I never start these ROLL CALLS, but have gained things from them. Thought the following might be explanatory. My way serves the same purpose as a ROLL CALL, but I think fits in with the mail lists which do not allow ROLL CALL. You can still participate in a ROLL CALL. The idea was for the members to get the names they are researching out on the Internet again and they called it a ROLL CALL. You should put the SURNAME of the person you are researching in the subject line with an approximate date. Example BROWN, Robert>VA/OH early 1800s. Or Robert VA/OH 1750s for surname lists. Then in the letter you could be more specific. I would send an e-mail for each name. This way each name you are searching gets undivided attention. I don't think that a ROLL CALL with just a list of names serves much purpose, as we never know what years are involved or anything else. The ones I benefited from were the ones who had a surname in the subject line and more details in the body of the message. Roll Call tells us nothing and when you are rushed or as busy as many of us are, we delete and never look and you are cheating yourselves as well as others because the answer might be there, but no one opens it to find out. There is room to do 1 or 2 names/surnames in the subject line. Perhaps Brown, Jones, Smith 1800s, or John 1850, William 1880. This tells everyone a lot. As has been pointed out, this is also a problem for the Archives. Can you imagine going into the Archives and checking to see if in the past several years someone was searching your name so you can contact them, and there you find 1000 queries titled ROLL CALL? Would you open those or skip them? Just think you might miss that connection you have been searching for for years. Thanks for writing. Sandy in Florida Maybe I will catch up with my mail when I retire, in 2010, <grin>