The following announcement was written by the Board for Certification of Genealogists®:

FREE BCG-SPONSORED WEBINAR

“Follow the Trail of Records and DNA from Ireland to Oregon (1810–1860)” 

by Karen Stanbary, CG

Tuesday, September 19, 2023, 8:00 p.m. (EDT)

A deep dive into the records narrates a family’s journey. Advanced methodology and DNA reconstruct the forgotten family.

Karen Stanbary, MA, LCSW, CG®, BCG Trustee, is an author and national lecturer focusing on topics related to using genetic evidence correlated with documentary evidence to solve genealogical brick walls. A Chicago local, she holds a Master’s Degree in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago and has completed advanced graduate study in Social Anthropology at the Colegio de Michoacán, Mexico. Her genealogical practice specializes in Midwestern U.S., Chicago, and Mexican research as well as complex problem-solving, unknown parentage, and DNA analysis. She is a coordinator and faculty member at IGHR, and SLIG. She received the NGSQ Award for Excellence for her complex evidence case study incorporating traditional documentary research and autosomal DNA analysis in the June 2016 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. She published “Drowning in DNA? The Genealogical Proof Standard Tosses a Lifeline” in Debbie Parker Wayne’s book Advanced Genetic Genealogy: Techniques and Case Studies. Most recently, she published another complex DNA evidence case study in the NGSQ June 2023 issue: “A Charming Scoundrel and a Tragic Victim―Charles Mapes and Maggie McBurney of Rock Island County, Illinois: Biological Parents of Myrtle Eva (Porter) Dewein.” She holds the credential Certified Genealogist from the Board for Certification of Genealogists where she serves as a Trustee and is chair of the DNA Committee.

BCG’s next free monthly webinar in conjunction with Legacy Family Tree Webinars is “Follow the Trail of Records and DNA from Ireland to Oregon (1810–1860)” by Karen Stanbary, CG. This webinar airs Tuesday, September 19, 2023, at 8:00 p.m. EDT.  

When you register before September 19 with our partner Legacy Family Tree Webinars(http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=8110) 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).

This summer, the Digital Library of Georgia released several new grant-funded newspaper titles to the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. Included below is a list of the newly available titles.

Titles funded by the Chattooga County Historical Society with a grant from the Tillotson-Menlo Charitable Foundation, Inc

Titles funded by the Forsyth County Public Library

Titles made available as part of the Georgia Newspaper Project Born Digital Project

Titles funded by the Georgia Public Library Service

Titles digitized in partnership with Georgia State University Library

Titles digitized in partnership with Kennesaw State University Museums, Archives and Rare Books

Titles funded by Mercer University Libraries

Titles funded by the Middle Georgia State University Library

Titles funded by the National Digital Newspaper Program with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities

Titles digitized in partnership with the Taylor County Historical-Genealogical Society

Titles funded through a grant from an anonymous donor

The letter was dated July 17, 1939, and signed by a man named Joseph Gross. He was writing from New York to thank the Forward for helping to find his relatives. Alongside it in the digital archive was a letter written in Yiddish, dated the following week, sent from Brussels and signed by Avrom Gross, Joseph’s cousin.

“I read the letter with such great astonishment,” Avrom wrote. “I have no way of thanking you.”

I stumbled across these letters online, in the digitized archives of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Jerusalem, while searching for references to a column called Seeking Relatives that ran for decades in the Forward.

They were part of a collection donated, upon Yad Vashem’s founding in 1953, by a man named Isaac Metzker, a Forwardeditor who oversaw the column for years. I soon discovered that Metzker’s files included some 15,000 documents relating to Seeking Relatives, letters and notes that hinted at the way the newspaper connected thousands of Eastern European Jews with family in the U.S. before, during and after World War II.

The Yiddish letter written by Avrom Gross on July 26, 1939, thanking the Forward.  

I had been looking for information about Seeking Relatives in June 2022 for what I thought would be a fairly straightforward article to help commemorate the Forward’s 125th year of operation. Instead, Metzker’s files would lead to more than a year of painstaking reporting in partnership with the Forward’s archivist, Chana Pollack.

You can read more in an article written by Andrew Silverstein and published in the forward.com web site at: https://forward.com/culture/552402/story-behind-holocaust-survivors-letters-testimony-jewish-victims/. 

In case anyone is interested:

As mentioned in a previous article last week (at https://eogn.com/page-18080/13248857), I am back at home after my recent hospitalization. As I mentioned in that update, "I am not back to 'my old self' but I do feel better than I did for the past week or so."

Indeed, the recuperation has been slower than I expected. Maybe that is because my body is getting older. (I celebrated a birthday a few days ago.)

In any case, I am now planning to work on this newsletter every day. In other words, I now plan to revert to my regular schedule.

For anyone who didn't read my earlier update, after taking a rather long automobile trip, I went to get out of the automobile but I stumbled and fell, hitting the back of my head rather hard on the pavement. I immediately saw stars and all sorts of other lights. Being a typical male, I shrugged it off as "a minor incident." However, upon walking into the house a few minutes later, I fell twice on the living room floor. Maybe it wasn't so "minor."

Three days later, things were not improving so I went to a walk-in medical center. They gave me a quick once-over evaluation and immediately sent me to a nearby hospital emergency room. After a more extensive evaluation, I was admitted to the hospital.

Three days later I was discharged with a warning that a full recovery would take at least 2 or 3 weeks. Since then, I haven't left the living room couch for more than a very few minutes.

Do you know how BORING daytime television is?

From Gail Dever's blog: Nova Scotia Archives last week added marriages from 1947 to its website, and they are searchable by name.

In May, the provincial archives updated its online death records, adding deaths from 1972. 

A team of scientists in Beijing say they have developed a new gene-editing tool that is more efficient than CRISPR technology, as the threat of US export restrictions looms over China’s biotech sector.

The researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology reported their modular gene-editing system – called CyDENT – in the journal Nature Biotechnology on August 28.

It works a little differently to CRISPR/Cas9, which is patented in the United States. That gene-editing tool splits double-strand DNA in order to make edits to the base pairs that make up the strands, according to CRISPR Therapeutics. The DNA is cut and then repaired by a natural cell process, meaning it could lead to imprecise editing and even undesirable mutations.

But CyDENT can be used to perform strand-specific gene editing without any cuts, according to the paper.

Kevin Zhao, one of the study’s authors and co-founder of Suzhou-based Qi Biodesign, said CyDENT used modules to perform different parts of the editing process. The design allows researchers to “find the best bespoke application” for the variations that emerge.

You can read the full story at: https://tinyurl.com/4u653cmh.

There is a fascinating story involving a stolen infant. Thanks to a DNA kit from MyHeritage, the infant (now an adult) was reunited with his birth mother. You can read the full story in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/08/chilean-american-adoptee-reunites-with-his-family-42-years-after-he-was-stolen-from-them/

UC Riverside’s California Digital Newspaper Collection, or CDNC, has received a $321,282 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH, to participate in the National Digital Newspaper Program, or NDNP, which is managed by the Library of Congress. The CDNC is one of several digital humanities projects within UCR’s Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research, or CBSR.  

The grant will be used to digitize a collection of newspapers serving Black communities in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas between World War II and 1963. UCR’s project is part of the NEH initiative American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future, emphasizing the role of the humanities in tackling contemporary social challenges. 

“The NEH awards provides the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research with funds to ensure that students, scholars, and the broad American public have high-quality, free-of-charge, and open access to the press archives of Black California,” said Daryle Williams, the dean of UCR’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. “Within the digitization of various newspapers, we have on our screens the voice, vibrancy, and turmoil of African American communities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, from the interwar period through the Civil Rights era.” 

Brian Geiger, director of the CBSR, said this will be the first NDNP project to focus on the Black experience after World War II and “the Second Great Migration.” 

 “These papers will be invaluable resources for anyone studying 20th Century American history,” Geiger said.  

The award is among $41.3 million in grants announced in August by NEH to support 280 humanities projects nationwide. UCR’s award is one of 12 NDNP grants that will aid in digitization of local newspapers. 

The NDNP started in 2005, with UCR one of the initial participants. Past UCR digitization projects have included for pre-1923 papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Herald; Gold-Rush Era papers; Borderland papers from Imperial County;, and the Spanish-language newspaper La Opiníion. 

The title page of the first edition of the May 22, 1917, issue of the Atlanta Georgian reports on the destruction caused by the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917 and the city’s effort to control the damage.

This issue marks the 3 millionth page digitized by the Digital Library of Georgia.

The newspaper circulated daily from 1906 to 1939, was the first Hearst-owned newspaper in the South, and is the most prominent example of sensationalist yellow journalism in Georgia. In its first year of publication, the paper infamously printed stories intended to inflame racial tensions that contributed to the start of the Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906.

Famed newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst purchased the Atlanta Georgian in 1912. Under his ownership, the paper printed increasingly scandalous headlines and illustrations that dramatized local crimes, including its coverage of the Leo Frank case in Atlanta.

The digitization of this title was funded through a grant from an anonymous donor as part of their mission to provide resources that promote a greater understanding of Georgia’s history during this important period.

We have developed an online press kit, available at bit.ly/dlg3millionwhich includes:

• An image, description, and link out to our 3 millionth page;
• A link to our press release;

• An interactive map showing which cities and counties in Georgia have newspapers digitized by the DLG;
• Eleven impact stories that demonstrate how digitized historic newspapers have helped people find what they were looking for;
• A link to Covers Dixie Like the Dew”: A History of Newspaper Journalism in Georgia
• A blog post of the 5 favorite newspaper pages written by DLG staff;
• Links to instructional videos on how to use the Georgia Historic Newspapers site.

Since 2007, the DLG has provided access to the state’s historic newspapers, with the majority having been digitized from microfilm produced by the Georgia Newspaper Project (GNP).

With the launch of the Georgia Historic Newspapers (GHN) site in July 2017, the DLG has maintained that tradition by bringing together new and existing resources into a single, consolidated website where newspapers dating from 1763-2023 are full-text searchable and can be browsed by city, title, date, keyword, or region.

Annually, DLG digitizes over 400,000 historic newspaper pages with funding from GALILEO, the University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Public Library Service, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the R. J. Taylor, Jr. Foundation, and dozens of cultural heritage institutions across the state. The DLG also microfilms more than 200 current newspapers. Historic newspaper pages are consistently the most visited of any DLG site.

You can read more at: https://blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu/?p=8590. 

Malaysia said on Tuesday (Sep 5) it is considering regulations that will make internet giants Alphabet's Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms compensate news outlets for content sourced from them.

Malaysia is in discussions with Google, Meta and other major online platforms over the regulatory framework, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said in a statement after meeting with officials from both companies.

The proposed regulations will be similar to rules in Australia, which in 2021 made it compulsory for Google and Meta to compensate media outlets for content that generates clicks and advertising dollars, the MCMC said.

The MCMC is also mulling rules similar to Canada's Bill C-11, which aims to regulate streaming platforms and requires them to support Canadian content.

It said the rules were part of government efforts to address "imbalances" in income for digital platforms and local media, and to ensure "fair compensation for news content creators".

The MCMC said it was also in discussions with the social media platforms to address online harm such as child sex abuse material, online gambling and financial scams.

Malaysia has increased scrutiny of online content under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who came to power in November.

Earlier this year, Malaysia said it would take legal action against Meta for failing to act against harmful content on its Facebook platform, but later dropped the plan following meetings with the company.