Information on the website update from the Minnesota Historical Society’s May 24 “Local History News.” The new website has some issues and hopefully this will clear those up. I’m happy to see the People Records Search and the Newspaper Hub will still be accessible during the possible month of restrictions.
WASHINGTON, May 24, 2023 – Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall has awarded 47 grants totaling $6,510,701 for projects in 27 states and the District of Columbia to improve public access to historical records. The National Archives grants program is carried out through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, NY
$150,000 to support a project to conserve, process, digitize and make available online 67 linear feet from the Jewish Labor and Political Archives: the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Collection, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Collection, and the Jewish Labor Committee Collection. (RH-103536)
Tacoma Public Library, Tacoma, WA
$126,823 to support a project to re-house, digitize, and make publicly available the photograph archive of the Tacoma News Tribune (established 1883), the state’s second-largest newspaper. The Library will also update the primary source sets and lesson plans for K-12 students to include digital surrogates from the Tacoma News Tribune photo morgue and create a public exhibit. (RH-103549)
Nebraska State Historical Society, Omaha, NE
$148,492 to support History Nebraska’s project to convert its existing collection descriptions by migrating approximately 1,400 government record and manuscript finding aids from non-EAD documents into ArchivesSpace; oversee the migration of the remaining 1,500 finding aids in the collection; and link the finding aids to born-digital and digitized assets to Preservica, which currently contains over 470,900 digital assets. (RH-103576)
Westchester County Historical Society, Elmsford, NY
$75,875 to support a project to digitize the McDonald Papers (1,100 annotated) handwritten transcriptions of 407 interviews with participants and eyewitnesses to the Revolutionary War recorded between 1844 and 1850. (RH-103590)
National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Minneapolis, MN
$124,311 to support a project to digitize 20,000 pages of records (1852-1945) related to at least nine Quaker-operated boarding schools from six states held in the collections at Swarthmore College and Haverford College. This group of records are from Quaker-operated boarding schools and Quaker organizations include enrollment papers, financial information, correspondence, administrative records, and photographs. (RH-103611)
For the full list please check https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/awards/awards-5-23-1. I can already hear your excitement at the variety of projects!
My lunch break today was accompanied by an informative online presentation about the U.S. National Archives location at St. Louis and the disastrous 1973 fire that destroyed many records. It was a helpful presentation. I have attended presentations and read articles about the fire, but this one seemed to hit me more today. This summer marks 50 years since that awful fire. My Dad was in the Army Air Corps in WWII as a flight engineer. I need to obtain his records that still exist and those they can recreate. I will also send in the stories he told me about his service, wartime illness, hospitalization on a British ship, meeting Bob Hope during that hospitalization, and a few other tidbits. His timeline could help the archivist with the search for records.
Watch today’s presentation at any time on YouTube or check the presentations slides on the NARA website. The was no handout for the session. The URLs for viewing are below.
Learn more about the series: https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-series/2023
View the National Archives YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@USNationalArchives
The last few weeks have been extra busy with syllabus preparation for upcoming presentations. Some of those are listed below. Click on the links or blue organization titles to learn more and to register.
I am an instructor in Colleen Robledo Greene’s
Course 5 – “Researching Families of Mexican Descent on Both
Sides of the Border” week-long genealogy course.
and
I’m presenting a joint session for this course and Ari Wilkin’s Course 6 – “Researching
African Americans Before and After the Civil War in the U.S.”
· I am the Coordinator and lead instructor in the course “Digging Deeper: Records, Tools, and Skills.” It’s a 5-day course filled with instruction, an extensive syllabus (almost 200 pages!), hands-on work, problem solving, and discussion. Full course details and other instructors https://www.gripitt.org/courses/digging_deeper/
· I am an instructor in a separate course that week, “Spirit of the Inland Seas: Research in the Great Lakes Region ” coordinated by Cari Taplin, CG.
This will not be an easy project and I am sure that is already evident to those involved. Some who will be working on this were the students themselves or had older family members who attended these schools.
The reading of the painful comments of boarding and day school superintendents, teachers, and others about the children forced to attend these schools is not a nice experience. For about a ten-year span of time, I read much of the correspondence between the schools, parents, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs for several schools. It caused many tears. I still do some research in the records of a couple schools and in some cases, the records no longer exist. I’d be willing to bet that is not always because of a fire, flood, tornado, or other calamity. While some records have been digitized by the U.S. National Archives (NARA) and some genealogy website partners, it does not include the many folders of correspondence. Neither are the records that do exist found in one repository or in one location of NARA.
A press release tells more about this preservation project.
For more on this project https://www.neh.gov/news/doi-neh-partner-preserve-federal-indian-boarding-school-oral-history-and-records
I saw the first sentence of Judy Russel’s description for her upcoming webinar and yelled YAYYY. I really did yell that loudly. “Names weren’t changed at Ellis Island, but in courts, legislatures, and elsewhere both formally and officially — and on the fly.”
How can we get beginning (and probably some who say they aren’t beginners to log into this FREE webinar on name changes?
FREE BCG-SPONSORED WEBINAR
“Name Changes and the Law”
by Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL
Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 8:00 p.m. (EDT)
Names weren’t changed at Ellis Island, but in courts, legislatures, and elsewhere both formally and officially — and on the fly. As genealogists, we need to know why names were changed, and how those changes might be recorded if we want to have a chance at finding out what’s in a name.
A genealogist with a law degree, Judy G. Russell is a lecturer, educator, and writer who enjoys helping others understand a wide variety of genealogical issues, including the interplay between genealogy and the law. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a law degree from Rutgers School of Law-Newark, and holds Certified Genealogist and Certified Genealogical Lecturer credentials from the Board for Certification of Genealogists. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, trade association writer, legal investigator, defense attorney, federal prosecutor, law editor and, until her retirement, was an adjunct member of the faculty at Rutgers Law School. Judy is a Colorado native with roots deep in the American South on her mother’s side and entirely in Germany on her father’s side. Visit her website at www.legalgenealogist.com.
BCG’s next free monthly webinar in conjunction with Legacy Family Tree Webinars is “Name Changes and the Law” by Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL. This webinar airs Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at 8:00 p.m. EDT. When you register before May 16 with our partner Legacy Family Tree Webinars (http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=8102) you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Anyone with schedule conflicts may access the webinar at no charge for one week after the broadcast on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.
“We appreciate the opportunity to present these high-quality educational webinars,” said President Faye Jenkins Stallings, CG. “At BCG, our purpose is to promote public confidence in genealogy by supporting uniform standards of competence. These webinars help to achieve that by providing educational opportunities to family historians of all levels of experience.” Following the free period for this webinar, BCG receives a small commission if you view this or any BCG webinar by clicking our affiliate link: http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=2619.
To see the full list of BCG-sponsored webinars for 2023, visit the BCG blog SpringBoard at https://bcgcertification.org/bcg-2023-free-webinars/. For additional resources for genealogical education, please visit the BCG Learning Center (https://bcgcertification.org/learning).
The Washington County [Minnesota] Historical Society added a wonderful post to its Facebook page yesterday. Collaboration does make a lot of records more accessible to researchers. https://www.facebook.com/WCHSMN
It’s a big deal! Only $25 for a year’s new membership. That’s a half-off price.
You’ll get one full year of anytime access to all 1,950+ classes and 7,400+ syllabus pages. Catch up on webinars you missed, rewatch those you need again, and all those handouts! Geoff Rasmussen and the Legacy Family Tree Webinars team does it again!
Offer valid for new memberships only, and expires on May 13, 2023 at 11:59PM. Click here to purchase this special deal.
Be among the initial viewers to view these free on the National Archives YouTube channel beginning Wednesday, May 3! As the archives relates “In recognition of public service, we are offering a special Genealogy Series focused on both military and civilian records. The series will provide family history research tools for all skill levels along with a general overview to specific topics. Broadcasts of the program sessions will take place in May and June. All are welcome!”
After the initial showing, “the video and handouts will remain available on this web page and YouTube”
For more details visit here. Overview of the schedule:
