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I’m a genealogy addict. It’s true. When people tell me how wonderful I am to be doing all this family research I feel like telling them that there must be a 12-step program for genealogists where I could stand up and say, "Hi, I’m Bobbie and I’m a genealogist." You know you are an addict when you wake up in the middle of the night thinking "maybe John Harrington went to New York instead of New Jersey…" and then you spend the rest of the night on the Internet.
But sometimes being a genealogy addict has a benefit. I’d been sneaking into the fabulous Everton Library to do research during lunch breaks for years, and I began to hear rumors that the new owners of Everton’s were going to sell off the library.
The Everton library contains 60,000+ books, manuscripts, records, pedigree charts, newletters, photographs and family histories, many of which are unique to the library. It is one of the largest privately held genealogical libraries in the United States, and was started by the Everton family in 1945 as they reviewed genealogical books and family histories for their landmark genealogical magazine The Everton Genealogical Helper. The Everton family were pioneers in genealogical research with their genealogical forms, the magazine and the HandyBook for Genealogists. They loved genealogy and genealogists and built a fine reputation among the genealogical community. After nearly 50 years of service to the industry the Everton family sold the company and the library.
Now I’d like to tell you about how you, as a subscriber to the Everton magazine, helped to save the Everton Library. The Everton Publishing company has existed as long as it has because of genealogy enthusiasts like you. Everton’s Library was built from books that were sent in by readers to be reviewed in the Genealogical Helper. Nearly 50 years of submissions created a vast family history collection whose value was recognized by the right people just in time to preserve it in its entirety.
It just so happens that I am CEO and President of the Cache Chamber of Commerce and Cache Economic Development. Because I’d worked with both government and private industry I knew that if we were going to save the Everton Library in Cache Valley (Utah), it was going to take a team effort. I first contacted Bob Johns, the publisher of the Everton Library, who told me that it would take $4 million to buy the library and business. That’s when I turned to Verne Bray, who not only is the associate director of the Family History Center in Logan, Utah, but also is the CEO and founder of a publicly traded company with five plants all over the U.S. I remember him standing in among the library stacks. "You’ll have to be creative;" he said smiling, "keep me in the loop." He is now Chairman of the Board of our company. About the same time I met Walt Fuller, who was president of St. Barthelemy Press out of Atlanta, Georgia. Walt published really beautiful county and city histories and was working with the Chamber on a genealogical history of Cache County. He was interested, too. He is now the President of Everton Publishers.
Shirley Mercado, president of WestWords, and I have been friends for over ten years, ever since we worked together to create her business in Logan. Her company was uniquely positioned to do all of the pre-press work for the magazine and more importantly to scan, tag, and create the searchable Internet site to put the Everton Collection online (copyrights will be respected).
WestWords is considered one of the best compositors in the world. Having them in Logan was part of the "serendipity" that seemed to always be a part of this effort. Not only was WestWords a key player, but they had hired Jill Davis who had been an Everton employee for 26 years prior to the new ownership. Jill put us in touch with Holly Hansen who had been a vice president in the company and editor of the old Genealogical Helper magazine.
Holly Hansen almost cried when she heard we wanted to bring back the Helper and create an online library of the Everton Library collection. Holly had become president of My Ancestors and was giving seminars and lectures all over the country. She had also built a resource of 35 professional genealogists who are anxious to help individuals find answers to their research questions. After consideration, she whole-heartedly accepted the challenge of rebuilding Everton’s Genealogical Helper and enhancing the old, much loved format to fit today’s technology and style of research.
Rick Hoeft came on board with his company, Information Connections, which is located in the Utah State University Research Park. IC is an inbound call center that will take our phone subscriptions (real people, not automated voice prompts) and call subscribers. If you get a call, it will most likely be from a USU student who has been to the Everton Library.
Our attorney Gary Anderson is a real historian, serving on the Board of the American West Heritage Center and the Mormon History Association. Even our CPA, Scott Jackson, is the son in law of a genealogist.
The team includes other CEO’s and a former development manager of Microsoft. We’ll also have an advisory board that includes Everton family members and former Everton executives.
The team was great but we couldn’t run a library of the magnitude of the Everton Library and we felt that it should be available to any genealogical researcher who wanted to use it.
Now it was Logan City’s quick response that really saved the library for posterity. I first talked to Ronald Jenkins, Logan City Librarian, about the Everton Collection. He knew it well and nearly jumped out of his seat when I first broached the idea about Logan City trying to have it donated. We raced to Mayor Doug Thompson’s office. He didn’t hesitate, since he is a person with real vision. He called down the city attorney, Mark Sorenson, and within minutes I had permission to try to get the library donated. Ron and I drove to Nibley that afternoon and walked through the stacks of genealogical material. We were shaking with excitement.
During all of this we had been working with Bob Johns, former publisher of the Family History Network. He was representing Bill Schjelderup, president of the respected CompanionCorp whose major product is a school library catalogue program. Bill had received the assets of the company in a Sheriff’s sale. He loved libraries and wanted to save the library. When we approached Bill about donating it to Logan City he was wonderful to work with. This donation would help him find the right home for the library. He said that he was pleased that it would stay in Cache Valley, Utah, where it had always been.
All of this took about a year to negotiate, when the donation of the library and the assets was complete. We couldn’t just start; we had to wait two months to respond to a Request for Proposal from Logan City for the business assets. We submitted our proposal and bid and after waiting for what seemed forever, we were told that our team had won the bid. We started the business the last few days of September; everyone has worked into the night to meet the goal of getting out the November/December issue of our first Genealogical Helper. We hope you like the result and understand why you didn’t get your July/August or September/October issues. By being one of our valued subscribers, you not only get a great magazine, but you have played an important part of saving a real genealogical treasure in the Everton Library Collection. Within a year we hope to begin to share it with you online.
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