Here is an article that is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However,  it describes a service that I use daily and am very satisfied with it, so I decided to share it here. I am not paid by anyone for publishing this article; I am simply a very satisfied Proton Mail customer.

For years, I have been concerned with online privacy. I now use a very worthwhile tool in that battle. 

You should definitely check out Proton Mail if you've been looking for a better choice to free email services like Gmail. There is no cost for the service, and it gives you some of the most private email you can find. On top of that, it works with other Proton services, like its VPN, password manager, and even a calendar tool that focuses on privacy.

On the other hand, I think Proton really shines with its monthly plan. Proton Unlimited costs $13 a month ($10 a month if bought yearly), but the free version of its services already has a lot of features that might make the price worth it. But Proton Unlimited's extra features are well worth the money if you care about keeping your data safe online. You can also subscribe to just some of Proton's services if you don't think the whole deal is right for you.

What does Proton give you for free?

When you sign up for Proton's services, the most important features are already included. These include end-to-end privacy, encrypted contact information, and multiple calendars. You'll also get 5GB of free storage on Proton Drive. It's encrypted from end to end, so it's safer than Google Drive. There are also VPN features, but they only work on one device (in the free version). You can connect to VPN sites in five countries that are moderately fast. Along with that, Proton has its own free password generator called Proton Pass. Before you even pay a dime, there are so many great things about Proton that you might not even want to subscribe. But you should.

Proton VPN is available on all your devices, including Windows, Macs, Chromebooks, Linux, smartphones, and even routers.

So many ways to keep your email private

The fact that Proton Mail can handle three custom email addresses is one of my favorite things about Proton Unlimited: You can now change your email address to any other address you like, whether it's a custom site for your business or just a name that sounds better than @protonmail.com. In your Proton account, you can also use up to 15 different email names. This way, you can have separate accounts for things like shopping, social media, and more. You don't have to sign up for and manage different Proton accounts. This is a convenient way to break up your email alerts. You can also send as many messages as you want and make as many groups, labels, and custom filters as you want. The free version of Proton Mail has some limits in these areas.

It also lets you give out fake email addresses that all point back to your real address. This tool is called "hide-my-email aliases” (details are available at https://proton.me/support/aliases-mail) and it's included with Proton Unlimited. No one will have to know your real address that way. Apple has something similar, but you can only use it if you sign up on an Apple device. A lot more people can use Proton's product because it works on Windows PCs, Macs, iPhones, and Android phones.

When you sign up for Proton Unlimited, you'll be able to view 25 separate calendars instead of three. You can also share your calendar with other people. The basic Unlimited plan for Proton Drive comes with 500GB of storage. However, the biggest improvement is the larger Proton VPN (more on that later).

Another great thing about Proton Mail is that your emails are end-to-end encrypted, which means that no one can read them, not even the employees at Proton. This is especially helpful if you give and receive private information.

You can also just sign up for Proton Mail Plus if you don't need all the benefits that Proton Unlimited has to offer. Every month, this service costs $4.99 and gives you 15GB of space, 10 unique email addresses, and help for one unique email domain. Also, you can have as many files, labels, and filters as you want. However, you won't get the extra features that come with Proton VPN, which is fine for some.

If you have Unlimited, Proton's VPN is better.

Proton Unlimited gives you full access to all of Proton's fastest VPN sites in over 90 countries. Proton VPN is one of the best free VPNs you can find. You can also use P2P and BitTorrent, protect yourself with NetShield, use Tor over VPN, get better VPN speeds, set your own DNS if you want to, and connect to LANs.

When you share files or download them using P2P or BitTorrent, protection helps hide your IP address. Also, NetShield blocks ads and annoying trackers that keep an eye on your browsing past. Access to Tor over VPN also makes web reading even safer, because the Tor browser's features and Proton VPN's network routing work together so well. When you want to really step it up, the private DNS feature lets you protect yourself even more from bad people by giving you your own online connection method.

Because every site you view is trying to keep track of you in some way, it's important to use a VPN. The free Proton VPN is good, but the paid Proton Unlimited VPN blocks ads and tracks even better without slowing down your home internet too much. I've used other VPNs before, but Proton's speeds were always faster, even on the free version.

Proton Pass adds more vaults and built-in two-factor authentication.

Proton Pass lets you store passwords in two vaults, create 10 email aliases, and share your account with up to two other people without Proton Unlimited. But if you pay for Proton Unlimited, you can have up to 50 different passwords, as many hide-my-email aliases as you want, two-factor authentication (2FA) built in, and share with up to ten other people. You can subscribe to Pass Plus for $4.99 a month (or $1.99 a month if you pay for it all at once) if you only want to use Proton Pass.

New updates, such as tracking the Dark Web

The most recent update to Proton Unlimited adds real-time tracking of the Dark Web. If any of your personal information shows up on the shadier parts of the internet, you will be notified. A lot of banks offer these types of services, but keeping it somewhere you check every day, like your email, is the best way to make sure you're always on top of your security.

Once more, you don't have to pay Proton to get something out of this: You can use Proton Mail for free, and it has a lot of features. It also doesn't hide any important privacy settings behind a paywall, so you can use it to protect your privacy without spending any money. If you want even more privacy protection and more tools to keep your digital life in order, though, Proton Unlimited is the way to go.

To read more about Proton Mail and all of Proton’s other privacy-oriented services (many of which are FREE of charge), look at: https://proton.me/.

An artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search engine has been launched that makes combing through decades of parliamentary records more fruitful for the public, and which could raise understanding of how issues evolve in Singapore’s top law-making body.

Called Pair Search, the website search.pair.gov.sg is powered by a large language model (LLM) – the same technology behind ChatGPT – and also lets users sift through case judgments from the High Court and Court of Appeal.

Early results from test users of the prototype search engine have been encouraging, said Open Government Products (OGP) senior software engineer Oh Chin Yang.

You can read more in an article written by Goh Yan Han and published at: https://tinyurl.com/2p89wms.

Alzheimer’s disease may be inherited more often than previously known, according to a new study that paints a clearer picture of a gene long known to be linked to the common form of dementia.

The authors of the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, say that this might even be considered a distinct, inherited form of the disease and that different approaches to testing and treatment may be needed.

Among people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, researchers recognize familial forms of the disease and sporadic cases. Most cases are thought to be sporadic, which develop later in life. Familial forms, caused by mutations in any of three genes, tend to strike earlier and are known to be rare, accounting for about 2% of all Alzheimer’s diagnoses, or about 1 in 50 cases.

Under the new paradigm, 1 in 6 cases of Alzheimer’s would be considered to be inherited, or familial.

This shifting appreciation of inherited risk, researchers say, is due to a better understanding of the role of a fourth gene that carries the blueprints to make a lipid-carrying protein called apolipoprotein E, known as APOE. APOE ferries cholesterol throughout the body and brain and is thought to play a role in depositing or sweeping away sticky beta amyloid plaques, which are one hallmark of Alzheimer’s.

You can learn a lot more in an article by Brenda Goodman published in the CNN web site at: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/health/alzheimers-apoe4-gene-risk/index.html.

“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Wine is necessary for life.” – Thomas Jefferson

“My manner of living is plain…a glass of wine and a bit of mutton.” – George Washington

According to many historians, the American Revolution was built on a foundation of booze. Our ancestors imbibed frequently, often every day. It is estimated that there were more taverns per capita than any other business in colonial America. In fact, the Colonial Williamsburg web site says:

Colonial Americans, at least many of them, believed alcohol could cure the sick, strengthen the weak, enliven the aged, and generally make the world a better place. They tippled, toasted, sipped, slurped, quaffed, and guzzled from dawn to dark.

Many started the day with a pick-me-up and ended it with a put-me-down. Between those liquid milestones, they also might enjoy a midmorning whistle wetter, a luncheon libation, an afternoon accompaniment, and a supper snort. If circumstances allowed, they could ease the day with several rounds at a tavern.

Alcohol lubricated such social events as christenings, weddings, funerals, trials, and election-day gatherings, where aspiring candidates tempted voters with free drinks. Craftsmen drank at work, as did hired hands in the fields, shoppers in stores, sailors at sea, and soldiers in camp. Then, as now, college students enjoyed malted beverages, which explains why Harvard had its own brewery. In 1639, when the school did not supply sufficient beer, President Nathaniel Eaton lost his job.

You can read the rest of the Colonial Williamsburg auricle at: https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday07/drink.cfm

In colonial times, Americans probably drank more alcohol that in any other era, certainly more than the national average today. In colonial America it is estimated that the average American drank eight ounces of alcohol a day. Americans drank beer and cider with breakfast; rum and wine with dinner; claret, ratafias (a fortified wine or a fruit-based beverage), creams, punches, and other concoctions in the evening.

The first settlers brought with them the English tradition of beer drinking. Even during the famous 1620 voyage of Pilgrims on board the Mayflower, beer saved the voyage. The water aboard ship reportedly become brackish and potentially deadly while the beer on board remained drinkable. The latter part of the voyage kept sailors and passengers alike happy with a good supply of beer. We tend to think of the Pilgrims as sober-faced, upright people who avoided fun at all times, but they obviously packed a lot of beer on board before embarking on a lengthy trip aboard the very crowded 110-foot Mayflower.

The Pilgrims were planning to go to Virginia but ended up in Massachusetts, landing on a cold, snowy, wind-blown coast on December 19, 1620. The change in plans apparently was caused by the lack of water and the dwindling supply of beer on board the ship. Captain Christopher Jones recognized the need to preserve the dwindling stocks for his sailors on the return journey (which would be far too dangerous to undertake until the following spring), and so the passengers were encouraged to land near the top of Cape Cod. Jones knew that the fresh water found in Massachusetts would be insufficient for the return voyage. First, the water might go bad on the return voyage; secondly, he and his sailors were not accustomed to drinking water. 

These instructions to keep beer on board the Mayflower for the return trip did not go down well with the Pilgrims. William Bradford complained that he and his companions "were hastened ashore and made to drink water, that the seamen might have the more beer." Pilgrim William Wood complained that he did not dare drink the water in the wilderness, preferring beer. He wrote his opinion of fresh water: "I dare not prefere it before good beere." (See Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters by Frank Chapelle). 

The Pilgrims in Massachusetts were not the first Europeans in North America to enjoy alcohol. The Dutch also had a functioning brewery in what is now Lower Manhattan by 1613, beating the Mayflower immigrants, who would not have anything resembling a formal brewhouse until at least 1621. Even before that, the Roanoke colony tried brewing with corn as early as 1584 (obviously before going missing).

A quick Google search finds that our founding fathers were heavily involved with alcohol, sometimes as brewers and distillers, sometimes as importers and smugglers, and almost always as consumers:

George Washington owned a whiskey distillery: http://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/distillery/

Thomas Jefferson imported thousands of bottles of wine: https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/wine 

John Hancock smuggled hundreds of barrels of strong Portuguese Madeira into the colonies—an act that would cause his ship to be seized and lead to a riot and the burning of a British customs boat on Boston Common: http://www.john-hancock-heritage.com/the-liberty-affair/

While I cannot verify the authenticity of this quote, one claimed common saying from the 1700s says, “If I take a settler after my coffee, a cooler at nine, a bracer at ten, a whetter at eleven, and two or three stiffeners during the forenoon, who has right to complain?”

Please pass that bottle, will you?

As a parent, finding books for your children to read either on their own or with you can be an expensive undertaking. In addition to the price of books (for all ages) going up year after year, it can also be an increasingly difficult proposition to find a place to put them all. That's why it's good news for parents everywhere that Google is just giving away digital kids' books.

Wait, how many books?

Google dropped the news today that it had made over 300 non-fiction children's books available on its Google Play Books platform. What's even more of a pleasant surprise is that all of these titles will have the option to read and listen at the same time. Reading a book while listening to it is a tried and tested method of assisting children with their reading comprehension and decoding skills.

In addition to this massive book drop, Google also announced that it had put thousands of audiobook previews on its YouTube channel. Although these previews were already available on the Android and iOS mobile apps, I have a feeling that more people are browsing YouTube than are browsing Google Play Books. It's also worth noting that when it comes to audio books, the narration is just as important as the plot, so having a preview is a vital part of making an informed purchase.

You can read a lot more about all this at: https://bit.ly/3UNWxHu.

The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society’s (NYG&B) Church of the Transfiguration records are the newest, large-scale, searchable edition to their online collections. This ongoing project has been part of their Digitize New York initiative to preserve and make accessible at-risk historical records. The Church of the Transfiguration collection consists of tens of thousands of marriage records spanning nearly 200 years.

Marriage certificates and register books organized by year for the Episcopalian parish located at 1 East 29th Street, New York, NY. While both record types can be browsed by clicking on each year, the marriage certificates can also be searched using the search box.

On May 9, from 1 until 2 pm ET, NYG&B will host an online webinar “Debuting Church of the Transfiguration Marriage Records” on how to search this new collection and what’s coming next. This is a free event but registration here is required.

You can read more in an article in the newyorkalmanack web site at: https://bit.ly/3JOX6KY.

Happy Star Wars Day!

Perhaps I should say, "May the Fourth Be With You."

Star Wars Day is a (very) informal commemorative day observed annually on May 4th to celebrate George Lucas's Star Wars media franchise. Observance of the day has  spread quickly through media and grassroots celebrations since the franchise began in 1977.

The date of May 4th originated from the pun "May the Fourth be with you", a variant of the popular Star Wars catchphrase "May the Force be with you". Even though the holiday was not created or declared by Lucasfilm, many Star Wars fans across the world have chosen to celebrate the holiday. It has since been embraced by Lucasfilm and parent company Disney as an annual celebration of Star Wars.

The first recorded reference was the phrase being first used on May 4, 1979, the day Margaret Thatcher took the job as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. An online news article from the Danish public broadcaster says her political party, the Conservatives, placed a congratulatory advertisement in The London Evening News, saying "May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations."

Of course, that  reference to May 4, 1979 has nothing to do with Star Wars. However, why let that stand in the way of a good promotion?

Perhaps a better reference is that on May 4th, 2015, astronauts in the International Space Station watched the Star Wars. 

Whatever the reason, I would like to wish you and Anakin Skywalker a Happy Star Wars Day!

By the way, the next day, May 5th is Cinco de Mayo in Mexico but is also known as "Revenge of the Fifth" day in a galaxy not so far away.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

How many ancestors do you have? 

It is a simple question and would appear to have a simple answer: Any of us can count the number of our ancestors by performing a very obvious mathematical progression: two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so forth. In the past twenty generations, you have a mathematical chance of having more than one million ancestors. Thirty generations produces more than a billion ancestors, and forty generations results in more than one trillion.

The calculation is correct from a mathematical viewpoint but it ignores one obvious fact: there have never been that many humans on the face of the earth since the dawn of evolution! The reality is that it is impossible to have one trillion unique ancestors, regardless of the mathematics involved. 

In reality, we all have multiple lines of descent from single individuals. That is, if you could fill out a pedigree chart of all the names of all your ancestors going back forty generations, you would see the same individuals appearing time and time again in various places in the chart. For example, your mother's great-great-grandfather might be the same person as your father's great-great-great-grandfather, and so on and so forth, repeated thousands of times with different individuals at different places in your family tree. The further back you go in time, the more often certain individuals will appear in multiple locations in your ancestry.

The correct term for this is "inbreeding." That's not a very polite word in the English language, but it is a fact: if you go back enough generations, every person on the face of the earth has hundreds or even thousands of cases of inbreeding in our family trees. When hearing the word "inbreeding," some people will picture the residents of remote mountain hamlets or rural farming communities. In fact, inbreeding is much more common at the opposite end of the social spectrum: the royal families of England and Europe have far more inbreeding than the rest of us. 

Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip were second cousins once removed, both being descended from Christian IX of Denmark. They were also third cousins as great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. That results in obvious inbreeding when looking at Prince Charles' pedigree chart. 

Genealogists often prefer to use the phrase "pedigree collapse," a term first coined by the late Robert C. Gunderson, the Senior Royalty Research Specialist at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Gunderson correctly calculated that, if you kept multiplying by two the progenitors of a person born today, doubling his parents, their parents, etc., the person would have something like two hundred and eighty-one trillion forebears alive at the time of Charlemagne. Obviously, there were nowhere near that many people around when Charlemagne was King of France in 800 A.D., or at any other time. 

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13352105. (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

Genealogists frequently underestimate the necessity of citing their sources at the beginning, but quickly realize its significance.  Ultimately, at some point in the future, you will ask, "From where did I obtain that?" If you had the foresight to document the source citation when you recorded the other information, your question can be readily answered. Source citations have numerous applications in genealogy.

Cite This For Me is a complimentary software add-on for the Chrome web browser that instantly generates webpage citations in the APA, MLA, Chicago, or Harvard reference styles with a single click. To generate a properly styled citation, navigate to the desired page and click the button. Subsequently, duplicate and insert the reference into your assignment, or include it in your online bibliography for secure retention until a later time. Cite This For Me is equipped with a Google Chrome extension.

That’s impressive considering it's a FREE product!

The free version of Cite This For Me can be accessed at https://www.citethisforme.com/.

The Pittsburg County (Oklahoma) Genealogical and Historical Society offers a valuable resource for advanced reading called Genealogy Source Citations Quick Reference. It can be accessed at https://bit.ly/3gkaBBR. If you lack knowledge about source citations in genealogy, begin by referring to that document. 

Elizabeth Shown Mills has authored several comprehensive volumes on the subject of source citations in genealogy research. The sources for family historians include "Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian," "Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace," and "QuickSheet: Citing Genetic Sources for History Research: Evidence Style." To access all of these references, simply visit Amazon's website at https://amzn.to/314kiy3.

The following announcement was written by the folks at MyHeritage:

We are thrilled to announce the publication of three new and important historical records collections: New York City birth, marriage, and death records. These robust collections are some of the most important vital records in the U.S. available online today, and MyHeritage is the only genealogy company that hosts the index for these records with scanned images. After a year-long process of creating this brand new index, we are glad to share the collections with you. New York City has played a pivotal role in the story of the United States as a nation and in the personal stories of countless American families. If you have any American roots at all, chances are, at least one person in your family tree was born, got married, or died in New York City, and may be found within these collections.

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

The collections contain a total of 37.4 million records and include a complete index created by MyHeritage alongside beautifully scanned color images of the original certificates and licenses.

In addition to indexing millions of primary individuals in the records, we invested a lot of time and effort in making millions of secondary individuals indexed and searchable as well. For example, in marriage records, while the bride and groom are the primary individuals listed in the record, the parents of the bride and groom are secondary individuals that you wouldn’t typically find indexed for these types of records. But on MyHeritage, we made a special effort to index these individuals as well. That said, there are additional individuals — for example, witnesses of a marriage or the person reporting a death — who are mentioned in many of the records but not indexed, so it’s always wise to look at the scanned image.

Let’s delve further into these collections: 

New York, New York City Births, 1866–1909

This collection contains 7,560,069 birth records from New York City, New York, United States, between the years 1866 and 1909. Records typically include the name of the child, date and place of birth, the names of the parents, and information about their birth.

Search New York, New York City Births, 1866–1909

New York, New York City Marriages, 1866–1949

This collection contains 20,912,650 marriage records from New York City, New York, United States, between the years 1866 and 1949. Records typically include the names of the groom and the bride, their birth place, their ages, the date and place of marriage and the names of their parents.

There are two different types of marriage records within this collection: marriage certificates issued by the New York City Health Department and marriage licenses issued by the New York City Clerk.

The NYC department of health issued marriage certifications through 1937, and beginning in 1908, in compliance with New York State law, couples planning to marry obtained a license through the city clerk. The city clerk license typically included an affidavit filled out by the couple, the license issued by the clerk, and the certificate completed by the person performing the ceremony.

We consolidated the multiple marriage records for the same individuals and we put them together as a set, so if there are both a marriage certificate and a license (which would be found for the years 1908–1937) then you will see both as part of the same record. If there is only one or the other, you will see just the one. 

The information recorded in these two different types of records is mostly the same. However, the city clerk marriage licenses include additional information about the couples’ parents and occupations, which can be extremely helpful. 

Search New York, New York City Marriages, 1866–1949

New York, New York City Deaths, 1866–1948

This collection contains 8,893,688 death records from New York City, New York, United States, between the years 1866 and 1948. Records typically include the name of the deceased, date and place of birth, age at the time of death, date and place of death, the names of the parents and the name of the spouse.

Search New York, New York City Deaths, 1866–1948

Examples

In a recent webinar about New York City historical record collections, hosted on Legacy Family Webinars, our Director of Content, Mike Mansfield delved into the new New York City’s birth, marriage, and death records, and featured some examples.

Each of the examples highlights the wealth of information contained within New York City’s historical records. From births to marriages and deaths, these documents serve as invaluable resources for understanding the lives of past generations and tracing familial lineages.

You can read a lot more in this announcement in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://bit.ly/3UKmmZ9.