The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University is home to collections of archives and papers created by some of the most studied authors and poets of the past century, including many of Ireland’s most inspiring writers. This globally significant collection — with papers from Seamus Heaney, W. B. Yeats, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Rita Ann Higgins, Edna O’Brien, Thomas Kinsella and Medbh McGuckian — is one of the Rose Library’s best-known collections.

Currently, researchers and students must visit the Rose Library in person to use many of the collections, as with most literary archives. In-person use is a challenge for researchers who are not on campus — and especially for the hundreds who travel across the U.S. and the world to use the materials.

A virtual reading room would help make it possible for researchers to access collections without requiring travel.

You can read more in an article in Emory’s web site at: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2023/11/er_mellon_grant_02-11-2023/story.html 

The following is a press release from the Society of Genealogists:

The Society of Genealogists is delighted to announce the opening of their new home at 40 Wharf Road N1 7GS. From Wednesday 13^th to Friday 22^nd December 2023, they’ll be hosting an exclusive Member Only opening, with access to Non-Members beginning Wednesday 3^rd January 2024.

Created by genealogists, for genealogists, the Society of Genealogists is the perfect place to come to research your family history, whether you are a beginner or a seasoned expert. The Society’s new Research Hub encompasses an archive, library, and computers with access to a wide range of genealogical sites. An established FamilySearch Affiliate Library, Wharf Road offers a fantastic friendly space for exploring your family history in the company of fellow genealogists and expert staff. Located in the heart of the historic canal landscape of North London, and easily accessible from a variety of tube stations and bus routes, please see their website https://www.sog.org.uk/visit-us for full details on how best to plan your visit.

We also have an organisational update for you: 

After a year as Interim CEO and overseeing our soon to be opening new home at Wharf Road, Patrick Barker is waving a fond farewell to the Society of Genealogists in December.

Existing SoG team members, Rebecca Gregory and Natalie Pithers are delighted to announce they will be stepping into Interim Co-CEO roles. Natalie, previously responsible for Project and Communications Management, has been an avid genealogist since her teenage years. Rebecca has been a member of the SoG team for 3 years as Head of Membership and has overseen many developments in our membership packages and services. Both Rebecca and Natalie are excited to be a part of both SoG’s history and future.

“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Society of Genealogists. The Staff and Members alike have made me feel extremely welcome, and their passion for the past has been contagious! Whilst I am sad to be leaving, I am thrilled to be handing over the reins to two people so dedicated to the SoG’s mission to help people discover and explore their heritage”. – Patrick Barker.

Here we have new papers from the North Carolina Collection that have never been microfilmed! The North Carolina Collection originated in 1844 and is the largest traditional collection of library materials for any state. Learn more about the NCC here!

These additions include:

• The Courier (Asheboro, N.C.) – 1917-1918
• The Randolph Herald (Asheborough, N.C.) – 1848
• The Daily Advance (Asheville, N.C.) – 1884
• The Mountain Voice (Bakersville, N.C.) – 1881
• Our Fatherless Ones (Barium Springs, N.C.) – 1903-1912
• The Blowing Rocket (Blowing Rock, N.C.) – 1942
• The Chapel Hillian (Chapel Hill, N.C.) – 1890-1891
• The Clarkton Express (Clarkton, N.C.) – 1907
• Recorder and North Carolina Tobacco Journal (Durham, N.C.) – 1883
• The Daily News (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1865
• Goldsboro Daily Argus (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1889-1892
• The Eastern Reflector (Greenville, N.C.) – 1898
• The Henderson Times (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1863
• The Western North Carolina Times (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1896
• The Daily Free Press (Kinston, N.C.) – 1908-1909
• The Laurinburg Enterprise (Laurinburg, N.C.) – 1881
• The Monroe Enquirer (Monroe, N.C.) – 1875-1881
• Ocracoke Island Beacon (Ocracoke, N.C.) – 1941
• The Orphans’ Friend and Masonic Journal (Oxford, N.C.) – 1881-1912
• The Church Intelligencer (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1862-1865
• The Menagerie (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1857
• The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1877
• The Friend and Templar (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1880
• Semi-Weekly Standard (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1865
• The Star, and North-Carolina State Gazette (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1818
• The Reidsville Times (Reidsville, N.C.) – 1882
• The Roanoke-Chowan Times (Rich Square, N.C.) – 1907-1910
• The Rockingham Rocket (Rockingham, N.C.) – 1887
• Salisbury Evening Post (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1906
• The Daily Union Banner (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1866
• Shelby Review (Shelby, N.C.) – 1893
• The Sandhill Citizen (Southern Pines, N.C.) – 1917
• The Daily Landmark (Statesville, N.C.) – 1879
• The Wadesboro Intelligencer (Wadesboro, N.C.) – 1886
• The Dew Drop (Wadesborough, N.C.) – 1853
• The Colonist (Warm Springs, N.C.) – 1870-1871
• The Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1908
• Wilmington Chronicle (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1849
• The Wilmington Herald (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1854-1855
• Wilmington Journal (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1880-1894

The following is an announcement written by the Hartford History Center:

The Hartford History Center at Hartford Public Library was recently awarded an $18,830 National Film Preservation Foundation grant to restore and digitize a collection of early 20th-century films by radio pioneer, inventor, and Hartford resident Hiram Percy Maxim.

The films, which will be available on the Connecticut Digital Archive within the next year, feature Maxim and his wife, along with their family and friends.

Hartford is recorded in many ways, including footage of flooding in November 1927 and the view from the city’s first air mail plane. Maxim, according to the website ConnecticutHistory.org, “earned patents for his inventions in automotive design, noise abatement, and other fields. Also a passionate hobbyist, he left his mark on early aviation and wireless radio.”

Maxim’s broadly recognized achievements, ConnecticutHistory.org points out, “brought fame to Hartford, where he made his home from 1899 until his death in 1936.”  Among his noteworthy achievements was a role in the start of the American Radio Relay League, the national association for amateur radio, which to this day has its national headquarters in nearby Newington.

Maxim was born in Brooklyn, New York, and first came to Hartford in the 1890’s to work for the Pope Manufacturing Company, helping design the Columbia electric motor carriage. He later founded his own firm, creating the Maxim Silencer for firearms and adapting the technology to be used in early automobile mufflers.

The Hartford History Center at the Downtown Library, is located at 500 Main Street, Hartford. (The Downtown Library is temporarily closed due to water damage.)

The following announcement was written by the Wyoming State Library:

The Wyoming Digital Newspaper Collection has added five prison newspapers to its database. Titles include Best Scene, J-A-B-S, Wyoming State Honor Farm, Wyoming Pen, and The New Approach. These newspapers span from 1915 to 1992 and give insight into the daily lives of those in the prison system.

“Providing the titles provides a different aspect of Wyoming history,” said Travis Pollok, Wyoming State Library Legislative Librarian.

These collections of newspapers were all written, edited and published by those in the prison system. Topics range from entertainment pieces to local news. Local news from these articles include prices, agricultural information, and government and school events. On the entertainment side, newspapers include opinion columns, poetry, and short stories.

The New Approach from April 1992

To read more from these collections, visit the Wyoming Digital Newspaper Collection, located at https://wyomingnewspapers.org/. One may also enjoy other unique newspaper collections such as Heart Mountain, Wingspan, and P.O.W.

The following is an announcement written by Library and Archives Canada:

In August 2018, Library and Archives Canada finished digitizing more than 600,000 service files of Canadians who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the First World War. We’re pleased to announce that these files have been integrated into our main database, Collection Search, and are now available through a new landing page.

This change brings a number of improvements from the old database search experience. For example, you can now use filters to focus your research more closely and easily. In addition, the improved wildcard search function means that your research can continue even if you are unsure of a name or its spelling—for example, “Fran*” can lead you to results for “Frank” or “Francis.” Finally, the landing page has an integrated image viewer, which means that you can now see all of the images directly on the results page rather than individually.

Don’t forget to check out our tips and research strategies, located at the bottom of the page! 

You may also want to consider creating an account that allows you to save records of interest to revisit later.

We will close the old standalone database in the relatively near future and redirect users to the new search interface. We will give users time to adapt to the new search experience in the coming months and recommend that you update your bookmarks in the meantime. To provide feedback about the Collection Search experience, please email us your comments. 

As we celebrate this accomplishment, we’d like to take a moment to recognize the contributions of the Friends of LAC, who help improve the accessibility of these files by transcribing additional information as part of LAC’s Co-Lab initiative.

As Canada’s national memory institution, this update makes our military history more available to everyone and it is one part of our work this month to honour those who served this country in times of war and peace.

Deacon Phillip W. Ravenel knows the history of the church he grew up attending. He knows Lovely Mountain Baptist Church is 135 years old and his great-grandfather, who helped build it, was part of the congregation that first formed in a small tent.

Many stories and memories can be shared by church members, along with physical keepsakes, but the small Black church in North Charleston does not have a system in place to record and archive its history.  

“Nobody thought about putting them in a safe storage space so a couple of generations from now we can look back and say, ‘This is how the church got started and these are the folks that attended it,’” Ravenel said. 

Lovely Mountain Baptist Church is just one of several Black churches in the Charleston area that doesn’t have a formal documentation system in place.

This is why Minister Lisa Robinson and Minister Anna Montgomery, who attend Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, hosted a conference to help Black churches start the archival process. 

Nearly 20 church leaders and members heard from archivists and preservation experts about best practices for documenting a church’s history during the Nov. 4 virtual conference. 

You can read more in an article by Kenna Coe published in The Post and Courier web site at: https://tinyurl.com/yhd23fhr.

Would you want this to happen in a cemetery where your loved ones are buried?

A lawsuit was filed on Friday on behalf of nearly 400 plaintiffs with loved ones buried at the Tildenville Oakland Cemetery in Oakland, Florida. The Tildenville Oakland Cemetery was established in 1947.

The lawsuit echoes concerns that have been voiced for the past several years. The lawsuit alleges the developer’s of a nearby subdivision constructed an additional entrance roadway, which detoured drainage in the area. The 380 families allege the water is now being dumped into the cemetery. Relatives describe graves and remains being submerged above ground after flooding.

It says the developer’s “approval and construction of the culvert to divert runoff water from the new drive into Longleaf at Oakland and dump the water, instead, into the Oakland Tildenville cemetery, the defendants desecrated the resting places of the families and the loved ones.”

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

Ahead of Remembrance Sunday in the UK, when we remember the two world wars and later conflicts, TheGenealogist is marking Armistice Day by adding to its collection of Military records.

This release of over 40,000 Rolls of Honour, over 65,000 Medal awards and over 1.5 Million War Memorial Records significantly adds to the suite of fully searchable Military records on this family history website.

The new War Memorials can be searched from the TheGenealogist’s Master Search or by locating the memorial on the georeferenced maps displayed on their Map Explorer™, which also lets you search the area around where your ancestor lived.

[Attack on a Merchantman by Enemy Submarines]

For those with ancestors who were mariners and served in the Merchant Navy or Fishing Fleets, the Rolls of Honour and Medal Awards from The National Archives Series BT 339 will be especially poignant. 

The Rolls of Honour name the deceased and missing-presumed-dead from the ranks of the merchant marine fleets and fishing trawler crews who were employed on minesweeping and patrol duties during World War II (1939-1945) and further years up to 1953.

The list of Medal Awards from 1866 to 1970 includes Mercantile Mariners recognised for gallantry and service. Among these honours is the Albert Medal, initially awarded for saving lives at sea.

Additionally, the Mercantile Marine Officers Nominal List 1916-1920 records recipients of the Order of the British Empire, Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Service Medal, along with issues of the London Gazette listing many other medals (such as the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal and Commendations) citing the deeds of gallantry these Mercantile Marines performed. The images of these records include the details of these deeds, some of which reveal intriguing stories of shipwrecks, shark attacks and gallant heroes.

Read TheGenealogist’s feature article: Rolls of Honour for Unsung Heroes of the Rolling Sea

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/rolls-of-honour-reveal-unsung-heroes-of-the-rolling-sea-6860/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, which puts 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 and 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!

This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it is important news for those of us who value our online privacy in order to protect ourselves from hackers, ransom thieves, credit card thieves, and government spies:

Encrypted messaging service Signal is now testing usernames, which will offer people a more private way to share their contact details on the app. Signal kicked off the public test today through a new beta build available in its community forums. "After rounds of internal testing, we have hit the point where we think the community that powers these forums can help us test even further before public launch," says Signal VP of Engineering Jim O'Leary.