Paris- After five long years, after our hopes and fears rode a roller coaster of ups and downs wondering if it would ever come true, The Lamar County Genealogical Society moved into its new quarters on Saturday February 15, 2003. Members and friends loaded boxes of books in pickups at PJC, moved furniture and equipment from the rented storage facility near Evergreen Cemetery and brought in several loads of file boxes from Betsy Mills’ house.

Entering from the east side of the depot one sees the librarian desk and copy machine first. In the middle of the room is twenty file cabinets. The left wall houses book shelves of Lamar County books. The west wall is set up to hang pictures and maps. The right wall is divided into three sections - two sections of pictures of railroad depots, pictures of trains, a map of the Santa Fe rail lines in the US and a large Texas map. Between these two sections one will find 16 feet of retail shelves filled with all our books and memorabilia for sale.

Walking into our second room, which is the south end of the depot, immediately to the right is 6 feet of reference books. The east wall contains 10 more filling cabinets. The south wall begins, from left to right, with a 15 drawer map cabinet followed by three Internet ready computer stations, three microfilm reader stations and a microfilm cabinet. The west wall contains four sets of book shelves perpendicular to the wall. All books are shelved first by state then county.

We have worked nearly every weekend arranging the resources we now have available. And even though it looks wonderful there is still much more to be done. For instance there are nearly 20 boxes of old newspaper clippings waiting to be cut and pasted to paper and placed into the 30 file cabinets. The entire collection of books will need to be re-cataloged. There remains months of work to be accomplished before one can say we are done.

New volunteers have come on board to make our facility available to the public. Our hours are Monday - Friday noon until 4 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. We are very grateful to the following members who give generously of their time so that the general public may use our facility.

Still we desperately need more help so we can be open in the mornings. We NEED to be open 9 - 4 p.m. everyday. If you are local and would like to help please contact Roberta Woods. All of us have made genealogical trips outside our own area. Think how disappointed you would be if a fine facility like ours were closed on one of those trips.

With our new location comes even more financial responsibilities. We have insurance and telephone bills that we never had before. As always, our finances are dependent on you the members. Please help your society by choosing the $25 I CARE or the $50 or more CORNERSTONE membership when you renew each year. We’ll take any amount of donation throughout the year even after you have renewed your membership. Many who have visited our facility say we have one of the finest collections in the area. Of course we’ll never be as big as a genealogical section in a major city public library but we can be a major regional facility with your help.

You can also help by donating books, microfilms, maps, pictures and other pertinent materials you may have and no longer want. We want to expand our holdings to include all historical material. We’ll take any American or world history book. We’ll even accept microfilm that deals with other areas of the country. And to go along with the depot theme we will accept any material concerning transportation history. For instance, Jim Steely has donated a fine collection of Train magazines and pictures. If you have a picture of local interest, we don’t need the original, make us a copy and we’ll make a home for it. Perhaps you have a thesis or paper of regional interest. Bring it by the library and we’ll make a copy of it free on our own photocopy machine.

We now have plenty of room to shelve family histories, biographies and autobiographies. The majority of our members have popular genealogical programs which will produce books. Please take a moment and produce a book for our library on your family. Perhaps you have several family names pertinent to the area. A good idea would be to break them down into several books. We’d love to have them. Above all give it a title that includes the main family name. Remember, our family history section is shelved in alphabetical order by surname. Oh yes, we know “it is not finished,” whose is? But something is better than nothing, AND, you can always update it later by sending another book and asking that the old one be pulled. You know that the greatest thing a family historian can do is share.

If you can prepare a book for us, please help by not having it spiral bound. We have countless numbers of spiral books that won’t stand up on the shelves. They are difficult to find when browsing the shelves. We hope to get as many of our current books already like this three holed punched and placed in notebooks simply so they will stand up on the shelves and have a spine that a title will slip into. If you are preparing a book, please three hole punch it, buy a three hole notebook that has the plastic cover on all three sides where a title page and spine label can be produced and slipped down it. If you don’t want to go to all the trouble of punching it, send the papers to us and we’ll get it done.

You can help us also by sending a CD of your family records. Again, you can always update it later by sending a new one. If you do this please convert it to Family Tree Maker or PAF as these are the only two programs that we have on our computers to view the data. Also it will be helpful if you name the file on the CD by the major name of its contents.

If you have questions about how to send us materials please call or email Ron Brothers at 903-737-8693, email: rbrother@1starnet.com.

903-784-5020Thank you for your support of our society. Without you we cannot be what we are and cannot grow to what we need to be.

With the rush to move and get organized we haven’t reminded you about the need to have material for our Annual publication. The time to start putting it together is very near. Last year we had very little membership participation. Though we are eternally grateful, without Skipper Steely’s contributions we would have had a very small publication. Everyone has a family story. Please sit down and put one together for us. A submission of a descendancy chart or group sheet is not what we need. We need a story in paragraph form.

Please save it in Wordperfect or Word format. Do not use special indentions and charts. Please do not capitalize or italicize names. Keep everything in a simple paragraph form. Please send it to the attention of Ron Brothers on a floppy disk, CD or email the file as an attachment to rbrother@1starnet.com. We do not have the volunteers to retype a story sent to us otherwise. Deadline is August 1, 2003. It takes several months to index and format a 300 page book, so the sooner you send it the better. Please help. The story you write may answer someone else’s questions many years from now.

In elections held in the regular November meeting of the Society the following persons were elected officers of the society.

AS OF15 Apr 2003	Actual 2002	Proposed 2003	Actual 2003
INCOME
Book Sales	1792.14	2500.00	311.35
CD Roms Census View Sales	59.90	60.00	0.00
Copy Machine	377.75	500.00	56.60
Donations	3980.20	500.00	53.00
Interest - Expansion Fund Savings Account	595.09	0.00	2.19
Map Sales	80.00	100.00	13.00
Membership (Dues)	4475.00	5000.00	3110.00
Microfilm	0.00	0.00	0.00
Postage for Mailing Books	203.30	400.00	28.10
Postage for mailing Census View	3.00	10.00	0.00
Sales Tax Collected	109.04	150.00	10.62
T-Shirt	0.00	0.00	30.00
Fund Raising (Other)	0.00	0.00	0.00
Transfer of assets (& uncleared check) 17249.57+124.00	17373.57	21644.00	0.00
Total Income	29048.99	30864.00	3614.86
EXPENSES
Books Purchased for Library Inventory	3150.85	1000.00	459.77
CD Rom Disks For Library Inventory	462.45	600.00	106.98
Census View CD Purchase for Resale	35.94	60.00	0.00
Computer Expense	205.94	1000.00	237.24
Copy Machine Expense	361.51	500.00	0.00
Expansion Fund Expense Furnishings, Equip, Storage	19890.32	10000.00	9131.56
Insurance	0.00	650.00	0.00
Microfilm Purchases/Rental	99.75	150.00	0.00
Miscellaneous Bank Charges	229.08	100.00	77.05
Photography	0.00	200.00	0.00
Postage Expense - Annual	379.12	500.00	2.00
Postage Expense - Census View	0.00	30.00	0.00
Postage Expense - Mailing Books, Maps, Freight	170.27	300.00	26.31
Postage Expense - Stamps	78.48	100.00	22.41
Postage Expense - Newsletters	125.40	300.00	0.00
Postage Expense - Bulk Mail Fee	275.00	140.00	0.00
Printing Annual	1743.57	2300.00	0.00.57
Printing Books/Maps for Resale	97.69	600.00	118.86
Printing Brochures/& other	0.00	200.00	0.00
Printing Newsletters	237.50	500.00	0.00
Programs	25.00	50.00	0.00
Sales Tax Paid	78.94	200.00	109.26
Subscriptions/Memberships/Other	25.00	100.00	60.00
Supplies & Damage Control	463.90	500.00	164.25
T-Shirts /Funeral Flowers	54.13	0.00	25.00
Tax Paid for Misc		77.00	76.62
Telephone	0.00	500.00	52.75
Total Expenses	28189.84	20657.00	10670.06
INCOME LESS EXPENSES	859.15	10207.00	-7055.20
Checking Account Balance as of 31 Dec 2002 /Now	7862.94	0.00	2490.98
Capital Reserves (CD.) Lamar Nat 0822	12101.86	0.00	12101.86
Capital Reserves (Savings Acct.)	1679.21	0.00	0.00
Net Assets	21644.01	0.00	14592.84

We were deeply saddened by the news of the death of member Peggy Maness in March. Peggy and her husband Thomas had contributed thousands of dollars to our society in the last 5 years. Their contributions were the deciding factor in the purchase our Civil War series of soldier rosters. Without their support we would not have been able to acquire this excellent and expensive resource and collection. Our hearts go out to the family of Peggy for the loss of their loved one.

Once again we wish to acknowledge and thank Dr. William Hayden and his wife Betty for their contributions in helping our move to the depot come true. Dr. Hayden arranged for more than $10,000 in seed money to be placed in a certificate of deposit that grew well in the last five years. From this contribution we were able to purchase new library shelving and other equipment to make our facility a first class entity. Without their help, we would be using used and flimsy metal shelving, banquet tables for computer stations and boxes for filling cabinets. Their philanthropic efforts made a great difference in what we are today and we will be eternally grateful for their donation. Dr. Hayden is currently recuperating from hip replacement surgery and we wish him and his family well and a speedy recovery.

Friends, we have asked for your contributions and donations for many years. Running a facility like ours takes more money and our membership has to supply the funds.

I wish to give the following general donation to the Lamar County Genealogical Society.