Work is underway to make public again a University of Vermont (UVM) website that was a favorite among historians, teachers, and media sites. The Changing Landscape Archive went online in 1999 and is home to approximately 72,000 images of the state’s landscape over more than a century. According to a UVM statement posted at the landscape archive website, “The site is offline and will remain so until we are able to create a redesign and implementation that meets current standards for development.”

“All 70,000 plus images are inaccessible, but they’re safe,” said the archive’s director, UVM environmental science professor Paul Bierman. At present, he is working with computer programmer Katrina Czar to update the site for public use. “I intend to have the archive back up in a read-only format by the end of the year,” said Czar in a recent email statement, “however, that is contingent on it getting the all-clear from our security team.”

Bierman said he is paying independently for the work to modernize the code of the digital photo archive. “This is a pretty massive undertaking,” he said. “It’s like upgrading things from a version six to a version nine … thousands and thousands of lines of code need to be updated.”

The Changing Landscape Archive was funded with an $800,000 federal grant from both the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Over several years in the early 2000s, UVM students were hired to collect, scan, upload, and write descriptions of photos from all over Vermont designed to show how the state’s landscape has changed. Included in the archive are approximately 32,000 images of the build-out of Vermont’s interstate highway system.

You can read more in an article by Sylvia C. Dodge published in the northstarmonthly web site at: https://tinyurl.com/4cn5cekk.

What remains to be seen about the prospects for a hangar expansion at Lancaster Airport depends on whether there are remains to be seen.

Human remains, that is.

A headstone belonging to Johannes Meister, who settled on land now owned by the airport shortly before the American Revolution, was discovered several years ago on the property, near where new hangars are planned.

The marker for Meister, who died in 1815, is accompanied by other headstones buried nearby, and expansion plans can’t proceed until the airport figures out what to do with the stones and potential remains.

Grave Concern, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Lancaster County’s historical cemeteries, is “95% certain” human remains are near the headstones, according to member Steve Stuart. 

If remains are there, Pennsylvania’s 1994 Historic Burial Places Preservation Act comes into play.

“That’s the threshold question here: Is this a historic burial site or not?” Sam Mecum, attorney for Grave Concern, said during a hearing in county court Tuesday.

The act protects burial grounds that are at least a century old and in which no burials have taken place for at least 50 years. However, gravemarkers and memorials in such places can be moved with court approval.

To find out whether there are remains will take some digging.

A previous effort to determine if human remains were on site proved inconclusive because stones obstructed ground-penetrating radar.

At Tuesday’s hearing, attorneys representing Grave Concern, Meister descendants and Lancaster Airport Authority agreed to go forward with an exploratory dig using an excavating consultant.

That’s “the big unknown,” Judge Jeffrey Reich said. “Are there actual human remains anywhere near there?”

A dig date was not scheduled and could take some time to work out logistically, though Aaron Zeamer, the airport authority’s solicitor, talked of having it done before the ground gets too cold.

Whenever it does happen, a Grave Concern representative can be present, Reich said.

Regardless of whether remains are found, the headstones likely would be moved to Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lititz or Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Warwick Township, according to Zeamer.

You can read more in an article by Dan Nephin published in the lancasteronline web site at: https://tinyurl.com/2pcnbv23.

Here is an article that is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, computer hardware, computer software, and related topics. However, given the politics of these days,  I will suggest that every American should be aware of the lies and misleading stories that are deliberately being posted by political enemies.

I am not going to republish this about this fairy tale. However, if you want to read about the sexual smears and rumors concerning Democratic nominee Kamala Harris that are being spread by her competition, look at: https://www.salon.com/2024/09/09/secretive-right-wing-network-paid-influencers-to-spread-smears-about-kamala-harris-report/

I recommend you first hold your nose before clicking on that link.

The following is a press release writtn by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

WASHINGTON, September 16, 2024 — Today the National Archives launched a new website Declaration250.gov to help the nation join in its journey to celebrate America’s 250th birthday and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The National Archives is planning for a two-year celebration, in coordination with the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, also known as America250, and other federal partners and cultural heritage organizations.

As the home of the Declaration of Independence, the National Archives is planning to play a central role in the nation’s celebration. Under its Declaration250 branding, the National Archives will be celebrating the ideals of equality and liberty enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and commemorating 250 years of United States resilience and the pursuit of happiness.

“Declaration250 is our nationwide celebration, and we invite all Americans to celebrate with us,” said Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan. “From the Road to Revolution to the Spirit of Independence, we’re going to spend the next two years hosting events, discussions, and activities that will salute how far we’ve come as a nation and explore how we can continue to work together to build a more perfect union.”   

The new website will serve as an anchor to all the agency’s Declaration250-related activities over the next two years. Currently the site features signature programming and a countdown to July 4, 2026. 

It also points to a wide range of related National Archives resources, including an America’s Founding Documents page on the Declaration of Independence and a Calendar of Events. Relevant exhibits will also be shared from the website, such as Road to Revolution, which is currently on display in West Rotunda at the National Archives Building.    

“For the next two years, the National Archives will commemorate and celebrate the Declaration of Independence in the nation's capital, at locations around the country and online,” said Shogan. “I invite you to help carry out that spirited charge and join our national celebration. Learn more at Declaration250.gov about our plans for America's biggest birthday yet.”

Visit Declaration250.gov to learn more and to sign up for the newsletter to receive Declaration250 materials and updates.

A very interesting story can be found on the MyHeritage Blog at: https://tinyurl.com/eaxxw4hk

When Elana Milman was 6 years old, one of the children on the kibbutz where she lived let slip a secret. He said that one of the children in the children’s quarters had parents who were not their real parents. For days, Elana tried to get him to tell her who the adopted child was, and finally he admitted: “It’s you.”

Elana confronted her parents the next day. They took her to her favorite spot on the kibbutz, under a mulberry tree, and told her that it was true: they were not her birth parents, but they were the ones who raised her and loved her.

Elana Milman as a child with her adoptive parents

This answer satisfied her at the time, but as she grew older, she developed more and more curiosity about her birth parents. She pressed her parents for information, but it was only when she was 29 and pregnant with her third child that her adoptive mother finally gave her the first nugget of information: her mother’s name was Franziska Lewinska, and Elana was born in Germany.

In 1978, Elana’s husband Dov traveled to Germany for work and seized the opportunity to discuss Elana’s case with a German lawyer, who offered to help. He was able to locate Elana’s original birth certificate, which said that Elana was born Helena Lewinska to a Polish-Jewish woman, indeed named Franziska Lewinska, at the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp in 1947. It also listed her father’s name as Eugeniusz Lewinski.

After meticulous research, Elana was able to track down her birth mother, who had married and changed her name, in Canada. She went to visit and even to live there with her family for a year, and Elana was able to develop a close relationship with her birth mother — then called Franka — before her death in the 1980s. Franka shared with Elana that she had survived the Holocaust by escaping the Warsaw Ghetto and assuming a false identity. But she refused to tell Elana who her father was, and every search Elana tried based on the name on her birth certificate hit a dead end.

“Every time I quizzed my mother — like, what happened to her during the war and who was my father — she gave me different stories,” she told CNN in a recent interview. “When I bugged her too much, she said, ‘The only thing I can tell you is that he was a very good singer and dancer — and very handsome.’”

Elana accepted that she would probably never know who her father was. She wrote an autobiography — later adapted into a historical novel in English called The Secrets My Mother Kept — and after publishing it, she was interviewed in an Israeli magazine. MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet happened to read the article, and he forwarded it to the MyHeritage Research team asking if there was anything they could do to help.

The (shortened) story is that Elana eventually learned more about her father and also that she had a brother, a fact she had never known. Even better, she eventually met her brother and together they visited the grave of their now deceased father,

Elana Milman and her bother, Juliusz Gorzkoś, at their father’s grave

You can read the full story at:  https://tinyurl.com/eaxxw4hk and even watch a video on CNN television at https://tinyurl.com/48cyvmb4.

The Sullivan County History Museum needs your help. The museum says it has thousands of photos with no labels or information. It's asking people to take a look and see if they recognize the people or places in the photos.

The museum curator says many people use these historic photos in their genealogy research. She hopes identifying these photos will help give families a more complete history.

“If I had photos out there of my family history, I would want to know about that. I would be really sad if I lost that part of my family history. And there is potentially someone out there who has lost that history,” said Katiesha Benson, museum curator.

You can view some of the unknown photos on the history museum's Facebook page. The museum also invites you to stop by during the Corn Festival this week to look at the photos in person.

In 1980 a 23-year-old woman was shot multiple times by an unknown assailant in a small county in central Kansas.

44 years later, the county sheriff made a Facebook post. Over the years, dozens of law enforcement officers looked at the case to no avail. In mid-2022 I was approached by Detective Sgt. Adam Hales to reopen the case using new techniques and technology that were now available at the time of the murder. In all honesty, it was with some degree of skepticism that I authorized the expenditure of manpower and resources. Many of the witnesses as well as law enforcement officers that were originally involved in the case had died and interviews were not possible.

A statement from the Kansas attorney general's office says the police investigation culminated with an interview with Steven Hanks, a neighbor of the woman, who admitted to the killing. Hanks (who is now 70 years old) was arrested and charged with murder and second-degree, according to the county sheriff's Facebook post.

Hanks has been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Dallas office is reaching into the toolbox of technology to solve crimes, with a particular emphasis on Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG). This modern method intertwines the science of genetics with the traditional sleuth work of genealogy, aiding agents to track down culprits who've long evaded capture. Embracing this innovation, the FBI Dallas has established a dedicated team whose focus is tirelessly utilizing IGG to unravel cold cases and bring closure to mysteries.

The FBI's appeal to the public is a crucial aspect of this process. By submitting genetic information to public databases, citizens have the power to indirectly assist in these investigations. This method relies heavily on the availability of such data, making community cooperation an indispensable component. The FBI Dallas has clearly stated, "we can't do it alone and need the public's assistance," an acknowledgment that the lineage of justice is not solely in the hands of the authorities but also in the strands of the public's DNA.

The effectiveness of IGG in crime solving has been underscored by its role in high-profile cases across the country, including the identification of the notorious Golden State Killer. In these instances, IGG has proven to be a beacon of hope, illuminating paths to mysteries that were once shrouded in shadows. It is not only a tool for law enforcement but a symbol of the interconnectedness between individuals and the larger narrative of our communal existence.

As advancements in IGG continue to evolve, ethical discussions about privacy, consent, and the boundaries of law enforcement's reach into personal data are sparking up. While there is broad acknowledgment regarding the potential of IGG to deliver long-overdue justice, these conversations are imperative to ensure that the eagerness to embrace such technologies doesn't infringe upon the rights and liberties we hold dear. It's a tightrope walk where balance must be meticulously maintained.

I first wrote about this story 2 weeks ago at: https://eogn.com/page-18080/13402660. However, a new article at https://tinyurl.com/d86x23uc provides additional information. 

Research shows 25% of web pages posted between 2013 and 2023 have vanished. A few organisations are racing to save the echoes of the web, but new risks threaten their very existence.

It's possible, thanks to surviving fragments of papyrus, mosaics and wax tablets, to learn what Pompeiians ate for breakfast 2,000 years ago. Understand enough Medieval Latin, and you can learn how many livestock were reared at farms in Northumberland in 11th Century England – thanks to the Domesday Book, the oldest document held in the UK National Archives. Through letters and novels, the social lives of the Victorian era – and who they loved and hated – come into view.

But historians of the future may struggle to understand fully how we lived our lives in the early 21st Century. That's because of a potentially history-deleting combination of how we live our lives digitally – and a paucity of official efforts to archive the world's information as it's produced these days.

However, an informal group of organisations are pushing back against the forces of digital entropy – many of them operated by volunteers with little institutional support. None is more synonymous with the fight to save the web than the Internet Archive, an American non-profit based in San Francisco, started in 1996 as a passion project by internet pioneer Brewster Kahl. The organisation has embarked what may be the most ambitious digital archiving project of all time, gathering 866 billion web pages, 44 million books, 10.6 million videos of films and television programmes and more. Housed in a handful of data centres scattered across the world, the collections of the Internet Archive and a few similar groups are the only things standing in the way of digital oblivion.

"The risks are manifold. Not just that technology may fail, but that certainly happens. But more important, that institutions fail, or companies go out of business. News organisations are gobbled up by other news organisations, or more and more frequently, they're shut down," says Mark Graham, director of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a tool that collects and stores snapshots of websites for posterity. There are numerous incentives to put content online, he says, but there's little pushing companies to maintain it over the long term.

Despite the Internet Archive's achievements thus far, the organisation and others like it face financial threats, technical challenges, cyberattacks and legal battles from businesses who dislike the idea of freely available copies of their intellectual property. And as recent court losses show, the project of saving the internet could be just as fleeting as the content it's trying to protect.

"More and more of our intellectual endeavours, more of our entertainment, more of our news, and more of our conversations exist only in a digital environment," Graham says. "That environment is inherently fragile."

Saving our history

A quarter of all web pages that existed at some point between 2013 and 2023 now… don't. That's according to a recent study by Pew Research Center, a think tank based in Washington, DC, which raised the alarm of our disappearing digital history. Researchers found the problem is more acute the older a web page is: 38% of web pages that Pew tried to access that existed in 2013 no longer function. But it's also an issue for more recent publications. Some 8% of web pages published at some point 2023 were gone by October that same year.

This isn't just a concern for history buffs and internet obsessives. According to the study, one in five government websites contains at least one broken link. Pew found more than half of Wikipedia articles have a broken link in their references section, meaning the evidence backing up the online encyclopaedia's information is slowly disintegrating.

You can read more in an article by Chris Stokel-Walker published in the BBC web site at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20240912-the-archivists-battling-to-save-the-internet.