Dear Kansas Iselys,                                                                           12/24/05

 

I’m John Mattox, the oldest son of Caroline Elise, who was the youngest daughter of Merrill, a grandson of Elise & Christian Isely. I’m writing to you because you are also a Kansas Isely, a descendent of Elise & Christian, who settled in Kansas in 1872, raised 8 children, and now, more than 300 of us have them as common ancestors.

 

There are two announcements I want to make. First, I just finished putting together a website for us called,  "The Isely Information Project: Of-By-For-Ourselves Goes Digital". It is at http://isely.info/. I transferred content from the website I established in 1996, including a digital edition of Sunbonnet Days that Susanne McGuire Cooksey, Anne Alexander Bingham, and I produced. I’ve also added more content bringing the total from 5 Mbytes to 100 Mbytes, including digital images of photos supplied by my cousin Glen Hermsmeier (from photos he inherited from Merrill via his mother, Mary Frances), pages written by Anne Bingham about her grandparents, Fred & Mary, narratives and digital images made from photos supplied by Merrill’s son, Bill, about their time in Turkey, and CC Isely Jr.  home-movie footage passed on by David and Katherine McGuire that features Elise, Alice, Lydia, Fred, Charles, Bliss, and assorted children and grandchildren in the 1930s. My intention is that this digital archive will exist in perpetuity.

 

You are invited to contribute content for this site; video, narrative and/or digitized photos.  A good place to begin is by retyping biography of interest from the1939, "Isely-Dubach Of-By-For Ourselves," and by digitizing photos from that compilation that are not either already on the website and/or more recent photos of your branch of Kansas Iselys. It would also be great to know the highlights what you folks have been up to during the 66 years that have transpired since 1939! I plan to avoid security concerns by primarily posting material that is already historical. Also, we will  not post on the web any inappropriate personal data, e.g., phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

 

The other announcement is that I am conducting a census of the Kansas Iselys. From the information you supply, I intend to compile a Microsoft Excel database with postal and e-mail addresses for the contemporary adult Kansas Iselys. I enclose my current copy of this Excel database – you’ll see that it is far from complete – please pass copies of this letter on to those you know who should get it but who are not on this list. I will also compile a database of all Kansas Iselys (living and deceased) to be posted at http://isely.info/gedcom/gedcom-index.html. At this address you will now find a database of the Isely data gathered by Merrill in 1966.  Please checkout your entry in Merrill’s data and those of your immediate family. Let me know of any updates and/or corrections. I mail with this a form for your response. I will also mail a copy of the final Excel database of contemporary addresses upon request (for non-commercial use only).

 

Please complete the enclosed form and mail it back to me.

 

Cheers!

 

Cousin John