Articles that tell stories like this make me smile at how wonderfu it is for the descendants. They also make me wish for such a discovery for my own family history.
The article goes into additional details that tell things the descendants did not know before the letters were found. https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/culture/lifestyle/historical-baltimore-love-letters-mystery-RKCCYFVDJFF4NHFI4SNRZYYGNM
I love press releases like this from a few days ago. I plan to watch some and unfortunately have a couple conflicts on dates. I will later watch them on YouTube. The National Archives channel there already has extensive presentations and short videos. https://www.youtube.com/usnationalarchives
National Archives kicks off annual online Genealogy Series for May, June 2024
Participate in our free genealogy series!
WHAT: Join our National Archives experts as they present sessions during our annual online Genealogy Series on YouTube. This educational series will teach you how to use federal resources at the National Archives for genealogical research. Sessions are intended for beginners to experienced family historians—all are welcome!
Lecture schedule, topic descriptions, videos, and handouts are available at the 2024 Genealogy Series web page.
WHEN: May & June 2024—all sessions take place on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. ET
WHO: National Archives experts in government records will broadcast from facilities nationwide.
WHERE: The series will be broadcast on the U.S. National Archives YouTube channel.
HOW: Watch the broadcasts on YouTube. Participants can watch individual sessions, ask questions, and interact with presenters and other family historians. No need to register—just click the links on the schedule to view the sessions! Videos and handouts will remain available after the event. For more details, go to the 2024 Genealogy Series web page.
I haven’t posted much this month. Like other instructors preparing for institutes, webinars, conferences, and seminars, it has been a busy month. The lilac photo is for my late maternal grandmother. Giving her a bouquet for Mother’s Day was our tradition. I miss her and my lilac bushes. Just seeing this picture shouts spring at me.
In the first 13 days of May, I have prepared 107 pages of syllabus and handout material. Seven were brand new presentations. The others needed to be updated, tweaked, and added to. In addition to that, the PowerPoint presentation slides needed to be created, updated, edited, tweaked, and a few were “dang it, that really shows my main points.” Oh, and I presented two webinars. 13 days was not all it takes to prepare those pages. It represents years of research, education, thinking, and developing.
All that was combined with work on a large legal document for a client that had a recent deadline.
I will be back to blogging, catching up on work for my other clients, and maybe a few hours of just reading something totally fluffy! There is also a Minnesota Twins baseball game in my future. One of my great grandson’s games, too. My grandnephew’s high school graduation party is soon. Much of yesterday was spent with my daughter and her children, then a lengthy conversation with my oldest son. Whether or not it is Mother’s Day, family is important. I am blessed to have family by blood and by choice. That includes my fellow family historians.
Now, go say something kind to someone in your sphere or hug them, do something good for yourself, and don’t forget to then catch up on the ever-updating world of genealogy education.
37.4 million records for New York City. MyHeritage is the only genealogy company that hosts the index for these records with scanned images, even names of witnesses and parents are indexed. I found some entries I need to research more, but am pretty sure where they fit in.
You can search the collections here:
Search New York City Births, 1866–1909 on MyHeritage
Search New York City Marriages, 1866–1949 on MyHeritage
Search New York City Deaths, 1866–1948 on MyHeritage
Many more details on the MyHeritage Blog.
p.s. The Mother’s Day DNA sale is still on. $39 for the test kit plus shipping unless you order two or more.
DNA has shown that I have collateral line connections to Australia and New Zealand. The Australia cousin I already knew about thanks to an 1860s letter to a U.S. relative from the man in Australia. I need some free time to work on them. Here’s an opportunity for me and for YOU! Read more on the MyHeritage Blog.
It’s the Legacy Family Tree Webinars spring webinar sale! Do you know about the almost 2200 webinars and 8500 syllabus pages presented by more than 400 speakers from around the world? If you aren’t a current member, you are missing out on some wonderful online genealogical and historical education.
A special link that provides the 50% discount is found in the Join Now button in the blog article here: https://news.legacyfamilytree.com/legacy_news/2024/04/spring-webinars-sale-only-25.html.
or via my Legacy Family Tree Webinars $25 sale affiliate link
The offer expires on April 28, and is valid for new memberships only.
Finishing the updating of my PPT for tomorrow’s presentation on the WPA and the Historical Records survey and all the indexes, records, and descriptions that genealogists should be using today. Many already research in some of these without knowing the how, when, why, and where.
Join me tomorrow for this free webinar sponsored by the Houston, Texas Public Library’s Family History Research Center at the Clayton Library. https://calendar.houstonlibrary.org/event/11393281
Today only and until 11:59 p.m. ET
Sale ends 18 Apr 2024 at 11:59pm ET. Excludes shipping. Some DNA features may require an Ancestry® subscription. Traits included with active subscription.
https://www.ancestry.com/c/dna/offer?o_iid=135286&o_lid=135286&o_sch=Web+Property
Next week, we have National DNA Day on April 25th. I’m sure more testing companies will have big sales. Watch their websites (23andMe, Ancestry, FamilyTree DNA, Living DNA, and MyHeritage) and sales are announced on various social media sites.
Today’s Press Release from the National Endowment for the Humanities provides funding for many projects, 238 to be exact!
A handful of examples
California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine Project Title: An Indigenous History of Captivity, Memory, and Freedom in the United States, 1880–2023 Project Description: Research and writing for a book on the ways in which Indigenous people have been subject to captivity in the United States.
Kentucky, Whitesburg
Appalshop, Inc. Project Title: Salvaging Appalachian Photo Collections Project Description: The treatment and digitization of 5,850 photonegatives from three collections dating from 1935–1995 and documenting the social, cultural, and economic history of Appalachia that were damaged in a major flood in 2022.
New York, New Paltz
New Paltz Huguenot Historical Society. Project Title: Preserving and Digitizing the Historic Documents of a Colonial Hudson Valley Community: New Paltz, New York Project Description: The creation of 2,500 digital objects and 90 catalog records, as well as conservation and rehousing, of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections from four of New Paltz’s cultural heritage institutions.
Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh
Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. Project Title: The Italian Diaspora Archive Map Project Project Description: A planning project to coordinate the work of scholars and cultural heritage organizations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia to identify and aggregate information and resources that document Italian American history in the region.
Virginia, Christiansburg
Christiansburg Institute. Project Title: Unveiling 20th Century Black Life in Middle Appalachia: Digitizing School and Community Records Project Description: Cataloging and digitizing four collections on the Christiansburg Institute, an educational organization in Appalachia established by the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1866.
Wisconsin, Eau Claire
University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Project Title: Dematriation: Gendered Dispossession and Family Separation in the Colonial Northeast,1630–1763. Project Description: Writing an article on the community impact of Indigenous enslavement and family separation during the Pequot and King Philip’s wars (1636–1638 and 1675–1676).
For the full informative Press Release, https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-262-million-238-humanities-projects-nationwide
For the full list of grants state by state, https://www.neh.gov/sites/default/files/inline-files/April%202024%20NEH%20grant%20awards%20.pdf
Several minutes ago, I received a Press Release from the U.S. National Archives. It has launched a brand new digitization center at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) location in College Park, Maryland. If I mentioned this to most people, the reaction would not even come close to what most of my readers will feel!
“The new center’s equipment fleet includes high-speed scanners and overhead camera systems that can handle a variety of record types and formats. Thanks to this equipment, the National Archives will be able to digitize up to 10 times as many records per year. This will provide Americans with access to millions of additional records each year. With more than 13 billion paper records in its holdings, being able to speed up digitization is critical to the agency’s mission of providing access to federal records.”
I am excited because every time I check the NARA Catalog for some specific items, I keep coming up against a “NOT YET AVAILABLE ONLINE” or that a collection is only partially digitized on the NARA website. I can find some of the material digitized on NARA partner websites (Ancestry, FamilySearch, etc.) but there still millions of pages of textual records to be digitized. Then there are the photos, maps, etc. . .
Many additional details can be found in the full Press Release. https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2024