Genealogy News for you

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  • Enjoy Free Access to Census Records on MyHeritage. Discover more about the lives of your ancestors this Labor Day with FREE access to all census records on MyHeritage. Search through this treasure trove of 1.3 billion census records for free from September 1 through September 8, 2021. This includes more than U.S. censuses!

  • Minnesota Genealogical Society 2021 Virtual North Star Conference 30 September – 2 October. 6 plenaries with main speaker D. Joshua Taylor and 23 breakout sessions plus handouts! I am doing two of the breakout sessions.

  •  Ancestry has unveiled the world’s largest digitized and searchable collection of Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedman’s Bank records to date, with more than 3.5 million records available for everyone to search for free at www.Ancestry.com/Freedmens. “The addition of these significant records can be instrumental in helping descendants of previously enslaved people in the U.S. make additional discoveries about their families by offering a path to trace ancestors prior to 1870. This collection can enable meaningful family history breakthroughs because it is likely the first time newly freed African Americans would appear in records after Emancipation.”

  • My speaking calendar has been updated. I’m just a bit busy in September with many hours of virtual presentations. Please join me and the great organizations that have asked me to speak. For the dates and links for more information and registrations: https://genealogybypaula.com/speaking/speaking-calendar/

 

 

Only online August 24: Controlling Chaos: Organizing Your Genealogy Materials

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Yes, I am still doing presentations. All online for the foreseeable future until we get this Pandemic under control. All online means more can join in, no matter where you live. It may be at odd hours in your time zone, but it’s the education that matters. I will be doing single presentation webinars and participating in all-day or multi-day seminars. Email me for more details and the fees if your organization wishes one or more of my topics that appear under the Speaking tab above. 

This Tuesday, August 24th, grab a snack or meal and join me and the North San Diego County [California] Genealogical Society for a webinar. My topic is Controlling Chaos: Organizing Your Genealogy Materials.

It takes place at 10:00 a.m. PDT which means noon for me in the Central Time Zone. I present some common sense and practical ideas for organizing your accumulating paper and electronic files. I also have a bit of advice from my Grandma Gert. The full description and the link to register (Free!) is here: https://nsdcgs.org/program-meetings/. A handout is available. 

Scroll further down the page to see what else the NSDCGS has on their calendar. 

Paula Stuart-Warren: my upcoming genealogy presentations

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The calendar of my upcoming presentations has been updated. I am going to be online for many organizations and with a variety of topics from August into October! https://genealogybypaula.com/speaking/speaking-calendar/. After that, I have room for more presentations. Contact me for details: PaulaStuartWarren at gmail.com.

I have made a safety and health decision that at least through the first quarter of 2022, I will only do online presentations. The factor of being in a meeting room with my fellow genealogists who all like to talk is not something I wish to do in the near future due to Covid. I do miss the hugs, excited hand-waving, and nods of agreement, but other than hugs, we can do that online. I have enjoyed the online webinars and seminars the last couple of years. It also means I can turn around and pull a book off one of my bookcases in order to answer someone’s question.

For presentations after that first quarter, my speaking fees will increase for in-person presentations. I will be updating that information in the near future. There will be no increase for virtual presentations whether they are a single webinar or a day-long seminar. That’s a benefit for organizations who are health conscious in our current situation.

Now I better go work on presentation handouts and the accompanying PowerPoint slides for those dates already scheduled.

Catching up on more genealogy and history press releases: great news!

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  1. The UK family history website, Findmypast, has announced the publication of a vast online collection of “Old Parish Registers” in collaboration with 9 local archives and organizations across Scotland.  “Dating back to 1561 and spanning 450 years Scottish history, the new collection contains more than 10.7 million historical documents chronicling baptisms, marriages, burials and more.”  Read the full details https://www.findmypast.com/blog/new/scottish-old-parish-registers. My Stuarts, Allardyces, Grants, and Edwards are calling.
  2. Legacy Family Tree Webinars and MyHeritage offer thousands of webinars. This September (aka Webtember) will offer four Fridays full of webinars. The cost: FREE. View on the Fridays, review, or view what you missed throughout the month. Register on my affiliate link http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=6600. To subscribe and view all the handouts and the almost 6,000 archived webinars, join for $49.95 on my affiliate link http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=1739.
  3. MyHeritage has acquired “90.91% of the share capital and 89.11% of the voting rights of Filae, a leading genealogy service in France.” It’s another boost for those of us with European roots. I hear my French ancestral lines urging me to investigate! Read the MyHeritage blog for more details. My Daoust, Boyer, Vinet, and other ancestor names are begging to be checked.

Minnesota: $432,940 in 52 Grants to Support History via the Legacy Amendment

Paula Stuart-Warren  Uncategorized    2 Comments

Safe historical storage, microfilm readers and printers, microfilm purchases, oral histories, and building preservation are just some of the reasons why 52 grants were awarded to a variety of organizations around Minnesota.

“The Minnesota Historical Society is pleased to announce 52 Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage Small Grants ($10,000 and less), totaling $432,940 to organizations in 24 counties. . . . This state-funded program is made possible by the Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on Nov. 4, 2008. The Legacy Amendment supports efforts to preserve Minnesota land, water and legacy, including Minnesota history and cultural heritage.”

I applaud the aspects related to microfilm but I wish that more of the grant monies were dedicated to digitization so that the real benefit would be expanded to more people who don’t reside in the area of the library or historical organization.

For a full list of the grants, please see the press release on the Minnesota Historical Society’s website: https://www.mnhs.org/media/news/17053.

The National Register of Historic Places: Saint Paul, Minnesota and beyond

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This past weekend involved a drive through my hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota. I love to drive by all the beautifully preserved homes on Summit Avenue and nearby streets. Then a posting on a Saint Paul page on Facebook got me thinking about the National Register of Historic Places for my city and county. With the links below, I’m sure you can find similar lists for your current and ancestral localities. I have read some of the applications and these include details on people, buildings, and organizations. I love looking at the photos of libraries, historical societies, and courthouses in addition to the homes.

The National Park Service pages include these statistics: “Since its inception in 1966, more than 95,000 properties that Americans believe are worthy of preservation have been listed in the National Register. Together these records hold information on more than 1.4 million individual resources–buildings, sites, districts, structures, and objects–and therefore provide a link to the country’s heritage at the national, state, and local levels.”

Catching up on my genealogy presentations

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In June, I spent a week as a faculty member of the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh. 10-12 hours each day of online teaching and consulting and follow-up research on students’ questions. It was both an exhilarating and exhausting week.

Now I am catching up on research and reports for client plus working on handouts and PowerPoint slides for my August-October presentations. All will be done virtually. I have also updated my speaking calendar. Each date has a live link for the sponsoring organization so that you can register for the webinar or other presentation. https://genealogybypaula.com/speaking/ is the page where you can click to see the calendar. 

Info from press releases in the genealogy world

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I’ve been extra busy with teaching and client work the past month and in a particularly good way. I occasionally post information I receive from press releases and other emails. The world of genealogy grows all the time!


Findmypast

Today I spent some time investigating this week’s crop of additions to British newspapers on Fmp. The press release said “It’s a bumper week of releases with 13 new papers and updates to six others. Brand new additions include:Aberystwyth Observer covering 1869, 1874-1884, 1887-1895 and 1899-1910

Censor or Satirical Times covering 1846

Dissenter covering 1812

Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper covering 1846-1851

Emigrant and the Colonial Advocate covering 1848-1849

English Mail covering 1860

Evening Star (London) covering 1843

Fleetwood Express covering 1889, 1896-1917 and 1919-1920

Jewish Record covering 1868-1871”

You can always read their blog to learn about weekly new and updated material on their blog: https://www.findmypast.com/blog/new


GENEALOGY GUYS LEARN SUMMER SALE – JULY 2021

The Genealogy Guys Learn subscription education site is on sale at 25% off from July 1st through July 31st for $74 for the first year’s subscription (new members only). Our regular annual subscription price is $99 and this sale price of $74 is a 25% savings! Genealogy Guys Learn currently offers 35 video and 20 written courses with new content added every month. Courses range from beginning to advanced topics. A complete list of current courses and new topics coming soon can be found at https://ahaseminars.com/cpage.php?pt=29.  To enroll: https://genealogyguyslearn.com/.



MyHeritage

You can now confirm or reject a Theory of Family Relativity™ on MyHeritage. This functionality was widely requested by their DNA users. “Our Theory of Family Relativity™ feature incorporates genealogical information from all our historical records and family tree profiles to offer theories on how your DNA Matches might be related to you. While the theories presented are often accurate, sometimes, they are incorrect. Before now, there was no way to confirm or reject a theory. Now there is! This new functionality will allow MyHeritage users to systematically review their theories and mark the ones they’ve already looked at so they can focus on new ones.”  Click here for more details.


National Archives (United States)

An email from NARA stated: “Did you know the National Archives Catalog contains over 140 million pages of digitized historical records and more than 27 million descriptions of the records in our holdings? And new pages and descriptions are being added to the Catalog each week!” Click here for more details.

Minnesota’s Brainerd Lakes area and photos galore

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“The Brainerd Public Library was awarded in 2014 a local Minnesota Historical and Cultural Heritage grant through the Kitchigami Regional Library System to start the Brainerd Lakes Area Historical Photo Scanning Project.” this is how an article in the Brainerd Dispatch on June 14th began. What a neat project! Photos were contributed by individuals, businesses, and organizations and then scanned. The Brainerd Public Library and the Crow Wing County Historical Society cooperated in the project.

I had family in the area and have vacationed many times in this beautiful lakes country as a child, with children, with grandchildren, and with friends. The article drew me in completely with the large photo from 1948 showing a Northern Pacific Railway car that was surrounded by many dozens of railroad workers. If you know much about me, you know that railroad history and railroad records are one of my history and genealogy passions.

If you have family from that area, read the article here. If you don’t have family in the area, read the articles and maybe work to get such a project started where you reside or in an ancestral area?

“Lost” Essex County Massachusetts 1810 census rolls discovered

Paula Stuart-Warren  Uncategorized  ,  2 Comments

All those boxes and volumes of records still in libraries, archives, historical societies, and courthouses do hold long-lost treasures. I advocate for ordering a box or volume and simply looking through the contents. NOT one specifically related to your family, but just for your own knowledge and experience. I spent years going through some files at the U.S. National Archives (NARA) and was shocked to find the proof of an adoption of a brother for one person. It was not what I was seeking at the time. I was able to present that proof in person and there were tears of joy. Share the knowledge of what you find so that records can be fully described, transferred to the appropriate repository, and hopefully be digitized so that others may find them.

A friend in the archival field often related stories of “found” records. Missing or overlooked old documents in places they should not be. An email from the U.S. National Archives today tells of one recent discovery made 221 years later.

Instagram Post Leads to Recovery of 1810 Census Rolls

“WASHINGTON, June 14, 2021 — Local 1810 census records from Massachusetts, long missing from the collection of census records of the time, are finally in Washington, DC, after a 221-year delay, thanks to a social media post.

A National Archives employee scrolling through Instagram saw a February post from the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) Library that connected archives, genealogy, and Black history, using the 1810 Essex County census record book.

Family researchers and history scholars can now view the digitized version through the National Archives Catalog. . . “

Read the full news from NARA: https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/1810-census-massachusetts