ISSN #1055-1891

Dear Cousins:

Welcome to our 45th newsletter, the beginning of our 12th year. It hardly seems possible. It's been great fun the whole time so far as I am concerned. I hope it has been the same for those of you who were in at the beginning as well as those joining with us later.

I've been thinking about this for awhile and thought it might be a good time to go over some of the decisions we've made together. The first was to keep everything as inexpensive as could be. We began naively thinking that it would only need enough dues to cover the printing and mailing of the newsletter, but now we have so much correspondence, inquiries, solicitations for help in locating sources and persons with mutual ancestors that expenses have risen. That has been no problem due to the generosity of so many of you who include donations with your subscription dues. We are in great shape financially, and our library of genealogical histories compiled by some of you, as well as already published works, has been steadily growing. Along with that we have two 4-drawer filing cabinets packed with information from you all. I've recently attempted to cull extraneous material and it's been a task but a fruitful one. So pat yourselves on the back for all the work you've done and been generous enough to pass on to others. After all, that's why we are in business.

One thing I wanted to mention since I have repeated, on occasion, items which have already been printed in earlier newsletters. I do so because new subscribers may not have that information, so periodically we re-publish such items.

Happy St. Patrick's Day...Easter...and any other holidays you are observing. And remember, if you haven't paid your subscription for 1999 please do so that you can continue receiving the newsletter.