I received a rather pleasant surprise this past weekend: He's back!

An old friend is announcing the formation of a new company that will provide a valuable service to genealogists.

Many long-time genealogists will recognize the name Bob Velke. Bob probably is best known in the genealogy community as the founder and CEO of The Master Genealogist (TMG), genealogy software for Microsoft Windows first released in 1993. Bob founded the company Wholly Genes Software to sell and support the program.

Those who were able to learn more about Bob also soon realized he was an expert researcher and a person who demanded true source citations to all facts that he added to his own genealogy database. He strongly encouraged the users of The Master Genealogist to do the same with their record keeping. Indeed, The Master Genealogist was the experts' preferred tool for proper record keeping. Nothing before or since has the source citation capabilities of The Master Genealogist.

Time marches on and Wholly Genes Software eventually went out of business and faded away. However, here is a new press release I received from Bob this past weekend:

Introducing Gopher Records, LLC: a new way to retrieve records from the  National Archives.

For a limited time, you can get a Civil War pension  file for just $25 and a service file for just $10. This introductory offer represents a 50% discount from our regular prices which are already the lowest in the industry.

When ordering directly from NARA, a digital copy of a full pension file  is $80 for the first 100 pages and $0.70 per page thereafter. For a  300-page file, that's $220.00 - but our price is just $25 with this  amazing offer.

NARA is closed for COVID-19 but we are taking advanced orders now. When  NARA opens, orders will be processed in the order that they are  received. Best of all, you won’t be asked to pay until your documents  are ready to be delivered to you.

This 50% discount offer expires on 31 Dec 2020.

Please visit us at https://GopherRecords.com/de/.