Newsletter has been published and emailed out! - William Dollarhide's "New York State Censuses & Substitutes."

Well it’s not exactly easy… To publish a Newsletter that is.

I thought it would be just type the thing up in WORD, cut and paste it to an email and send it out to the many hundreds of subscribers that agreed to opt in. Nope, ain’t that easy. First of all, the subscription box on the webpage is all automated; it records the name and email, sends the welcome letter and the confirmation link. Now the system is waiting to have the Newsletter component inserted into the mailer program in HTML format. Well that is not exactly WORD, if you know what I mean.

Most everything would work OK until we got to the Index to the 1846 Manuscript Tax List for the Town of Vernon, Oneida County, NY. The table that was created when I did the index in EXCEL just did not want to format and be nice. We worked on it pretty much all day and after becoming totally frustrated, decided to extract all of the email addresses and send the Newsletter out in WORD with the bulk mail feature to multiple undisclosed recipients. I hope it works.

The Manuscript Tax List will be scanned and put up on the website as JPEG images and will be available to all “Confirmed” Subscribers. More manuscripts will be forthcoming in future Newsletters.

I expect to get several questions, complaints, and comments from the subscribers because the mailing just seems clunky, at best. There is the possibility that many of you will find the Newsletter in your SPAM box. If this happens you should mark it “Not SPAM” and go into what ever contraption of software that you are using and allow it to come in from now on.

If it accidentally arrived in your email box and was unwanted, please accept this advance apology. This is the very first time that we have attempted to do such a mailing and I suspect it will take a little while to iron out the bugs. We will gladly remove anyone’s address that does not wish to receive the Newsletter.

Hey, it’s volume one, number one, what do you want from me?

You should definitely check out the Book Review for William Dollarhide’s excellent new book on “New York State Censuses and Substitutes”, on our website http://www.ny-genes.com

I will Blog more about this “MUST HAVE” book at another time.

Nelson House Results - Confirm Subscription - I'll get back to you (promise!)

The Nelson House in Poughkeepsie is not going to be demolished, or at least not soon anyway. The proposed line item for demolition in the 2006 budget will not likely be voted in. The demolition meeting turned into a preservation rout. Read about it here http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/DCL_budget_PH-02Dec05.htm . Thank you to all readers that sent a message to the Dutchess County Legislators.

The Newsletter will be emailed out to “Confirmed Subscribers” tomorrow, Saturday 12/03/05. It is not too late to subscribe and confirm, or to confirm the subscription you already requested. Just go to the “Welcome” automated email and hit the “CONFIRM” link.

There will be many new items of interest and an index to a totally unique manuscript Tax List for 1846 from an Upstate New York Town. The complete tax list will be published on our website under DATA / IMAGES and available to “confirmed” subscribers only.

If we have been corresponding recently and I owe you an email or other type of answer, please bear with me for a few more days. Most of my spare time has been devoted to tweaking the website and getting the newsletter ready to issue. I’ll have more time to write back after this weekend.

Crisis! Stop Demoliton of Nelson House in Dutchess County, NOW!!! - Newsletter Subscribers MUST confirm!

To the readers of the ny-genes blog:

There is a crisis at hand. Tomorrow, December 1^st, the legislators of Dutchess County are voting to destroy a colonial landmark home, Nelson House, that is on their property. If you want to do history a favor, PLEASE!!! Write to the legislature tonight or first thing in the morning to encourage them to vote NO for now and give the local historians a chance to come up with a rescue plan.

Here is the content of an email that I forwarded to the legislature tonight and hope that you readers of this blog will send some kind of a simple message as well. You do not have to be a resident of Dutchess County to send a message of support for the stopping of the demolition.

“To the Legislators of Dutchess County, New York.

Please do NOT destroy NELSON HOUSE!

This is such a crisis!

Do not vote to destroy an important piece of history that will benefit you, your children and many generations to come. Table this matter and give the concerned local citizens and other interested parties a chance to come up with a plan to salvage and restore a beautiful landmark.

You have in nearby Garrison, NY a magnificent Federal Style mansion museum named BOSCOBEL RESTORATION. This was a home that the demolition had literally started on when there was an "eleventh hour" (or perhaps midnight plus hour) rescue!

A group of serious historians were able to rescue it after it had actually started to be demolished. The rescuers had to actually go to the demolition contractor's storage yard on Long Island to retrieve some of the magnificent columns and carvings to be able to restore the fantastic home to its’ original condition. It took a while and it did not happen over night, but it is now a world class museum. But the important thing is that the demolition of Nelson House must absolutely be stopped NOW!

I can not even begin to tell you how much this gorgeous mansion, BOSCOBEL, has given enormous pleasure to historians, tourists, antique and arts lovers, world-wide!

If you do an Internet search under tourism (equates to dollars!), history, culture, arts, antiques, museum, Federal period, etc. You will find information on BOSCOBEL.

You need to halt all demolition proceedings of Nelson House NOW!!!

You have the possibility to create a visitor's point of major importance that will benefit your county and local businesses for ever to come.

Wishing you all the very best for your county and your citizens.

Richard Hillenbrand – website: http://www.ny-genes.com
(Former Director of the Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, NY)”

Here is the email link to the Dutchess County Legislators: countylegislature@co.dutchess.ny.us

Here is a link to some information on Boscobel Restoration:

http://www.pcnr.com/Culture/BoscobelRestoration.html

Yesterday and today several hundred of you nice people subscribed to my upcoming Newsletter at the Upstate New York Genealogy (UNYG) website at: http://www.ny-genes.com .

I’m thrilled with the response and am excited about getting this first issue out. However, if you did subscribe, then an automated welcome message was sent to the email address that you entered. It is imperative that you respond just once by clicking on the “Confirm” link. This is an automated system and it is the only way that we have of knowing if you entered a valid address and that you do indeed want to subscribe and that someone else is not subscribing you to something that you have no interest in.

I “PROMISE” you, nothing bad will happen to your computer by responding. It is not like opening an attachment. You have my word on it. I just want to make sure that everyone that does want to receive the Newsletter does in fact get it emailed to them.

If perhaps you deleted the email welcome message or can not find it, then let me know personally and I will manually go into the data base and confirm you. Anyone who is not confirmed will NOT get the Newsletter.

Records Access Legislation, FGS-NGS-RPA, IAJGS-PRMAC-ECHO (Alphabet Soup)

Sunday evening November 27^th there was a tele-conference regarding “Records Access Legislation” hosted by Ancestral Manor. If you are interested in finding out what the proposed “regulations” for the new law against anti-terrorism are going to be, I would suggest you bookmark the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society (FGS-NGS) website under their Records Preservation and Access Committee (RP&A) at www.fgs.org/rpa . As the various rules and regulations come out in a short while, this committee will be publishing them on their website and these regulations will affect all genealogists, so be aware and be educated so that you may be heard!

While you are at the above link to FGS-NGS click on their Formal Actions category and read the article by Dr. Robert L. Rafford, professional genealogist, entitled “Identity Theft and Vital Records”.

Another group that is heavily involved in monitoring these regulations is the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS), through their Public Records Access Monitoring Committee (PRMAC). Read the article on-line in their publication “ECHO” written in September 2005 by Jan Meisels Allen, IAJGS Board Member, at http://www.iajgs.org/echo/echoissues.htm .

There is a plethora of gossip and hearsay that has been bandied about of late and it will serve us all well to see the “actual” wording of the regulations before we jump to conclusions. Apparently the government wants to close access to Birth Certificates (at least,) so that terrorists may not use them to obtain a Driver’s License, Passport, or other forms of identification. I will be putting some links up on my webpage at www.ny-genes.com that should benefit those of you who might be interested in following these matters.

Back from Thanksgiving Holiday - Ancestral Manor Teleconference (tonight) (FREE)!

Well we are back from a gorgeous Holiday get together. We stayed at a private resort cabin down in Yates County in the Finger Lakes Region, and it was fabulous! We had about 20 people and eight dogs, a log home on a small lake, big fireplaces, lots of board games and no computers! I did not even experience withdrawal symptoms which surprised some. Our new Springer Spaniel, Riley, decided that the ice on the lake was meant to jump through in order to go swimming, no problem. He went in several times and would come up to the door with icecicles hanging from his eyebrows and chest hair, but he loved it anyway!

Last night we got home just in time to sign up for a tele-conference put on by Ancestral Manor. The conference was on using maps in genealogical research. It is a real neat idea and you can listen to or talk to all of the other members of the conference at the same time, with the host/moderator leading the program.

They have another one tonight at 8pm Eastern time about the legislation regarding Vital Records and the anti-terrorism laws that will be going into effect nationwide. You are all invited to attend and it is totally free. Just go to their sign up page and though it looks like you are purchasing something, there is no charge, no credit card needed, just use the order and shopping cart checkout to apply for an account and the invitation and telephone number and account number will be sent to your email. Sign up early and let's see if we can get some readers of the Upstate New York Genealogy website as participants.

Here is the link that describes the conference tonight and then all you have to do is register. Absolutely no charge for the service but you may have to pay for the long distance phone call if you do not have some kind of telephone with free long distance.
http://ancestralmanor.com/dnn/?tabid=118