On September 18, the “Holocaust Survivors of South Jersey” digital archive and website were officially unveiled to the public. The webpage was launched on Stockton’s Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center website. This project started in 2019 when the Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton University (Holocaust Resource Center) realized no database existed to track the Holocaust survivors of South Jersey who have lived in Atlantic, Cape May, and Cumberland counties. They took on the enormous task of creating their own database, which will be an important resource for future generations looking to learn about our local history.

Now, there is an extensive digital archive documenting the Holocaust survivors’ stories that can be accessed at the Holocaust Resource Center (at stockton.edu/holocaust-resource/sjhsp.html) or by special arrangement. The university-launched website presents brief life stories of Holocaust survivors as well as profiles of South Jersey businesses owned and operated by local Holocaust survivors. The archives and the websites will continue to grow as more information and documents become available.

The “Holocaust Survivors of South Jersey Project” of the Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton University aims to document the life stories of Jewish Holocaust survivors who lived in Atlantic, Cape May, and Cumberland counties. What started with just 125 names in 2019 quickly grew to 1,503 names that the Center’s research team has identified in these three counties.

You can read more in an article by Jordan Posner published in the jewishvoicesnj.org web site at: https://bit.ly/3MadBBF.

To view the new website, please visit stockton.edu/holocaust-resource/sjhsp.html.

Justin Hauge co-founded the “Storied Collection,” a company in England that connects travelers with stays in “historic and ancestral properties.”

There are 28 properties across England, Ireland, and Scotland that represent a combined 11,291 years of history. The Storied Collection team looked at the ages of the properties, the number of families who had owned them, and the average number offspring per generation, and estimated that more than 80 million people could be descendants of once-owners of the various luxury lodgings.

Those properties range from 13th-century castles to country manors to full-on hotels and fortresses. These aren’t your standard properties, unless you’re used to sleeping in stone towers and rooms with floor-to-ceiling tapestries and fireplaces. But if you find out you’re one of that huge number of people who may have royal blood, you may want to consider booking a trip to the castle where your ancestors once ruled the roost.

For example, if you’re a Thornbury, Tutor, deClare, Stafford, Howard, Boleyn, or Aragon, you’ve got some ancestral history at Thornbury Castle where you can sleep in the room of Henry VIII and the doomed Anne Boleyn. Its history dates to 1019. It was a home for Henry VIII and wife Anne Boleyn (in happier days, one assumes) and was owned by several key players in the game-changing War of the Roses in the mid-1400s. And at least one plot to murder a traitor to King Richard III took place within the castle’s walls.

Today, however, it’s a downright gorgeous castle with 15 acres of gardens and opportunities to sleep in the room shared by King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn or sleep in the tower used by Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England from 1509 to 1533. As with many of Henry VII’s wives, she was beheaded — but not in the tower, one assumes. Oh, and if you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s, you may have memories of a rumor: say “Bloody Mary” three times in a bathroom mirror and she’ll appear behind you. While that has yet to work at any sleepover, the actual “Bloody Mary” (Queen Mary I) did own this castle in the early 1530s.

You can read a lot more about this and other properties in an article by Suzie Dundas published in the Matador Network web site at: https://matadornetwork.com/read/castle-hotel/.

The “Storied Collection” may be found at: https://storiedcollection.com/.

Donna K. Fitzgerald writes a genealogy column for the Crossville (Tennessee) Chronicle newspaper. Her latest column focuses on the USGenWeb Project and provides so much background information that it undoubtedly will add to your knowledge of the service.

She writes:

"Well known as a free resource for genealogy, The USGenWeb Project (www.usgenweb.org) is a volunteer-driven organization. Each website under the USGenWeb umbrella is individually created and maintained.

"In addition, there are special projects and even a USGenWeb Kidz Project featuring children’s history and genealogy, an excellent resource for teachers.

"There is a large cadre of volunteers at the state and county levels. USGenWeb.org has been named one of Family Tree Magazine’s Best Websites since 2000 and is a recommended resource by the National Genealogical Society and various online genealogical newsletters and organizations.

"The USGenWeb Project has thousands of sites and millions of web pages. It is used by several million visitors annually.""

You can read more and expand your knowledge at: https://bit.ly/3EjIscT.

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

Washington, DC

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has posted a draft Customer Research Agenda and requests feedback from public and government customers, stakeholders, staff, and colleagues in the archival, historical, and records management communities.

The draft Customer Research Agenda is open for review and comment through October 21, 2022.

To view the draft, visit Archives.gov. Submit comments by email to customer_experience@nara.gov.

“Your collective experience with us matters, and we are working to better serve you,” said Stephanie Bogan, Chief Customer Experience Officer.

NARA will review and consider comments received by October 21, 2022, prior to finalizing its Customer Research Agenda. The final Agenda will be published on Archives.gov and updated annually.

“As published in NARA’s Strategic Goal 2:  Connect with Customers and Action Plan to Advance Customer Experience at NARA, we are deeply committed to learning directly from our customers and working together to design and deliver equitable and effective services for all,” Bogan said.

NARA is developing its Customer Research Agenda to guide the agency’s customer research and service improvement efforts. Its customer research will center on deepening the agency’s understanding of the wants, needs, and expectations that individuals, organizations, and communities have when interacting with the National Archives. In alignment with agency-wide efforts to expand NARA’s reach and access, the draft Customer Research Agenda includes questions that explicitly focus on helping NARA understand how the agency can expand access and participation. NARA’s goal is to ensure that its services are available to all, including groups that have been historically disadvantaged or excluded.

The draft Agenda is an important step toward achieving NARA’s Strategic Goal 2: Connect with Customers. These efforts also support government-wide initiatives to improve federal customer experience and service equity as represented in the President’s Management Agenda, Executive Order 13985, Executive Order 14058, and the Office of Management and Budget’s A-11 Circular §280.

The following is a press release from the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center:

The Encyclopedia of Chicago is a joint production of the Chicago Historical Society, the Newberry Library, and Northwestern University. The online web site includes thousands of historical resources, including articles, photographs, maps, broadsides, and newspapers, all related to Chicago's colorful and complex history.

I found it very easy to navigate. Of course, the test of any online web site of historical information is its contents. Indeed, the Encyclopedia of Chicago has thousands of pages of information for all to see. I found items about the Labor Unrest in Chicago from April 25 - May 4, 1886, maps of Prairie Avenue where many of Chicago's wealthiest citizens lived in the 1880s, including George M. Pullman (of the Pullman railroad cars), Marshall Field (Chicago's richest man), John G. Shortall among others. The map is fully interactive; you can zoom in and out as well as move north, south, east, or west with the mouse. Other items I noted included many historical photographs, essays on ice fishing, essays on Chicago's gangsters of the 1930s, descriptions and maps of cemeteries, and much more.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago is a great resource for Chicago residents as well as anyone with Chicago ancestry. While it doesn't provide lists of births, marriages, and deaths, it does give great insights into the world in which your ancestors lived.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago is available free of charge to everyone. To access it, go to http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org.

One hundred years ago, the University of Vermont launched the state’s first radio station, which eventually became WCAX, TV channel 3. In honor of this milestone, today Secretary of State Jim Condos and State Archivist Tanya Marshall announced that the theme for Vermont Archives Month this October is ‘communication,’ to showcase the myriad ways people have conveyed information to each other over time.

“At a time when our civic discourse is more divisive than any time I have experienced in my lifetime, this year’s Archives Month theme of ‘communication,’ could not be more fitting or important,” said Secretary Condos. This theme was selected in recognition of the critical role communication plays in how successfully we all live and work together.”

“The transition from relying on textual records like pamphlets and newspapers for information sharing to broadcasting, first by radio and then television, is especially fascinating,” added State Archivist Marshall.

The Vermont State Archives & Records Administration, a division of the Secretary of State’s Office, will host an open house from 5 to 7 PM on October 27 featuring behind-the-scenes tours and an exhibit titled “Getting the Message Out (and In).”

The public records on display will have a three-pronged focus: how state government conveys information the public needs to know, how the public interacts with the government, and how the state markets itself outside of Vermont. Additional events for public agency partners will be held the week of October 10 in recognition of Electronic Records Day.

Other historical records repositories around the state will also be hosting events, most notably the recently reorganized Montpelier Historical Society. They will hold a public forum on October 22 from 2 to 4 PM in the Pavilion Auditorium entitled “The Golden Age of Vermont State News Coverage,” which they identify as the era from 1960 to 2000. Anne Galloway will moderate a discussion with several long-time reporters, editors, and bureau chiefs.

More information about Vermont Archives Month, including the schedule of events, can be found online at www.vtarchivesmonth.org(link is external). Inquiries can also be directed to the Vermont Historical Records Program at sos.vhrp@vermont.gov(link sends e-mail).

It was December of 2014, and Michael Usry had no idea why a pair of Louisiana State police officers showed up at his New Orleans home, asking him to accompany them to the precinct for questioning.

He was even more confused when an FBI agent asked to swab his cheek for DNA.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” Usry, now 43, tells The Post. “I was like, ‘Am I being accused of a crime? Do I need a lawyer?’ ”

It was only later that Usry, a low-budget filmmaker, learned he was a suspect in the 1996 murder of 18-year-old Angie Dodge. There were a few things that pointed to him: He’d visited Idaho Falls, Idaho, where the victim was killed, during the same time frame of the murder. He had directed a 2010 film called “Murderabilia,” which — according to the search warrant — “dealt with some sort of homicide or killings.”

But the main reason cops showed up on Usry’s doorstep was his DNA. When genetic evidence from the crime scene didn’t match anything in the national law-enforcement database, the police ran a familial DNA search on Ancestry.com, the world’s largest for-profit genealogy company.

They found a close match between semen found at the murder scene and the DNA of Usry’s dad, who had donated his saliva to Ancestry as part of a genealogy project with his church. When the elder Usry was deemed too old to be a suspect, it led detectives to his son. Although the younger Usry had never used Ancestry or any other genealogy service, his dad’s DNA was enough for a judge to issue a warrant.

Even after Usry’s DNA was tested and his name cleared — which took weeks — he didn’t rest easy.

You can read more in an article by Eric Spitznagel and published in the New York Post web site at: https://nypost.com/2022/10/01/how-police-can-use-your-dna-to-solve-crimes-without-consent/