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Written on February 7, 1997
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Laurie McDonough and myself have quietly celebrated some of the small milestones for the Leitrim-Roscommon home page. In the early part of January our page counter rolled over to 10,000, almost coincident with the one year anniversary of the L-R home page. I woke up this morning to see that late last night (Feb 4, 1997) the counter had logged in 13,000 visitors to the home page, so on this milestone note I would like to respond to those people who have asked the question "how did the Leitrim-Roscommon home page start?"
During the later part of 1995 I was actively searching for information on my Finn ancestors, when I came across a posting from Laurie McDonough in the soc.genealogy.uk+ireland newsgroup. Her posting indicated she had done some research in Co. Roscommom, and at that time I had seen very few posting from others who were doing research in Co. Roscommon. I sent an email to Laurie and we opened up some communications channels that have continued through to the present time. During those first email messages that we sent back and forth, I found out that Laurie had been working on the assumption that her ancestors were from County Roscommon, but later research had revealed that they had originated from County Leitrim. I was very much impressed with the work Laurie had done while researching both Co. Roscommon and Co. Leitrim. She had kept a data base of every person she made contact with, recording the surname they were researching and their email address. She also periodically posted to related newsgroups soliciting Leitrim or Roscommon surnames from new researchers and an offer to email the surname list to anyone interested. Her data base provided me with several contacts for people that were researching the same surnames or other surnames in the same Townlands of Co. Roscommon in which I was interested. I had several more email exchanges with Laurie regarding our mutual research efforts, and during one of these exchanges Laurie expressed an interest in being able to reach a larger portion of the research community to make them aware of her growing data base. At this point it would be prudent for me to fill in some background information that plays an important role in this story. My son, Shaun Finn, owns the ISP (Technocore Communications) on which I have my internet account. So, one phone call later I was writing an email back to Laurie with a suggested solution to her dilemma. If she was interested, we could post her surname list on a WEB page at www.thecore.com. My work background involves a large amount of programming experience, so I offered to handle the site administration portion of the operation, if Laurie would continue to work the logistics associated with screening, formatting and maintaining the actual surname list. Laurie felt it was the answer to giving her surname list the exposure to the research community she desired, so we shook hands via email and the project was off and running.
It has been a very rewarding merger of talents. Laurie has continued to do a very efficient job of maintaining and managing the surname list, and I have had a chance to develop some additional programming skills. Laurie and I are very proud of the Leitrim-Roscommon home page, and we hope that all the researchers that visit the site will be able to enjoy the resources that we have made available through our home page on the WEB.
Thank you all for your continued interest in the Leitrim-Roscommon home page.
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Ed Finn | Laurie McDonough |
