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YANCEY
COUSINS UNITED |
MESSAGE FROM THE WEBMASTER
Hello and welcome to YANCEY COUSINS UNITED. I'm so pleased that you took the time to come to this site when there are millions of sites to pick from. You probably got here because some way, some how you are connected to the Yancey surname or one of it's variants. I'm just glad to have you here.
I want to tell how this site got it's start, what I hope it will become and a little about myself.
My name is Barbara Yancey Dore (aka) RootsLady and I live at Nederland, in Jefferson County, Texas. Never heard of it....well it's near Beaumont, close to the Texas and Louisiana border and about ninety miles east of Houston. I was born and raised in Port Neches, Texas; which is "next door" to Nederland. I'm married to James Ollice Dore and have a daughter, Crystal Marie; a son, James Wesley ("Jay"); and a step-son, Phillip James Dore, of Wichita, Kansas. I graduated from Port Neches-Groves High School in 1966. Attended Port Arthur College for a short time, went to work, got married, quit work and began a family. I was a housewife and mother for the next twenty odd years. Then I went back to work, helped start up a Home Health Care Agency & ended up owning part of it. After about a year and a half we sold to a national company and I returned to my "love".... genealogy. If you would like a better idea of what I'm all about, I invite you to stop by my personal homepage at: http://RootsLady.com that I call "RootsLady's Home, Home The Web". I also have a genealogy humor site called THE OUTHOUSE.
There you can read about how I got started in this wonderful endeavor called Genealogy over twenty three years ago. I'm a past editor for "Yellowed Pages"; the quarterly for the SouthEast Texas Genealogical & Historical Society. Since getting on the internet for the first time, less than a year ago, I have become the sponsor and webmaster for eight southeast Texas Counties through the TXGenWeb Project; webmaster for the above genealogical society, list owner for two county mail-lists. I just recently became the list-owner for two surname mail-lists.... the COLLIER-L and YANCEY-L, which are mail-list dealing with those surnames and their variants.
I must admit I started those last two list because I kept hoping someone else would because I didn't even have time to do any personal research with all of the other genealogical sites and lists I now have. The COLLIER line was the one I first started on, years ago, and the one I concentrated on the most. It is my dad's mother's side of the family. It has also been one of the most frustrating because of mis-information that has been repeated so long it is very hard to straighten out.
Being a YANCEY myself, I've heard all my life the story that "all the YANCEY's in the United States are descended from four or five brothers who came over in 1640 with Sir William Berkley". I thought to myself, "now that ought to be easy". So much for my thinking!! So now we come to why this page and mail-list was started.
I have probably done less research on my YANCEY line than most of my hundred-plus direct lines. My mothers side of the family got to Texas very early (around 1822) and my dad's mother's family arrived in Southeast Texas around 1850. I honestly believe I'm kin to almost everyone in this part of Texas. My father's father came to Texas in the early 1900's from Alabama. It was easy to do research right here in my own backyard on my Texas lines but not so easy to research Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, etc. with a husband and growing family. So my YANCEY line went lacking.
In April, I requested the two mailing list from RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative. Before I got the approval, hacker's brought down thousands of other mail-lists over at MAISER. I finally got approval in late May. I started planning a page where people could sign up for the list and where I thought I would start the process of collecting and freely distributing data for the surname YANCEY. I hadn't even got the page up yet when I got an eMail from Dennis J. Yancey from Florida saying he had seen the listing on RootsWeb or one of the other "New-List" postings. Now, I had only corresponded with Dennis once before this and here he was offering to share his years of YANCEY research with me and anyone else who was interested for free. All he was asking in return was a little consideration for how his work was displayed. Now who could ask for anything more....a brand new list, a brand new page and tons of information being offered. My ancestor's must be putting in a good word for me somewhere!! I sure felt like I had to "take the time" to do a decent job in planning this site and deciding what I wanted to accomplish......FREE YANCEY information for everyone!! Dennis has since started a site of his own, called... Websites Of Interest To Yancey Family Researchers and that means more info for Yancey researchers. Some of the material that was originally here has been moved offsite. It is my understanding that Dennis has some reports on the YANCEY family that he sells at near cost. Please be aware that I don't have any reports, books or anything to sell you. My only wish is that if you have a YANCEY line and desire information that you might be able to find it here at no cost through the sharing of others.
Thank God, this is not a SMITH or JONES line. I believe with the YANCEY surname and the Internet, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that we could literally collect nearly every Yancey marriage, cemetery record, census record, etc. that exists in the not-to-far future and make it freely available for anyone and everyone who is interested. We will never have all the answers to all the questions but we sure can make a site that should benefit any Yancey researcher and provide the base for any future Yancey researchers. We should be able to Unite Yancey Cousins across the United States and perhaps beyond.
I would welcome any and all comments, suggestions and ideas on what we can do and how we can do it to make this site the best one-name site on the web.
I wish to thank you for your time in reading this lengthy message and for you having chosen to somehow be a part of our efforts, large or small.
Barbara Yancey Dore (aka) RootsLady@rootslady.com
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