TO Barb: Thanks, and with the exception that I believe the first stop after censuses is in the records of the counties in which an ancestor lived, I agree completely. From: Excalibur131 To: VAROOTS-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 6:56 PM Subject: Re: [VAROOTS] Errors on pay sties Hi Paul, I'm wondering (maybe others are too), do you subscribe to any pay-for-info site? .... Libraries don't advertise what they don't have; universities don't talk about what they don't offer; book stores don't mention what they don't have in stock or can't get. What reason would a pay site have to be any different? I don't think "revealing," as if it were some dark secret, is a burden the pay-for-info sites should be saddled with. ... Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 7:44 PM Subject: Re: [VAROOTS] Errors on pay sites I think your questions are fair ones. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. In my view how genealogy should be presented is present and apparent in many well written abstracts, transcriptions and printed histories. Perhaps the example most familiar to all of such presentations may be found in Crozier's monumental "VA Wills and Administrations". By reading the "Introduction" to that work, the reader, newbie or otherwise, finds named the many sources and records dates that are NOT present, thus supplying the reader with information of what he must seek elsewhere. My 30 years in business clearly revealed to me, as it has for myriad business people, that by saving a customer valuable time and directing him/her elsewhere for what we did NOT supply, he became most appreciative and came back to our offerings when those met his needs. Do I suggest that the pay-for-genealogy sites enumerate what is not there? Of course not; that would be as impossible as it would be silly. Do I suggest that folks should not soon after beginning examine censuses? Again, not by any stretch! What I do heartily recommend is that the subscribers to such services, in order that they realize the magnitude of the efforts that may/must be undertaken, be told, even if it be with only one paragraph, that excluded from that single source are millions of records; millions of deed and mortgage records, millions of courts' orders, entries and minutes, tens of thousands of Loose Papers, marriage records, schools and funeral directors' records, sextons' lists, sheriffs', auditors' and tax lists, cemeteries lists, maps, family records and on and on and on, all of which must be remembered when the reader finishes with what those info merchants have available. It should be no secret for folks new to this hobby that while those sites do often strive mightily to add daily to their offerings, they have mountains of info yet to climb. In my classes in beginning genealogical research, time after time I have had students tell me that they had searched "just everywhere" on the internet, and had not found some certain ancestor, and therefore "he is really lost and can't be found". I need not tell you or any other experienced researcher that such thoughts could only have arisen from representations that this or that site had millions of people named (it has been written that more than 900 million people have lived on our land alone since Jamestown), and that such and such a site was the biggest and best available. Do I subscribe to any pay for sites? Yep, numerous newsletters from my "where" counties; several states societies, many libraries and archives, especially New England, VA and NC, and almost enough other information sources to require a second mailman. Again, if we must disagree, I am sorry, but I remain firm in my view that we all - including those profiting from genealogy - have a duty to help all others find whatever new and different sources there may be that are over and above what is being sold. It is for the above reasons that I and many others, including even such learned men as Brent Tarter, freely help other folks and lead them to WHEREVER they should next go. I have yet to see anyone on any staff of any pay-for site come online and help with individual problems. Whatever. Genealogy without documentation is nothing. Paul Drake JD Genealogist & Author <www.DrakesBooks.com> ----- Original Message ----- ---------------------------------------- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users. It has removed 1027 spam emails to date. Paying users do not have this message in their emails. Try www.SPAMfighter.com for free now!