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I guess the time has come for me to have to
cry "UNCLE" as we said long ago!!
For about 38 years I've pursued this
wonderful "hobby" of family research called genealogy. I've
enjoyed meeting and helping others find their family
"connections". I've also enjoyed working on families other than
my own just because they were neighbors or their relatives,
co-workers, friends of my ancestors. I've worked of the families
of former slaves and many families that just lived in the same
counties as my ancestors.
It's been a time consuming and sometimes
expensive joy. Driving to courthouses, cemeteries & libraries
back when gas was sometimes as little as 19 cents a gallon
wasn't so bad but document copies & certified copies ran up the
cost.
In the early years I, like many others,
thought someday I would publish a book or two and perhaps recover
some of the expenses. Well, so much for my thinking. The only
"paid" genealogy work I ever did was to work on a estate for the
court back in the eighties.
Time passed and then along came computers. I
shudder to think what I paid for my first computer, printer, a
very small copy machine and microfilm reader. Oh, but along with that expense came a
"whole new world" and ways of doing and preserving genealogical
research & data. My
first genealogy program was PAF, then ROOTS v1, etc. and
probably a dozen since then. Next was
discovering the Internet, the second "new world". But the
expenses kept growing in many different ways as I'm sure you are
all aware.
Since I started photographing tombstones and
had the desire to post those online for everyone's benefit the
expenses have gotten to the point that I feel the need to ask
for your help. Most of the cemeteries I photograph are 75 to 125
miles from my home. The cost of making several trips to complete
some of the larger cemeteries along with the
cameras, new and faster computers, high-speed internet connection for uploading the 1000's of
photos, storage fees, software to enhance and correct flaws in
the photos, etc. is becoming more than I can handle alone.
I've worked for better than three years
trying to make this project happen. I've
thought of placing the photos on CD's or DVD's to get funding to
continue this work but would prefer to keep access free for all
if possible. Sometimes you feel like you just have to take a
leap in faith that all will work out.
Like any worthwhile project of this size it
needs funding in order to be maintained and grow. I hope that you will find something in this
project that is helpful to you and that you will also find the
project is also worthy of your support.
Thank you for your time reading this and your consideration,
Barbara Yancey Dore
RootsLady |