National Society Magna Charta Dames and Barons
Electronic Newsletter, March, 2010
TO MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY MAGNA CHARTA DAMES AND BARONS, POTENTIAL MEMBERS AND THOSE
WHO SHARE OUR INTEREST IN THE PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY
FROM LEWIS L. NEILSON JR.,
CHANCELLOR
DATE: March 11, 2010
If this is the first
Electronic Newsletter that you have received from our Society, please read the
paragraph OUR E-MAIL LIST below. The link to the Newsletter on the
Website is:
http://www.magnacharta.org/Enews/enews032010.htm
The link to the Website is:
http://www.magnacharta.org.
Highlights:
Topics: New Information ***
Greetings - Please send new email
addresses
Thank you
***General Update
***Annual Dinner in
Washington DC - Saturday, April 17, 2010
***Preparing for 2015 (the 800th Anniversary of Magna Charta)
***Report from Centennial Dinner - 2009
***Significant Increase in Communication
***Magna Charta
Partners
***1215 Magna Carta Tour –
Overview – New Video To Be Added
***Magna Carta Lecture June 2010
***News From Brookfield Publishing
Reissue of Magna Charta in 2015 - 800th
Anniversary – Reminder
Participation in State Divisions and New Divisions
Potential Members
Contributions
***OUR E-MAIL LIST
I wish all of our Divisions
Colonies and Chapters well with your programs and meetings.
If you are a member of our Society with email you should have received an email with the username and password (case sensitive) for the “Members Only” section of our website. If you are a member and did not receive the username and password please let us know.
If you are not a member you may be receiving this Electronic Newsletter because you expressed interest or because you were referred to us. You may keep our records up to date by providing your full name and current address. We encourage you to consider joining or becoming a partner.
Since constitutional liberty is or should be of interest to all members of the lineage community we encourage you to send us the email addresses of members of the lineage community who are not on our lists. These addresses will be used for the purpose of distribution of our Electronic Newsletter. Since we are reaching out to the lineage community we would welcome responsible articles which could be included in the Electronic Newsletter.
On behalf of the Officers
and Council of the Society, I bring greetings with this Newsletter. We continue
to develop awareness of Magna Charta and its message. We ask each of you to
participate with us in continuing the long tradition of friendship and
fellowship which has continued over many years. We need to increase the number
of members and friends on our email listing. Please ask your relatives and
friends to send us their E-mail address. Please also send us the E-mail
addresses of friends who are interested either in lineage societies or in
memorializing Magna Charta. For the future, please propose new members for our
Society. Please also attend your local meetings and include your children and
grandchildren. We have a very special organization and I hope that you will help
us to maintain its traditions.
We continue to be pleased
with the response from our members to update addresses and provide new addresses
for those who have been lost. Many members who were eligible to do so have
appointed successors. Updated address lists will be sent to the State Divisions.
I am, however, saddened to learn when our members are deceased. I and the
Society are grateful for the time, dedicated effort, and financial contributions
that many of those members have given to our Society. As I update the deceased
role with members who I have worked with and known during the past nineteen
years, I am reminded that we need to express appreciation on an ongoing basis to
all of those who are helping to make our Society a wonderful organization. Thank
You!
The Texas Division,
organized March 19, 1960, celebrated its 50th anniversary and the 100th
anniversary of the Society this past weekend and I attended my twenty first
consecutive Parliament of the Division. When I reviewed the early minutes and
reports, I was reminded of the service of all our past leaders who have given so
much to our Society. We can honor their memory by continuing their passion for
our Society and its purposes. I welcome and encourage emerging leaders who share
that passion. All
our members embrace our purposes. It is the special few, whose interest in those
purposes and their implementation becomes their personal passion, who provide
inspiration for their leadership roles. I enjoy working with those who share my
passion for and commitment to our Society as we strive to implement our purposes
and to accomplish our mission of developing awareness of the Magna Charta.
At the National level, we have embraced
technology where appropriate and that approach has attracted new members, many
who are new to lineage organizations. The focus on our purposes as worthy and
relevant is an important factor in that growth as younger people especially
recognize that the good life is not an entitlement but involves responsible
participation as well as enterprising work. The families of our soldiers,
especially, are learning that freedom really isn’t free. By using technology to
enhance our mission of developing awareness of the Magna Charta we are providing a
way to articulate that individual liberty and the rule of law are especially
important to the United States and that we wish to share that message with all
peoples.
Our Divisions, Colonies, and Chapters have a
special role in our Society, enabling our members throughout the United States to
participate in educational programs with friendship and fellowship. We continue
to look to our Divisions, Colonies, and Chapters to encourage membership
development and to provide educational content for our web presence. If you
share our passion for the purposes of our Society and wish to start a Division,
Colony, or Chapter, please let us know.
Annual Dinner in
Washington DC - Saturday, April 17, 20
The content for our 2010 dinner presentation will be provided by you. We would like your ideas for the celebration of the 800th Anniversary of Magna Charta during the year 2015. We have already talked about a contest for a contemporary Magna Charta - the fundamental content remains but the articulation should be creative. Others are formulating their own ideas, for example, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, according to the Press, wishes to create a UK constitution in recognition of the 800th Anniversary. This 800th Anniversary is an extraordinarily import event and provides an opportunity to remind all people of the importance of Magna Charta and its message. We anticipate that many people and groups will join in the celebration. How do you think we as a Society should celebrate 800 Years of Magna Charta?
We encourage our members and non members to send us their written ideas and visions for the celebration of the 800th. We will summarize the ideas in a report at the dinner and if there are exceptionally creative ideas or exceptionally prominent advocates for the Celebration (with creative ideas) we plan to invite their presentation. We are mindful of time limitations for presentations, but we also provide a reminder that the audience for the dinner is far beyond the lucky few who subscribe to the dinner. Thanks to the internet, it extends worldwide and into the future.
Subscribe - The reception and dinner will be held at at the University Club, Washington, DC. The cost per person, cash bar, is $100.00 and subscriptions may be sent payable to the National Society Magna Charta Dames and Barons, PO Box 4222, Philadelphia, PA 19144. Contributions, especially Patron contributions, are welcome and encouraged.
You will observe a response
form on the website, link from “what’s new”.
Patron support of our Dinner is very helpful. We encourage Patron support this year, even if you are unable to attend the dinner. We will recognize our Patron supporters at the Dinner.
Please give us your thoughts.
From the 2009 Centennial Dinner in Washington DC - April 18, 2009
View video from our
Washington DC
Centennial Dinner on Saturday, April 18, 2009 at the University
Club. Our speaker was Francis Webb Neate, Esquire, with his talk entitled
“Magna Carta Within the Rule of Law” (history of the concept of the Rule of Law
and the place of Magna Carta in its development). Mr. Neate is the Chair of the
Rule of Law Action Group of the International Bar Association, an initiative he
pioneered as the main focus of his presidency during his term in 2005 and 2006.
In his presidency he encouraged Bar Associations and heads of state to respect
the Rule of Law.
Significant Increase in Communication with Members / Potential Members / Potential Partners
Those who are members of our Society and who have provided their email address have noted that we have sent several emails to members during last year, one of which included the full name of the member and her or his current address according to our records. When a member responded, we then updated the address, identified the successor member (or primary member) and asked for their email address also. The response has been excellent and we are still updating the records and adding Successor or Primary information. We encourage our members to provide their email address and to inform us of changes. We included the username and password for the member section.
We have added to our regular database those potential members and supporters who provide their addresses using email. We sent an email to each of them, including the address they provided, and requested updates. We requested that those who sent email without including an address consider joining or becoming a partner. The response has been very significant and will result in many new members.
There are additional potential members or partners whose email address has been sent to us by our members. They will continue to receive the electronic newsletter unless they advise to the contrary in which case they will be promptly removed from our email list. Please recommend your friends and those you believe support our purposes by sending us their email address.
We are initiating Magna Charta Partners for
those who share interest in our purposes but are not members. We plan for an
Advisory Council. You may be a MC Partner by application, either by explaining
your service in support of our purposes or by including a contribution. There is
detailed information on our website. While we have grown to over 17,000 members,
I am still surprised at the number of people who are proposed for membership but
have not completed the lineage forms as well as the number of people, who have responded to our “lost members” pages but have not taken
the next step to become members. We would like you to participate as Magna
Charta Partners in support of our Society and our purposes.
1215 Magna Carta Tour –
Overview – New Video To Be Added
We attended the Magna Charta Exhibit of the 1215 Magna Charta at Fraunces Tavern which was hosted by the New York Society Sons of the Revolution on September 14, 2009 and we recorded the press portion which we plan to add to our website.
There can be a number of
additional Exhibit opportunities leading up the 800th anniversary in 1215 and I
would welcome suggestions.
The Magna Carta Lecture is planned for June 18, 2010 at Lincoln Cathedral. If any of
our members are interested in attending please let us know so that invitations
can be requested. In addition, we may be able to schedule additional events or
programs related to Magna Charta depending on the number interested. Information
about this Lecture will also be available from the Cathedral website.
News From Brookfield
Publishing
A Lineage Form has been added
which can be completed by computer and then printed out and mailed with
supporting documentation. Original signatures are needed for the application and
the supporting documentation needs to be included.
Reissue of Magna Charta in 2015 - 800th
Anniversary - Reminder
We are continuing with
planning for the Reissue and welcome interest in a Committee to be established
for this purpose.
Participation in State
Divisions and New Divisions
We will be sending lists of
new members to most of the State Division Regents or local Regents. If you are a
member and wish to participate at the State or local level, please let us know.
The "members only" section of our website includes contact information for our
State Divisions. Please be reminded that it is necessary to first be a member of
the National Society in order to participate in State Divisions or Chapters of
Colonies.
Several of our members have
expressed interest in forming new Divisions. Thank you for your interest and we
look forward to assisting with this effort.
If you are not a member of
our Society and are eligible, I hope that you will join. If you are not eligible
but share our interest in history and genealogy, we encourage you to remain on
our Email list. We also welcome your participation in our ongoing genealogical
research projects and our Tours. We welcome and encourage new members and remind
those submitting lineage information to include copies of referenced material.
As mentioned in prior
E-Newsletters, membership continues to be of vital importance to our Society. If
you wish to speed up or facilitate the membership process, please include with
the Proposal Form a well-documented lineage (including copies of the
documentation) to either a known ancestor or to one of the qualifying Barons. If
you have sent lineage information without the copies, you may also speed up the
process by sending copies of the documentation. Lineage Forms are provided on
the Website.
We rely on member
contributions for our Society operations and we plan to build our endowment in
connection with the 800th Anniversary of the sealing of Magna Charta. We hope you will consider contributions, including contributions of
appreciated securities. Our Society is a public charity under Section 501(c)(3)
of the Internal Revenue Code.
We continue to
significantly increase our e-mail list. To those of you who are new
to our list we welcome you to receive our Electronic Newsletter and hope that
you will find our Society and our mission to be interesting. Since the primary
mission of our Society is to develop awareness of Magna Charta, we wish to
expand the circulation of our Electronic Newsletter by increasing our e-mail
address list. We particularly wish to includ those who are members of lineage
societies and/or those who share our interest in the principles of
Constitutional Liberty. I would like to thank those who have shared their email
lists since our last Electronic Newsletter.
We encourage you to check
our Website regularly for new developments and information. The link to the Newsletter on the Website is:
http://www.magnacharta.org/enews032009.htm The link to the Website is:
http://www.magnacharta.org.
Our E-mail list is made up
of those who have sent us e-mail, of members and friends of the Society who have
responded to our Newsletter request for E-mail addresses, and others who we
believe might be interested in our Society or mission. If you would prefer not
to receive future Electronic Newsletters, please let us know. If you
have friends who you believe might be interested in our Society, please forward
this e-mail. If you have received this as a forwarded e-mail, please visit our
Website at for more information about our Society. You may also contact our
Society Office at 215-836-5022.
Do not hesitate to contact
me with questions or suggestions.
Chancellor@magnacharta.org
Sincerely,
Lewis L. "Ted" Neilson, Jr.
Chancellor
National Society Magna Charta Dames and Barons
Email:
Chancellor@magnacharta.org
Website:
www.magnacharta.org
Telephone: 215-836-5022
Fax: 215-836-5056
Mailing Address: PO Box 4222, Phila., PA 19144