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/

The National Archives has still not recovered all the presidential records that should have been turned over at the end of the Trump administration, according to a new letter to Congress from the acting archivist.

"We do know that we do not have custody of everything we should," Debra Steidel Wall, acting archivist of the United States, said in her letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., suggesting that former officials had still not turned over electronic messages of official business done on personal accounts.

Wall's letter was a response to a Sept. 13 request from Maloney seeking an "urgent review" of "whether presidential records remain unaccounted for and potentially in the possession of the former president."

Wall said the National Archives and Records Administration "would consult with the Department of Justice" on whether "to initiate an action for the recovery of records unlawfully removed."

You can read more in an article by Benjamin Siegel published in the ABC News web site at: https://abcn.ws/3SQCHYf.

Shared DNA Matches are a valuable tool for users interested in figuring out how they’re related to a specific DNA match. The new sorting functionality enables you to sort your Shared DNA Matches based on the proximity of their relationship to you or to the DNA Match you’re reviewing, and gain new insights.

Shared DNA Matches are a valuable tool for users interested in figuring out how they’re related to a specific DNA match. The new sorting functionality enables you to sort your Shared DNA Matches based on the proximity of their relationship to you or to the DNA Match you’re reviewing, and gain new insights.

You can read more about this new functionality in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://bit.ly/3fI4igc

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

One of the big challenges in genealogy software is sharing of data when two or more researchers are working on the same family. The most common scenario is when each person has his or her own genealogy database. However, as different members of the project discover new data and enter it into their own databases, how does the information automatically get updated to others without requiring each person in the project to manually re-enter the same data?

The quick answer is “via GEDCOM files.” However, anyone who has ever tried this way of merging small bits of information from multiple researchers into the database of each participant can tell you that it is no small task. GEDCOM was designed for a one-time data import. While possible, it is difficult to use GEDCOM for frequent small updates.

Luckily there is an easier method of sharing genealogy databases. Anyone with a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux system can set up a private file-sharing network. For the remainder of this article, I will focus on Windows solutions. However, similar programs are available for Mac and Linux systems as well.

By using a file-sharing program, you and your cohorts can establish a private, encrypted network across the Internet. The only people who can access the data are the ones to whom you grant access. All data is fully encrypted and protected by user IDs and passwords. The more popular methods are free of charge.

File-sharing programs are as also called “peer-to-peer” networks, or simply P2P. In this case, peer-to-peer means that there is no central file server involved. Each participant’s computer can exchange data with every other participant’s computer across the Internet, assuming that each computer’s owner gives access to the other participants. In fact, the menus allow each owner to share as much or as little data as he or she wishes. For this discussion, I will assume that the owner of each computer has decided to share either one file or one entire subdirectory although other options are available.

P2P networks became popular with the original Napster music-sharing network. Napster’s success spawned hundreds of other P2P networks , many of them with far more powerful capabilities than the original network. Many of the early networks were used for illicit activities, such as sharing copyrighted music, videos, and other content. However, as the software has matured, P2P networks have become “legit.” To be sure, a few wide-open networks still exist and are anonymously sharing files against the terms of copyrights, licenses and laws. However, newer, private P2P networks have become respectable; they can respect copyrights and laws. In fact, P2P networks are now becoming useful in corporations as well as for personal use.

You can install a P2P application in your computer and then designate what files will be made available to others as well as to whom they are available. You can share photographs, documents, and even genealogy databases. Yes, you can even share copyrighted materials, but all of that is under your private control. You are responsible for all material that you share.

Anyone who is to be allowed onto your private P2P network will need to install the same software on his or her computer. Once installed and logged on, the individuals you allow into your network can access the files you make available. Conversely, you can access the files that they decide to share, if any. All participants must have an Internet connection at the time they are sharing data. However, these networks work well on dial-up as well as broadband connections.

“Wait a minute,” you say. “Can’t I do the same if I set up an FTP server on the Internet?” The answer is, “Yes, you can -- if you’re more technical.” You can create FTP or Web servers if you have the knowledge required. However, such servers require a knowledge of Web technology and at least moderate skills at configuring servers. Establishing a P2P network is far simpler -- so simple that most non-gurus can create such a network within minutes without assistance.

You can also find some public file-sharing networks that run on some company’s server. These may be free or charge a modest amount. Most of the ones I have seen insert obnoxious pop-up ads all over the place. They also limit you as to how many megabytes you can share. The private P2P networks described here will not display pop-ups, and file sizes are limited only by the space on your hard drive.

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/12938393.

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.

An intriguing DNA project from Oxford and Harvard researchers promises, "We’re analysing DNA from ancient and modern humans to create a ‘family tree of everyone’"

According to information on the project's web site:

Did you know that it’s now possible to sequence all of your DNA for about the cost of a smartphone? This will reveal your unique genetic makeup, and can be used to work out the similarities and differences between yourself and other people around the world at a genetic level.

But how can you make sense of this information, and what does your genetic variation tell you?

In our research group at Oxford University’s Big Data Institute, we think the key to understanding this is held in our ancestry, and in particular in the genetic genealogy that relates us all. This describes how you and everyone else have inherited different parts of your genome from different ancestors. If we could learn this genealogy and decipher where and when they lived, we could uncover all of the history written in our genes – how our ancestors moved around the world and the evolutionary processes that created us all.

This sounds like a Herculean task. Without the genomes of everyone who ever lived, what could we possibly know about people who lived thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago?

We’ve approached this task by devising a series of elegant computer algorithms which take genetic similarities and differences in a dataset of many individuals, and accurately reconstructs relationships among them.

Unifying modern and ancient genomes

Building on this approach, in our new research we describe the story of recent evolution among 215 diverse human populations from varying times and geographic locations.

The genealogy – lines of descent from our common ancestors – includes the genomes of 3,601 people from three separate datasets, as well as eight high quality ancient genomes. These came from three Neanderthals (an extinct human subspecies who lived in Eurasia until around 40,000 years ago), a Denisovan (another human subspecies more recently discovered from a shard of bone found in a Siberian cave), and a family of four humans from the Afanasievo culture who lived 4,500 years ago in south Siberia.

The unified genealogy, or “family tree”, explains the genetic relationships of these thousands of genomes to one another.

AWA, whose goal is to preserve global memory and cultural heritage for future generations, is an initiative of the Norwegian company Piql, which collects and stores its partners’ contributions in a secure vault repository set deep in a decommissioned coal mine in Svalbard, Norway, just some 600 miles from the North Pole.

Designed to withstand natural and man-made disasters, in the safest location on earth, data stored here will last for centuries. Much of our heritage is stored digitally and, despite best efforts to protect it for the future, it can be exposed to risks, either from the online environment or just from the limits of modern storage technology. The combination of resilient long-term storage technology and the remote, safe and cold conditions found on Svalbard, enables data to live on into the distant future.

Established in 2017, the Arctic World Archive (AWA) holds an impressive collection of valuable digital artefacts and irreplaceable information from around the world, with over 15 contributing nations.

AWA is home to manuscripts from the Vatican Library, political histories, masterpieces from different eras (including Rembrandt and Munch), scientific breakthroughs and contemporary cultural treasures.

You can read a lot more in the AWA web site at: https://arcticworldarchive.org/.