After more than four decades, a woman has been reunited with a man stolen at birth, her son, who she was told had died.

Parents love their children and want nothing but the best for them. Any significant amount of time parents are separated and unable to hug their children can feel like a lifetime. For most mothers and fathers, a weekend without their kids can be too much to handle. One woman, Maria Angelica Gonzalez, went decades without seeing her child due to lies she was told following her son’s birth, according to Fox News.

 Forty-two years ago, Maria gave birth to a baby boy in Santiago, Chile. But the outlet reports that soon after Jimmy Lippert Thyden’s birth, he was whisked away from his mother.  Hospital workers took the newborn from Maria. 

Jimmy states in a video posted on YouTube that the doctors told his mother he needed to be in an incubator. Maria never saw her baby boy again. She was told that her newborn baby had passed away. 

But, as Jimmy explains, thanks to online research, he was able to track down his birth mother.

“I was able to find her because of, because of the DNA through MyHeritage.com,” Jimmy said. 

Jimmy hoped on a plane and traveled thousands of miles. At his destination, the now-lawyer, who resides in Virginia, met his birth mother for the first time.

The Mother-Son Reunion Was An Emotional Moment, 42 Years in the Making

As one could expect, Maria and Jimmy’s reunion was an emotional moment filled with hugs and tears. The video shows Jimmy, with a bouquet of flowers, walking over to Maria as the two envelop one another in a long and overdue hug as both shed tears of joy. 

Jimmy told Fox News that his mother said he had “no idea the oceans I’ve cried for” him. He added that she “laid awake praying that God let me live long enough to learn what happened” to her son all those years ago. 

 Jimmy and Maria were separated as part of a child trafficking operation, a “counterfeit adoption.” Fox News reports that during the 1970s and 1990s, thousands of babies were illegally taken from their mothers in the South American country. 

The following is a press release written by Reclaim the Records:

www.ReclaimTheRecords.orgView this e-mail in your browser our fifty-first please-stop-trying-to-take-our-records-away newsletter New York Wants to Lock Up Vital Records — Again! Here’s How We Can Stop It, If We Act Fast A backdoor proposal to essentially ban public access to birth, marriage, and death records got snuck into their annual budget bill?! Hi again from Reclaim The Records, that little non-profit which likes to pry historical and genealogical files and databases out of government archives, libraries, and agencies, and then puts them all online for totally free public use. And we're back in your inbox today with some absolutely infuriating news about public records access. (There's a lot of that going around lately, we know, but this one is particularly awful for genealogists.) We need your help to stop a horrible records access rule change that New York has hidden in its annual budget proposal, and we have only DAYS to get them to stop it. Please read this newsletter carefully, and note what you can do -- especially if you are a New Yorker, or someone with New York roots, or you just really really don't like politicians hiding public access to public records, especially without any public debate or warning. As part of New York State's Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, Part U of the Health and Mental Hygiene Legislation would: Extend embargo periods to 125 years for birth records, 100 years for marriages, and 75 years for deaths — making New York one of the most restrictive states for vital records access in the entire country! Hike fees by more than 400%, raising the cost of a single genealogical record request to $95! Eliminate even the basic vital records indexes, making it nearly impossible to simply confirm if a record exists in the first place! The rationale for this sneaky law change claims that this will “streamline operations” and “digitize records,” but the reality is that the state is now trying to dodge their responsibilities. Instead of addressing New York's five-year backlog of unfulfilled "genealogy requests" from members of the public, who are just trying to get copies of records, the state now wants to rewrite the law to stop serving the public entirely. And now we need your help to stop them. We just built a brand new website that outlines the proposal, provides detailed context about the state of New York’s vital records, the state's terrible records management, and their past behaviors which have deprioritized genealogists and records access in general. We're backing up our words with screenshots of internal state e-mails we've gotten over the years through our Freedom of Information requests, copies of state Inspector General reports detailing the state's records protection problems, and copies of publicly available documents like the state's multi-million dollar digitization contracts. And we've put it all together for you to read. And here it is: Learn all about this new awful proposal to cut off public access to New York records, and what you can do to help stop it!:  www.NYSVitalRecords.org    What You Can Do to Help This is important. We only have a few days, so please do these items as soon as you get this e-mail.  If You Live in New York: Call and email your State Senator and Assembly Member immediately. Tell them how this bill will impact you, your business, your research, or your family. Personal emails and phone calls are the most effective—even better if you can request a meeting. You can find your NYS Senator's name and contact information here. And you can find your NYS Assembly Member's name and contact information here.  For Everyone (Inside & Outside of NY): Submit Written Testimony -- this means your comments about this proposal! -- by THIS TUESDAY, February 11 at 5 PM EST! Send your written testimony to: wamchair@nyassembly.gov and financechair@nysenate.gov. If you're a New York resident, your e-mail should also cc: Governor Kathy Hochul at Governor.Hochul@exec.ny.gov.  Spread the Word — TODAY! Tell your colleagues, genealogy groups, historical societies, social media, and anyone else who values public records. The more voices we have, the stronger our opposition.  Team Up With Other Organizations The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) has published their open letter to the New York State Legislature, outlining the significant flaws in the proposed legislation and BVR's attitude towards the genealogy community. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&B) has also created a landing page with key details about this issue, including additional action steps. Again, our deadline is THIS TUESDAY, February 11, 2025, at 5 PM EST. And our new website, with alllll the details about this awful proposal, and how to try to stop it, is  www.NYSVitalRecords.org  . Tell your friends right now! Help Us Keep Fighting – Donate Today! Reclaim The Records is a small but mighty organization that fights for public access to historical records. We don’t take government funding — we rely entirely on grassroots support from people like you. If you believe in open records, transparency, and genealogical rights, please make a donation today. Every dollar goes directly toward legal efforts, public awareness campaigns, and the fight against record closures like this one.  Click here to donate now! Your support helps us keep up the fight. @ReclaimTheRecs Like us on Facebook www.ReclaimTheRecords.org MAKE A DONATION TO RECLAIM THE RECORDS Reclaim The Records is an IRS-recognized 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Our EIN is 81-4985446. Your support helps us keep fighting for more open records!

Augusta Genealogical Society

Augusta, Georgia

February 22, 2025, Virtual Genealogical Program

Researching Enslaved Ancestors in Georgia

Presented by Tammy Ozier

This presentation offers a structured approach for family historians and genealogists to uncover their Georgia-based enslaved ancestors in historical records. We'll begin with a brief timeline of slavery in Georgia, setting the stage for our research. To find enslaved ancestors, we start by identifying a target ancestor. The key research questions to answer are: 

                    Was the target ancestor enslaved?

                    If so, who was their enslaver(s)? 

We'll delve into these questions through three illustrative case studies.

Tammy Ozier, a dedicated family historian for over 25 years, has traced her enslaved and free ancestors back to the mid-1700s. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Black Studies from San Francisco State University and is a retired corporate finance executive with over 30 years of experience. Her research focuses on Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.

Tammy frequently presents at local and national forums on genealogical and historical topics and conducts family history research through her company, Ancestral Pathways LLC. She supports community research by conducting descendency explorations for targeted groups.

When:  Saturday, February 22, 2025 Time:  11:00 am - 12:00 pm  EST 

Where:  Online 

Price:   FREE to AGS members and $10 for nonmembers

The registration deadline is February 20

Augusta Genealogical Society

Augusta Genealogical Society Find out more about your family history with the Augusta Genealogical Society.

 Click above link to register

Limited seating is available to view the virtual presentation at the Adamson Library.  ​To reserve a seat, please call (706) 722-4073.

JOIN AGS NOW and enjoy the benefits of several programs, free to members in 2025

The Augusta Genealogical Society is a non-profit organization founded in Augusta, Georgia , in September 1979.

On April 18, 1984, an unidentified white female was located off a dirt road near Lake Dorr in Altoona, Florida. It was determined that the remains were that of a female between 17 and 20 years old, who stood 5’0” to 5’1” tall and weighed approximately 100 pounds. Upon investigation, it was estimated that the young woman had died several weeks prior to the discovery of her remains and her death was likely due to homicide. With no leads about her identity, the woman could not be identified and she became known as “Judy Doe.”

Multiple efforts were made to identify the remains based off of skeletal recreations, dental records, and DNA. A facial reconstruction was completed and released to the public in hopes that it would generate leads about Judy Doe’s true identity. All of these efforts were unsuccessful. 

In November 2023, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office contracted Othram in an attempt to provide new leads or information. Over a year was spent working through the genealogy of Judy Doe, and possible family members were identified. Detectives contacted these suspected family members in an attempt to gather information and obtain samples to further the genealogical testing.

In November 2024, detectives were able to make contact with a suspected close relative of Judy Doe. The cooperation of the family member led to them submitting DNA for comparison. This DNA was sent to Othram for analysis.

In December 2024, Othram verified that Judy Doe was the sister of the family member and that Judy Doe’s real name is Rebecca Sue Hill. Detectives have been able to establish that Hill has been missing from Arkansas since sometime in 1981, which would make her 16 or 17 years old at the time of her disappearance. Hill was not in any database as "missing" due to remains being found in Little Rock, Arizona that were misidentified as Hill by a family member sometime in 1981 or 1982. 

Detectives are continuing to investigate the circumstances of Hill's disappearance and death. Her death is a suspected homicide, and it’s the hope of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to bring the investigation to a resolution.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office currently has three other cases in the genetic genealogy process. The first is “Julie Doe,” who was located in Clermont on Sept. 25, 1988, and is being investigated in conjunction with the DNA Doe Project. The second is “Jane Doe," who was located in Sorrento on Dec. 7, 1991, and is being investigated with Othram. The third is a sexual battery suspect from 2007, which is being worked with the help of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Parabon Nanolabs.

Republished courtesy of Lake County Sheriff's Office

The Massachusetts Historical Society collects, preserves, and provides access to collections that document the history of Massachusetts and the nation up to the present day. Information is increasingly being created and communicated in a digital environment, which means many twentieth and twenty-first century collections include or consist entirely of digital files, such as PDFs and JPEGs.

MHS has been working toward preserving and providing access to this content for many years through countless meetings with staff from the Collection Services and IT departments. We are now happy to announce the official launch of the MHS Digital Archive!

The MHS Digital Archive provides access to born-digital content and reformatted audiovisual files. We define these files as the following:

Born-digital is a term archivists use to describe content that was created in a digital environment. The emails you send and receive, the Microsoft Word documents you create and store on your computer or cloud storage like Google Drive, and the images and videos you take on your cellphone are all “born-digital.”

Reformatted-audiovisual items refer to physical audiovisual media (such as cassette tapes, VHS tapes, vinyl records, 16 mm film etc.) that have been converted to digital files, so users can access them without needing playback equipment such as a VCR or a record player.

How to access digital and audiovisual materials

If you have researched in MHS collections in the past, you may be familiar with using ABIGAIL, the MHS library catalog, and MHS Collection Guides to access physical materials in the MHS reading room. Or perhaps you have accessed physical items that MHS has digitized and made available on our website. We have added links to born-digital and audiovisual items within ABIGAIL and the collection guides so that users will be able to find content using the same tools, regardless of format.

Users can also access individual born-digital and reformatted audiovisual items by searching or browsing the MHS Digital Archive directly, but we encourage you to start your search with the MHS Collection Guides and ABIGAIL. I like to think of catalog records and collection guides like a recipe, and individual items (whether they be physical or digital) like an ingredient list. Without the context of the recipe, you just have a bunch of ingredients.

Stay tuned for blog posts next week that highlight some of the collections and items in the MHS Digital Archive!

The Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation (MSHEF) announced today the expansion of their website, mshefoundation.org, to include the first-ever national searchable database of Holocaust education resources.

Known as the only organization that provides grants nationwide directly to teachers, the MSHEF funds Holocaust resources and programming for their classrooms, such as books, field trips to Holocaust Museums, and Holocaust survivor speakers. Their new database was created in response to overwhelming requests for credible sources of Holocaust information and assets. MSHEF has carefully curated a library of Holocaust knowledge, making these essential educational resources accessible to today’s learners and tomorrow’s leaders at no charge. 

“Nothing like this has ever been done before. Not only is the teaching of the Holocaust mandated in many states, but growing conflict and hate have created urgency for these tools,” said MSHEF Co-Founder, Ann Arnold. “This collection provides one location for teachers to find a variety of Holocaust education resources. The database, searchable by state, will connect them to local and national resources of all types, all at once.” 

The interface allows users to search for resources by type (books, museums, survivor speakers, etc.), age of students, and state location - opening access to dozens of virtual and in-person assets. The MSHEF wants to continue to grow and diversify its existing collection of reference materials to become a definitive source of Holocaust education resources. If you are an organization that would like to become part of the resource database, please submit your request for review.

Founded in late 2019 by the daughters of Holocaust survivor Mark Schonwetter, Ann S. Arnold and Isabella S. Fiske, the Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation aims to empower teachers to teach anti-hate initiatives, respect, and kindness to students through Holocaust education by funding grants for teachers. The amount awarded each year continues to rise and reached record-breaking expansion during their 2024-25 grant cycle–nearly $150,000 in Holocaust Education Grants was awarded, reaching over 73,000 students in 31 states.

About the Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation:
The Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation is a non-profit organization that funds educational grants nationwide to teach anti-hate initiatives, respect, and kindness to students through Holocaust education. The MSHEF grants up to $1,000 to educators to support engaging programming for students such as field trips to museums, books, curriculum, and Holocaust survivor speakers. Visit mshefoundation.org to learn more, or email connect@mshefoundation.org.

Johan Michalove is nearly 3,000 miles from the Los Angeles wildfires, but that didn’t stop him from pitching in.

A doctoral student in the field of information science currently based in New York City, Michalove developed an interactive map at fireaid.info that has become an online hub for thousands of people in the greater Los Angeles area who need provisions, are looking to donate supplies or want to get involved.

Click to open gallery view

Credit: Louis DiPietro/Provided

“I like to say that I build at the speed of crisis,” said Michalove, who hurriedly developed and launched the map on Jan. 8, just as wildfires around L.A. intensified. “I have been calling my map a ‘cartography of care,’ because it’s not only a visualization of aid and resources, but it’s a visualization of the collective goodwill of people on the ground and in the community. It’s vastly underestimated just how much people want to help their neighbors and help their community.”

Fireaid.info – which to date has attracted 280,000 views – automatically pulls information from a collaborative Google spreadsheet that serves as a kind of community message board connecting L.A. neighbors in need with free resources and services.

Information on the spreadsheet is vetted and managed by Mutual Aid LA Network – MALAN – and shares where people can find free food, clothes, phone-charging stations and even childcare among the dozens of aid locations across the greater LA area. Volunteers can also learn which locations need which items. 

“People really love it,” Michalove said. “All the feedback that I’ve had has been overwhelmingly positive.”

“Was able to find friends and neighbors!” wrote one resident about the map. “They helped make a hygiene kit for a 64-year-old friend whose home burned down.”

“This website helped my organization find a place to drop off donations that we collected,” wrote another.

“I think Johan’s work is a quintessentially info sci kind of contribution – thinking deeply about a problem in its social and, indeed, planetary dimensions, then working creatively to a response that strengthens the capacity and fabric of local communities and actors,” said Steven Jackson, vice provost for academic innovation and professor in the Department of Information Science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, and in the Department of Science and Technology Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Jackson and Malte Jung, associate professor of information science in Cornell Bowers CIS and the Nancy H. ’62 and Philip M. ’62 Young Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, are Michalove’s co-advisers.

A technologist and systems designer, Michalove created the map after seeing social media posts about the wildfires, which sparked memories of his time in Australia during the catastrophic brush fires of 2019 and ’20, known as the “Black Summer.” He came across MALAN’s spreadsheet and was floored: Here was grassroots organizing happening online, in real-time, and in response to catastrophe. He immediately went to work making MALAN’s information more interactive and mobile-friendly.

“Trying to use a spreadsheet on your phone is miserable. Now, imagine how miserable you’d be if you just lost your house, all you had was your phone, and you’re trying to get access to free resources,” he said. “So I said, ‘I can build an interface layer and just pull data from the spreadsheet and put it in a map.’”

Since launching fireaid.info, Michalove has made a few tweaks based on user feedback. Most notably, the map can be translated into 17 different languages.

As for future use, he said the technology behind interactive maps like fireaid.info can be used “anywhere people want to help each other.”

“And that’s everywhere,” he said. “People always want to volunteer. They want to donate time. They want to donate whatever excess resources they have. It’s really an information science problem in a lot of ways – to allocate resources efficiently.”

The experience led him to establish mutua, a nonprofit that develops technologies in collaboration with community organizers to build digital infrastructure for mutual aid networks.

“Unfortunately we’ll see more and more of the kinds of problems Johan is targeting in the years ahead,” said Jackson, who directs Cornell’s Computing on Earth lab, where Michalove is a member. “As the work of the Computing On Earth Lab suggests, the ability to think and work creatively from and with communities will be essential to our ability to survive and thrive on a changing planet.”

I am excited to announce the long-awaited and highly anticipated release of the MyHeritgage new DNA ethnicity model: Ethnicity Estimate v2.5. The new model provides higher-resolution results compared to the previous model, v0.95, and nearly doubles the number of ethnicities identified by MyHeritage, from 42 to 79. Here is the announcement from MyHeritage: First, an honest confession: We know that many of our DNA users have been looking forward to this update for a long time. We initially released the intended model, v2, in June 2024 to a relatively small subset of thousands of users and ran surveys to gather feedback. The feedback was okay, but this wasn’t good enough for us; we wanted it to be great. Several flaws were raised in the survey. So, we decided not to roll out v2 to all users, and our team went back to work to improve the model further. We apologize for this delay, but we put quality above all else. In that time, we developed a better algorithm, overcoming shortcomings in the v2 model, and released the new model, v2.5, to the same subset of users, plus thousands of others. Again, we surveyed these users, and this time, the feedback was significantly better. Users reported being happier with the new model compared to both the original ethnicity model (v0.95) that we’ve been using for years, and compared to v2. Today we’re delighted to release Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 to everyone. New MyHeritage DNA users will receive Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 results from day one. As for existing MyHeritage DNA users who have received v0.95 ethnicity results before: we want everyone to be comfortable with their results, so we’re giving them the choice: Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 is opt-in, and is not automatically activated for our existing DNA users, so it will not override the previous ethnicity results. It’s up to you to decide if you want to see the new results, or if you prefer to stick with the original ones. If you decide to receive your updated results, you’ll be able to switch back and forth between the models at any time using a simple dropdown on the results page. Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 is free for all users. Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 Overview The Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 model is based on advanced new algorithms developed by the MyHeritage Science Team from the ground up following two years of extensive research and fine tuning. The new ethnicity breakdown provides better resolution; for example, individuals whose DNA results previously showed Scandinavian ethnicity will now receive results specifying what percentage of their ethnic makeup is Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish. Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 Highlights Identifies 24 percentage-based European ethnicities. Quite a few of the new percentage-based ethnicities, such as Armenian, are unique to MyHeritage and not identified by other tests. Distinguishes between 15 different Jewish ethnicities, more than most other DNA tests on the market. Learn more in our blog post about Ethnicity Estimate v2.5 and please see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CffkVq74joo. Please share this news far and wide, and please share your new ethnicity results, too! People love to see these videos with the spinning globe animation and they tend to go viral — this one for example has 846K likes and 57.1K shares. To download the video of your ethnicity results, open your Ethnicity Estimate on the MyHeritage website, and click the download button on the upper right corner of the map (from desktop) or tap the video icon and select “Download video” (from mobile web). You can find more detailed instructions here.

Today is the first day of the month. That is a good time to back up your genealogy files. Then test your backups!

Your backups aren't worth much unless you make a quick test by restoring a small file or two after the backup is completed.

Actually, you can make backups at any time. However, it is easier and safer if you have a specific schedule. The first day of the month is easy to remember, so I would suggest you back up your genealogy files at least on the first day of every month, if not more often. (My computers automatically make off-site backups of all new files every few minutes.)

Given the events of the past few months with genealogy websites laying off employees and cutting back on services, you now need backup copies of everything more than ever. What happens if the company that holds your online data either goes off line or simply deletes the service where your data is held? If you have copies of everything stored either in your own computer, what happens if you have a hard drive crash or other disaster? If you have one or more recent backup copies, such a loss would be inconvenient but not a disaster.

Of course, you might want to back up more than your genealogy files. Family photographs, your checkbook register, all sorts of word processing documents, email messages, and much more need to be backed up regularly. Why not do that on the first day of each month? or even more often?

Since 2016, Microsoft Word users have had access to Smart Lookup, a nifty feature that lets you right-click on a word or phrase and bring up definitions, synonyms, and relevant links to sites like Wikipedia.

Now, however, Windows Latest reports that Microsoft has decided to retire the Smart Lookup feature. If you check out the Smart Lookup support page, Microsoft has added a notice at the top:

“Important: Smart Lookup will be retired starting on January 1, 2025.”

As of this writing, if you right-click on a word or phrase and select Search “[word/phrase]” in the context menu, it’ll open up the Search pane like usual, but you won’t get any search results. It’ll get stuck loading before eventually saying: “Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.”

Smart Lookup was long powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and it actually worked quite well. So why remove it? The only reasonable answer is that Microsoft wants to push users toward Copilot. If you want to look up stuff — not just definitions and synonyms but anything else — then you’ll have to start relying on Copilot.

Not only has Smart Lookup been removed from Microsoft Word, but it’s also been removed from the standalone Office 2024 suite… an unusual move because Copilot can’t be used there at all.