The $470,000 grant will support research based on Yiddish-language testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation.

Isaac Bleaman, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to study the speech of native Yiddish speakers who survived the Holocaust.

The five-year $470,000 grant will support research that documents the Yiddish language as it was spoken by survivors who were interviewed for the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation, an organization that was founded by film director Steven Spielberg in 1994.

The goal of Bleaman’s project is to analyze the grammatical and phonetic properties of European Yiddish and to address the impact of the Holocaust on the development of the language. The award will finance the construction of a new digital language corpus containing transcripts, media files, and metadata.

These materials will be made available to researchers, Yiddish language instructors and students, as well as the general public for free online. Currently most of the Yiddish interviews can only be viewed at institutions that subscribe to the full Visual History Archive, and none are available with transcripts.

You can read more in an article in the Forward.com web site at: https://bit.ly/3zhlcrZ.

Historic photographs of World War Two Jewish refugees who started new lives in Suffolk have been donated to the county archives in Bury St Edmunds.

On Monday, July 25, Claire Duncan, from Bungay, donated the family photographs to the archive after recognising people featured in the 'We Have To Move On' exhibition at the National Horse Racing Museum, in Newmarket.

The exhibition looked at refugees living in the Palace House Stables hostel in Newmarket during the 1939-45 conflict.

You can read much more in an article by Toby Lown published in the East Anglican Daily Times web site at: https://bit.ly/3Jgh8wT.

Fritz and Eva Ball – Originally from Berlin, Fritz and Eva arrived at Palace House Stables in May 1939 and lived there until 1943. - Credit: William E Barton

Roots Ireland has announced the addition of 8,388 new Monaghan / Clogher census substitute records to their online portal.

Over 8,000 census substitute records from the Monaghan/Clogher region dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries have been added to the Roots Ireland database.

Roots Ireland holds over 23 million records, and the database is being added to continually. In 2022 so far over 57,000 records have been added to the Roots Ireland database from Monaghan, Tipperary, Westmeath, Galway and Kerry.

Now the group has announced the addition of 8,388 new Monaghan / Clogher census substitute records to their online portal.

The new records are as follows:

- 361 Inquisitions for County Monaghan dating from 1591. These list the properties held by people in Monaghan upon their death.

- 1,435 records from "Book of Survey and Distribution for County Monaghan" dating from 1641.

These records list the landowners of Monaghan at the time of the outbreak of the 1641 Rising.

- 833 records from "Book of Survey and Distribution for County Monaghan" dating from c. 1650s. These records list the landowners of Monaghan from the mid-1650s.

- 5,128 records from the index of wills for the diocese of Clogher, dating between 1659-1857.

- 631 records from an index of those who died intestate in the diocese of Clogher, 1793-1821. These list people who died without leaving a will in the Clogher diocese.

An up-to-date list of sources for Monaghan can be found at monaghan.rootsireland.ie.

A press release from the American University of Armenia:

YEREVAN — The Armenian Genealogy Conference is pleased to announce the addition of two prominent names to the list of speakers — Dr. Panov Dmitri Arkadievich and Andranik Nahapetyan — who will present at the first-ever annual assembly to be held in Armenia, September 23-25, 2022.

Dr. Arkadievich is a Russian historian, genealogist and archivist. He is chief of research and genealogical study at The DST Kristian (The House of Family Tradition). Dr. Arkadievich will present a survey of the Armenian genealogical research sources available in the Russian archives.

Nahapetyan is an independent researcher and member of the Council of Experts of the SFU ISRS Center for Armenian Studies (Southern Federal University, Institute of Sociology and Regional Studies). Nahapetyan will give a talk on the genealogy and origins of Simon Vratsian, the fourth prime minister of the First Armenian Republic. The presentation will also explore the resources available for researching Nor Nakhichevan (Crimean) Armenian genealogies.

In addition to these speakers, George Aghjayan, founder of the Armenian Genealogy Conference, will be exploring the use of DNA testing in Armenian genealogical research. The Armenian people have been subjected to multiple traumatic events over the past 200 years that have caused inordinate ruptures in family histories. DNA testing provides a modern scientific tool that can enhance our ability to determine ancestry, bridging existing generation gaps to reconnect families. A limited number of DNA kits will be available to participants of the conference.

Participants in the fifth Armenian Genealogy Conference can register online.

Since 2016, four conferences devoted to Armenian genealogy have been held in the United States. This year, for the first time ever, the Armenian Genealogy Conference will be hosting the annual assembly in Armenia. The conference is cosponsored by the Hamazkayin Cultural Association and the American University of Armenia (AUA).

American University of Armenia

Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values.

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Researching your family history has just got a little easier as six million historic records spanning 457 years is now available online.

This is the first time the entire Sussex Parish Registers collection has been digitised and brought online, in an exclusive collaboration with Ancestry, allowing people to discover information about baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths and burials within the historical county of Sussex.

The 125,700 records in this collection can range in date from the early 1500s to the mid- to late-1800s.

Working with the East and West Sussex Record Offices, the records on Ancestry hold detailed information about the ancestors of many of the counties families and will be searchable by parish on the Ancestry website.

You can read more in an article by Charlotte Harding published in the SussexExpress.co.uk web site at: https://bit.ly/3BtHsS7.

This is for advanced DNA experts only:

Opening and processing gene expression data files in Excel runs into the inadvertent risk of converting gene names to dates. As pathway analysis tools rely on gene symbols to query against pathway databases, the genes that are converted to dates will not be recognized, potentially causing voids in pathway analysis. Molecular pathways related to cell division, exocytosis, cilium assembly, protein ubiquitination and nitric oxide biosynthesis were found to be most affected by Excel auto-conversion. A plausible solution is hence to update these genes and dates to the newly approved gene names as recommended by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC), which are resilient to Excel auto-conversion. Herein, we developed a web tool with Streamlit that can convert old gene names and dates back into the new gene names recommended by HGNC. The web app is named Gene Updater, which is open source and can be either hosted locally or at https://share.streamlit.io/kuanrongchan/date-to-gene-converter/main/date_gene_tool.py. Additionally, as Mar-01 and Mar-02 can each be potentially mapped to 2 different gene names, users can assign the date terms to the appropriate gene names within the Gene Updater web tool. This user-friendly web tool ensures that the accuracy and integrity of gene expression data is preserved by minimizing errors in labelling gene names due to Excel auto-conversions.

See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-17104-3 for all the details.

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

The Crystal Palace, Penge, in the Bromley Valuation Office records

More than 109,000 new IR58 Valuation Office land tax records for owners and occupiers have been added by TheGenealogist to its Lloyd George Domesday Survey records.

Researchers can now discover all types of interesting details about the homes of their ancestors from the Lewisham and Bromley areas. Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist can find what their forebears' property was like in the years before WWI using the scanned images of the field books. These documents reveal what the surveyor from the years between 1910 and 1915 recorded about the size, state of repair and value of the house.

Detail from a Field Book from Lewisham Valuation Office area

As all the records are linked to the large scale Ordnance Survey maps that were used at the time, each property is shown plotted on detailed mapping on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™. This exceptionally useful tool, with its ability to show the same point on a variety of modern and historical maps, allows the house or family historian to see how the area may have changed over time and to explore their ancestors' locality.

In the case of this release we can see how in Bromley the Crystal Palace was still standing in fine parkland with fountains and other features. The Palace, having burnt down in the 1930s, its footprint is today given over to trees and grass on the modern map views. Across the road from its entrance had been a railway station in 1910 which today has subsequently been completely built over with new homes.

Lloyd George Domesday Survey linked map on Map Explorer™

• • TheGenealogist’s Lloyd George Domesday records link individual properties to extremely detailed maps used in 1910-1915 viewed on the powerful Map Explorer™

• • Fully search the records by person’s name, county, parish and street

• • Maps zoom down to show individual properties where they were plotted in the 1910s

• • Georeferenced to a modern street map or satellite map underlay to more clearly understand what the area looks like today

Total number of Owners and Occupiers in the current release: 109,177

Areas covered in Lewisham (63,451 Owners and Occupiers): Blackheath, Brockley, Catford, Deptford North, Deptford South, Forest Hill, Hatcham, Lee, Lewisham, Lower Sydenham and Upper Sydenham.

Areas released for Bromley (45,726 Owners and Occupiers): Beckenham, Bromley, Chelsfield, Chislehurst, Mottingham, Orpington, Penge, St Mary Cray

Read TheGenealogist’s article: From a Crystal Palace to the home of a Lord Mayor embroiled in scandal https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/from-a-crystal-palace-to-the-home-of-a-lord-mayor-embroiled-in-scandal-1593/

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, 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!

The following announcement was written by the Augusta (Georgia) Genealogical Society:

Annual Symposium

2022
Virtual Genealogical Program

Presented by the Augusta Genealogical Society

Augusta, Georgia

When:    Saturday, August 27, 2022

Time:      9:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m  EST

Where:    Online - Register at https://www.augustagensociety.org/

                Registration deadline is August 26, 2022

Price:      $35.00 for AGS members and $45.00 for non-members

Session 1: Guide to the 1950 US Federal Census

Speaker:  Lisa Louise Cooke

Guide to the 1950 U. S. Census. How to find your family in the newly released census by using census tract maps, initially available limited indexes, and what the 1950 Census tells us about our families.

Lisa Louise Cooke is the author of several books including The Genealogist's Google Toolbox.  She produces and hosts the popular Genealogy Gems Podcast and weekly videos at the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel.  She offers a Premium Membership service at her website at https://lisalouisecooke.com featuring exclusive on-demand genealogy education. Lisa also writes a regular column for Family Tree Magazine and produces the Family Tree Magazine Podcast.

Sessions 2, 3 and 4:  Genealogy and DNA

Speaker:  Diane Southard

Session 2: DNA Questions Answered. Understanding the basics of DNA and the terminology that is used.

Session 3: Using YDNA and mtDNA in Your Family History. Learn how both YDNA (thedirect male line), and Mitochondrial DNA (the direct female line) can enliven your familyhistory research.
Session 4: Connecting DNA Matches. How to identify and organize the cousin connections among those in your Autosomal DNA matches. Work together to determine how you are related to your matches and how to use that information to find ancestors.

Diahan Southard is a leading voice for consumer DNA testing, one of the world’s most fascinating, dynamic and socially-transformative new hobbies. As Founder of Your DNA Guide, Diahan teaches internationally, writes for popular magazines, and consults with leading testing companies. She authored Your DNA Guide–The Book and produced Your DNA Guide–the Academy, an online learning experience.

JOIN AGS NOW and enjoy the benefits of several programs, which will be free to members in 2022.

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

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

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.