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Membership
The
Extended Overholt Family Foundation, as a new
"start-up" nonprofit
organization, can provide only one
service to new members -- free access to
all the articles, pictures and family
tree information already available at The
Overholt Family Tree ~~ Karen's Branches.
As time goes by, we expect to offer more
in exchange for your support.A contribution
of one dollar will give you a one-year
membership.
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Membership
Details
We are
asking for your contribution of one dollar for a
year's membership. As a new "start-up"
nonprofit organization, we currently have little
to offer you, other than free access to all the
work published online at The
Overholt Family Tree ~~ Karen's Branches. Of course, all the
material at Karen's Branches
has always been available to the public without
cost, and shall remain so. This is called
"irony."
The second
reason for asking $1.00 for membership harkens
back to the year 1881, when on March 1st, the
executors of Abraham Overholt (deceased January
1870) signed over the trademark and business
rights to the name A. Overholt and
Company to Henry Clay Frick for the
consideration of "$1.00 and other good and
valuable considerations," considerations
that were left unspecified. There is legal
evidence showing the Overholts did not expect to
lose their trademark and business rights forever,
just as they did not expect Frick and partner
James G. Pontefract's refusal to leave the
premises of their Broad Ford distillery at the
end of a five-year contract. Although the family
sued to rectify this injustice, ultimately the
case was "buried" at the Supreme Court
level, and Frick retained ownership of everything
built up by his grandfather, Abraham Overholt,
and several generations of his own relatives.
Sending us your
one dollar will be a symbolic act in remembrance
of how much was lost with the legal exchange of
one dollar. But the action will result in a down
payment toward our efforts to preserve and
reclaim our heritage. This is "reverse
symbolism."
In the future,
we will welcome your contributions toward one or
more of the specific activites described in Our
To-Do List (see About Us
page), but a year's membership will always remain
one dollar.
Make your check
for one dollar (Only one dollar, please!)
payable to The Extended Overholt Family
Foundation, and mail it to the following
address.
The Extended
Overholt Family Foundation
1934 Westmont Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15210-4124
Add the words
"for membership" as a note on your
check, and give us your name, home address and/or
e-mail address, so that we can send a
confirmation. If you have a place on the family
tree, or consider yourself a member of the
general public, please let us know, and . . .
Thank you!
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