Leland Meitzler asked me to post this press release for my readers.

New Online Edition of Everton’s Genealogical Helper will debut July 1! Subscribe today for only $10.00!

LOGAN, Utah, June 12, 2008. Genealogy Online, Inc., publisher of Everton’s Genealogical Helper, today, announced the publication of the Genealogical Helper in an Online Edition. The Online Edition is an identical copy of the 176-page paper edition – complete with hotlinks to the hundreds of website addresses found therein.

Launch Date – The new Online Edition will launch on July 1 – simultaneous with the home delivery and newsstand date of the paper edition of the July-August issue.

Free Access – Subscribers to the traditional Genealogical Helper will have 100% FREE online access to the magazine – with no extra fees whatsoever. See http://www.everton.com for sign-up information.

Online Edition subscriptions – Everton’s Genealogical Helper, Online Edition, will sell for just $12.00 per year! That is only $2 per issue! And it’s only $10.00 for subscriptions made before July 1 at http://www.everton.com or phone 1-800-443-6325.

Net Family History – An important feature of Everton’s Genealogical Helper is the magazine within a magazine entitled Net Family History. New information specific to using the Internet for genealogy is always found in this portion of the bimonthly publication. Extensive website reviews are always located here, as well as articles dealing with Internet-related activities.

Why an online edition? – Every issue of Everton’s Genealogical Helper now contains hundreds of website addresses. The Internet is where some of the most exciting genealogical resource advances are taking place, so it’s required that information about these resources be disseminated to the Helper’s thousands of readers in every issue. Everton’s Genealogical Helper, Online Edition, will allow readers to go from their paper edition to the hotlinked Online Edition and access any of the websites with just a keystroke or two – no more typing in those lengthy website addresses! The Online Edition offers more than just the links found in the magazine – it is the entire magazine itself!

Format & hosting – Everton’s Genealogical Helper, Online Edition, will be in pdf format, readable by anyone, with any computer running an Adobe Acrobat Reader (Available at Adobe.com as a FREE download.) The Online Edition will be hosted by FamilyLink.com, Inc.

Why subscribe to the Genealogical Helper? – Subscribe to have access to the Helper’s how-to & historical articles, Net Family History (see above), genealogical sharing, extensive book and CD-ROM reviews & announcements, queries, the most complete event calendar available anywhere, and hundreds of ads detailing new products and services. In addition to these day-to-day features, you will also have access to the NEW updated, hotlinked Directory of Genealogical and Historical Societies – to be published in the Sept/Oct and Nov-Dec issues! Edited by Leland K. Meitzler, the Helper is guaranteed to help you extend your lines and fill in those blanks in your family tree.

WHAT A DEAL! – Your cost for a full subscription (the paper magazine & online access both) is less than 3 cents per page – delivered to your home, and now accessible online. Subscribe to the Online Edition alone for just over a penny a page! Subscribe by July 1 and it’s less than a penny per page!

Subscribe NOW at: http://www.everton.com or phone 1-800-443-6325.

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About Genealogy Online, Inc.

Genealogy Online, dba Everton Publishers, is the publisher of Everton’s Genealogical Helper, now in its 62nd year of helping genealogists find their ancestors. Genealogy Online, Inc. also publishes the Handybook for Genealogists, 11th edition, a top-selling guidebook for family historians. Their website is found at: http://www.everton.com. Also see: http://www.GenealogyBlog.com.

A colleague from Massachusetts, Christine Sweet-Hart, posted an amazing link on a professional genealogists’ discussion list. That link is to Curious Expeditions and the pictures of libraries and books is literally thrilling. I have only been to six of those libraries.

Christine warned that viewing this site would make us grab our passport and run to the airport. That is putting it mildly. Real libraries. Real books. Real art. Real craftsmanship. Wow! How many have you been to?

On one of the news services I subscribe to, I ran across an interesting article “South Africa: Genealogy Project to Connect Family History.” Click on this article title for the whole story.

It comes from BuaNews (Tshwane) and states that “KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sibusiso Ndebele is to officially launch the Family Tree Project aimed at facilitating research into family history and connecting family members.”

The project, to be launched in Durban on Wednesday is part of the 10th Annual African Renaissance Festival. Mr. Mdebele is the provincial chair of the African Renaissance campaign. Schools will issue assignments about family history and part of the campaign will be to enable the collaboration between academics and family historians in documenting respective family histories.

I wish there were such programs in other parts of the world, including the U.S. It might be a more peaceful place once folks learned how interconnected we are. The good and the bad we find in our family is a fact of life and it helps us to be more humble.

It was dark and dreary here today and I hope that didn’t ruin any of the Memorial Day Celebrations. This morning I spoke with my Dad and said he was my favorite veteran. Dad served in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He was in the 1103rd Army Air Forces Base Unit.
He was discharged at a Staff Sergeant after serving as an aerian engineer working on aircraft. He received his training at Chanute Field in Illinois and other training in Provo, Utah and Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. Dad has wonderful stories, and yes, I have interviewed him and typed them up. I love hearing his stories about riding camels, seeing the Great Sphinx at Giza, pyramids, and more. He told about helping to train Russians, about being very ill and in a British Naval Hospital where he was visited by Jack Benny. At one place he was stationed, he and his buddies had a monkey. Dad has a hearing disability, likely from the noise of working on the aircraft.

Thanks Dad and thanks to all the other brave folks in the military today and in the past.

This afternoon, I was doing some research in the digitized books at Google Books. I found some thing about my German family I hadn’t come across before. I knew that my step-Great Great Great Grandfather Gottfried Rohr and my Great Great Granduncle Frederick Fischer ran a tailoring establishment/clothing store in Watertown, Wisconsin. What I found on Google Books was an excerpt from W. F. Jannke III’s Watertown: A History (Arcadia Publishing, 2002). The author was relating stories about Watertown during the Civil War. In discussing events of 1861, Mr. Jannke reports, “in May, the firm of Fischer and Rohr, a tailoring establishment, were awarded a government contract to furnish uniforms for the Watertown Rifle Company.”

Several years ago on the Watertown Historical Society’s website, I had seen the images of the front and back of a Civil War token with the name of the store on it. There were actually two tokens on that website. I saw one on e-Bay many months ago but it wasn’t in my budget at the time and I told my youngest son about it.

Today, my oldest son checked his mailbox to see what had arrived in the last few days and it contained an envelope for me from my youngest son. I opened it to find the 1863 Fischer & Rohr tokens. Now, several hours later, I am still a little misty-eyed. Wow! Thanks, Pat. Also, how amazing I received it on the day I was working on that same family.

These tokens were actually used as money and the history surrounding them and the various types is quite interesting. Just type “civil war tokens” into your favorite search engine to learn more. This coin is of the “store card” token type and was intended to be used in the Fischer & Rohr establishment. Some of these tokens were political in nature and others were designed to be used as money to replace scarce coins.