Dear Dave --
Your message triggered some thoughts I'm having that might be considered in organizing Family Registries. I am by no means on the level you and many others are on this site, but I do like to organize things, so I humbly add my two cents.
Many on this Banat Group have personal research and aren't sure what to do with it when they pass. It would be such a shame if years of hard work and collections of resources were to be tossed. This information could continue to be a resource for many, if there was a repository, other than one's personal trees put on Ancestry, FamilySearch, and other websites. I think having Family Registers of Banat Immigrants to the United States is a wonderful idea.
There are most likely interested personnel at Ancestry, FamilySearch, the National Archives, etc., that deal with these types of acquisitions regularly. I know that 'A.I.' is now being utilized to create text versions of written documents, and making them searchable. However, it may take some time to get a persons donated research from raw data to searchable items.
I wonder if members of this Banat Group could work as teams to create regional Banat Family Registries for those who Immigrated to the United States. If each team collected research for a set location in North America, by dividing up the country into four areas, we might work together to create a Registry for each area, or region. You mentioned 3 areas that many Banaters congregated, often by village, congregation, etc. A few more I have seen, through the DK Calendars, are Cincinnati OH, Chicago, Michigan (?), and Los Angeles/San Francisco, New York, and possibly more. For example, CA, OR, WA, ID, AZ, NM, CO, WY, and MT could be one area/region. I am personally descended from immigrants of the Banat to Los Angeles, and so I and other descendants from this area could work as a group. Similarly, those in ND, SD, NE, KS, OK, TX, MN, WI, IL, IA, MO, AR, and LA could be part of another group, which would include those who immigrated to North Dakota where your ancestors located. The rest of the country could be divided into two more groups.
In this way, each regional group could receive any research coming in, and organize it with research already published and available already. These four volumes could then be sent to Genealogical Libraries around the country, and additional information can be added as it is processed and made available. This would ensure that all this hard work isn't "lost", it will be coordinated in an organized fashion, and websites could add it to their collection of searchable documents more effectively. This would be a massive effort, but so worthwhile, to continue this work.
It was wonderful to meet you in the San Mateo Family History Center years ago. Your work has been so valuable to me in researching my ancestral lines, and I will always be grateful. I would love to be involved in some way to 'pay it forward'.