Several people have told me that they've nominated the Robertson County site at www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2 for the Mike Basham Memorial County of the Month Award. I thank those who have nominated the site at http://hometown.aol.com/treecrazyd/txgenweb2/form.htm. I'm also grateful for the many kind comments that have been added to the guest book at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/GUESTBOOK.htm. Last week, the Hearne Democrat ran its second article on the site focusing attention on the fact that it is now the official site for the Robertson County Historical Commission (RCHC). In the future, Cathy Lazarus (chairperson of the commission) and I hope to get The Hearne Democrat to run an ongoing series of articles about people, places, and events in Robertson County taken from the files online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/History.htm from the Handbook of Texas Online. This will generate greater awareness of history and genealogy and increase interest in the site. We're also working with the RCHC and the Texas Department of Transportation to update the interactive Robertson County map at http://txdot.lib.utexas.edu/select.phtml?urn=urn:utlol:txdot.tcrobn01 with corrected/revised cemetery and historic marker locations. In response to the nominations mentioned above, I sent the following information to the members of the Mike Basham Memorial County of the Month Award selection committee. While receiving this award would be an honor, its receipt would generate even greater interest in the site and give the site greater credibility. I thought you might be interested in seeing what I sent to the selection committee. If you like the site and wish to nominate it for this award, please feel free to do so above (if you haven't already). The Robertson County site is one of the first sites in Texas to have all of the available information from the Texas Department of Health on births, marriages, divorces, and deaths online. Though other TxGenWeb Archives volunteers are working hard to archive this information, the Robertson County Volunteer Coordinator has taken it upon himself to do all of Robertson County. This information is now available at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/VITALSTATISTICS.htm. Similarly, census information in the county was scant. So, four years -- 1850, 1860, 1870, & 1880 -- of the handwritten census records have been purchased and placed online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/CENSUSRECORDS.htm. Additional years will be purchased in the near future. Slowly but surely, permissions are being granted and entire books about Robertson County are being placed online. Much of the 500-page out-of-print book Hearne On The Brazos (which contains 300+ pages of biographical sketches of residents) by Norman L. McCarver Sr. & Norman L. McCarver Jr. is online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/HOTB.htm. Three masters theses and two additional books on the county are currently being processed. Volunteers are always being recruited at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/VolunteerOpportunities.htm to assist with a variety of projects. Robertson County has some 120 cemeteries within its borders. The county coordinator has been on a personal crusade to find and record each and every one of them. These are listed at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/RWCemeteries.htm along with burial lists, GPS longitude and latitude coordinates, maps, and driving instructions to most cemeteries. Many of the individual cemetery lists (e.g., http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/RWEASTBOONEPRAIRIECEMETERY.htm) go beyond name, birth/death dates to include parents, spouses, children, & other information. A successful "adopt a cemetery" program has yielded quite a few volunteers who update & expand their family information, serve as lookup contacts for local cemeteries, update inventories, & provide information about upcoming cemetery association meetings. The master cemetery list has been created from talking with countless Robertson County residents, traipsing across pastures, and traversing gulleys with the county coordinator's 80-year old dad in tow to find old family burial plots that aren't on any maps. Letters will soon be sent out to every church in the county requesting assistance with the Robertson County cemetery inventory project. The Texas Department of Transportation (TDOT) map for Robertson County shows quite a few crosses which mark unnamed cemeteries. All of these have been located, inventoried, & identified. The TDOT map also contains some errors (incorrectly labeled cemeteries). Efforts are underway to update/correct the TDOT maps at the source with the fruits of this labor and to create an online interactive county map that accurately reflects all known cemeteries and historic markers. Robertson County's 71 historic markers are identified along with their inscriptions and GPS coordinates at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/RWHistoricPlaces.htm. The research that has been done locally on the historic markers has been communicated to the Texas Historical Commission which has updated its register of historic places in the county based upon the information provided. The Handbook of Texas Online has been painstakingly searched and all articles about Robertson County are conveniently available online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/History.htm. A special "volunteer opportunities" section at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/VolunteerOpportunities.htm is constantly updated and expanded as volunteers come forward to help accomplish identified tasks. Special collections (e.g., http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/CAMPHEARNECOLLECTION.htm [provides information on the old WWII German prisoner of war camp outside of Hearne] & http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/NEWBADENCOLLECTION.htm [provides information on the German-speaking colony of New Baden]) are featured. These collections include materials that have been located in Texas library collections. For example, a copy of the Deutsch Colony of New Baden, written in 1882 by the founder of the colony, was located at the University of Texas at Austin and is now online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/DEUTSCHCOLONYNEWBADEN.htm. This booklet was translated from its old-style German by a volunteer; it's frail map of original landowners was photocopied by UT then digitally reproduced at a commercial photo shop for online display. A photographic quality enlargement of this map will be donated to the Hearne Depot (which is being restored to its original turn-of-the-century charm). Information about this depot's move is online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/HEARNEDEPOT.htm. University library collections have also been scoured; their online library catalogs listing their holdings of Robertson County materials have been assembled at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/LIBRARYARCHIVECOLLECTIONS.htm. Finally, the entire site has a common theme (done in the same speckled background with the same colors). The site's welcome page features a tune from country western singer Tex Owens (a former resident of Robertson County) and shows a flag waving slowly in the Texas breeze. In addition to the normal components most sites offer (lookups, queries, local resources, search feature, Texas links, neighboring counties, GenWeb links, etc.), the Robertson County site even has its own chat room and scrolling information featuring "What's New," "What's Coming," and "Volunteer Opportunities." Every effort is being made to place as much information as possible at the fingertips of researchers interested in Robertson County. The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, this site will continue to grow and provide even greater information in the future. William Kent Brunette 2700 Q Street, N.W., Suite 241 Washington, D.C. 20007 202.342.5368 (phone), 202.342.9033 (fax)