Krey.org Introductory Letter

Krey.org Introductory Letter

Here's the mass e-mail that went out to all the Kreys on the e-mail list:
(download the letter in Microsoft Word or pdf format and print it out to send to other Kreys with whom you are in contact.)

Hello fellow Krey family members!

I'm sending you this e-mail message to announce two new websites dedicated to Krey family history. The first site location is www.krey.org/family/. That address will take you to a directory of the following pages:

Krey e-mail List - I used an internet search engine to start a list of Krey e-mail addresses (that's probably how I got your e-mail address.) The list is by no means comprehensive, so please send me corrections, deletions, or additions to the list. Accompanying this list is a list of Krey-related websites.
Krey Telephone Directory - Also from an internet search engine, this page contains a directory of U.S. telephone numbers for the name Krey, sorted by state. Kreys in the U.S. seem to be concentrated in the Midwest. Again, send me any corrections or additions to the list as well as requests for deletions. I will not publish unlisted telephone numbers on this page, but I would like to include at least the name and state/country of residence for any Kreys out there.
Family History - This page contains an account of one Krey line based on some genealogical research in what is now Poland. The line currently ends in 1774 with Michael and Catharine Krey. This is the farthest we have been able to trace this line, as previous records held in the village church are unreadable due to water damage. Places and names in the history are linked to photos. Send me results from your own research to be posted here.
Personal Histories - This page contains personal histories from various Krey family members. If you have biographies or other stories about specific Krey family members, please submit them. These accounts are especially interesting if you are one of their descendants. In doing the research for this site, I really enjoyed reading the accounts of immigration to the United States.
Family Tree - This page is basically a descendancy chart for the Michael and Catharine Krey line. You can navigate the family tree by clicking on parents or children. Individual names are linked to photos and personal histories. Please submit your own family tree if it ties into this line.
Historical Photos - This page contains historical photos of Krey family members. Also included are some photos of significant places in Krey family history.
Research Links - This page provides links to sites where you can do your own family history research. Using these links, you can easily pull up information on hundreds of Kreys with records going back over 400 years. Genealogical files containing the Michael Krey line are available to download here in PAF or GEDCOM format.

Due to limits on my time and available disk space, I have to limit the family tree and historical photos on krey.org to the Michael & Catharine Krey line. That leads us to the second site at www.myfamily.com:

MyFamily.com is an internet community that provides private websites for families to exchange information and keep in touch. In conjunction with the krey.org site, I have also set up a parallel site on MyFamily.com dedicated to Krey family history. Some of the features of the MyFamily.com Kreysite include:

Chat with other Krey family members who are online.
Navigate family trees and add your own family tree for others to navigate.
Add your e-mail address to the mailing list and automatically send email to everyone on the list
Post photos, stories, and other genealogical information related to the Krey line.
Post messages for other visitors to read.

You will find many other features once you log on. MyFamily.com sites are secure, so only those with passwords have access to them. You can check out the MyFamily.com Kreysite right now as a guest user. Guest users can view information, but cannot download, upload, or change any information on the site.

Step 1: Follow the links to MyFamily.com from the krey.org/family site
Step 2: Enter the following login information:

User Name: [encoded]
Password: [encoded]

For full access to the site, please e-mail a request to info@krey.org, and a new user name and password will be e-mailed to you within 1-2 days. Keep in mind that this site is dedicated to family history, so please post only photos, stories, etc. from deceased family members. For your own photos, I would encourage you to create a MyFamily.com site for your immediate family. I would also encourage you to create MyFamily.com family history sites for other lines related to the Krey line (such as the Stenzel, Marticinski, Boldt, Bauten, Bernthesel, Zimmerman, Gnehm, or Crandall lines.) Krey.org is a MyFamily.com affiliate, so if you decide to create a new MyFamily.com site, please do so through the links on the krey.org website. Setting up a new site is very easy - just follow the links to www.myfamily.com and click on "Start Free Site." This will direct you to all of the instructions you will need to set up a new site. If you create a site that krey.org visitors might be interested in, send me your e-mail address - I will post a link to it on the krey.org website, so that others who are interested in joining can contact you.

These two websites should work together. Check them out to get familiar with them and e-mail me any questions or suggestions for improving the sites. To summarize, the site functions are:

www.krey.org/family/ - general Krey contact info with detailed historical, photographic, and family tree info on the direct Michael and Catharine Krey line.
www.myfamily.com - interactive chat functions, automatic message and picture posting, complete GEDCOM family tree access for additional Krey lines.

My goal with these two websites is to encourage contact between Kreys and to provoke more interest and research into family history, whether through the Krey line or any other. It would be great if we could expand the tree to see how it merges with other lines and possibly to trace the line back even further. The internet seems to be the perfect place to exchange this kind of information. I hope that this site will help everyone to grow closer to family as well. Please help me spread the word by informing any other Kreys you know of the existence of this site, and ask them to submit their info as well.

And finally, a request for volunteers - I suspect there is a lot of information out there that can only get from paper to computer screen with a good deal of effort. So please let me know if you are willing to perform any of the following services. If so, I will post a link to your e-mail address, so that those in need of the service can contact you. Time seems to be the most valuable resource, but here are some anticipated specifics:

Typing - If people sent you copies of personal histories, journals, letters, etc., could you type this information into a word processing program?
Scanning - If people sent you historical photos, could you scan them in and convert them to .jpg or .gif format?
OCR - Good-quality text documents can be scanned and converted to computer files using Optical Character Recognition software. Do you have the hardware/software to do this?
Translating - many old Krey documents are in German. Would you be willing to help translate these documents into English? (The German version of the website is at www.krey.org/deutsch)
GEDCOM - Could you enter family tree data into PAF or GEDCOM files? Some online family trees (such as ancestry.com) accept only GEDCOM files with living members removed. Could you remove living members from existing GEDCOM files to prepare them for submission?
Database searches - Could you search through internet databases for specific individuals or general family history research?
Archives - Do you have access to LDS or other genealogical archives, and could you retrieve information from the databases?
HTML - Could you convert documents to web page format for publishing on the internet? Could you submit existing websites for search engine and genealogy database registration?
Web hosting - Do you have additional unused disk space available on the internet? If people sent you html or other documents, could you post the information on the Web so that we could link to it from these sites?

Well, that's it for this time. To be included in future mailings, please reply to this e-mail with a request to be kept on the list. Again, let me know if you would like to help out with this website so we can spread the work around in case we get swamped by the collected information. Please forward this message to any Kreys or other relatives with whom you are in contact. Enjoy the sites!

Sincerely,

Krey Price (son of Keena KREY)
http://www.krey.org/prices/
krey@krey.org

ps. webgeek.stuff: If you leave off the /family part of the address and go straight to www.krey.org, the logo on the opening page may be a little confusing—I am currently piggybacking the family history site on my upcoming web design site, which I host at www.jumbojet.net. You can still get to the family history site from there - it just takes a few more clicks through the directory.

pps. webgeek.stuff cont'd: Let me know if you are interested in sponsoring this website by having a webpage hosted at krey.org or kreyfish.net. With enough interest, the family history site could then stand alone at www.krey.org rather than in the folder www.krey.org/family/. As far as the other top-level krey domains, krey.com is Paul Krey's family website (includes a link to krey.org now), krey.net is an internet chat line running out of Belgium, and krey.de is Josef Krey's gardening center in Germany.

Most Kreys are German, so here's the German version of this website: