In the 1960s, a lady named Beatrice Bailey apparently pioneered this schlock. Beatrice had an ever-changing middle name. In her advertisement sent by mail to me, she would sign her name as "Beatrice Eastman Bailey." In a letter sent to someone named Smith, she would sign her name as "Beatrice Smith Bailey," and in an advertisement sent to someone named Williams she would sign as "Beatrice Williams Bailey." Her books contained collections of telephone listings of people with the same surname that she used as her middle name in the advertisement. Beatrice Bailey apparently was a one-person operation. She was under investigation by postal authorities when she died.

A much larger operation emerged from a mailing address in Bath, Ohio. Halberts, Inc. would send an advertisement for a book that claimed to be a "history of your family name." After paying about $40, the hapless purchaser received a cheaply made paperback containing a bit of generic "how to get start tracing your family tree information" accompanied by listings from telephone books. Halberts was hauled into court a number of times by postal authorities, but they simply changed the wording in their advertisements to get around court edicts. The court rulings didn’t seem to slow Halberts down very much.

In August 1998, I even visited the address in Bath, Ohio that Halberts used, and I wrote about my trip in that week’s edition of this newsletter. I found no company named Halberts at that address. In fact, the address was simply a mail drop. All orders sent to that address in Bath, Ohio were actually forwarded to the parent company in nearby Akron. You can read the article I wrote in 1998. About a year after my on-site visit, Halberts folded. It gave layoff notices to all of its employees, sold the office furniture, and ceased operations. The company blamed "competition from the Internet" for its business failure.

A smaller, third company apparently is successfully selling somewhat similar books. The Family News is a product or division of Morphcorp. This company publishes the (Surname) Family Yearbook. That is, in an advertisement sent to me, they will advertise the Eastman Family Yearbook. In an advertisement sent to someone named Williams, they will advertise the Williams Family Yearbook. Morphcorp also uses the business names of Mountain West News Service and Mountain Pacific News Service. The company also goes by the name of (Surname) Family News, such as the Eastman Family News or the Williams Family News. In any case, Morphcorp and Family News appear to be the same company. Morphcorp is not a reincarnation of Halberts. In fact, the Better Business Bureau listing shows that Morphcorp was in business for at least ten years before Halberts folded. Morphcorp’s "products" are somewhat similar to Halberts’ offerings, although very different in details.

While I have often received inquiries about Morphcorp’s Family Yearbooks from newsletter readers, I had never seen a copy. Recently, Dick Chroninger, a reader of this newsletter, told me about an advertisement he had received from the company. As expected, the advertisement was for The Year 2002 International Chroninger Family Yearbook. I asked Dick to forward the advertisement to me, and he kindly did so. I found the ad to be almost exactly what others had described.

The advertisement starts off in large print proclaiming, The Year 2002 International Chroninger Family Yearbook – A yearbook celebrating the last 2,000 years of Chroninger History. I find the claim of 2,000 years of Chroninger history to be a bit incredulous since surnames were not used at all until 600 to 700 years ago. Nobody had surnames 2,000 years ago.

The advertisement goes on to describe the Year 2002 International Chroninger Family Yearbook in detail. Some of the claims from the advertisement include:

Your family is in it!

Factual information about:

Chroninger marriages, like all about those Chroninger blushing brides and handsome grooms.

Chroninger births, birth information about Chroninger family members – when and where they were born.

Chroninger records…

Chroninger gathering places…

Also information about deaths, census records, Baptisms, immigrations, employments, occupations, retirements, 24 databases researched in all – all about Chroninger family members.

PLUS a complete revision of the classic Chroninger Family History…

The advertisement also proclaimed:

PLUS!! EXTRA!! PLUS! FREE! The Chroninger Family CD-ROM. This Windows/Macintosh compatible CD-ROM contains all the Chroninger records. ITS HUGE!! The "Yearbook" information was extracted from this collection of family facts. You will need a database or word processor to read this raw data. If your not a computer guru we’ll send it free anyway. (Your kid can figure it out.)

You will note several grammatical errors in the above words. I have transcribed them exactly as they appeared in the advertisement, including "your" which should have been "you’re," "its" in place of "it’s," and so forth. The person writing these ads obviously is not an expert in English grammar.

The ad lists the regular price of this "yearbook" and CD-ROM as $49.85 but then offers a "pre-publication reservation price" of $39.85. The advertisement also states, "Copies printed will be determined by the number of orders that my wife and I receive." So if they only print enough copies to meet the orders received, why do they list both a "pre-publication price" and a regular price? It appears that everyone gets the pre-publication price.

The advertisement also states that Morphcorp is a member of the Denver Metro Area branch of the Better Business Bureau.

I wanted to see this "yearbook" and CD-ROM for myself, and I also suspected that I would write about them in this newsletter. I filled out the order form and wrote a check for $44.85 about six weeks ago. That price included $39.85 for the yearbook plus $5 for postage. Even though I have a different surname, I wanted to see the The Year 2002 International Chroninger Family Yearbook from Morphcorp. This week the mailman delivered a large envelope from Morphcorp.

I ripped the envelope open and inside found a slim, forty-one-page booklet with a cheap GBC plastic comb binding. If you do not recognize the letters GBC, I can describe it as the plastic spiral binding you see so often in business presentations produced on a photocopier. GBC binding systems are quite popular for home and small business use. You can see examples at GBC’s Web site here.

I was surprised that there was no CD-ROM in the envelope, despite the claim of the free bonus CD-ROM in the advertisement. Perhaps the CD-ROM is being sent in a separate package and will arrive later. However, there was no mention of a delayed shipment in the order I received this week.

The cover of the booklet says, Y2K Chroninger Family Yearbook. Note that the original advertisement proclaimed "Year 2002." The second page of the yearbook says "The Original – (and only) – Year 2001 – Edition of The Chroninger Yearbook." OK, now I am really confused. Is it Y2K or 2001 or 2002? I see all three dates. Did they send me last year’s edition? Or have they simply not updated their boilerplate text?

Next, a large color coat of arms displayed as a crest is prominently displayed on the cover of the yearbook. However, it is a "generic" coat of arms that has nothing to do with this family name. A couple of pages later the following words appear: "About the Crest (on the Cover) – This Crest is a graphic artist’s interpretation of the Chroninger Crest. Its [sic] of greater value as a work of art, then as a genealogical or historical document." In other words, it is bogus. It is not a Chroninger crest.

The next page says, "My wife and I have been researching the Chroninger family (and other related families), genealogy and history since 1986. We have organized this book into chapters of booklets, each dealing with subjects about our history. We would like to thanks the readers of The Chroninger Family news who sent in piles of family information which made the publication of this book possible."

Again, the page contains more typo errors. It also strikes me as a bit unusual to see words like, "My wife and I" when the author’s name does not appear anywhere in this yearbook. I’d bet five bucks that the author’s last name is not Chroninger and that he is not closely related to anyone named Chroninger.

The first chapter of the book is "The Chroninger Longevity records." This chapter consists of a cover page plus one page of text, listing twenty-four names of people named Chroninger (in large type) and the years of their birth and death. Ages at death varied from twenty-three years old to eighty-nine years old. There was no explanation of how these people are connected to each other or to anyone else named Chroninger.

The second chapter was "Chroninger Name that baby!!" It claims to show the most popular first names in the Chroninger family. Again, this chapter consists of a cover page plus one page of text listing twenty-four common first names.

The third chapter is "The Chroninger Book of Locations." The cover page includes a picture of a dapper young man dressed in the fashions of the 1940s or 1950s but no reference as to his name. He may or may not be a Chroninger. The next page lists eighteen states where the Chroninger name appears. The yearbook makes no reference as to where this information was obtained.

The fourth chapter of the yearbook is the "Chroninger – Book of Births." The cover page is followed by a single page of text listing twenty-four names along with dates of birth. It also lists Social Security numbers. Apparently this information was obtained from the Social Security Death Index, which is freely available in several places on the World Wide Web.

The next chapter is "The Chroninger Book of Deaths." Again, it gives twenty-four names and dates, along with their Social Security numbers, all on a single page.

The next chapter is a bit thicker: "The Chroninger Book of Residents." It lists four pages of mailing addresses of Chroninger families in the U.S. I suspect that this is a list of people who received advertisements for the yearbook, although that is pure speculation on my part.

Another chapter is called "The Chroninger Census Book." It lists nine entries of people named Chroninger in the 1850, 1860 and 1880 U.S. censuses.

"The Chroninger Phone Book" contains four pages of telephone numbers and addresses of families named Chroninger with a published telephone number.

Moving along, I encountered an even more worthless chapter: "Chroninger – Believe it or NOT!" The chapter’s cover page proclaims, "These are records you have always wanted but have been afraid to ask for." A single page of text that contains exactly two listings follows the cover page: one for a mobile home park and another for a radiator repair business. Both businesses contain the word "Chroninger" in the business’ name. These appear to be extracted from the Yellow Pages. I have no idea why the chapter’s cover page claimed that these listings would be what I "have been afraid to ask for."

The next chapter is "The Chroninger Jokebook," which contains three pages of jokes printed in an even larger font than the rest of the book. I could read these pages from across the room, even without my glasses. The "jokes" are really dumb and appear to contain basic "fill in the blanks" jokes done on a word processor. The yearbook I received has my name inserted into every joke, but I suspect a yearbook you order would have your name substituted in place of mine.

Finally, I arrived at the last chapter and the one that looked the most promising: "The History of The Chroninger Family." However, it was subtitled, "A summary of how it all happened. A Not so serious history of the family." Indeed, it wasn’t very serious. The following eight pages contained very basic information about the history of mankind. It was full of generic statements, such as "Chroninger family members arriving in Europe at this time (3500 BC) were definitely high tech." Four thousand years before surnames were invented and the author refers to them as "Chroninger family members"? There is no reference as to how the author knows that these ancient inhabitants were "high tech" for their times.

There is one small section in the last chapter with a promising title: "Where is the Chroninger family from?" Sadly, the author simply writes that there is "contradictory evidence about where Chroninger emigrants shipped from enroute to America." In another section, the yearbook says, "In fact, little is known for sure about the earliest, colonial type Chroninger immigrants. The records have gotten very, very dusty."

The Year 2002 International Chroninger Family Yearbook is obviously a mass-produced document. The databases used are all publicly available elsewhere at no charge. The remaining text is simple, generic information written in a word processor. When a book about Chroninger is written, a word processor search-and-replace operation is used to insert the word "Chroninger" in all the appropriate places. If the next book to be printed were to be about the Eastman family, the word processor will again use a search-and-replace operation to replace the word "Chroninger" with "Eastman." This is computerized mass production at its worst.

Let’s examine the yearbook against its original ad:

"Your family is in it!"

Well, technically that is incorrect. The recipient of the original ad is listed in the chapter entitled "Chroninger Book of Residents." However, there is no information given about his parents, siblings, children, or other relatives. While the person who received the original advertisement is listed in the yearbook, the rest of his family is not mentioned at all.

"Factual information about:

"Chroninger marriages, like all about those Chroninger blushing brides and handsome grooms.

"Chroninger births, birth information about Chroninger family members – when and where they were born.

"Chroninger records…

"Chroninger gathering places…

This one is mostly correct. Technically, there is a bit of factual information about a handful of births and deaths although no information is given about the relationships of those listed to other Chroningers. Despite the claim of marriage records about blushing brides and handsome grooms, I didn’t find any marriage records at all.

"Also information about deaths, census records, Baptisms, immigrations, employments, occupations, retirements, 24 databases researched in all – all about Chroninger family members."

Read those words carefully. They appear to be correct to this writer although the mental image they paint does not match the goods delivered.

"PLUS a complete revision of the classic Chroninger Family History…"

I’d rate this as a zero. No mention was ever made in the yearbook about "the classic Chroninger Family History," nor did the yearbook contain any history information specific to the Chroninger family.

Even though this yearbook contains forty-one pages, the fonts used are very large and each of the "chapters" has a separate cover page. If set in a ten-point font with the cover pages deleted, this booklet would probably fill ten or twelve pages. Take out the jokes and a few other useless things, and the hapless buyer is left with about eight pages of listings from phone books and the Social Security Death Index plus a few other publicly available free sources. That is not a good return for the $44.85 that I spent.

Of course, I cannot write about "The Chroninger Family CD-ROM" as I haven’t received it yet. Stay tuned to this newsletter; I’ll let you know if it ever shows up in the future.

So much for the The Year 2002 International Chroninger Family Yearbook – A yearbook celebrating the last two thousand years of Chroninger History. This is one "celebration" I could do without, even if my name were Chroninger. If you receive such an ad in the mail, I’d suggest you throw it away and save yourself $44.85.

Morphcorp does not seem to have a Web page although the company does list an AOL e-mail address on the order form. The order form also mentions the company’s membership in the Denver Metro Area Better Business Bureau. The BBB’s Web site says that "Based on BBB files, this company has a satisfactory record with the Bureau. Any complaints processed by the Bureau in its three-year reporting period have been resolved. The number and type of complaints are not unusual for a company in this industry." The BBB Web site also says that, over the last 36 months, "Family News" has had 70 complaints. 26 complaints concerned ad practices, 5 complaints concerned selling practices, 18 complaints concerned delivery, 3 complaints concerned product quality, 7 complaints concerned refunds promised, 9 complaints concerned unsatisfactory performance, and 2 complaints concerned credit/billing problems. Of those, 39 complaints were closed resolved, 29 complaints were closed assumed satisfied, and 2 complaints were closed responded and reasonably explained to the Bureau's satisfaction." You can read more here.

It is the buyer's responsibility to carefully evaluate the advertisements received. In this case, I’d say, "Caveat Emptor!" (Let the buyer beware!) If you have already purchased such a book from Morphcorp, note that you have fifteen days in which to return it for a full refund. If you feel that the product did not live up to its advertised claims, you can always express your concerns to the Denver Metro Area Better Business Bureau. In fact, you can file a complaint at any time, not just within the first fifteen days.

You can read about the experiences of other customers of Morphcorp.

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