=====

In posting this announcement, Megan touched off the biggest firestorm in USGenWeb's brief history, one that still smolders and flares up periodically, usually when someone's "loyalty to the Project" is in question. The controversy over the incorporation of USGenWeb, Inc. shattered friendships and permanently divided the project into hostile camps that endlessly and warily circle each other to this day. Within hours of Megan's announcement, the Dills and Pat Smith were being publicly denounced as thieves and scoundrels, and in a very short time the accusations expanded to include the United States Internet Genealogical Society [USIGS], an independent organization in which the Dills and many other USGW participants were also involved. When the dust had settled, reputations were ruined, trust was lost, and the RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative [now RootsWeb.com, Inc., then and now a for-profit company] was left holding all the marbles.

How did this happen? To find that out, we have to go back to the very beginnings of the Project...

~ With a Little Help From My Friends...

Jerry and Lucy Dill first met Dale "Doc" Schneider on the Black-Helicopters mailing list, a list that one of its former members describes as "a clandestine list on which the current movers and shakers of the USGW Project discussed topics deemed inappropriate for the open lists." [Pat Smith, personal communication, 1 Oct 1999] They thought he was funny and very knowledgeable about computers and the internet, and they became good friends with him. Linda Lewis first invited Jerry to join the Black Helicopters list, and shortly thereafter Lucy joined as well. Jerry and Lucy were both very early participants in USGW. Jerry began in June 1996 as the coordinator for the Idaho archives, and Lucy adopted three ID counties in June 1996, and later took on several more during the period of rapid expansion in the project when there was a rush to get all states and counties online. Pat Smith started with USGW in the fall of 1996, becoming the Alaska SC and also adopting counties in OK and TX. He too participated in the Black Helicopters list, as did John Rigdon, Megan Zurawicz, Linda Lewis, Dale Schneider, and several others. Pat Smith and John Rigdon both explored business ventures with Dale Schneider, and Jerry and Lucy Dill also eventually planned a business partnership with him using the usroots.com domain. All four of these people gave, loaned, or paid money to Dale Schneider over many months in order to help him manage the servers for the project.

When the USGW Project first began, the national pages were housed on Jeff Murphy's personal account, provided by a commercial ISP. By June 1996, however, the national pages were housed on a server owned by Dale Schneider and which he loaned to John Rigdon, then the National Coordinator. John worked for an ISP in Georgia, and the server apparently "lived" there. In June 1996, Dale Schneider and John Rigdon registered the usgenweb.com domain name with InterNIC. According to both John Rigdon and Dale Schneider, they registered it as a .com domain because at that time acquiring a .net or .org domain required filing "all kinds of legal non-profit paperwork" [Dale Schneider, USGENWEB-ALL, 10 May 1998] and because the Project did not meet the requirements for either a .net or a .org address. [John Rigdon, USGENWEB-ALL, 12 May 1998]. The domain was housed on Dale's server, as were most project mailing lists, including the usgenweb list, and Dale was listed as the domain owner. At some point, Dale and John had a falling out and Dale moved all the pages and mail lists back to his server housed in Nebraska. This server housed several domains, among them USroots.com [Dale's personal business domain], and dsenter.com, the server that officially housed the USGenWeb Project.

By most accounts, Dale's server was unreliable. The server suffered back to back outages in October and November of 1997 and January and February of 1998. Dale was losing customers and USGW was receiving complaints about its main pages being offline. At least one such outage was due to nonpayment of a phone bill that resulted in the server's phone line being cut off; another was due to a massive snowstorm that took power and phone lines down for several days. To compound matters, Dale himself was often not available for long periods of time, sometimes for weeks or months. In order to keep the USGenWeb pages and mailing lists up and running, Jerry Dill began to extend considerable personal time, effort and money in keeping the domain online. At one point, Jerry and Lucy even asked Brian Leverich, of the RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative, for assistance in keeping the servers online and he refused. [email from Lucy Dill to Kay Mason, Nov 1997[?] According to Jerry, Brian "made it rather clear to me that he could not help us get those boxes on line and he had already told me he didn't want the boxes at his site. He pretty much said he "could feel my pain," but he could not help." [email from Jerry Dill to James [Streeter?], Nov 1997]. Although RootsWeb is well known in the online genealogy community for its generosity [they picked up the Maiser lists when they went down and hosted the USGW Archives for free from their inception, among other things], it is perhaps not surprising that Brian was reluctant to help out the USGW project in this case. Each time the Dsenter server went down, more states and counties gave up and moved to his server.

Despite the many problems Jerry, who was not a systems person and did not know Unix or much about managing servers at all, managed to keep the USGW Project online with only a few days downtime. But from all accounts, it was a rough time. Throughout the fall of 1997 and the early winter of 1998, Jerry loaned Doc money, paid his bills and managed his business. During this time, in order to keep Dale's business going and to keep USGW online, Dale shipped his servers to Jerry in Idaho, where they were able with the help of some local Linux people to get the boxes up and running. A local sysadmin was also able to get the admininstrative contacts on usroots.com and usgenweb.com changed to Jerry Dill's name, so he could pay the renewal fees that were coming due.

Throughout all this, Dale remained the sole legal owner of the usgenweb.com domain, and as he noted, "During this whole time I was the domain holder (owner) so any legal paperwork (involving threats, law suits and the like) came to me." [message to USGENWEB-ALL, 10 May 1999]. According to Dale, he initiated discussions on incorporation in November of 1997 and asked Jerry and Lucy Dill, who were his good friends and who were helping him out financially, to assist him in incorporating in order to protect himself from lawsuits. According to Jerry Dill, discussions on incorporation ensued after Dale was passed over for the position of National Coordinator in September 1997, a position he felt he should have so he could maintain control of the usgenweb.com domain. Originally, the incorporators were Jerry and Lucy Dill and Dale Schneider. Dale asked to bring in a personal friend of his, and Jerry and Lucy asked to bring in a fifth person, Pat Smith, in order to limit the potential for stalemated votes. Dale agreed to this and both his friend and Pat joined the small group. Before any incorporation papers were filed, Dales's friend asked to be released from the corporation and since she hadn't paid in any money or signed anything yet, she was removed. In December 1997, Dale Schneider, Jerry and Lucy Dill, and Pat Smith filed papers as an Idaho Corporation (Subchapter S) and by December 26, 1997, USGenWeb, Inc. was registered as a for-profit corporation in the state of Idaho. According to both Jerry and Lucy Dill, it was Dale's idea to register as a for-profit corporation since it was easier, faster and cheaper to do so. Jerry also indicated that one reason they decided to incorporate as a for-profit was to minimize tax ramifications [message to Michell Wiggins, 22 March 1998] and to protect the project from Dale's unreliableness and from any lingering resentment he might feel from being passed over for NC. [personal communication, 1 Oct 1999]

According to Lucy Dill, the three of them began to talk of forming a small corporation in Nebraska around the usroots.com domain in early 1997, when she and Jerry loaned Dale a substantial amount of money so he could upgrade his servers to compete with RootsWeb. She and Jerry wanted to incorporate to protect their investment in the business. But then nothing happened and discussion stalled, with Dale dragging his feet on it. In October 1997, a big and unexpected snow storm took out the servers and Dale agreed to ship them to Idaho, where Jerry had located a reasonably priced ISP to co-locate them. That was coincidental with Doc's losing his co-locating contract; due to that issue, the Dills had already been looking for a reasonably priced ISP to co-locate the servers. The snow storm just caused the move to be made "now," instead of "later." The servers were supposed to be "plug and play" when then arrived, but they were not. The ISP began working with Dale, by phone, to get the servers running, but suddenly Dale disappeared and the servers were still not on line. Unable to contact Dale, the Dills agreed to allow the ISP to take the servers to Eastern Idaho, where a team of linux experts was able to get the boxes working. Dale shortly reappeared and assumed his administrative duties with the servers. According to Lucy, "in early December of 1997, Doc began discussing incorporating the usgenweb.com domain. He hoped to capitalize on the traffic to the site to attract sponsors and thereby make a living for himself." Lucy asked to be involved in the discussions both so she could be assured that the USGenWeb project's interests were protected and to find some way to pay Dale a living wage. [Lucy Dill, personal communication, 1 Oct 1999]

Then on January 2, 1998, Dale once again disappeared. This time he was unavailable for an entire month and the Dills report receiving very negative feedback regarding this. On the advice of their attorney, the Dills filed an amendment to the articles of incorporation to have Dale removed from the corporation. At this time, he had not signed anything or provided any money toward the incorporation fees. The corporation thus consisted of Jerry Dill, Lucy Dill and Pat Smith, and its only asset was the usgenweb.com domain.

And that is where matters stood until March 18, 1998, when the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan.

~ A Brief Digression On Domain Names ~

The usgenweb.com domain was not the only domain that Dale Schneider hosted on his server. He also served Usroots.com, which was his personal business domain, USIGS, and several other domains and mail accounts. Usroots.com was apparently born when the original owner of dsenter.com wanted it back to use for his own purposes. [Lucy Dill, personal communication, 1 Oct 1999] Every time the server went down or Dale was unavailable, these customers suffered and many of them left. According to Jerry Dill, Dale was entirely incommunicado at this point [he lost his phone line in early January 1998], and as Jerry pointed out, they could no longer hide the fact that Dale was not participating in server management. So, Jerry took the actions necessary to keep the services up and running, including having the USroots.com and usgenweb.com domains changed into his name. In order to be able to perform needed maintenance on the servers they had experts at a local university work on the equuipment and they petitioned InterNIC to change the contact names for the usroots.com and usgenweb.com domains. Then they heard that Dale was back online, using a family member's email account, and that he was angry with them and accusing them of stealing his business, so they took steps they felt were necessary to protect the integrity of the servers should Dale decide to attack them. The Dills, however, still considered Dale to be their friend and once they were able to contact him again [when his phone line was reconnected in February 1998], they told him,

"By the time you came back on as maddoc@ibm.net, we were already backed into a major corner. You didn't contact us right away, leaving us to believe the rumors that you were, indeed, hostile towards us. When you did contact me, you were anything but friendly. Yes, I understand that you were angry from what you could see, but we really thought you knew us better than to assume we were the enemy. Not to repeat myself, but we had and have taken more flack on your behalf than any of the other USGW or USIGS people ever thought of taking. We have defended you, financed you, helped you, backed you and even loved you."

Now, back to the point of this message. What do you want from us, now? As I said on ICQ Thursday night, we are ready and willing to do whatever you desire. You are in charge of the next move. Just tell us what it is." [letter to Dale Schneider, 14 March 1998]

Dale responded that he would take back the Usroots.com domain and said he would find some way to keep it online. He also requested that all his equipment be returned to him, and Jerry agreed to return it. On March 16, however, Dale told Jerry, "I had a long talk with [Dale's friend] yesterday and have decided I want you to continue running the USROOTS.COM domain....I want nothing from this, I just want the domain and it's prestige to continue being a presence on the Internet. In other words it's yours free and clear." [letter to Jerry Dill, 16 March 1999] He also asked that he be paid for his business [usroots.com] and Jerry, Lucy and Pat agreed to release him from his debt to them, which was by this time well over $5000. Jerry asked to be given enough time to get a new server online and he then shipped back Dale's equipment. At this point, Jerry and Lucy started using the Rootsquest domains they had purchased in anticipation of Dale's taking back the usroots.com domain.

The usgenweb.com domain is mentioned only briefly in this correspondence, when Jerry reminds Dale that "One other thing you should keep in mind is that you authorized the corporation to take over the usgenweb.com domain." Jerry maintains that Dale transferred the domain to USGenWeb, Inc. during the process of incorporation; Dale maintains that he planned to do so, but had not yet done it. According to Jerry,

"In one of our pre-incorporation IRC meetings, the five of us voted for officers of the corporation. I was voted to be President and that made Doc mad. In our meeting, the next night, I resigned as President and nominated Doc and he was elected president. He wanted a salary guarantee. We had no idea of what kind of revenue he was producing from his USRoots.Com business, but we knew it wasn't adequate, so we had to decline his request. Therefore, the decision was made that he would keep the USRoots.Com domain and whatever income came in from it, in turn for putting the USGenWeb.Com Domain into the corporation. Thus, the name of the corporation became USGenWeb, Inc." [personal communication, 1 Oct 1999]

~ The Gathering Storm ~

On March 16, 1998, Jerry Dill sent the following message to Megan Zurawicz [Editor's note: in the version of this message that I received some information has been stripped for privacy reasons]:

======

"Before I release the news to the world, I want you to know this piece of news.

Back in November, Doc decided he wanted to Incorporate USGenWeb.  He talked with Pat, Lucy
and me and we agreed to throw in, along with [Dale's friend]. Pat, Lucy and I felt we could
control the thing better if we took ownership than if we let him go off  like a loose canon.   As I
said in a previous message, the incorporation papers were filed in December, as an Idaho
Corporation (Subchapter S).  By the time Doc fell out on us, it was too late to stop the process. 
The corporation has been in existence since 12/26/97 and, as you can see, nothing has changed
with USGW Project since then.  We hope that fact will calm some of the troubled waters.

Pat, Lucy and I are the sole owners and we decided to buy RootsQuest.Com as the corporate
domain, to try and keep the explosion down to a dull roar. However, the InterNIC listing for
RootsQuest.Com shows the owner to be USGenWeb, Inc.  No one has even noticed up to now.  I
just had an ICQ message from (Name), informing me that (Name) noticed it today, for the first
time.   [Editor's note: this probably refers to Linda Lewis]

I have a message to the world prepared, hoping to explain that the Corp. shell will give the
protection and legal status needed to make the USGenWeb a legal entity.  The copyright fears
can be put to rest, as USGenWeb, Inc. can offer that protection to anyone who wants to avail
themselves of it.

I need to get that message out on the Internet as soon as possible, but I first wanted you to be
aware that it is coming.   [Snipped for privacy reasons].  
Do you want to read it before I post it ?

Thank you for any advice you wish to give,
*Jerry"

Megan's response to this was to tell Jerry, "I'm not sure this one is going to be less than a holocaust, since it was done in secret. This is seriously Not A Good Thing." [letter to Jerry Dill, 16 March 1998]. Jerry still maintained [and does to this day] that "I honestly believe this will turn out to be a good thing for the project." [letter to Megan Zurawicz, 16 March 1998]. He told Megan he was writing an announcement to the project and told her he would post it [presumably to the Board] for comments. He planned to release the statement on March 19, but fate, in the form of Linda Lewis, intervened.

On March 16 or 17, 1998, Linda Lewis "discovered" the incorporation of USGenWeb, Inc. As she tells it:

"I discovered "USGenWeb, Inc." on the www.rootsquest.com Internic domain "whois" page, and asked Megan if Jerry had incorporated. She immediately asked him and he confirmed, that yes, the corporation papers were finalized and received on Dec. 27, 1997." [letter to USGENWEB-ALL, June 28, 1998]

After listening to the Board's discussion of the issue, Jerry posted the following message on 17 March 1998:

=====

Having read through all the mail generated by "the announcement," I will now
explain to all what I've already explained to James and Megan.   The
movement to form USGenWeb, Inc. has been brewing for a very long time.
Megan knew that, because Doc kept threatening to do it.  When he became
earnest about it last winter, the three of us (there were four for awhile)
agreed to participate, if we could  lay down some ground rules about NOT
selling any genealogical data from any source.  Our sincerest desire was to
protect the project and we finally achieved full agreement on those ground
rules.

We also insisted on having the corporation based in Idaho, where we could
control it, rather than leave it to chance in Nebraska.  Capt. Pat was in
full agreement on all those items and helped us get it done that way.
After we had filed the incorporation papers, the fourth person pulled out of
the picture, entirely.   After we had received the notification of
incorporation, Doc was cut off from the world and from us.  The remaining
three of us felt a bit trapped, but nonetheless committed to forging ahead.
Doc had not yet signed anything, nor paid in the required capital
investment.  We were/are in no hurry.  However, when Doc could not be
reached and the feed back we were getting was very negative, upon the advice
of our attorney, we filed an amendment to the Articles of Incorporation,
naming only the three of us as incorporators.

We are still committed to providing service to the genealogical community
and protection to the USGenWeb Project(s).  We are still committed to no
sales of genealogical material from *any* source.  We are still solidly
committed to helping provide "free access" to genealogical data on the
internet.  As Mo pointed out, we own only a server and a couple of domains.
We will never "own" the USGenWeb Project.  The very makeup of The Project
precludes anyone from owning it.  We own a corporate shell and we intend
only for it to be a protective umbrella.  Now, no outsiders can incorporate
that name and steal it from us.

We are sorry you have taken offense at what has happened.  No offense was
intended.  Had we brought the idea to this group or any other USGW group for
discussion, we and you all know what would have been the outcome--we've been
through it twice already.  A private incorporation is always just
that--private, *not* secret.  As Mo pointed out, we are friends to this
organization.  We are not enemies in any sense of the word.

You have convinced us, so far, we were right in not even mentioning it.
Unless you convince us differently, we will continue to withhold making an
announcement to the rest of the community for awhile longer.

Best regards,
*Jerry

Later that same evening, Jerry sent a message to Megan, informing her that since she felt so strongly that an announcement should be made immediately, he was willing to proceed with it and planned to post the announcement on March 19. He attached a copy of the revised announcement and requested that she forward it to the Board for any additional comments. Megan, however, did not wait for Jerry's announcement to appear, and instead posted her own announcement to the project mailing lists the following day, on March 18. Megan's announcement is notable in that it fails to mention entirely Dale's role in the incorporation and also fails to mention any of Jerry's assurances of good intentions toward the project. According to Jerry:

I don't recall now, but it was a very few days later that Megan called us and said Linda had reported to her that RootsQuest.Com was registered to USGenWeb, Inc. We told her that was true and we had been trying to figure out how to get the Project to accept the fact that they were now incorporated. We talked about releasing an announcement on all the major mailing lists, but she asked if she could see the announcement first. We sent it to her. She then said she had to share it with the Board. I told her we really couldn't delay the announcement any longer, because the rumor mill works so quickly. We ultimately gave her until the following Monday to discuss it with the Board and see what they would like to do.

The day before the Monday deadline, Megan and her Board issued their first inflammatory "press release." After that, everything went from bad to worse. I did offer to "sell" the corporation to the USGenWeb Project, if they would hold a national election, so the "people" could choose the Board members they felt would best represent them. Megan relayed that message to the Board, in the form of a threat and the fire turned up several notches. [personal communication, 1 Oct 1999]

Also, according to Jerry, both Megan and Linda "resigned their commissions" in the Black Helicopters that day, and the Black Helicopters list was itself dissolved forever the following day.

Reaction to Megan's announcement was swift. The Dills and Pat Smith were almost universally denounced by list participants. [Pat Smith, perhaps because he was not available online during much of this time, does not seem to have faced the same depth of rancor the Dills did; Dale Schneider was apparently entirely excused for his role in the incorporation]. Although Megan counseled the membership not to get "het up" over the issue, she herself called it "tasteless" and "irrelevant". Although it was not requested by the Board, a number of list members noted that they were removing links to the usgenweb.com domain [which at that time was identical to the pages mirrored on usgenweb.org and usgenweb.net, both hosted at RootsWeb] and putting disclaimers on their pages denying affiliation with USGenWeb, Inc. Also shortly after the announcement was made, the first mention of an alleged attempted takeover of the project archives was made. Most people who responded to the announcement, though, just seemed confused by it. Most wanted to know how it affected them and their pages and what, if anything, they should do.

Within a day, the question of ownership of the usgenweb.com domain was brought up by [you guessed it] Linda Lewis. So strongly did it concern her, she mentioned it a second time only a few hours later, saying

"We need straight out clarification about who actually "owns" the usgenweb.com domain. My understanding is that it is still registered through Internic in Dales Schneider's name. Jerry has only changed the administrative contact information. The domain is still registered to Dale in Nebraska. Once we determine the rightful owner, we'll know who the The USGenWeb Project's board needs to communicate with regarding any control." [letter to USGENWEB-ALL, 19 March 1999]

All discussion thus far had taken place without Jerry, Lucy or Pat's input. Several list members had pointedly asked where they were during all this, but as it turns out, none of them were subscribers to the mailing lists and although they had sent an explanation and apology, it had not gone through to the list. Finally, on March 20, 1998, the following message was forwarded to numerous mail lists:

=====

Dear Friends,

Lucy and I have committed a serious error in judgement.  In our effort to
help a project in which we truly believe and to which we have devoted our
lives for well over two years, we have, instead, dealt a serious blow to
cooperation and love among genealogists.  For that we sincerely apologize.

If our actions have created a financial burden to any person within this
entire community, please provide us with documentation and we will reimburse
you immediately.  We are not aware of any such burdens, but we stand ready
to face whatever music you feel is appropriate.

We also apologize that you were made aware, by someone other than ourselves,
of our forming the USGenWeb, Inc. entity.  The circumstances under which the
corporation was formed were changed mid-stream and we chose to not publish
the information at all.  On Monday, 16 March 1998, having been asked about
the corporation, we entered into discussion with the National Coordinator.
Then,  yesterday, I was allowed an audience with the USGW Board.  We were
giving them opportunity to decide what approach they would have us take,
with the understanding that we would release our announcement when they felt
it appropriate, if at all.  Again, we apologize that you were not allowed to
know the reasons compelling us to incorporate, before all the questions and
accusations hit these lists.

We have now spent nearly $8,000, not counting normal connectivity charges,
postage, long-distance phone charges, travel costs, books, etc., etc. (the
stuff all you folks also do in pursuit of this hobby), all in an effort to
further the work of FREE genealogical data and research on the internet.  We
have not received one nickel from our activities, nor have we done any of
what we've done in an effort to make a profit.  I realize no one believes me
when I make that statement, but it is true, nonetheless.

We also recognize that we have now ruined our reputation, as well as our
effectiveness.  For that, we are also very sorry.  We are guilty of
stupidity and bad judgement.  Other than that, we have no problem facing the
One who will judge us all.

For what it's worth, here is the announcement that was never published:

Thursday, March 19, 1998

MEMORANDUM

TO:  USGenWeb Project participants and associates

FROM:  USGenWeb, Inc.

SUBJECT: We are legal, at last!

As we begin the third calendar year of the USGenWeb Project's existence, we
are excited to be able to announce that we are finally a legal organization,
with all the rights, privileges, opportunities, and responsibilities granted
by the laws of the United States of America.  We no longer need to be
concerned about whether we have protection against copyright infringements,
libel, slander, theft or any other threat against property or life, as
granted by those laws.  We ARE protected, as of January 1, 1998.

That was the good news!  And, now, for those of you are looking for the bad
news-NONE has been identified.

We encourage all current participants in the USGenWeb Project, including the
Census Project, the Archives Project, the Tombstone Project, the Civil War
Project, the Surname Project and all other current projects or sub-projects
to take advantage of our new legal status.  You are welcome to place a
statement about copyright protection, as granted under the Corporate Shell,
as you see fit for your pages.

We wish to assure all State Coordinators and County Coordinators that your
web sites are and will continue to be your own property.  Copyrights of all
materials contributed to the USGenWeb Archives are and will continue to be
vested in the contributor.  In other words, nothing has changed, except the
gaining of legal status and all its benefits to the entire organization.
The Articles of Incorporation have not and will not presume to take any
ownership of those pages.  You may have all the benefits you want without
giving up any personal rights.

As stated above, all USGenWeb Project will continue, business as usual, with
the addition of benefits as provided by the corporate shell.  The National
Coordinator and the USGW Board remain in charge of the USGenWeb Project,
just as are all USGW Archives Managers, State Coordinators and County
Coordinators.  USGenWeb.Inc is not taking control of any part of the
project.

The USGenWeb Project will continue as we have been, operating from the
normal URL of http://www.usgenweb.com/

We hope you will be pleased about this new legal status.  Should you have
any further questions or concerns, please contact one of the three officers
of USGenWeb, Inc.

Best regards to all,

Capt. Pat Smith  Capt.Pat@rootsquest.com
Lucy N Dill  lnd@rootsquest.com
Jerry E Dill  jed@rootsquest.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------

After several days of questions and recriminations, the furor seemed to die down a bit, and you would think that since the Dills and Pat Smith had apologized for their error of judgement and had never shown any ill intent toward the project or its members, that that would be the end of it. But you would be wrong.