Putting a Ribbon on my Role

Years ago when Maxine Crowell Leonard seemed convinced it was my destiny to be the “annointed one” to continue forward her wonderful, decades-long devotion to Conger family research I was flattered and thought she might be right. Time was to prove us wrong.

I visited her twice at her Iowa home, rented an Econo-line van and brought her Conger family work home. I found her figures shared with me re how many Conger Confab subscribers there were wrong. As I learned more about the fabulous Conger name (she had been right about that) I learned  I could not accept her precept that all Conger in America descended from John Belconger of England.

And I learned I did not have genealogy genes or the capacity to splice them into my DNA.

Since launching this blog, I’ve received some terrific notes of encouragement and queries about Conger family research. I’ve not responded to about 99 percent of them. WHY NOT?, you ask. I am a people person and I love intelligent dialogue with good people, but I don’t enjoy my ignorance which I have self-perpetuated in my devotion to other activities successfully and satisfyingly engaged. In May this year, I began setting up and seeking support for an aviation museum at a local airport, and 90 percent of my mind and 60 percent of my time has been spent in that enterprise. Visit www.aeroknow.com for more info about it.

Recently I met, via this blog, a very competent local genealogist who does research as an avocation. When I asked her if she’d like to add my Conger resources to her collection, she declined, but she recommended I donate it to the Illinois State Historical Library. I explained there aren’t many Congers in Central Illinois, that my own parents had moved to Springfield in 1939 from Georgia. I’m as proud of my Georgia and North Carolina heritage as I am proud of being a born Yankee at St. John’s Hospital, Springfield, Illinois. There is no LOGICAL REASON for the Conger materials to be deposited there. I have always hoped for a CONGER or Conger KIN to accept the resources untouched here for 10 years and to resume publication of Conger Confab. It hasn’t happened so far.

I’m 63 years old, healthy as a young stallion, unemployed (not by choice) for the most part and pouring my soul into the AeroKnow Museum. I MUST find a home for resources that could be serving other Congers and good people interested in Congers. Monday, May 1 is my deadline.  If I don’t connect with a GENEALOGIST willing to accept what I want to GIVE away after promising me he or she will not sell them, but will share them as they should be shared, I will donate to the Illinois State Historical Library what they will accept.

I need a reply from a reader of this blog OR someone contacted by a reader of this blog by  Monday, May 2, 2011, I will contact the ISHL to learn how I might add Conger lore to their resources.

I’m not upset over this. You, the blog reader are more entitled to be mad at me than I am to feel negatively about anyone I’ve met as the Conger Confab producer and subsequent years. This blog will remain active until Conger resources are gone from the house. Almost nothing here is for sale. There are two exceptions: 1 — the remaining copies of the Conger Family of America Volumes 1 and 2, published by Maxine Crowell Leonard and passed to me  and 2 — several Conger Family Tree coffee cups I created for sale in the early 90s. If you want to know more about them, e-mail me –  writer@eosinc.com

Best wishes to all Congers, Conger kin and friends of Conger kin for a productive, healthy and prosperous 2011.

Test with new theme

This is just a test. I know I am behind posting here.

Back to normal programming now.

The Tormenting Impediment of Missionary Zeal

One of the factors which led to the discontinuation of Conger Confab the newsletter I took over from Maxine Leonard and published from March 1997 to June 2001 was that the number of paid subscribers I was told were supporting it, was in fact far less. But as with most labors of love — which it had been for Maxine and would be for me — supplementing production from my own bank account was not the major roadblock to continuing production of Confab. Another was my ongoing chagrin over 1. not being a genealogist — heck it took me six months to learn how to spell the work correctly, consistently — and 2. not wanting to become a genealogist. Because I had NO sense of family growing up and throughout most of my enduring thereafter, I thought I’d find some sense of it in taking on the newsletter. There would be no Conger family reunions of Confab subscribers in Springfield, Illinois — as I learned after a major effort to organize one — but several subscribers did pass through my town, to visit the collection, to meet me, pose for pictures and share encouraging words. The ultimate obstacle that stood in the way of my further attention to Conger family history was something I considered an elemental flaw in the premise of Maxine Crowell Leonard’s disciple-like devotion to her superlative enterprise. She revealed the flaw at the top of the March 1983 Confab, saying “It is believed that all white Congers are descended from the six sons of our immigrant ancestor, John Belconger. The March 1997 issue, the first I produced and distributed, modified that statement, saying “Sharing the continuing story of the Conger family of America  in the belief that all Congers are descended from the six sons of our immigrant ancestor, John Belconger.” I had grown up believing that all Congers were descended from a common Conger, but my parents and older sister didn’t go into details and I didn’t ask. Discovering Maxine years later and subscribing to Confab occasionally for about 10 years before becoming publisher, I wore the assumption like a comfortable hat. But the more I considered the possibility that NO OTHER immigrants came to the USA and Canada named Belconger, or Conger or variations on that spelling later changed to “Conger,” the more I considered it impossible. And I could not, as a journalist, perpetrate what was becoming a “fairy tale” to me.

I asked others for advice about how to reconcile the tension. How do I learn the truth without appearing to disparage Maxine’s amazing work? How much of her research is suspect because it was predicated on a fairy tale? Who KNOWS the truth? Could I as a researcher share updated information about the family while having absolutely no credential or scholastic foundation from which to JUDGE the accuracy of information sent to me by pranksters and liars? How could I — still the non-genealogist who could at least spell the word without having to move my lips as I typed it by then — separate the wheat from the chaff? Could I even share information that came to me from published sources without violating copyright laws? It seemed an impossible task, and it still seems so. My attitude was shaken out of my quagmire of doubt when Dick Henthorn, a MAJOR contributor to my knowledge over many years, contacted me concerning our shared interest in Facebook. I felt like a computer that had crashed to catatonia, immobilized, but was re-booted into action, not by a leather-covered toe to my gluteus maximus, but by the possibility of launching a new effort through this blog.

Comments and facts from all readers of Congers Worldwide are welcome and may be shared in the comments section here, by e-mailing me — jobconger@eosinc.com –  or by sending correspondence via conventional post to me at 428 W. Vine, Springfield, Illinois 62704-2933

What do you think?  What do you know?

Hello world!

Salutations from Springfield, Illinois, USA! My name is Job Clifton Conger, IV, descended from John Belconger who came to Woodbridge, Connecticut before George Washington almost lost a really important war for us, went on to greater fame as a new nation’s first chief executive . . . and you know the rest. This blog was launched October 2, 2009.

Congers Worldwide is my effort to create a publicly accessible place for good people  who share the last name of Conger to connect. I have a web site — www.aeroknow.com/arts/congerfamily.htm — but WordPress seems to offer a more open forum. Congers Worldwide (CW)  will be what it will be. Do we recognize a future pilot when he comes into this world? It’s appropriate that we don’t recognize what CW will be on the day it is launched.  If you are a Conger or Conger kin with questions about our family throughout history and today, here is another site for you. It will be what we desire it