Here's a Happy Year for you in 2009!

It's shaping up to be a great year.  We have just sent out mailings to over 200 Michigan O'Dochartaighs, in our first of three mailings to this state. Being the state of the highest membership already and the state of our genealogy center, we know there is a lot of interest and chattering in our organization.  We would like to get our message clearly out to all these O'Dochartaighs.  

The mailing introduces both our Association and our Genealogy Center.  From past mailings we expect to see an immediate 10% response for both the Association and Center.  Then another 10-15% slowly coming in over the next 2 months.

The goal is to create collaboration between all O'Dochartaighs in Michigan, connect them within our vast Master Clan Database and increase their involvement in our Association, as they are closer to our Corporate office and Research then other members.  We hope to also have a state-wide gathering.

The O'Dochartaigh Family Research Center will attempt to obtain genealogy information from these initial responders, as the Center goes to work supporting, training and assisting these family members and documenting the genealogy data.  The initial responders are expected to be, by in large, members who have already submitted genealogy information and will merely be updating our records.  There will, of course, be new contacts made, too, and we suspect these will be people already along in their personal research and who will be glad to see us take the time to try to match their discoveries up with ours, and to find people of their same family branch who may also be researching that branch.  This first phase of the work will probably move along rather quickly.

Probably in about two months time, the center will re-contact the unresponders with a progress report on the Michigan project and with a second plea for them to join the Association and submit their genealogy.

Then we will repeat this process with the second of the three mailing groups and then the third group.  They are divided into the Western group, Mid-state group and Eastern group.

What our Association and Research Center learns with this project will help us prepare better planning and coordination for other state-wide projects.  As mentioned before, Michigan was where we got our start, Michigan is where our research center is, Michigan is very familiar with us, Michigan O'Dochartaighs also are very familiar with us and need to know that our research center is back from Ireland.  This is amble reason to kickoff our first state-wide project with Michigan. 

The next state being planned for such a state-wide project is Kentucky (also in 2009), then possibly Iowa or Minnesota (2010).  Kentucky has been nearing "readiness" for a couple of years and if we can use voluntary help, instead of our new staff person (Heather Blain), we can run it simultaneously with Michigan.

Your feedback is appreciated- anytime on any subject!
Thanks.

Warmest regards,
Cameron Dougherty of the O'Dochartaigh Clann Association,
Patrick Dougherty and Heather Blain of the O'Dochartaigh Family Resarch Center