For many Americans, finding a family's history is a relatively straightforward process. Multiple research options allow people to find their people from the moment they stepped onto the shores of this country and even before.

The problem with genealogical research for many African Americans is that before 1870, there were very few records because they were not documented as human beings but as property.

However, an ongoing multi-state project enlisting help from three universities and libraries hopes to build a bridge for African American families wanting to trace their roots.

The Lantern Project is an effort to scan and make available to the public legal records documenting enslaved persons. Probate records and various other legal records from the early 1800s have been or are being scanned and will be available to people doing family history research or anyone interested.

This effort is intended to shine a light – thus the name Lantern – into ancestry that has been difficult to trace. The project has scanned Adams County court records from early statehood and some from Washington and Lowndes counties.

Six institutions are participating in the project: Mississippi State University, University of Mississippi, Delta State, Historic Natchez Foundation, Columbus-Lowndes Public Library, and Montgomery County (Alabama) Archives.

You can read (much) more at: https://bit.ly/3yvurFg

The following is a press release from the British Library:

We have another four projects that recently went online to highlight this month. Two projects from India, and one each from Cuba and Columbia:

Details about each new project may be found at: https://blogs.bl.uk/endangeredarchives/2022/10/new-online-september-2022.html

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

If you own a smartphone (Android or iPhone), you already have all the hardware needed to easily locate cemeteries and, in many cases, even go quickly to specific tombstones within each cemetery. You will need a bit of software, but that is available free of charge from several vendors. You will also need to spend a bit of time online, preparing for the trip.

To find a tombstone, first look on these two great genealogy resources: Find-A-Grave and BillionGraves. Not all tombstones have been catalogued on those two sites just yet; but there are millions of tombstones listed so far, and more are being added daily.

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Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo has won the Nobel Prize for medicine for pioneering the use of ancient DNA to unlock secrets about human evolution.

The Nobel Committee said Monday that Pääbo “accomplished something seemingly impossible” when he sequenced the first Neanderthal genome and revealed that Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. His discovery was made public in 2010, after Pääbo pioneered methods to extract, sequence and analyze ancient DNA from Neanderthal bones. Thanks to his work, scientists can compare Neanderthal genomes with the genetic records of humans living today.

“Pääbo’s seminal research gave rise to an entirely new scientific discipline; paleogenomics,” the committee said. “By revealing genetic differences that distinguish all living humans from extinct hominins, his discoveries provide the basis for exploring what makes us uniquely human.”

Pääbo found that most present-day humans share 1% to 4% of their DNA with Neanderthals, meaning Neanderthals and Homo sapiens must have encountered one another and had children before Neanderthals went extinct around 40,000 years ago.

He has worked as the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany since 1997, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at London’s Natural History Museum.

“His major contribution is being a pioneer in recovering ancient DNA and that has been extremely important in the study of human evolution.” Chris Stringer, research lead in human evolution at that museum.

You can read a lot more in an article by Rob Picheta and Katie Hunt published in the CNN web site at: https://cnn.it/3EGTJ7B.

A digital database is being developed to include victims of slavery across the South. Again, this is a "work-in-progress," not something that is available today. Archivists recently gave a presentation on “The Lantern Project: Uncovering Local African-American History” at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library.

The project is headed by Mississippi State. It will include digitized and searchable legal records of slavery in Mississippi and Lowndes County.

You will be able to search at libraries at MSU, Ole Miss, Delta State, Natchez, and Columbus, along with Montgomery, Alabama.

The three-year project is funded by U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

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.