I just heard from an old friend of mine this morning. I got a note from Bill Lee, whose genealogy books I have reviewed during my tenure as a magazine editor. Bill and his wife, LaVonne, spent a number of years tracking down family on-site. They would go from county to county, gathering all the information they could on their various family surnames. This project led to a number of useful surname volumes used by researchrs today.
Bill’s other specialty is the post-baseball lives and deaths of over 7,600 Major League players and others. He wrote a fascinating book on the subject called The Baseball Necrology.
Bill tells me that his wife, LaVonne (FODGE) Lee’s genealogy is now available on her personal website, FODGERelations.com . I checked it out this morning, and it’s a truly amazing site. There are more than 11,000 names on the website with Pedigree Charts and Family Group Sheets for each of the 11,000 names. I found a lot of useful biographical data on the site also. The most common surnames are AUGHINBAUGH, FODGE, HAPNER, HOSHAW, HOUSE, JUDAY, KNOOP, METHOD, OTT and ROOKSTOOL. Bill tells me that his own genealogy will be on line sometime this year. It’s now at 19,000 names and growing…
