Making Better Use of Our Communication Resources

Recently, we have had a rash of requests for membership into the Peter Burr Society Yahoo Group. While I approve these requests, I am concerned that these new members are about to discover that the group has become relatively inactive. It is not functioning as I would hope. We need to look at our objectives for this group and then explore whether there is a better way of meeting those objectives.

Currently, we have in place a total of three communication resources. It is time we better understand where the Peter Burr Society fits into the larger process and how all the resources can work together. Following are the web addresses for these resources: 

• Reliving History, Inc. website: http://RelivingHistoryInc.org
• This blog spot: http://relivinghistoryinc.blogspot.com
• The Peter Burr Society Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/peterburrsociety/

Purposes and Limitations:

• The Reliving History, Inc. website continues to grow and much will be added to the site for update and expansion purposes. The website, however, does not have a good connection for an online forum for input from people or a way for individuals to upload or share genealogical or historic documents.
• This blog spot contains whatever is on my mind and pertains to both Reliving History, Inc. and the Peter Burr Society. It is a good way for me to communicate with the public and does have a place for the public's comments below, but to my knowledge there is no process for those comments to be organized into a functional two-way forum or a way for others to initiate subject matter. Likewise, the blog does not provide a way for individuals to upload or share genealogical or historic documents.
• The Yahoo Groups provides the online forum and a way for individuals to upload and share important documents; however, for reasons both known and unknown the process is not functioning as it should. Or perhaps the problem could be that we have not yet generated enough on-going interest in (or understanding of) the process.
  

While Reliving History, Inc. focuses primarily on the Peter Burr House and has local support, the Peter Burr Society has its own unique purpose that can play a vital role on behalf of the house as well as the larger general history of the family.

The ca. 1751 Peter Burr House (priority focus of Reliving History, Inc.) is a tangible structure that is a treasure worthy of continued preservation, restoration, and programming. The house was built by Peter Burr (1699-1779) and his son, Peter Burr (1727-1795). The son (about 21 years old at the same time young George Washington, age 16, was in the same area) took up residence in the house and stayed there for the rest of his life as he raised 13 children during the years of our nation's formation. The house exists as an incredible vantage point in time from which our nation's early history can be viewed. Architecturally, archaeologically, and historically the house is a rare treasure of what could be national interest.

The Peter Burr Society (a more loosely structured organization) consists of descendants of Peter Burr and of other related families and friends. Family history plugs into the interpretation and history of the house. Yet, until recently, the family history has been very piece-meal with many pieces of the story still isolated (unshared), fragmented in different locations, or undiscovered. Many remaining pieces may yet be found in dusty archives someday or in boxes of old documents passed down from previous generations and in many cases still packed away in attics, forgotten. Let us hope they are found before age and critters make them too fragile or deteriorated to utilize. Much of our history will be found in obscure references in documents that belong to other families whose ancestors interacted with our ancestors. Until we as an organization become better know, why should anyone with a reference to one of our ancestors (in an old letter perhaps to someone in their family or an old journal) know (or even care) to contact us? Each time a new reference or document is discovered or a new piece of family information is shared, the picture becomes a little clearer. And as the picture becomes clearer, our story becomes more and more amazing.

The Yahoo Group is a great idea and provides us two benefits that are important:

• The ability to interact about family history in on-going conversations through the forum and 
• A place to upload and store our family documents. 

But functionally it is not yet doing what it was intended to do. Adjustments are needed and your input on this is important.

If you are not already a member of the The Peter Burr Society Yahoo Group, you can join by going to the web address above. At the home page, you will be able to read about our focus, but you will have to "Join" the group to be able to access the files and documents and other benefits including photo albums. If you are a truly interested person (not some marketing ploy) your request to "Join" will be approved, but you will have to wait a few hours for me to receive and process the request.

The "Joining" process is a protective mechanism. It allows us a method to safeguard our family information. I also allows us a way to block those who might be seeking a place to be opportunistic regardless of their other agendas. 


I would like your comments concerning:

• What are your general thoughts about the Yahoo Group?
• Is there a better or easier way than Yahoo Groups to meet our objectives?
  
• Do you have suggestions on how to revitalize the group and make it more useful?
• Do you have questions?
• Do you have any other comments on the subject?

There are some known reasons the group has become inactive.
We need to review those reasons in an effort to make the site more useful and therefore used by more people. First we need to understand what the group is for and how it relates to other focuses that are in process. Then I would like for us to find a process that does better than Yahoo what we originally intended. I am requesting your help.

Several reasons are known.

• We no longer have a moderator to facilitate (I would love for someone to surface who would like to oversee this project. It does not require a lot of time but could certainly benefit from someone who cares.)
• The Yahoo process is not very “user friendly” for our purposes.
• The “joining” process is difficult for some people especially for those who are not as internet savvy.
• Some people hesitate to join groups for fear of possible unknowns attached to joining.
• Some people have to create yahoo email addresses in order to join but then never use those secondary addresses. Some do not know how (or have a reason) to change their profile to link notices of messages to their primary email address.
• There is a learning curve to understanding what the group is for, especially for those who’ve never used groups.

There are also some reasons we need to revitalize this group or resolve any problems.
All of us are the composites of the many different families that united years ago and that by marriage and parenting produced our ancestors. Of all the different family lines that make up my particular ancestry, none is as fascinating as the Burr line. The more I dig, the more fascinated I become at how intricately woven this family was in the very roots of our whole American history beginning in 1630 with the first Burrs in the New World, a Puritan family, who arrived with John Winthrop’s famous fleet. Still missing from the over 150 documents posted on the Peter Burr Society Yahoo Group are documents about some of the more interesting people in our ancestry who are the current focus of a possible documentary mini-series on the family. While I do not want to say too much about the possible documentary series here, records of several close relatives of Peter Burr are not currently but clearly should be included in the Yahoo Group files. These documents include information about:

• Peter Burr's great great grandfather Jehue Burr, alluded to above as the Burr Immigrant who came as a Puritan to the New World with his young family. 
• Peter Burr's grand uncle Chief Justice Peter Burr (for whom our Peter Burr's father was likely named) who graduated early from Harvard and became the Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court long before our nation was formed. 
• Peter Burr's first cousin once removed, Thaddeus Burr, who is now being identified as one of the "missing links" in George Washington's Culper Spy Ring during the American Revolution. He was friends with a number of our founding fathers, and his home was the site of the John Hancock's wedding.
  
• Peter Burr's uncle, the Rev. Aaron Burr, who helped found and was the second President of what is now Princeton University and who was also the son-in-law of the great Rev. Jonathan Edwards. 
• Peter Burr's first cousin,  the NY Senator and later US Vice President Aaron Burr. While history books have not done the VP justice, the facts remain that he has many credits to his name and the final story on the truth of the historic events are slowly beginning to be known.
  

Anyone not excited about our history, most likely is unaware of how intricately our family history is woven around our nation’s history. We had early ancestors who were among the bedrock of our national history.

Not only do we need to connect the Peter Burr House to the known history that was occurring around it, but also we need to connect to the house a better picture of who the amazing family was that lived in that house.

While the general public focuses on revitalizing the house, the Peter Burr Society needs to focus continually on discovering, organizing, and sharing our family history.

I would seriously like to have your input as to how we can better function online in a manner that will allow better or easier two-way communication and help to accumulate more documentation and discovery of existing family-related documents.

To reply to this, you have at least three options:

• You can post a reply in the comments section below.
• If you are a member of the Peter Burr Society Yahoo Group, then discussion of this matter would best be done by posting a message in the online forum; however it will only be seen by members. 
• Or by comments addressed to me at bjoycecole@relivinghistoryinc.org or to my primary email address for those who have it. I will be happy to compile the thoughts (into one document) and share them later as appropriate.

Please take a moment to reply even if only by comment below, if with nothing else, then at least with a word of encouragement or thought on the subject.

Joyce Cole
Founder and Chairman of Reliving History, Inc.
Founder of the Peter Burr Society