Dear Listers, In the years that I have been mail list admin for this list, I've noticed that many people will subscribe to the list and then send a post stating that they are looking for a specific family that lived in the Barron Co. area. Very seldom does it spark a conversation - at least on this list. This has had me somewhat dismayed, but I always hope that there is private communication that has resulted from these initial postings. Using this mail list is one way to obtain info on a family group. I also see that many people write to the Barron Co. Message Board asking questions about families that lived in this county. Some of these queries result in some great communication and that is very encouraging to me. Thinking about this, I'm wondering how many people use the Surname Message Boards that have been set up for sharing info on a particular family name? There are lots of boards out there that can be utilized in your research. This was brought to my attention by one of our website contributors, Gale Kurschner. She has been researching the Kurschner family here in Barron Co. and has been willing to share her data with us on the Barron Co. website. But she wanted to take it a step further and so, she has started up a Kurschner Surname Message Board on the Ancestry/Rootsweb system. You can see it by clicking on this link - http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/board/rw/surnames.kurschner. This is an excellent way to find more information on your surname. I would encourage you all to look at what Gale has done and then check to see if there is a message board specific to your surnames of interest. To do this, go to this page - http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/script/main/rw and either search for the surname board that is of interest to you, or click on the first letter of the name of interest and browse to see what is available. Be sure to check any variations of spelling also! While I love to see many of you posting on the Barron Co. Message Board, I hope you are (or will) take advantage of these other boards too. I want you to be able to get the most out of your online research! If you don't see a board for your surname, do what Gale did and start one of your own! And, if you are a Kurschner researcher, Gale would love to communicate with you on this new Kurschner Surname Message Board. Good luck to each of you with your research, Nance