June 27-28, 2001

January 2001  Volume 4   Issue 4
Issued Quarterly

Schwenk Reunion Just Six Months Away!  Birthdays Gossip/Klatsch (formerly Dies und Das) Eleven More Kids Bring Total to 83 The Way It Was Two Years Ago The First Generation Links Midi Music Mini Mall

YES!  On Wednesday, June 27 and Thursday, June 28 Konrad's Kids and other Schwenks off-line will be gathering at the Sylvan Lake Lodge  in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Hope you will be there! The Lodge is situated at the edge of Custer State Park and is within easy driving distance to other scenic areas of the Black Hills. Here is a chance for the entire family to take a vacation and visit the area of  Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial, Wind Cave, The Badlands, etc.  If you have yet to venture  "Out West", this will give you a great taste of what the West is really all about! A great time for a Schwenk "gathering" and an opportunity to meet other KK's that you have only seen or heard about online.

At the Sylvan Lake Lodge we will have the use of a dining and meeting room so we can meet as a group.  There are also individual cabins for sleeping and rooms in the lodge, all at reasonable rates for the summer season. For those who love to camp or have an RV, there is also a campground nearby. Sylvan Lake is a beautiful spot with clear water for swimming. There is playground equipment for children and plenty of hiking trails for the family to enjoy.

In January 2000, I contacted the manager of Sylvan Lake Lodge and blocked out numerous lodge rooms,
sleeping cabins, and housekeeping cabins for the "Schwenk Family Reunion".  These accomodations will remain ours until the 15th of January 2001.  After that date they will again be released and made available to the public.

So far the plans are to rendezvous at Sylvan Lake Lodge on the forenoon of Wednesday, June 27th and to carry over our festivities to the following day, Thursday, June 28th. With this in mind,  Wednesday, June 27 would be the night for you to book a reservation for the reunion. Registration for the room or cabin will be up to you as a guest at the Sylvan Lake Lodge. Just call 1-800-658-3530 and ask to reserve a room or cabin and mention The SchwenkFamily Reunion room list. Information on the Lodge and the area can also be obtained by calling that toll-free number. I am offering this information so you can get a better perspective in planning your visit to the Black Hills in 2001.  Below is listed a description of the accommodations and prices available:

Sleeping Cabins:   1 room Cabin, 2 queen size beds with fireplace, 1-4 persons   $105.00. (10 cabins blocked for our use.)

Housekeeping Cabins ** : 3 rooms, full kitchen, 3 queen beds, 2 sofa-sleepers, 1-10 persons $165.00 ( 4 cabins blocked for our use)

Lodge Rooms: 1 room, queen size bed, 1-2 persons (No A/C) $85.00   (4 rooms blocked out for our use.)
Lodge Rooms in the East Addition:  1 room, 2 queen size beds , A/C 1-4 persons $120-130.  (7 rooms blocked out for our use) (Note that weather at this time of the year in the Black Hills should be moderate and A/C may not be needed except for those that prefer it. )

Since the July issue of the SNNL I have received a few responses to my request at that time. Please let me know the following information :   1. If you will attend   2. How many in your group   3. What kind of lodging you prefer. Please continue to plan and let me know if you will be attending. Your input will help both me and the committee schedule events. I will continue to update you on reunion plans. Send responses or further questions to me, Jim Schwenk, Chairman of the Schwenk Reunion 2001 at:  jamesrschwenk@earthlink.net  (Note to AOL users: If upon clicking this email link above, you find the symbols %20 in front of the address, simply delete those symbols).

Here are two linked photographs which appeared in the last issue of the SNNL:  Sylvan Lake Lodge  and Sylvan Lake.  And here is a map of the entire Black Hills Region.

Birthdays   For Birthday List for Konrad's Kids, click on cake >

Gossip/Klatsch  (formerly Dies und Das) ing up stuff. (Editors' note: The underlined persons are Konrad's Kids.) First the new babies. Joyce Schwenkbeck Spencer reports that her daughter Cheryl Bartlett Johnson of Winterpark, FL has had another child, this time a Mathew Scott Johnson born July 28th last..Up near Buffalo, NY, Duff Schwenkbeck tells us that he and his wife are now parents of a baby boy,  Jack Cyril Schwenkbeck  born Sept. 14th... And in Boise, Idaho, Rodney Schwenk and wife Jacki became parents for the first time on October 3rd when Austin Thomas Schwenk arrived...Here are some of the KIDS who have indicated they will attend the Reunion in June. And of course these include their spouses and often their children. There are surely others coming, but they've not yet informed the editors. And then there are those who've not yet made a firm decision to come. Milton Schwenk, Rodney Schwenk, Richard Schwenk,  JoAnn Schwenk Carlson, Jim Schwenk, Kathy Schwenk Axtell, Don Schwenk, Charleen Laur Soos, Karlheinz Schoenfeld (and probably several of his online children), Olinda Haehlen Corin, Maurla Haehlen White. The following KIDS are from SW Germany: Gudrun Hilsenbeck, her father Peter Hilsenbeck , and Gerd Schwenk.....Soo, what are we anyway? A club, an association? It is hard to come up with a fitting name. A network of blood kin sharing one common ancestor and connected to each other through the Internet is probably the most descriptive term. Another question some of you may have is, "What will take place at this reunion in the Black Hills?" First of all, it will be casual. There will be no keynote speakers, no dancing girls, no marquee over the door of the Sylvan Lake Lodge flashing out "Konrad's Kids' Konvention." No, this will simply be a rendevous of descendants of a linen weaver born 400 years earlier, many who never have met each other in the flesh before. Soo, to those readers who have not yet decided to come to the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota in June, go for it!....Rumor: George W. Bush wants into our Klub, but lacks the right pedigree...Check out the two new links in the Links Column near the bottom of this newsletter. If you take Don's link to rootsweb.com, you can check out your own ancestry leading back to our Konrad. If you need any help, drop him (Don) a line...Now one more promo for the reunion: We are counting on each of you to inform your non-computer Schwenk kin of this upcoming reunion of Konrad's descendants! The Black Hills is a spectacular part of America to see, to experience. Spend a week or so there, and two days of that vacation time meeting and mingling with your blood kin. Click here for a really great map of the region..And also, don't forget to send us news pertaining to what is going on in your lives...See you next time.

Eleven More Kids Bring Total to 83

Since the last newsletter, eleven more online descendants of our Konrad have come to the attention of your editors. Here they are in the order of their discovery. Welcome aboard!

Gay Jay Schwenk, age 24, a graduate student at Binghamton University in New York State, a scholar & musician. His parents are Jay Schwenk and Barbara. Here is a link to his tree which leads back  to Konrad Schwenk b. 1601.

Mike Schwenkbeck, age 25, who lives near Niagara Falls, NY, the son of Karl and Maureen Schwenkbeck. Here is Mike's tree.

Shirley Mack Pope born in 1938 in Niagara Falls, NY, whose mother was Anna Louise "Mibs" Schwenkbeck. Shirley now lives in Cape Coral, Florida near her daughters (see below). Here is her descent tree.

Sandra Mack Paul born in 1940 in Niagara Falls, NY, is the sister of Shirley and still resides in the city of her birth. See above tree.

The following four new Kids are all daughters of Shirley Mack Pope, all born in Niagara Falls, and all live in Cape Coral Florida.

Dorene Pope born in 1963.
Diane Pope Gutierrez born in 1960.
Elisabeth Pope DeMelo born in 1969.
Debbie Pope Salvadore born in 1959.

Beate Schwenk Betz was born in 1941 in Tuebingen near Stuttgart Germany. She now lives with her husband Rainer and son on the Island of Corsica just off the west coast of Italy. Click here for her descent tree as well as that of her son below. The discovery of Beate was a direct result of Rainer's visit to Don Schwenk's Website and a subsequent email to him.

Frederic Betz, the son of Beate and Rainer Betz, was  born in Tuebingen in the year 1970. For his tree, see above.

Lois Zimmerman Young was born in Illinois in 1938 and resides near Bloomington, IL. She is a second cousin of Beate Schwenk Betz. Lois's grandmother Sophie Schwenk, b. in 1871 in Münsingen not far west of Laichingen, came to Illinois as a young girl and married there. To see Lois's kinship connection to Beate, click here.

Peter Hilsenbeck was born in 1940 and lives near Neu Ulm in SW Germany. Both his children, Gudrun and Harmut are online. For his 60th birthday on the last day of 2000, they bought him his very first computer and got it connected to the Internet. See his descent tree here.
 

The Way It Was Two Years Ago

This network of kin has grown sharply during the past two years. Here is brief article from our December 1998 issue which then was not published online, but rather send to each Kid as an email attachment.

The First Generation (an excerpt from Schwenk Ancestry, a page in this Website).
 
 

This story begins in the year 1601 with the birth of Conrad Schwenckh in the weaving village of Laichingen. We know this from the death register. We do not know - or more correctly we cannot prove - the names of his father, mother or siblings. There are, however, a few clues found in the church books which indicate who his father and one brother may have been. This subject will be discussed later in this chapter.

What are some of the historical time markers which can put this year of birth of our patriarch into perspective? King James I of England was crowned two years later; The Jamestown Settlement was founded when little Conrad was six; and when he was ten, the King James Version of the Bible first appeared in print. When Conrad was about to leave his teens, the Mayflower and its one hundred passengers were approaching Cape Cod. And so with these time markers we have a feeling of what was then contemporary.

Times were peaceful and prosperous in Laichingen as Conrad was growing up. This village was widely renowned for its quality of linen, and produced more of it than any community of comparable size in the region. And Conrad played a small part in that history. He almost certainly learned these skills at the feet of his father in the gloomy weaving cellar room, die Dunk, beneath the floor of their home.

Sometime in the years 1630-1635, Conrad asked a certain Magdalena for her hand. Her maiden name remains unknown to us. She was probably a local lass. We do know she was born in 1607. Her name was found mentioned in the church books only two times: at a christening in 1659 (just two years after the vital records of the parish church were resumed), she served as Godmother. The entry said in part, "Magdalena, wife of Conrad Schwenk, weaver." The other mentioning of her name was in her death entry.

The children of Conrad and Magdalena. We know they had four sons who married and had children. The marriage dates of each were found as well as all of their children. This couple surely must have brought other children into the world, but apparently they did not survive. A careful search was made through the marriage registers from 1657 through 1688; no daughters of Conrad and Magdalena appeared in those pages. A family tree or paternal ancestry chart provided to us by our distant cousin, Heinrich Christoff Schwenk, living in Laichingen today, also shows only these four sons. More about him later.

Hans Jacob was born in 1637. He followed the weaving trade, as did all his brothers. He married on Oct. 30, 1660 to Anna Schlenk, a young woman from Merklingen, a village a few miles northeast of Laichingen. They had fifteen children, of which five survived. He died in 1694 in his home village. The translated text of their marriage appears below:

 On Hartmann's Day, 30th of October, Tuesday after 19th Trinity, were here in the
 church consecreated, Hans Jacob Schwenckh weaver, lawful son of Conrad
 Schwenckh of the weavers, also called cooker of cabbage, and Anna, lawful
 daughter of the late Hans Schlenk from Merklingen of the Ulm Sovereignty"

 In the decades following the end of the 30 Year's War, nicknames - and often very odd ones - were common. And so, it seems, our Conrad was known - at least for awhile - as the "cooker of cabbage." When son Andreas married four years later, and later, Johann Heinrich and Bernhard, that nickname was not shown in those marriage entries. Perhaps they were eating better then.

Andreas was born ca. May 1, 1641. Our Andreas. He will take center stage in the following chapter.Editors's note: This original writing was done in 1995 some time before the concept of Konrad's Kids war born. Many of you descend from the other three brothers of Andreas.

Johann Heinrich was born in 1645. He became an important figure in this community. He served as judge for many years on the local court. He also was the Heiligenpfleger, the local parish financial adminstrator, in Laichingen. But he suffered a lot of tragedy in his personal family life. His first wife was Anna Schwenk-Edel; they married on Nov. 17, 1668. She bore eight children. She died on Apr. 1, 1682. He remarried on Nov. 12, 1682 to an Anna Drechsler. She died in childbirth the following November at the age of twenty. His third wife was again an Anna and this time an Anna Schwenk-Schreiner. She bore nine children. One of those was a Johannes. We will meet him later in the year 1752 in a very interesting way. J. Heinrich died there in Laichingen on August 27, 1718 at the age of 73.

In 1998, this writer learned of a male descendant of J. Heinrich who still carries this family name. A Gerd Schwenk born about 1970 who lives in Laichingen.  His father is Ernst Schwenk born 1937.

Bernhard was born in 1650. On Feb. 6, 1676, he married Anna Mack. They had ten children, seven of whom survived and married. Our cousin Heinrich C. Schwenk, living in Laichingen today, traces his ancestry back to this Bernhard, brother of our Andreas, and is thus a member of the eleventh generation, with Conrad (1601-1686) being our common ancestor.

And now back to Conrad and Magdalena. This story of them and their children has been considerably enriched through information obtained from Cousin Heinrich Schwenk. Besides his family tree, he gave a copy of his company's letterhead and family crest, or actually more of a company charter, to Richard L. Schwenk, the writers's first cousin, who with his wife Caring had visited Laichingen in June, 1995. The company is called,"Konrad Schwenk  Leinenweberei und Wäschefabrik". This charter-like document  lists all the heads of the company - CEOs (Chief Executive Officer) if we may use this 20th Century term - going back to our Conrad Schwenk, b. 1601. There are ten CEOs which precede Cousin Heinrich and his two brothers. The first was Conrad, the "founder" of this linen weaving company. The next four CEOs, Andreas, Georg, Andreas and Johann  Heinrich were not direct ancestors of Cousin Heinrich. We'll return to this subject in a moment. CEO # 6, a Conrad born in 1773 and all the subsequent company heads were indeed direct ancestors of Heinrich. So who were these other four Schwenk "weaving executives" who presumably pushed aside their brothers and cousins, the direct ancestors of Heinrich to take over the helm?

This question led the writer once again back to the Hailey Mormon Church Family History Library and those precious microfilms and a search for this Andreas Schwenk, CEO # 2. Who was he? How did he take over the company? He was not our Andreas, b. 1641. A clue was provided on Heinrich's family tree. Someone had handwritten a note on it indicating that CEO # 5, Johann Heinrich Schwenk, born in 1725, was the third child of an Andreas, b. 1680 "from a different line." Here is what the christening and marriage registers revealed: Andreas, 1680, was the son of a BernhardSchwenk born in around 1650. Bernhard had married an Anna Stump in 1675. Including Andreas, they had at least five other children born between 1676 and 1688. The Godfather at all these christenings was Heinrich Schwenk, judge! We met him earlier. He was the third son of our Conrad. It is the writer's strong conviction that this Heinrich and Bernhard were first cousins! The evidence for this lies below.

When Bernhard and Anna married in 1675, the pastor penned the following words into the Ehebuch:  Bernhard, lawful son of Andreas Schwenk, behind the church, with Anna, daughter of Wilhelm Stump. And so now we know the father of this Bernhard. A search for his death date yielded very interesting information. He died on Nov. 20, 1695. His age of 79 at death reveals a birthdate of April, 1616. He was a widower  when he died. The pastor described him as "Andreas Schwenk, hinter der Kirchen" (behind the church). More than five years earlier, on Feb. 3, 1690, his wife Waldburga, born Dauer, died. Again she was described as the wife of "Andreas Schwenk, behind the church." Her age of 71 at death gives  us a birth year of 1619. Where is this all leading? Well, this leads to the high probability that this Andreas was the younger brother of our Conrad. There were fifteen years separating the births of each, but that was not all uncommon in those days. It seems almost certain that it was this Andreas who became the 2nd CEO of the Konrad Schwenk linenweaving company. Is it not logical that this family-owned business would remain within a nuclear or extended family? At sometime toward the end of that century, perhaps with the death of the above Andreas in 1695, George, the son of our Andreas (is anyone confused?) took over the reins of leadership. Then later, his son Andreas took over as CEO # 4. Then in perhaps the middle of the 1700s, Johann Heinrich, the great-grandson of "Andreas behind the church" began calling the shots. Then, as mentioned earlier, the leadership of this company fell back to Cousin Heinrich's direct ancestors and remains so until today.

Cousin Richard Lloyd Schwenk has offered some incisive thoughts regarding the leadership of this weaving company being  sometimes passed between cousins rather than traditionally from father to son.  Below are his words written in October, 1996.

"Probably the success of The Schwenk Linenweber Co. in overcoming problems of suitable CEO successors was their flexibility in selecting the most able from among the sons and cousins and not confining their choice to just the oldest son of the incumbant CEO."

But wait! We are not finished with "Andreas behind the church." He and Waldburga had at least four children. Three were boys born before 1657. They all married and continued contributing to the "Schwenk overpopulation" of Laichingen. The only child whose birth record was found - and she apparently was the last-born child of this union - was an Anna Ursula. She was born on March 27, 1658. The pastor wrote that the father was "Andreas Schwenk jung (junior), weaver. Mother was Waldburga Dauer from Stubersheim." What is of particular significance here is the word jung! That has to mean that his father was also named Andreas. Some pastors used the latin word, Junior. Most used the word, Jung. Often, in order to identify the individual when there were many persons of the same name - which was certainly the case in Laichingen - the words, "der jünger" or "der älter", the younger or the older, were written after the names. But Jung after Andreas's name means he was a junior. And so it follows, that if this writer's hypothesis holds water, then the father of our Conrad and Conrad's  brother Andreas was an Andreas Schwenk, and he would be our earliest documented Schwenk ancestor. His estimated year of birth would be sometime between 1570 and 1580. A persistent search for his death date revealed nothing. He must have died before the church books were reinstituted in 1657. This writer and descendant of our documented patriarch Conrad hopes the reader has not become hopelessly confused with all the Andreas', Conrads and Heinrichs, but the story of the Konrad Schwenk Leinenweberei Company's chief executive officers and the probable relationship between the first five of those had to be told; and as well, the connection of these to the likely father of our Patriarch, Conrad.

Back in 1974, the Konrad Schwenk Linen Weaving Co. hired a firm in Stuttgart to research the early ancestry of this Schwenk line. The name of the firm is "Wappenarchiv Dochtermann." It specializes in designing coat of arms, authenticating ancestry, etc. It was this hired research which led to the creation of the list of CEO successors of this linen weaving company. In their search, they came up with an interesting anecdote about our Conrad, the founder of this company. First of all, their research confirmed that Conrad's nickname was "Köchinen Coles" , cooker of cabbage; but more interestingly, perhaps, that reportedly he and two other members of Laichingen were captured by Austrian troops on Sept. 27, 1646 and marched toward Pfullingen. While on what is called the Honauer Steige, a trail, the three prisoners escaped. The information of this event was recorded in a report by the Vogt, marshal or provost, of Urach, and sent to Duke Eberhard III of Württemberg

The commonness of the family name Schwenk in Laichingen.  We have already learned of this in the opening section of this story. But to further illustrate this, here are some of the marriage entries back in 1658 through 1661. The population of Laichingen was then around 300. Marriages were few and far between. There were three weddings in 1658. One of those was between a Maria Schwenk, daughter of the "honorable Andreas Schwenk, judge and weaver." The groom was Johannes Mangold. They, are incidentally, also two of our ancestors.  In 1659, only one couple pledged its vows. That was Ursula Schwenk, daughter of "the honorable Christoph Schwenckh, toll official and master candlemaker." She married Cyrianus Schüttenhalm, wagonmaker. The wedding in 1660 was that of Hans Jacob Schwenk, above mentioned. Four events of matrimony occurred in 1661. In one of those, Margarette Schwenk, widow of Georg Wäng, married Jacobus Brüttinger. She, as it turns out later, will be the "great-grandmother" of our cousin Elsbeth Schwenk-Schwahn. The story of her (Elsbeth) appears at the end of this chapter.

The following entry in the church registers was made in 1945!
 

 "While working on the church registers in the parsonage in 1945, a final
 remnant  stuck beneath the oldest Laichingen marriage register, was
 discovered a single leaf,  page 7 with 7 marriage entries from the year
 1581.Unfortunately, pages 1-6 and pages 8 ff  were not found..."

Of the seven marriages (actually only six appear on this page), one involved a bride born Schwenk. Here is the entry for her and hubby: 1581. Görg Vürker  and Margretta Schwenck had a wedding on the 3rd of Oct.

The other marriage entries on this page were equally as terse. None showed parents nor occupations of the groom. We can be happy that the Church began making more detailed entries in the following centuries. But here we have additional proof that there were Schwenks living in Laichingen in the 16th Century (actually there are documents showing this family name in Laichingen as early as 1383). Who will ever know...perhaps Margretta was the sister of our Conrad's grandfather?

This chapter ends with the death of Conrad Schwenk, b. 1601. As shown in the death register, he died at the age of 85 on Feb. 23, 1686.  Here is the translation in English:
 

 "The 23rd Feb: died from a stroke, Conrad Schwenk, weaver, the older, and was
 on the following date, St. Matthew, buried with sermon and great ceremony.
 Age:  85 years"

And near the Autumn of 1689 on Sept. 13th, our great-grandmother Magdalena joined him in eternal rest. She had lived 82 years. They had both lived long lives when measured even by today's standards. Before we move to the next generation-chapter, here is another anecdotal  story which deserves the light of day.

The following is a slight departure from the telling of the story of our Schwenk ancestry, but it is closely related and earns a place here. It begins with a letter written on May 25, 1994, to an Eberhard Schwenk of Schelklingen, a town just north of Ehingen. The writer had jotted down the address from a phone book while visiting the Mundingen/Ehingen area that month. The letter asked whether Eberhard might be a descendant of a Johannes Elias Schwenk (son of Elias, brother of our John) born in Urspring in 1870, a village right near Schelklingen. And if not, was perhaps a Schwenk  of Feldstetten one of his ancestors? Sometime later, a reply came from his sister, Elsbeth Schwahn, born Schwenk. Her friendly letter said that her brother had passed away a few years earlier. She enclosed a paternal ancestry chart which her father had prepared back in around 1940. This was a common occurrence in those days, a requirement by the National Socialist Party; through this, one proved one's Aryan ancestry. The chart or tree leads back seven generations to a Peter Schwenk, a farmer,  born in Laichingen around 1720-30. Wow! Exciting stuff! A quick glance at the maps showed Laichingen to be only an hour's walk east of Feldstetten. All kinds of questions arose from this letter and chart. Was Peter perhaps the father of our Conrad (b. 1773) or the brother of Conrad's father? The reader must keep in mind that in May of 1994 all we knew was that Conrad (brewer) was born probably in Feldstetten in circa 1765. We knew nothing of his Laichingen ancestry, nor that the family name, Schwenk, was as common as mud in Laichingen.

After the Mormon Church's microfilmed records of the church books were discovered by this writer in Feb. 1995, and after the bulk of the search for our Schwenk ancestry in Feldstetten and Laichingen was completed, a good many days were devoted to find a possible ancestral link between "Cousin Elsbeth" and the writer. Was her "Patriarch" the same as ours, Conrad Schwenk, weaver, born 1601? Or did she descend from a Schwenk metzger or Schwenk schreiner, etc, etc.

This search was not one bit less exciting than the one which had earlier led back to our Conrad. And it too led to a Conrad Schwenk, born 1610 in Laichingen. But this Conrad was a member of the schreiner (cabinetmaker) clan. His father was a Jörg (Jerg or Georg) Schwenk, schreiner born about 1575-80. And so the question of the consanguineous relationship between Elsbeth Schwahn Schwenk and the writer was not answered fully. They are either tenth cousins or more distantly related. No matter which, a wonderfully warm relationship had developed as a result of her reply in 1994, a lively correspondence,  and the subsequent search for the common ancestor!! A chart now follows which shows eleven generations of each. The original - typed in German - was sent to Cousin Elsbeth! For our purposes, it has been "brought back" to English.

Links

 http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=donschwenk This is Don Schwenk's online family tree. More than 11,000 individuals appear in this tree, including, of course, all of Konrad's Kids. All the names are linked to their parents, and descendants - if any. We think you will find this very interesting and informative.

 http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=laur1 This is Charleen Laur Soos' online family tree. It contains more than 17,000 individuals. It works the same as explained above.

http://www.terraserver.com/  Here you can find topographic maps and aerial photographs of places in the US. Check it out. Very interesting!
 http://www.kbb.com/  This is Kelly Blue Book's Website. Here you can check on the retail and wholesale value of your car.
http://www.laichingen.de/ This is Laichingen's official homepage. Check out what's happening in our "cradle community." In the German language, naturally.
http://www.dialpad.com/ is a site where you can download free software with which you can telephone people within the United States from pc to phone. These calls are free. No gimmicks. All you need is a simple microphone.

http://www.infospace.com/  Here you can locate phone numbers and addresses of people in many countries of the world.
http://www.thumbsplus.com/ will take you to the homepage of ThumbsPlus (Cerious Software, Inc). ThumbsPlus is a remarkable image viewer and organizer program.
http://www.paintshoppro.com/ - This is where you can download as shareware an excellent image editing program.
 
 

Midi Music Mini Mall

Some Webpages contain hidden imbedded links to midi files. That is, soon after you open the page, music begins to play which is usually entertaining, but the visitor has no control over this. Here, we will give you the freedom of choice. If you choose, simply click on the links and adjust the volume according to your preferences. A tip: If a large window opens containing the midi file, simply minimize it so as to allow the continued reading of the newsletter while the music plays in the background. If that doesn't work, right click (Windows users) on the link, then select Open in New Window.
 

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