We Americans are well aware of the difficulties in researching our lines across the "big pond" and I'm sure the reverse is also true. Picture this if you will ~~ you're searching for an ancestor from [let's say] Illinois or Germany but a search of the internet produces so many incorrect references that you're instantly turned off from looking. How would you like to be able to go to a site where you find sources, resources, links, and/or raw data on only the Bower/Bauer/Baur surnames [plus their variant spellings] for only that particular state or country?

Formally known as the "Continuum," the plan of the State/Country Project is for an individual to adopt a state or country and search the internet for every genealogical instance of our Bower/Bauer/Baur surnames [and spelling variations] within their respective area that's online. A visitor would open the page to find every site on the internet where the spelling variants of Bower/Bauer/Baur can be found. The possibilities for individual state and country source pages are limitless. Newbies to genealogy would have immediate help on where to look, while "old-timers" would find new ideas and pages.

We currently have nine states and one country represented. They are:

If you're wondering what's required and how you'd even go about accomplishing a project like this, here are two sites that are fully operating and ready to not only assist you in your Ohio and Illinois research, but can give you ideas on setting up a Continuum site:

Ohio - http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rbower

Illinois - http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Grove/8230

Your site can be one of links only, or you can add raw material. [Think of the Continuum along the lines of a GenWeb county site, but centering on Bower/Bauer/ Baur, etc. material only.] It's really quite easy and definitely a lot of fun.

I do hope to hear from you saying you'd also like to host a state or country for this project. With enough participation from the family this can become one of our best tools for online research because what you [or a visitor] needs to begin or continue your research in a given state/country will all be on one page. Imagine how much time we could all save and how quickly our dead ends could be resolved!

Please contact me saying you'll host a state or country and help make this a success of this project. We can make it work only if we pull together.