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John McCoy 3/12/97 Former Assistant State Coordinator of the NEGenWeb Project Nebraska's county's coordinators represent current residents, displaced Nebraskans, and those with only ancestral ties. This wonderful mix of styles, personalities and skills, synthesizes into a "virtual" community which parallels the state's rich social and cultural heritage. Each county page includes a section of "links" to other web pages with information about the county and genealogical research in general, a listing of volunteers that will do look-ups via e-mail, and a section where readers can submit queries about their ancestors and view the queries submitted by others. Beyond these basics, the pages vary as widely as their volunteers. Enterprising Nebraska coordinators have transcribed county marriage records, burials in cemeteries, and pioneer reminiscences. Historical and genealogical societies for several Nebraska counties have established a web presence through the efforts of county coordinators. NEGenWeb volunteers have also been the driving force behind several related projects that benefit on-line genealogists and historians. Many volunteers stepped forward to help with the Andreas project--a number of them Nebraska GenWeb members, and, in an astonishingly short period of time, a good portion of the general history portion of the book and 29 of the 69 county chapters have already been transcribed. The "History of the State of Nebraska" was published by the Western Historical Company, A. T. Andreas, Proprietor, in 1882. It is an early history of the State prior to 1882, and is of interest to both historians and genealogists. It includes the history of each of the 69 counties that were established prior to 1882, and many of these county chapters include biographical sketches of some of the early citizens of those counties. This is a huge book, and has turned out to be a monumental task, but one well worth taking. EKIS and its sister site, KanColl, created by Lynn Nelson and directed by Dick Taylor, a native Nebraskan, will archive this and other works into perpetuity, at the same time providing high-profile access permanently on the KU server. It will ensure that this early history is available for generations to come. The Andreas project can be found online at "History of the State of Nebraska." The enthusiasm exhibited for these entirely volunteer-staffed efforts is nothing short of phenomenal. In February of this year, at the USGenWeb national level, 77% of the counties had sponsors. A branch of USGenWeb, the USGenWeb Archives, coordinated by Linda Russell Lewis, stores transcribed primary source documents. In some instances census data for an entire county has been placed on line. Last month the archives passed the 100 million bytes mark--the equivalent of more than 60,000 printed pages of records. Volunteers are still welcomed in all phases of the project including creating and maintaining state and county pages, hosting mailing lists, organizing files submitted by volunteers, and transcribing public records for inclusion in the archives. I thought I might join in roll call and add my bit of history to the group. I was searching my mother's family roots on the internet in the Kentucky GenWeb back in the middle of 1996. It was such a useful tool (remember that the USGenWeb project started with those good folks in Kentucky), I decided to try some of the other states. Finding the Nebraska GenWeb site in August, 1996, I found that only one county was on line that I had roots in - Hamilton County. Butler and my own birth county of Nemaha were not on line yet. I was sure someone living in those counties would have them on line soon, so I went back to Hamilton County and posted my query and surnames. Barb Hruza had done such a magnificent job, I had to send her a note complimenting her on her site. To my surprise, I got a personal note back from her, and she gave all the credit to some lady named Connie Snyder. Well and good, I went off on my merry way to search for my family roots in Illinois. I came back a week later and found Butler and Nemaha had not yet been adopted. Soon, I thought, they will be on line. Off again to merrily search on the internet. Another week passed, and I checked back into Nebraska. Nope. Still not adopted. I wrote Dale a note telling him I did not know a Dang thing, but was more than willing to learn, and was willing to adopt Nemaha and Butler Counties. Dale never responded, so I posted my Nemaha and Butler information in the "Guest Book" on the state page (that was ALL that was on the state page in those days, besides a list of counties, who there cc was if they had been adopted, or if they needed to be adopted). Another week went by and Butler and Nemaha were still not adopted, so I wrote Dale another note, a little put out that he had never responded to my first note. I told him about all I could do was put up a place for folks to post queries and their surnames, but that was better than he had now. Amazingly, I received a form letter from Dale telling me to sign up on the Nebrroots List and on the Negen-l list, and gave me passwords for Butler and Nemaha Counties. I signed up for both lists, and couldn't tell one from the other because I saw the same names on both lists - Larry Sweney, Barb Hruza, occasionally Dale, Connie, Jean Walsh, and Alan Dripps were the names I remembered seeing a lot. Discussions varied from personal family research to how to do html coding. This was early October, 1996. The first thing I did was fire off a letter to that nice lady running the Hamilton County site...she was nice enough not to answer my other email, and it wasn't even a robot reply - it was a real person that took time to write to me. Sure enough, Barb answered my email, told me that I should contact Connie Snyder as she was such a help and really did all of her coding for Hamilton County. Reluctant to bother such a busy person, I got a book on HTML coding, and found some info on the internet. Then Barb or someone told me how to "capture" a web page. Heehee. Barb said that I could copy her page - take anything I needed she said. And here Bill Oliver thought he was copying MY pages - {rofl}. The end of the first week I was a fledgling cc, a note came down one of the lists that said "roll call." It took all weekend, but I think seven counties checked in that were up and on line, and four or so more checked in that were working hard to get the pages ready. That was probably 90% of the counties checking in. By November I had messed the captured Hamilton County pages up enough that no one could recognize it as Hamilton County - also no one would have wanted to claim it. I tried to upload it. Failure. I think learning to FTP was harder than learning to code. I broke down and wrote to Connie, who graciously offered her assistance. I sent my pages to her, she cleaned them up and uploaded them for me. She also donated the very first bit of information for the Nemaha pages - the Corryell Park information, complete with pictures!! While I was suffering through all of this - I was also on the phone calling libraries and court houses in Nemaha and Butler Counties - this ran up my phone bill, especially in Butler County. I bet those Butler County folks are still laughing about the snipe hunt they send time on trying to get help/information to post. I had much better luck in Nemaha County - both the courthouse and the library said to contact a fellow named Denny Norvell. Turns out this Denny fellow was at that time the Vice President of the Nemaha Valley Genealogy Society (NVGS) and their newsletter editor. Denny supplied me with newsletters, pamphlets, booklets, and sold me a History of Nemaha County (still the best investment I have made as a cc). The lethargic Butler County folks only had enough energy to send me on more snipe hunts. They could care less about history or genealogy. One gentleman did write a weekly history article for the local paper, but he did not want to give, sell, share or help in any way, shape or form. It's not that he didn't want his information on the internet - he was just a relative of Junior Samples, and it would have been too much work. Back to roll calls - by the third week, I figured out that roll calls started on Friday and ended late Sunday night, and you could check in any time. Since I live in Oregon, most folks have had an opportunity to check in before I am up. I got on line Friday morning and no one had checked in on roll call yet - yippee!! I got to be the first one to check in - actually started roll call. Larry Sweney wrote me a nice note thanking me for starting roll call for him. Oooops. I realized I was a loose cannon rolling around here. This group did have some protocol, and although Larry didn't say it, I realized I blew it. I have to give Dale Schneider and Larry Sweney credit - Dale insisted that the county pages were ours to do with AS WE WANTED - as long as we had the required stuff (USGenWeb Logo, Blurb about USGenWeb and how to volunteer, and a query page). That freedom I think really helped this group to show their talents. I have to give Larry credit, as he never got upset, no matter what. Barb Hruza started urging Dale to give me something to do on the state level. I never did figure out what I did to get Barb that mad at me. Dale called me on the phone and we chatted some in early January. He said to hang on, he had some ideas. Heck, I was in no hurry, two counties were keeping me busy. Barb Hruza mentioned to me one day that the Hamilton County had a bridge that was actually in three counties. I was awe-struck by this. I have been on bridges that started in one county and ended in another, even bridges that spanned two states, but had never heard of a bridge that managed to cover a part of three counties. I told her that would make good trivia! We kicked the idea around a little, and I finally goaded Barb into posting it on the Nebrroots list. Boy, did we have fun. Folks really got involved, and were trying to figure out what bridge and what counties. Then one or two people complained loudly that this had nothing to do with genealogy. Dale told us to ignore them, that this was fun. But Barb and I figured we didn't need to step on any one's toes. Barb got permission from Dale to start a "Heritage List" that we could play trivial on, and if folks didn't like to learn a little trivia, they could stay away and we would all be happy. Hee hee. I see folks on the heritage list complaining from time to time, but I have to chuckle - the heritage list is for anything and everything having to do with Nebraska, but it is especially for TRIVIA!! My hat is off to Barb for doing such a fantastic job with it. KUDOS, Barb. One of the interesting notes on the Nebrroots list in early January 1997 came from Bill Oliver. Seems Bill was a little upset that certain counties had not been adopted. I wasn't too crazy about the public reply that he got from Larry Sweney, so I wrote Bill a note, telling him I knew the frustration that he had, as I had the same frustration that Nemaha and Butler had not been adopted. Through this time, Bill thought he might be able to help, and posted some letters written by his immigrant ancestors about leaving (Austria??) and coming to Nebraska. Those letters were fantastic, and hope Bill will re-post them, maybe on the Heritage list, some time soon. Encouraged that Bill really was talent waiting to be tapped, I encouraged him to become a cc. Boy was that a mistake At the end of January 1997, Larry Sweney died from cancer. None of us knew he had cancer, and it came as a shock to us. Dale called me and told me to take over as volunteer coordinator, which was the same as assistant state coordinator, without the title. Back in those days, there were no committees, very little organization, and one heck of a lot of fun, so it was a real shock to have one of our number pass on. As someone else mentioned, we agreed to continue roll call, and had a memorial roll call for Larry Sweney that Friday. I used roll call to help get organized. I unofficially kept track of who checked in and who didn't. I also checked the ftp site to see if pages were being taken care of. When six or so weeks would go by, and someone had not checked in on roll call, or sent any messages in that time period, and had not updated their pages in any way in the same time period, I got worried that another cc had passed to the great beyond and I would write them a note. Two cc's never responded to me ever. Jon Almquist did respond to me. I got dressed down, shall we say. Jon wanted to know, why we expected him to communicate with him, since he had tried and tried back in November to adopt another county and Dale had not answered him. Jon was right. Dale was a lousy communicator. He communicated as the mood fit, and it did cause major problems. I wrote Jon back, apologized to him, and promised that communications would be better. Jon and his wife are among the oldest and best we have, and I am sure glad we did not loose him, and all the singed hair and eyebrows I got from reading that first note from him have about all grown back. Phone calls and emails to Dale got things moving a little better - he put my name with his on the email address on the state page and on all the county pages. When someone sent an email to the State Coordinator, I automatically got it, and it was my duty to take care of it. My daily email county jumped dramatically when that happened. I started getting up at 4:30 every morning so I could answer email. I answered email from 5:00 a.m. to 7:30, then would go to work. I would come home at noon, answer email for a solid hour, then go back to work. I would come home about 5 P.M., and answer email until as late as midnight, then start all over by getting up at 4:30 the next morning. I am serious, that is no stretch of the truth. We used the NEGen List for all of our decisions - we voted on what direction to go, what needed to be done, etc. Remember, back then there were less than 20 of us, and we got to know each other fairly well. A lady named Laurie Saikin became my right hand. She "swept" the counties for me, to make sure that the county pages met USGenWeb standards and that the links worked. Laurie also started our "Society Page" which was the first thing the state page had (besides the guest book). Laurie worked hard on that, and had a lot of difficulty trying to get information from both NSHS and NSGS. Laurie was frustrated but undaunted, and managed to get a lot of information up to help researchers. Looking at that page now, from the perspective of what is now available from the state page, that wasn't much, but back then it was a lot. I kept my eye out for anyone on any list that either asked to be a cc or complained about the lack of cc's, and did all I could to recruit them. Some volunteers also just popped up out of the clear blue, which meant they were interested, and did not need a sales pitch. One thing I decided to do early one was to make sure anyone and everyone got a personal note from me, not an impersonal form letter. Other than searching for volunteers, some of my email had to do with my two counties...dang, I had two counties to take care of. I almost forgot about them! Other email had to do with "how do I..." I usually forwarded them to Laurie Saikin or Connie Snyder (by now, Connie was doing the dodging and/or ftp for two thirds of the counties, and we were taking credit for it). In February, 1997, Jeanne Walsh and Barb Hruza, as has been mentioned in other messages, started pushing for 100% adoption of counties. We had an increase in adopted counties because of this, then we kind of trickled off. One day Laurie just disappeared. I tried calling her, left messages on her answering machine, talked to her son, sent her email, but she never replied. I was in one heck of a fix. About the same time, my father passed away, and I had to fly to California for a week. When I got back, I found that Jean had started beating the drums to get the 10 or so remaining counties adopted. I would have complained about the work load she was putting on me, but she had taken on two other counties, and could really be counted on in a pinch. Barb Hruz, ever the Nebraska GenWeb booster, was right there with her urging the total adoption of all the counties. Our ranks were swelling. There were still counties to be adopted. I can't remember how, I am sure Jeanne did it to me, but I ended up with Knox, Wheeler, and Holt Counties in addition to Nemaha and Butler. There were folks out there with more counties than me, so I didn't complain. All I did was clone my Nemaha page, change the county name, and give folks a place to post a query or a surname. If someone researching any of those counties happened to mention that they either lived there or HAD LIVED there, they got my impassioned plea to become a cc for that county. Thanks to Lynn and Jaquelyn, Holt and Knox had the cc's they really deserved - folks that would give them the TLC a good cc will give there county. By mid May, 1997, I was feeling the strain of trying to hold together a growing organization, and with Laurie missing it was very hard. To make things worse my family had only seen my back when I was home since January. My face was buried in the computer screen. Oh, yes, I had volunteered in December of 1996 to type the Nemaha and Butler chapters of the Andreas Project that Connie was doing such a fantastic job of overseeing. I was WAY behind on that project. But, Ted, Carole, and Bill Wever saved my bacon. Bill photocopied those chapters, mailed them to T & C, who scanned them in and emailed them to me. I sent then to Connie, telling her how sore my fingers were {bwg}. Bill and T&C got me out of a few other pinches along the way since then, too. In late May or Early June I started trying to persuade Connie to take over as the coordinator of volunteers. I think I got the idea from my partner in crime, Barb Hruza. I knew that Connie only had two counties, the Andreas Project, and four or five projects in Kansas going on. Surely being volunteer coordinator would be a piece of cake for her. After refusing the first half dozen requests to step in, she weakend and agreed - if she could have a committee to help run the show. AS you all know, that was the best thing that has happened to the NeGenWeb Project. About the same time, Jeanne Walsh graciously offered to take Wheeler County off my hands, so I was back to just Nemaha and Butler counties. then, Barb Hruza sent me an email saying there was some lady searching the exact same names in Hamilton County as I was, and she sent me her email address. Carolyn Wilkerson came into my life at that point, and my knowledge of my own genealogy tripled. My own genealogy!! I had not worked on that since September, 1996. Gosh, it would be fun to do genealogy again! On July 1, 1997, Connie officially took over for me. She and her committee immediately got a clickable map on the state page. Connie changed the looks and format of the state page, T & C added so much information, especially the County Unknown, Bill Oliver jumped in and did a lot of ego messaging and encouraging, and started giving weekly stats on roll call - something I only did once or twice, but kept a record here without posting it. I still enjoy reading Bills 11 O'clock news report and statistics. And my dear second cousin Carolyn was talked into adopting Butler County from me (and has done a magnificent job, I might add). Now that I had time to take my nose out of the computer, I realized that my time spent doing this had taken a heavy toll on my family. I had two teenage boys that I no longer knew, and a wife that had given up on having a husband. One son is still a problem for me, and my wife, well, that is another story and I have gotten too long now. I will add this, though - it wasn't just the storm that brought dsenter down, it was much more than that. In part, it was Dale's laid back way of dealing with things, even the phone company. They cut him off, not the storm. But it was also Dale's big heart and - his free space for any and all Nebraska Counties - that cut d won on his revenue. Selling web space is basically what Dale did. And it was not just Nebraska - lots of states and a lot of the USGenWeb stuff was on his server. Losing dsenter had it's silver lining, though - USGenWeb, frustrated that Dale would not contact anyone and tell us what was going on, stepped in and told Connie she was now the State Coordinator (actually, a job she had been doing since July without the title). And, Brian gave us all the space we need - free, of course - on his server. Last but not least, my dear cousin, sensing I was in a funk or was not otherwise taking care of Nemaha like I should (I was honestly burnt out), asked me if she could have Nemaha. With mixed emotions, I gave it to her, and she has done wonders with it. If you have read this far, you are a brave soul. But thanks for sticking it out this far - I have to say THANKS to Barb Hruza, Denny Norvell, Connie Snyder, T&C, Jeanne Walsh, Lynn, Jaquelyn, Bill Oliver, Bill Wever, and my dear cousin for all there support, kindness, enthusiasm and friendship over the years. And thanks for overlooking my faults - I know I exasperated you all from time to time. Now, to steal a phrase I read yesterday - Eagelarks, all!! John Feb-Mar 1997: Volunteered to John McCoy, got Nance County. Laurie was our handholder as we're on Macintosh. Jeanne let us know that we were novices at sending stuff by email (messed up a million files while learning). Sherri B. arranged an opportunity to "DO" a book for Platte. Ted extracted & posted a couple censuses. Summertime: Jeanne & Barb cracked the whip until we "volunteered" for additional counties (thank you both, we had FUN and learned some MORE things!). No longer recall if that was before or after we started County Unknown. Made a run to NE & gathered some material. Dsenter broke, and we all moved to RootsWeb. Bits of antique files recovered here & there, temporary pages installed. Everybody was scrambling for lost images & links. Ginger got the RC going; added Civil War & WW I. [Historical Note from P¹, or P²: 2/9/99 (Resourch Center) "officially" opened 17 Oct 1997. Have a heap of old email that was being passed around primarily between Wendy, Connie, Ginger and us. Everybody surfing and trying to get together handy links for genealogists. By August Ginger was in charge and trying to organize the bits & pieces. Resource Center was hardly "on the air" before dsenter crashed! Believe Ginger had part of the RC located on other servers in the beginning because she was concerned about putting up so much at once. Double check with her, please! Civil War started at the same time as a subsidiary page, had it stashed in Nance County website. Big advantage on the timing was that Connie then requested a separate website for the RC when we moved to RootsWeb.]Did a couple chapters of Andreas. Surnames list on CoUnk started with names from Andreas, & was enlarged repeatedly. Locations list only gained bits & pieces. Wendy started filling up the archives. Ted started extracting Merrick marriages. January 1998? Started to produce NE & Midwest Gen. Record (now done, at last). Betty volunteered for Cheyenne & Deuel, later Lenise took over Howard County. Bill Wever started statewide projects to get us ALL scanning, typing. Great people, plenty of work, good times. Trivia for entertainment, with "zingers" from Pam & Carolyn. Inspirational messages from Connie & Bill O. Sorry to hear about Catherine's bum visitor. Welcome to Jan, enjoy the good life with NEGenWeb! Better get this off, or won't get counted in the "news". Ted & Carole I started in December of 1996 with Fillmore County. I too, did not know anything about html. Dale Schneider was not too sure it was a good idea for me to take over the county, but I persisted and finally he agreed. I have learned html with the help of all of you and a well-worn book. When we changed to rootsweb.com--there were problems getting the files moved. It seems that I could never make connection with the server. Connie helped me, but I knew something else needed to be done besides having her update Fillmore County, so that is why the Fillmore files are at: http://www.ccp.com/~smiller/index.htm I have gotten so many responses from people who appreciate the work we do. Just this week I got a response from the board of directors of the Shickley cemetery asking how to go about getting their records posted. I told them to send me photocopies of the records and I will post them. This may take awhile, but it is amazing how we can obtain information. I have enjoyed "knowing" all of you (by e-mail) wish I could have come to your get-together this summer, but it did not work out. Keep up the GREAT work! I have only been with the project since March and am very excited about being the coord. for Dixon County and being part of such a great group of volunteers. I have been doing genealogy for only 5 or six years and have been using the internet since then for resources etc... I then decided to concoct (did I spell this right?) my own personal web page, using a AOL based web page generator, which does the HTML for me. Needless to say I have not taken the time to figure out HTML, but I am working on it! I have always used the USGen Web pages and had always wanted to volunteer, (but geez, the one county that I felt I could really contibute to already had a coord.) I could have volunteered for another county, but I felt I could do a little bit more for Dixon County, as I still have relatives and many contacts there that could help me out ;) Low and behold, in March of this year I recieved a email from James Kinman, the Dixon County, NE coord asking me if I would like to take over the site. I simply could not refuse! Connie and Bill were very helpful in getting me started. To this point, I have only gotten the major items up such as surnames, queries, links. I have been able to help out a couple of people on their queries, last week I happened to have a obit here at home that a lady was looking for, so I scanned it and sent it to her, she was tickled. I am planning a trip to Dixon County this summer and hope to come back with lot's of good stuff for the web pages. The last few weeks have had me busy outside in the yard, new house which means no trees, no shrubs, no nothing (had to do something about that), and hubby has been off to Dallas for three weeks :) I hope now to get back to the really fun stuff, Dixon County and the USgen Web/NEGen Web project. Hi to All, My History: I was wondering around on internet and found the NeGenWeb, went to Banner County and seen Leah's message asking for a volunteer with roots in Banner County. My roots are deep but my knowledge of how was nil so I discovered. I went to the teacher at Sioux County High and laid more problem on his desk. He has been helping me and is going to let me graduate from Sandbox. With Leah's help and the teacher I about have it all together. So he tells me!!!! I have been reading the messages about the problems, seems they have a way of working it out. I think the GenWeb is great and I am proud to be part of it. Banner County has a lot of history to offer. My two counties, Banner where I am from and Sioux co. where I live were pretty wild in the early days and had a lot of interesting characters. Briefly, I became interested in the whole idea of web paging back in my BBSing and FIDONet days of corresponding with others by subject lists. That was back in some dark age. But, finally took the plunge and subbed to the Nebraska list around September/October of 1996 and "lurked" around until I opened the message portals and John McCoy began pestering me about "getting involved". Even then I fooled around and fooled around until finally I got up enough nerve to ask for "free" space from two entities in late February 1997. I chose the "local hometown" space on dsenter to put both Nuckolls county, NE and Wood county, OH into the ether. It wasn't but days that John McCoy and PikeGirl were pushing for more adoptions. I took Dundy, also because my folks "spread" to that area. I was going to take Adams also, but Catherine beat me to that one. And, as it turns out, she is so much more qualified for that county. Things grew to the point I began "babysitting" Webster [the drop off point for my ancestors] and Clay counties; then Wayne and Stanton. At the first, I slightly altered John McCoy's Nemaha county page [with his permission, of course] to get something up and running. For what I knew about html was contained in one percent of a timble. Discovering that html was similar in logic to the dBASE [now xBASE] computer language gave me some advantage in learning. But, I never would have gotten going if it weren't for PikeGirl's cheerleading, John's insistence that I could do it, Connie Snyder's invaluable help with html code, and most certainly Laurie Saikin's help with graphics. Like Connie said this week; the group sure has expanded. And changed some too ... into one of the grandest extended families I have participated in. Bill I started corresponding with Dale in late 1995 and signed up for my Livingston County site immediately. When Don, my husband found out about my new venture...he said why are you doing Livingston County? All of your research is in Nebraska, so I also told Dale I would do Chase or Dundy or both if he needed. We corresponded and talked on the phone a lot during those early months...I also talked to Larry several times before he died, and he arranged for some books for me to purchase for my NE collection. Unfortunately my life took a wicked turn at that time period and my mother with Alzheimer's got worse and worse and so my whole life was taken over with her care. Physically I also had several surgeries. I also care for my 87 year old neighbor who has no family and he can hardly walk. I continued to put up stuff on Livingston County because it was easily accessible, and collected stuff from family members for Chase & Dundy. It is amazing what I have learned with only 2 years of this medium behind me, fact being that the stuff I put up first is now sooooooo ugly....and I cannot wait to make it look better now. When it was apparent that Dsenter would fail, and I knew we had a home at Rootsweb, I watched as all of the Nebraska counties were moved and the leadership became stronger and stronger through Connie & Bill's care. Connie nudged me to at least get up something for Chase, no matter how small...so as usual, working under deadlines, I pulled together something so at least there was a page. I even put up some photos of our "Eagle" nickname that Bill had decided to call us....what I did not notice was that I actually had a seagull photo up on the page....gee, it WAS a neat picture...and the darn bird did have feathers.....after all....yikes, was I teased about that. I saw the camaraderie forming between the group of coordinators and it was truly wonderful. Tried to meet up with Barb after Don's mom died in the spring of 1997, but it appears that we passed each other in the parking lot where her old house now sits awaiting restoration so she can give us a tour at the Meet 'n Greet in August. Things got even more hectic with now the additional estate care of Don's dad who will be 96 in July, well they always say a person with nothing to do gets bored....guess I will never get in that situation.... Came through NE again in February and finally did meet Barb and we went shopping for stuff to drive the foolish people from Michigan who seem to think they were more number one that we were.....went home with decals all over my car just to irritate them. Also got to see Denny in Nemaha County and tour his museum, just gorgeous! I have continued to collect tons of Nebraska information to upload on the site and to share with other NE researchers, and just wish I could figure out that cloning thing one step beyond the sheep, I need several more hours in the day. True to the type of people I have always met through my almost 30 years with Don's family in Nebraska, all of the coordinators are great individuals and I truly feel blessed to know them. I have been active with other state groups and none compares with this group. Who knows when the load will lighten, but I sure have fun doing this to keep my stress levels down.....I sure cannot wait until August to see if faces match what I think you all will be like.... In July 1997 my cousin Peggy Ebel volunteered to do Lookups if I would maintain a Knox web page. Like everyone I had no idea how to create HTML code so John McCoy had to do the work for us until mid November. Thanks to his previous efforts we had a good beginning. Peggy and Judy added lists of individuals buried in Knox County. We are still working on that project. Living in Sheridan, Wyoming means that I can answer a few questions from my books and census microfilm but most of the research I pass on to Peggy and Judy. I enjoy belonging to this special group. |