NOTE: This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, I believe that all computer users should be aware of the dangers of online advertisements and the solutions available.

I have been using an ad blocker for nearly a year and love it. It doesn't block all advertisements but it does block a lot of them, including most of the more obnoxious “pop up" advertisements.

From an article by Zack Whittaker published in the TechCrunch web site:

Research into the brutal shakedown of the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center in 1981, and the experience and backgrounds of delinquent girls and incarcerated women in Hawaiʻi are highlights of the work of former University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa women’s studies program director and professor emerita Meda Chesney-Lind, which is now available online. University Archives has made Chesney-Lind’s collection of research and academic work as a scholar and activist with a focus on women and crime available on ArchivesSpace.

Meda Chesney-Lind

Her extensive contribution to the field of feminist criminology has been recognized nationally, with a large number of publications and prestigious awards.

Chesney-Lind has been with UH Mānoa’s women’s studies department (renamed to the Department of Women, Gender and Sexualily Studies) since 1986. She also previously taught at Honolulu Community College as a lecturer.

Spanning from the 1970s to 2010s, the Meda Chesney-Lind papers provides valuable research materials, including material from various courses taught in juvenile delinquency, human sexuality, women’s studies, criminology, sociology of gender and sex roles; keynote addresses and presentations; and more.

“I have always been on the margins in terms of my work,” said Chesney-Lind. “Living in Hawaiʻi gave me a unique perspective on crime and justice, particularly around issues of race. Of course, being female in a predominantly male field was also influential, directing me to focus on the experiences of girls and women in a largely male oriented criminal justice system.”

You can find the entire article at: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2022/12/20/uh-criminologist-papers-go-online/.

The following announcement was written by the folks at Findmypast:

The Herald Digital Archive Project was first launched by the Farnham Herald in November 2019, but its progress was stalled by the Covid-19 lockdowns.

However, the lockdowns also prompted an increase in local interest for local newspaper archive material and the Herald has now got the project back on track.

With the help of volunteers over the past year, 80pc of the Tindle-owned Herald’s physical paper archives – totalling some 785 volumes of newsprint – have now been inventoried, while 99,000 photo negatives have been indexed.

You can read more at: https://tinyurl.com/y48j6xc6.

The following announcement was written by the folks at TheGenealogist:

More than 185,000 new Lloyd George Domesday land tax records have been added by TheGenealogist to its Landowner and Occupier records. Consisting of records from the counties of Berkshire and the Buckinghamshire, this release provides researchers with the ability to discover owners and occupiers of property in the period 1910 to 1915.

IR126 Map of Ascot on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ 

Covering an area of over 800 square miles, researchers can use these records to see the size, state of repair and value of the house in which their ancestors had been the landlord of, or had lived in. 

TheGenealogist has linked all the records to the large scale Ordnance Survey maps that were used at the time.These detailed maps show each property plotted on detailed mapping that can be viewed with TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ tool. This interface will show the same coordinates on a variety of modern and historical maps. Using this allows house or family historians to see how the area they are researching may have changed over time and with it to then explore their ancestors' locality.

• Details of Individual properties can be found in these Lloyd George Domesday records
• Records are linked to extremely detailed maps used in 1910-1915 and viewable on the powerful Map Explorer™ 
• Ability to fully search the records by a person’s name, county, parish and street
• The Ordnance Survey maps zoom down to show individual properties
• Georeferenced to a modern street map or satellite map underlay the researcher can more clearly understand what the area looks like today

Areas covered in this release include:

Aldermaston, Aldworth, Amersham, Arborfield, Ardington, Ashampstead, Ashley Green, Barkham, Basildon, Beaconsfield, Beech Hill, Beedon, Beenham, Binfield, Bisham, Bledlow, Blewbury, Boveney, Boxford, Bradenham, Bradfield, Bray, Brightwalton, Brimpton, Buckland, Bucklebury, Burghfield, Burnham, Catmore, Caversham, Chaddleworth, Chalfont St Giles, Chalfont St Peter, Challow (East and West), Charlton, Chenies, Chepping Wycombe, Chesham, Chieveley, Childrey, Chilton, Cholesbury, Clewer Within, Clewer Without, Cold Ash, Compton, Cookham, Crowthorne, Datchet, Denchworth, Denham, Donnington, Earley, East Garston, East Ilsley, East Lockinge, East Shefford, Easthampstead, Ellesborough, Enborne, Englefield, Eton, Farnborough, Farnham Royal, Fawley, Fawley, Fawley, Finchhampstead, Fingest, Frilsham, Fulmer, Gerrards Cross, Goosey, Grazeley, Great Coxwell, Great Missenden, Greenham, Grove, Hambleden, Hampden (Great and Little), Hampstead Marshall, Hampstead Norris, Hanney (East and West), Harwell, Hawridge, Hedgerley, Hedsor, Hendred (East and West), High Wycombe, Hitcham, Horsenden, Horton, Hungerford, Hurley, Ibstone, Ilmer, Inkpen, Iver, Kimble (Great and Little), Kintbury, Lambourn, Langley, Leckhampstead, Lee, Letcombe Bassett, Letcombe Regis, Little Marlow, Little Missenden, Maidenhead, Marlow, Medmenham, Midgham, Mortimer, New Windsor, Newbury, Newland, Old Windsor, Pangbourne, Peasemore, Penn, Princes Risborough, Remenham, Ruscombe, Sandhurst, Saunderton, Shaw, Shinfield, Shottesbrook, Slough, Slough, Sparsholt, Speen, St Giles, St Lawrence, St Mary, St Nicholas Hurst, Stanford Dingley, Streatley, Sunningdale, Sunninghill, Swallowfield, Taplow, Thatcham, Theale, Tilehurst, Towersey, Turville, Twyford, Upton, Waltham St Lawrence, Wantage, Warfield, Wargrave, Welford, West Ilsley, West Shefford, West Woodhay, White Waltham, Winkfield, Winnersh, Winterbourne, Wokingham, Wooburn, Woolhampton & Yattendon

Read TheGenealogist’s article: To the Cottage Born https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/to-the-cottage-born-1645/ 

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

After Ross Chanin’s grandfather died, Chanin mourned not only him, but the fact that he’d never gotten a chance to hear more about his grandfather’s life. Over a conversation with a journalist friend, George Quraishi, it became clear to Chanin that Quraishi’s skill set — interviewing and audio editing — could be conducive to capturing a family’s history.

Chanin and Quraishi started conducting interviews for friends and family and recruited software engineers Martin Gouy and Moncef Biaz to build apps to make it easier to record remote interviews and play them back on the web. Convinced that they had the seeds of a business, Chanin and Quraishi decided to apply to Y Combinator and were accepted into the Summer 2020 batch.

Today, their startup — Artifact — has over 10,000 customers across 15 English-, Spanish- and French-speaking countries. It’s raised $5 million inclusive of a seed round led by GV, which had participation from Atento Capital, Goodwater and Offline Ventures and notable angels such as Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear and former Blizzard CEO Michael Morhaime. 

“Interviews are incredible storytelling spaces, but they’re generally reserved for the rich and powerful and are not about our parents, grandparents and children,” Chanin told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Our dream is that Artifact will become the place where families the world over tell and experience their stories.”

Artifact charges customers $149 to have an interviewer (mostly moonlighting journalists, according to Chanin) conduct an interview with a family member. Packages include one interview and an edit with a custom introduction, sound mixing by an audio engineer and a web page for listening and adding photos.

It’s a four-step process. First, Artifact customers tell the interviewer who they’ll be interviewing and what they’ll discuss. Then, Artifact invites the interviewee to choose a day and time for the interview, which happens via phone or videoconferencing. The resulting recording — usually 30 minutes in length, give or take 15 minutes — is edited down to a 20-minute “episode,” which can be shared via the web with loved ones or publicly.

Artifact aims to turn around episodes within five business days of an interview. Up to two guests are included in the price of a single interview, with a $35-per-guest charge for additional interviewees.

You can read a lot more in an article by Kyle Wiggers published in the TechCrunch web site at: https://tinyurl.com/3vas7e8z.

From the MyHeritage Blog:

MyHeritage has long made a name for itself as the go-to destination for international genealogy. This strength comes from the fact that MyHeritage is translated into 42 languages, and is the most popular genealogy platform in most non-English speaking countries, in addition to its widespread popularity in the English-speaking world. Users around the world have built millions of family trees on MyHeritage, and when combined with diverse historical record collections and unique technology for overcoming language barriers, it’s clear why MyHeritage is the leading family history service in Europe and many other countries. 

Our commitment to innovation means that we’re constantly adding new technologies, while improving those that are already on MyHeritage even further. Today, we’re delighted to announce that we’ve taken our Global Name Translation Technology™ to the next level, and applied it to DNA Matches!

Language can often serve as an obstacle when exploring your origins in a different country. Back in 2015, MyHeritage pioneered Global Name Translation™, a unique technology to help users overcome language barriers as they conduct their family history research. Global Name Translation™ automatically translates names in family trees and historical records from one language to another, enabling users to connect with relatives and locate historical records in different and sometimes unexpected languages. We first applied this technology to search results in our historical record search engine and integrated it into our matching technologies for new information added to family trees. In 2020, we extended Global Name Translation™ to enable cross-language Record Matches. 

This newest application of Global Name Translation™ is great news for users who receive DNA Matches in Greek, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian, or whose display language on MyHeritage is one of those languages. Both will now find the names of their DNA Matches transliterated, either from non-Latin characters to Latin letters (English), or from Latin letters to the selected language on their family site.

How it works

Global Name Translation™ uses advanced algorithms that were developed based on MyHeritage’s vast international database of 18.7 billion historical records. The technology automatically translates names found in family trees, historical records, and now, DNA Matches, with very high accuracy and generates all plausible versions of the name to facilitate matches in different languages. English serves as the common ground behind the scenes. Without modifying data that is entered into MyHeritage and stored in its original language, this technology matches similar names written in different languages with each other. It also utilizes extensive dictionaries built by MyHeritage to cover synonyms and nicknames. 

Let’s say you’re a Greek MyHeritage user who isn’t aware of any family connections in Israel. Suddenly, a DNA Match tells you otherwise, but you can’t read the name of the match because it’s in Hebrew. Until now, not knowing a person’s name or how to address them may have even prevented some users from contacting their matches in the first place. Thanks to this new extension of Global Name Translation™, you’ll be able to read the name of your DNA Match from Israel and contact them using their given name. 

Accessing DNA Matches

To view DNA Matches for any DNA kit that you manage, hover over the DNA tab on the navigation bar and select “DNA Matches”.

You can read a lot more at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/12/new-global-name-translation-for-dna-matches/.

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Have you encountered this problem when researching birth records from 100 years ago or even earlier? In some parts of the U.S., this was a common practice.

I had to smile a bit when reading an article in the Boston Globe published several years ago about the "problem" of incomplete birth records. It seems the city of Boston has many birth records from years ago where the baby's name is simply recorded as “baby girl” or “baby boy.” The reporter wrote, "A generation ago — when more families had six or more children — babies without official first names were surprisingly common. Overwhelmed new parents would leave the hospital without completing birth certificate paperwork."

You can read more in the article by Andrew Ryan in the Boston Globe at: http://bit.ly/2pedZ7w. The same article tells how to amend a record and add a first name by providing documentation. 

Actually, the "problem" is not unique to Boston nor to any particular area of the United States. An experienced genealogist probably can tell you of numerous similar examples. I have seen it many times, especially in the case of my mother and her siblings.

My mother’s birth record at the town clerk’s office in Ashland, Maine, records her first name as “baby girl.” All of her older brothers and sisters were recorded as “baby girl” or “baby boy.” However, the younger siblings (of the 16 children) are recorded with their correct first names. The same is true for many, many other families in the same town, recorded in the same records.

When my mother had to get a Social Security card some years later, it was a minor problem. Since there was no birth record showing her true first name, she had to get affidavits from several people who remembered the event. That wasn’t hard for her since her mother (my grandmother) was still alive at the time and she gladly submitted an affidavit saying that she remembered the event well! Apparently, all of my mother's older brothers and sisters had to do the same when they applied for Social Security cards.

I have heard a number of different stories about why this practice was common, and some of those stories contradict the other stories. As a result, I don’t know what the truth is except that, after reading the town clerk’s records and the records of other town clerks in the area, I do know it was a common practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Boston officials estimated that, in the 1950s, roughly 1 of every 25 birth certificates lacked a first name. I suspect it was even more common in many rural areas in mid-winter.

I will disagree with one statement in Andrew Ryan's article in the Boston Globe: "Overwhelmed new parents would leave the hospital without completing birth certificate paperwork." In the case of my mother, her siblings, and my grandmother, there was no hospital involved. The nearest hospital was more than 20 miles away, a difficult trip at any time of the year and impossible during the winters in northern Maine, where 3 or 4 feet of snow was common and the (dirt) roads were never plowed in the winter. (My mother was born in March.)

My grandmother gave birth to all 16 of her children at home. I suspect some of your ancestors did the same.

Who provided the information to the local town clerk? And when was the information provided? In my mother’s case, the town clerk’s office was “in town,” 5 or 6 miles away. That’s a long ways away over unplowed dirt roads in northern Maine where the snow in March was often more than 4 feet deep!

That was an impossible trip for my grandmother who had just given birth. She also had other children at home that required her care. So she undoubtedly did not provide the information to the town clerk.

My grandfather was not at home at the time as he was working in the woods (he was a French-Canadian lumberjack working in the deep woods of northern Maine. I doubt if he even heard of the birth of his newest child until he returned home in April or May.)

None of the other children supplied the information as they were too young to make such a trip into town in the arduous winter weather conditions.

So, who supplied the information? Unfortunately, the town clerk did not record that fact.

Was it the doctor? Probably not, as I was told that most of these children were born without a doctor in attendance. Was it a midwife or perhaps another, older relative?

I wish I knew.

'My Town, My Story' will help Connecticut public libraries build digital collections of local history and memory

Connecticut Humanities (CTH) has awarded a Partnership Grant of $173,711 to the Connecticut Digital Archive (CTDA) for an exciting new project called My Town, My Story. My Town, My Story is focused specifically on helping Connecticut public libraries build digital collections of local histories and encourage individuals and community groups to contribute to the common memory of their town.

The grant allows the UConn Library to build and market an easy-to-use program to collect local history from communities across Connecticut that can be set up in any public area of a library or similar organization.

“By creating a pre-packaged and ready to use program, we are excited to get the incredibly rich information from people who have not traditionally contributed to building a digital cultural heritage collection,” says Greg Colati, Director of the UConn Library Digital Preservation Repository Program. The wider net cast to collect from community members will broaden the resources being preserved and made available to the people of Connecticut.

You can read more in an article by Jean Cardinale published in the UConn web site at: https://tinyurl.com/y9yhpmeh.