Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com:   

NOTE#1: This is a repeat article from a year or so ago. The question arose again today because of an email message from a newsletter reader. I suspect other people have similar questions so I decided to re-publish this article again for those (unknown) people.

NOTE#2: This article has nothing to do with genealogy. If you are looking for genealogy-related information, I suggest you skip this article.

NOTE#3: For me, this has almost become a new religion: I try to avoid as much printing as possible. Instead, I publish to PDF files (and occasional other formats) and save it to a private space I pay for in the cloud. As a result, I can quickly and easily find anything, even years later, by searching for it electronically. This works even when I am traveling overseas. I find it faster and easier to search for things electronically rather than pawing through reams of paper.

If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, you probably already know that I am a fanatic for going paperless. Life without paper is good! Also, life without paper can save a lot of time and frustration when later trying to locate and retrieve items.

For instance, a few months ago, I traveled and stayed in a hotel room in Anchorage, Alaska. If I wanted a document or some other bit of information I saved in an earlier week or even in an earlier year, I could quickly retrieve it from my paperless filing system, even from Alaska. Try doing that with paper! To retrieve anything from paper files when needed, I would need to carry a 4-drawer or larger filing cabinet as my carry-on luggage on the plane!

Aaron Couch published an article on the MakeUseOf web site several years ago that describes the easier ways to convert to a paperless existence. Admittedly, I only found the article recently and am impressed with it.

Aaron writes:

"Paperless – a term that is used quite often now days. But what does it mean? And to what extent does it apply? Certainly we all still use paper to some degree despite the advancements in technology, so how can we go completely paperless?

"Well, the truth is, there will likely always be some form of paper, but the problem doesn’t lie in using paper itself, but instead having awareness for the amount used and methods of which it is being used for."

He then describes:

• Alternatives To Printing & Paper Notes
• Print To PDF
• Save As WWF, Save A Tree
• Electronically Sign Documents
• Use Your Smartphone For Notes
• Clip Webpages Instead Of Printing Them
• Cutting Down On [Snail] Mail
• Get Your Bank Statements Via Email
• Fill Out Forms Online
• Email Invoices (For Businesses)
• Get Your News & Information Online
• Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists
• Pay Your Bills Online
• Scan Existing & New Documents
• Use A File Organizer, Preferably With OCR
• Sync Your Documents Across All Devices
• Conclusion: Helpful Methods To Adopt

If you would like to simplify your life, start by reading The Future Is Here – Your Guide to Having a Paperless Life Today by Aaron Couch at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/future-guide-paperless-life-today/. A related video, How to go Paperless with a Digital Filing System, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7VJopCHem0.

Also see my earlier article, Possibly the Best (?) Document Scanner for Home and Office Use, at: https://www.eogn.com/page-18080/12284742.

Most people are warned before taking a DNA test that occasionally there are unwelcome "surprises" in the results. One such surprise was recently documented.

A couple in Salt Lake City recently took a DNA test to learn more about their heritage. The results claimed there were more questions. The results said that the husband was the father of the couple's eldest son, but the father of their youngest was unknown.

You can read the full story by Kate Graham as published in The U.S. Sun web site at: https://tinyurl.com/3ubs697a.

What's in YOUR genes?

An article by Esther Linder published in the abc.net.au web site describes how historians, genealogists, and others almost lost a valuable collection of records:

A historical society in Melbourne's east is racing to preserve thousands of photographs that were almost destroyed in a freak accident.

The Box Hill Historical Society's collection came close to destruction in April last year, after rewiring works in the town hall building caused a humidifier to malfunction, increasing the humidity levels within the archive's rooms to nearly 90 per cent.

Lead archivist Helen Harris had stopped by the archive on a Saturday and found condensation dripping through the building and paint beginning to melt.

"It's every archivist's worst nightmare, to open a door and find condensation running down the walls," she said.

"We had stuff spread out in other rooms [to dry]. It's an entire archive, it's too much to take out."

Whitehorse City Council paid for a conservator to review the damage, who confirmed how close the archive was to being lost.

Had the fault been discovered a day or two later, the delicate documents, papers and photographs of the archive would have been destroyed beyond repair.

The digitisation drive will become part of Victorian Collections, a state-wide catalogue that is available online, run by Museums Victoria and the Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria as a record of the state's past. Funding for the program is provided by the state government through Creative Victoria.

As an area rich in history ranging from the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, early European settlement in the 1830s, to the migration boom of Chinese-Australians in the last few decades, the treasures within the archive are numerous.

There is more to the article at: https://tinyurl.com/mpk77mza.

This is the second installment of a multi-part article. 

First of all, I'll offer a short follow-up to last week's article: I kept using the word "you" in that article. As a newsletter reader pointed out , "you" can be either singular or plural.

You can start this business by yourself, with a partner, with your family, with a local genealogical or historical society, or with any others who share your interest in electronically republishing old books and extracts from records. In fact, e-publishing is an excellent method for genealogy societies to republish old books and records at low cost. The society can provide a valuable service as well as earn a revenue stream that may be difficult to duplicate elsewhere. 

Last week's article focused on the mechanics of scanning old books and other documents, converting them to computer files and (optionally) CD-ROM disks. This week I will describe practical methods of advertising and selling the information. In the next article, I will describe methods of collecting payment. 

When looking for genealogy information, any computer-savvy genealogist will always look on the Internet. That genealogist is a potential buyer. Therefore, sellers of genealogy information always need a web presence. Luckily, this is relatively easy to do and is also quite inexpensive. There are many web hosting services available that will provide a web site for as little as $5.00 a month.

You can already find a number of web sites created by vendors who republish old genealogy books on CD-ROM disks. Of course, CD-ROMs are a technology that is now disappearing. Many desktop computers and almost all laptop computers are now sold without CD-ROM drives. The newer technology is selling digital copies of old books as “ebooks.” That is, digital files. These are typically sold on the World Wide Web with delivery handled online within seconds after the purchaser makes payment for the ebook.

Creating your own online shopping web site will quickly create two major challenges: advertising and payments. Neither problem is insurmountable. In fact, there are interconnected solutions for each. The easiest method of advertising is to find out where your customers are already looking, and then offer your wares in that location.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: 

https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13204270.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

TheGenealogist has added to its Headstone Collection copies of records from certain local authorities and the Church Commissioners that relate to the removal of graves and tombstones in burial grounds. These records are held by The National Archives.

They detail former cemeteries from all over England and Wales and cover the years 1619 to 2003. A number contain a plan of the original place of burial while some will reveal the place of reinterment also.

An example of transcription of a headstone removed in TheGenealogist’s RG 37 records

Headstones are an extremely useful record for the family historian as they can give the researcher information that has not been recorded elsewhere. 

They are mostly accurate in revealing dates and names and often other family members are on the same tombstone or are buried close by. 

When a grave or headstone has been removed then a record of the inscription may have been recorded in this particular recordset.

The Removal of Graves and Tombstones records on TheGenealogist are part of their Death & Burials – Headstone Collection and are searchable by: 

    • the deceased’s name

    • year of death

    • place of original burial

    • any keyword that may have been included

Details from a search of TheGenealogist’s Death & Burials records

The origin of these RG 37 official records of burial ground removals can be traced back to 1911 and a recommendation was made by the Attorney General that such records be made and deposited with the local registrar of births and deaths. The Registrar General suggested to the Home Secretary of the time that the records should be deposited with the miscellaneous records held by the General Register Office instead of at the local registrar. 

If your ancestor was buried in one of the burial grounds to have been recorded in this release then, despite the headstone no longer standing, you will be able to discover details about your ancestor recorded on their tombstone at the time it had been originally erected.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: A not so final resting place: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/a-not-so-final-resting-place-1813/.

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, 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!

Your (very) distant ancestors probably did not originate where you thought they did.

A new model for human evolution asserts that modern Homo sapiens stemmed from multiple genetically diverse populations across Africa rather than a single ancestral population. This conclusion was reached after researchers analyzed genetic data from present-day African populations, including 44 newly sequenced genomes from the Nama group of southern Africa. The research suggests that the earliest detectable split in early human populations occurred between 120,000 to 135,000 years ago, after long periods of genetic intermixing, and that subsequent migrations created a weakly structured genetic stem. Contrary to some previous models, this research implies that contributions from archaic hominins were unlikely to have significantly affected Homo sapiens’ evolution.

You can read more in an article published in the University Of California - Davis web site at: https://scitechdaily.com/new-dna-research-changes-origin-of-human-species/. 

The Underground Railroad, which helped people escape slavery to freedom, necessarily operated in secrecy until the end of the Civil War. Now a grant from the National Park Service will support the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida in highlighting the history of this pivotal social movement.

The $350,000 grant through the U.S. Department of the Interior will allow the program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to gather, preserve, transcribe and promote digital video and audio recordings for use in museums, K-12 classrooms and documentaries.

The Network to Freedom Underground Railroad Oral History Project is a collaborative research project designed to shed light on one of the most important and least-understood social movements in American history.

“Conductors and freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad struggled against the power of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the executive branch for generations and in doing so left an unrivaled record of democratic striving and intersectional coalition building uniting African American, white, and Hispanic antislavery activists against tyranny,” said PAUL ORTIZ, director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. “This is an incredible opportunity for University of Florida undergraduates, graduate students, and staff to learn the legacies of the most important grassroots democratic institution in American history.”

Under the guidance of the National Park Service and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, UF staff and students in the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program will record the oral and family traditions of Underground Railroad descendants and representatives.

The Underground Railroad oral histories will be jointly housed at the National Park Service and the University of Florida Digital Collections at George A. Smathers Libraries.

You can read more in an article by Douglas Ray published in the University of Florida web site at: https://tinyurl.com/mrxfkcvd.

In 1981, the Hearst Corporation donated its newsreel collection to the University of California. In cooperation with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Packard Humanities Institute is developing this website as part of a joint project to make the Hearst newsreel collection more easily accessible to the public.

Like all historical records, newsreels reflect the attitudes and prejudices of the times in which they were produced. This website is intended to promote public interest in the past, and as a resource for historical and cultural research. Naturally, neither we nor the UCLA Film & Television Archive endorse all the views depicted in the images and commentary of these newsreels, some of which could be disturbing or offensive to some users.

Begin browsing the newsreels shown in theatres from 1929 to 1967. If the story title is displayed in red, you can click on the title to play the video.

See all viewing options

Frequent Questions

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Scotland People of Nairnshire   

Over 4,000 new transcriptions have been added to this existing collection. These records are from multiple sources, and often include details such as names, places and additional notes. If your ancestor was from Nairnshire, this collection could be the key you’re looking for.  

Scotland Registers and Records 

To complement the Nairnshire records, a further five publications have been added into Scotland Registers and Records. These PDFs cover 1290 to 1850, and include social histories, parish records and more. There are 84 titles in total to explore, including Land and People of Nairnshire by Bruce B. Bishop, offering key detail about Nairnshire residents.  

Anglo-Boer War Records 1899-1902 

If your ancestor served in the Anglo-Boer War, you may find them here. A further 19,117 records have been added to this collection, taking it to over 383,000. You might find details of your ancestor’s unit, medals awarded, or even casualties.  

Notable names spotted in this collection include: 

·         A young Winston Churchill, taken prisoner at Blaauwkrantz Farm in Escourt in 1899 

·         Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle, who was awarded a Queen’s South Africa clasp 

Newspapers 

Six brand new titles, updates to a further six, and a total of 89,176 new pages make up this week’s newspaper releases. 

New titles: 

·         Bayswater Chronicle, 1860-1873, 1878, 1893, 1896, 1909-1939, 1944-1949 

·         Buteman, 1875, 1882, 1884, 1887-1889, 1892 

·         Citizen (Letchworth), 1906-1916 

·         Downham Market Gazette, 1879-1889, 1891-1895, 1897-1911, 1913-1916 

·         Loftus Advertiser, 1879-1895, 1897, 1899-1906, 1909-1916 

·         Morayshire Advertiser, 1858-1864 

Updated titles: 

·         Eastern Post, 1922-1925, 1927-1938 

·         Haverhill Echo, 1941-1943 

·         Macclesfield Times, 1925 

·         New Milton Advertiser, 1990 

·         Sheerness Guardian and East Kent Advertiser, 1894-1896, 1899-1911, 1913-1932, 1934-1939 

·         Sheerness Times Guardian, 1940-1948, 1979