Howdy All!! Responses back to my question about purposes the TXBELL list could serve have been helpful. You've said: o You'd like to do queries and responses on the list, to help with your genealogy researches... so we'll do that (I'll review the List Welcome Letter to see what it says now and change it if needed). o You've also said you'd like to have Bell County history/genealogy material put in from time to time, for background, leads, and general information (I've got some permission-to-include requests out with some Bell County sources, hoping I can include some of the interesting things in Bell County history in this list and on the Bell County page). o Some of you would like to see something about the historical markers in Bell County, and we can do that. o Also mentioned was finding out about where to look for what kind of records, of genealogical interest (I'm working on that... I visited the Belton, Temple, and Killeen Public Libraries, and have asked them for some listings of what they have relating to Bell County, and whether or not they'll loan them. Also, the Bell County Museum is interested in a web presence, but didn't have anyone to work on a page for them, so I've built a simple one to get them going.. try them after a while at www.vvm.com/~museum.. but there's nothing there just yet :)...). I have just started the TXBELL mailing list and had not been successful in doing interactive searches yet at the address Laurel Burns gave, but keep trying it. (Take a look at http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl and let's get it doing something for us!) Laurel is right, it is a search of mailing lists, but I've not found that it indexes into some of the board databases that Surname Helper searches... so it may be a point of education for me! Maybe you need to be using both for your searches to get the most benefit. Since I've only been doing the Bell County page since the second week of February, and had not ever used mailing lists or boards before TXBELL was set up, I have a lot to learn about making it a useful tool. I do hope that discussions will have something to do with Bell County, or genealogy research relating to Bell County, or resources that can help with Bell County research. Lastly, if you have material to put in the non-Query boards that's for Bell County people, please post it, or send it to me to post. It seems that the non-query boards in almost all of the Texas counties I've browsed have very little (generally none) material in the Deed, Wills, Pensions, Bible Records, Biographies, and Obituaries Boards, and I'd think they'd be full of information. Is it too hard to do the postings, or is a suitable format needed ("What does a good posting look like"?) Boy, it's interesting being a newbie listowner! Bill Bost TXBELL Listowner RootsWeb Sponsor Bell County Coordinator/webmaster ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com