E-mail Policy

I really do not like answering e-mail, which is usually why I wait so long to respond to people. Please adhere to the following before sending me an e-mail:

• Please be polite.
• Please allow me 30 days to respond to your e-mail.
• Please fill in the subject line; I receive many e-mails from people I do not know, and often will delete an e-mail that has no subject.
• Please include your full name.
• Please include a return e-mail address, if necessary.
• Please do not send me an e-mail on a family unless it's one you know I'm researching because of a query I left somewhere or because you saw it on my personal web site. If you have a question about a family you don't think I'm researching, I will usually try to help in some way, but your time would be better spent trying to find someone who is researching that particular family.
• Please do not send me an e-mail requesting information on a family from outside my general research area unless you know your family is related.
• Please use the resources I've made available to locate courthouses and so forth. Asking me for information I've already made available may push your e-mail to the bottom of my long list of e-mails waiting to be answered.
• Please remember that I maintain, at last count, over 600 separate pages of information. If you are writing because of something I have on the web, please tell me exactly where you found it so that I will know to what you are referring. Enclosing the exact URL is always helpful.
• If I promised to send you something or find something in particular for you and you have not heard from me in 30 days or so, please write again and (politely) remind me that I promised to do such-and-such for you.
• If you are writing because of a broken link on one of my web sites, please include the exact URL of the page on which the broken link was found, and the URL of the broken link so that I may update the correct page.
• Please be aware that I will post any e-mail sent to me in query form on the query board of this web site, and that I will post your name and e-mail address to any pertinent county surname boards I maintain. If you do not want me to do this, please say so in your first e-mail.
• If I have the wrong e-mail address for you on one of my sites, please tell me the counties and/or surnames you research so that I don't have to search through every single county surname page I maintain for your e-mail address.
• Please do not send my research back to me as your own; that pretty much guarantees that I'm not going to respond.