In a message dated 7/11/2000 2:09:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time, histwash@thegrid.net writes: << I am sorry to say that your response to just meet for an afternoon at a genealogy conference as a "get together for an afternoon" just won't solve the problem.>>Snip<< >> Chuck, I wasn't aware that we had a problem. This site seems to be working fine for research. I fail to see how getting together is going to further that aspect. I belong to the Southern California Clan Mackenzie as well as the North American Chapter of the same and we have get togethers (called Highland Games), but they certainly don't pertain to research. It's Bagpipes, kilts, black and tans and a good time. In my line I have in excess of 1400 entries. Not all of them, of course are Washburn descendants. but enough of them are to tell me that there are far more people that could join the Mayflower Society, if they choose to, than they could handle. As soon as someone mentioned an initial fee of $5.00 and annual dues of $20.00, I lost interest. Why? I couldn't help but think of where the money would go! Charging a fee, and justifying it are two entirely different matters. My chapter of the SAR is $98.00 to join and $55.00 a year and that's only one organization. I belong to five and I'm pretty much "annual dues(ed) out." I don't know how everyone else feels, but as a Washburn descendant, I, for one, would like to keep this part of my heritage simple and inexpensive. If you set up a website, you could justify the maintenance of it with contributions, (or perhaps small fees), just as RootsWeb does and the site would be a Washburn site. You could include password access to limit the sight to Washburn descendants, but I don't think you should. This way, newsletters could be weekly (no postage) and Washburn descendants from all over the world could contribute. All the deeds, birth records, wills, etc., could be placed in a data bank for people to review, along with individual pedigrees. this way, no election of officers, etc. After all, we live all over the place and we really don't know each other, so it's pretty hard to "elect" anyone. I having a hard enough time with the elections in November! I think we all agree that this site is primarily the descendants of John Washburn and Margery Moore, so the research, as I have stated earlier, is really fine. Get togethers are fun, but most people seldom make the effort to travel very far to do so, regardless of what they may say. Even in some of my family reunions, we have had relatives living less than thirty miles from the reunion site that "couldn't make the trip." Mac