Plans are moving ahead to create the Peter and Mary Kalikow Genealogy Research Center at Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Lower Manhattan following a visit by Peter Kalikow and his daughter, Kathryn Kalikow, with Museum President and CEO Jack Kliger. The three reviewed plans for the Center, a new facility that will allow Museum visitors to access Jewish genealogy resources and discover their own unique Jewish history.

The new facility will use the Museum’s respective collections and JewishGen, the Museum’s wholly owned affiliate and the world’s largest and most significant resource for Jewish genealogy, to give visitors the opportunity to preserve their Jewish family history and heritage for future generations.

HJ Kalikow president Peter Kalikow said, “My family believes that knowing and embracing one’s family history is one of the most powerful connections we have to our heritage. By utilizing the latest technology, coupled with the enormous data resources of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, this new research center will have the means of connecting Jews with their own personal history that would have otherwise been lost to time or the infamy of the Holocaust.”

A new chapter in Black American history is unfolding at the Newberry Library, courtesy of a recently acquired glass slides collection highlighting the significance of Chicago and several other Northern cities during the Great Migration in the early 1920s.

The Great Migration was the movement of millions of African Americans from the rural South to the urban Midwest, Northeast and West.

The slides are believed to have been produced between 1922 and 1923 by the Methodist Episcopal Church and, according to the Newberry Library, “are the most complete set known to survive, and few, if any, of the images have ever been published.”

Will Hansen, 43, the Newberry Library curator, says the slides were purchased at auction in October.

“We had our eye on an auction of African Americana and knew that would be something incredibly fascinating for the Newbery and to have in Chicago,” Hansen says.

The slides are glass sheets with an image placed between them. They are based on black-and-white images that have been hand-colored.

“They are a series of lantern slides, also known as sort of magic lantern slides,” Hansen says. “These slides were most likely created to raise funds for the Methodist Episcopal Church’s operations supporting migrants as well as Black communities.”

Miriam Thaggert, a former Newberry research fellow, says the images create a strong connection between the viewer and the people pictured in the slides.

You can read more in an article by Vanessa Lopez published in the Chicago Sun-Times web site at: https://tinyurl.com/2p8hpe8h

The following announcement was written by the folks at Trent Park House (located at Trent Park, Cockfosters Road, Barnet, EN4 0PS, England).

People who have a connection to the incredible history of Trent Park House will have their memories recorded for a new museum.

Memories and stories from people connected to the history of Trent Park House will be recorded and “brought to life” thanks to a new lottery-funded project.

The Grade 2-listed Georgian mansion – which played a key role in the Second World War when the conversations of captured Nazis were recorded by a team of ‘secret listeners’ – is currently being restored. A new museum had been due to open this year, but this has now been put back until 2025.

Last year The National Lottery Heritage Fund announced it was giving £225,000 to Trent Park Museum Trust for an oral history project which would “bring Trent Park to life”. This week the Cockfosters charity announced it was now launching the project, with the aim of preserving the rich history of the house through the collection of stories and memories from those who have a personal connection to it.

The personal stories will be shared through a variety of mediums, including audio recordings and transcripts. They will form an online archive that will explore the history of the Second World War secret listeners as well as being used for the museum and website, which are currently under development.

The oral history project will be led by Rib Davis, who has been actively involved in the collection and dissemination of oral history for over 40 years.

Anyone with a personal connection to Trent Park House are encouraged to get in touch with the museum trust: Visit trentparkhouse.org.uk

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

(+) Essential Things I Never Travel Without – Part

Jerome E. Anderson, R.I.P.

Family History Knowledge Helps American Adolescents Develop Healthy Sense of Identity

Could There be a Royal Title in Your Family Tree?

Limerick Historian 'Blown Away' by Discovery of Documents

University of New Hampshire Library Digitizes Town Reports for Entire Granite State

Webinar: The Seven Phases of African American Genealogy

Genealogical Society of New Jersey (GSNJ) Spring Conference, 22 April 2023

YIVO to Digitize Millions of Documents From Jewish Labor Bund

UArizona Helps Launch Archive Sharing Stories of Detained Immigrants

‘Inaccessible’ RTÉ Archives in Ireland to be Made More Open to the Public Under Proposed Legislation

San Francisco State Bay Area Television Archive Is a Treasure Trove of History on Film — and Streaming Online

WWII Love Letters Hidden Behind Wall in New York Home Delivered to Family 80 Years Later

Vatican Secretariat of State Publishes Full "Jews" Series of Historical Archive Online

OGS Call for Lecture Proposals for 2024 Annual Conference

More Than 355 Square Miles of Additional Lloyd George Domesday Records Released on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™

Findmypast Adds More Than 200,000 Unique Records

The Unusual Cause of Death of Allan Pinkerton

Make Old Low-Resolution Images Look Great on Linux With Upscayl

Storj Next Could Make Decentralized Storage More Appealing to Both Supply and Demand Sides

4 Things Genetic Counselors Want You to Know About At-Home DNA Tests

For almost half a century, the pulse of much of the Jewish Diaspora was the Bund, a combination labor union, political party and social organization. 

But for years the only way to see those signs of life — the summer camps, schools, music ensembles and the picket lines — was to visit the archives and know what you were looking for.

Now, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will digitize the Jewish Labor Bund archive, some 3.5 million pages of documents, photos, flyers and correspondence from revolutionary leaders like Emma Goldman and David Dubinsky. The digitization will make these artifacts accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

The Bund Archive was established in 1899 in Geneva, Switzerland, two years after the Bund was founded in 1897 in Vilna, Lithuania (now Vilnius). Rehoused in 1919 at the German Social-Democratic Party building, it came under threat with Hitler’s rise to power. The archive’s caretakers smuggled its contents into France in French Diplomatic pouches, nominally selling it to the French government.

Remarkably, though the Nazis seized the archive in 1944, much of it survived the war. The Bund Archives have been at YIVO since 1992.

You can read more in an article by PJ Grisar published in the Forward.com web site at: https://forward.com/culture/536338/yivo-yiddish-jewish-labor-bund-archive/.

Jerome E. Anderson of Easthampton, Massachusetts, formerly of Warren, MA, and Boston, died on February 13, 2023, at age 81. 

Genealogist, book collector, and former chemist, Jerome was a longtime member and staff member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, delivering lectures around the country, preparing exhibits, and carrying out valuable research for patrons and colleagues, for publications and his own projects. He was an editorial consultant for the NEHGS Register and contributing editor for The American Genealogist (TAG). 

He was known as a specialist in early handwriting on Anderson family lines and the Scotch-Irish of early New England and Canada with a particular interest in Maine ancestry. 

He was also an enthusiastic member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. As a book collector, Jerome concentrated on American and New England history and science, and the history of books, bookbinding, and printing. With memberships such as in the Ticknor Society of Boston, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Friends of the Houghton Library, he contributed uniquely to research and collections in early New England book and printing history. 

You can read his obituary at: https://tinyurl.com/4nrsynv7.

This online webinar by Tony Burroughs will provide an overview of the methods and sources in the seven distinct phases that are the building blocks of African American genealogy. It progresses from beginning to advanced research, highlighting some of the problems and complexities of African American genealogy along the way. It is valuable for beginners, intermediate, and advanced researchers.

Tony Burroughs is an internationally known genealogist who researched Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Johnson's family history and consulted on genealogies for Oprah Winfrey, Smokey Robinson, Al Sharpton, and Billy Porter. He has appeared as a guest expert in African American Lives with Henry Louis Gates, Oprah's Roots, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Real Family of Jesus, the History Channel, CBS Sunday Morning, and the BBC. His book, Black Roots, was number one on Essence Magazine's Best Seller List.

The Live online webinar will be held Tuesday, February 28, 2023, from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm CST, (7-00 pm to 8:30 pm Eastern Standard Time). The fee is $30.00 USD.

Register now at: https://bookme.name/tonyburroughs/the-seven-phases-of-african-american-genealogy-1

Teenagers struggling to develop a healthy sense of identity must walk a tightrope, balancing commitment to their family’s values with their own exploration of what matters, most psychologists agree.

A new BYU study suggests that studying family history may help older adolescents find this sweet spot. From a survey of 239 18-to-20-year-old students at seven U.S. universities, researchers found that individuals who had the healthiest identity development — both a sense of connectedness to family and adherence to their own beliefs — also had high levels of family history knowledge.

“Family history knowledge is particularly good at keeping us grounded,” said BYU experience design and management professor Brian Hill, an author of the paper that was published Wednesday in the journal Genealogy. “There are kids who go off and explore their own paths without settling into a value system that can guide them going forward. We need knowledge of where we come from along with individual differentiation from family to find a steady path.”

The surveys in the study assessed whether students knew about the major events and important anecdotes from their parents’ and grandparents’ lives, as well as how developed the students’ identity was based on standard measures — whether they were close with family, how they had arrived at their political and religious views, how they had explored occupational options and how committed they were to their values.

The results indicated that many adolescents have high levels of family history knowledge. About 77% of the participants knew the answers to three-quarters of the family history questions. The more they knew, the more likely they were to have developed a healthy sense of identity. 

You can read more in an article by Christie Allen published in the BYU News at https://news.byu.edu/intellect/family-history-knowledge-helps-american-adolescents-develop-healthy-sense-of-identity.

The full study can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/7/1/13. 

The following announcement was written by the folks at TheGenealogist:

TheGenealogist has once again expanded its Landowner and Occupier Collection with the release of over 134,000 new Lloyd George Domesday land tax records. This latest addition covers more than 355 square miles of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, including areas around Watford, St Albans, and Hemel Hempstead, and extending up to Luton, Dunstable, and Toddington. The records provide a fascinating insight into the lives of our ancestors, enabling researchers to uncover the owners and occupiers of properties between 1910 and 1915, as well as details about the size, state of repair, and value of their homes.

The Corn Exchange, Luton

The scanned field book pages (IR58) have been meticulously linked to large scale Ordnance Survey maps from the time and are fully searchable by a person's name, county, parish, and street. TheGenealogist's powerful Map Explorer™ tool provides an easy way to switch between georeferenced modern and historical maps, allowing researchers to explore the area and see how it has changed over time.

• Individual property details can be found in these IR58 1910 Valuation Office records

• Fully searchable records by a person’s name, county, parish and street

• Survey books are linked to large scale maps used in 1910-1915 and viewable on the powerful Map Explorer™ 

• The historic OS maps locate individual plots georeferenced to a modern street map or satellite map underlay

Area covered by this release of Lloyd George Domesday Records

Included in this release are the IR58 property records for the following areas:

Abbots Langley, Aldbury, Aldenham, Barton, Berkhamsted Rural, Berkhamsted Urban, Billington, Bovingdon, Bushey and Oxhey, Caddington, Chalgrave, Dunstable, Eaton Bray, Eggington, Flamstead, Flaunden, Great Gaddesden, Harpenden, Heath and Reach, Hemel Hempstead, Houghton Regis, Hyde, Kensworth, Kings Langley, Leighton Buzzard, Linslade and Soulbury, Little Gaddesden, Luton, Markyate, Nettleden, Northchurch, Puttenham (Tring Rural), Puttenham (Tring Urban), Redbourn, Rickmansworth and Chorleywood, Ridge, Sarratt, St. Albans, St. Michael, Stanbridge, Streatley, Studham, Sundon, Tilsworth, Toddington, Totternhoe, Tring Urban, Tring Urban (Tring Rural), Watford and Wigginton.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: The “seeds” of the Ryder Cup in Land records for Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/the-seeds-of-the-ryder-cup-in-land-tax-records-for-hertfordshire-1668/

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!

NOTE: This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it is about some new technology that may revolutionize computer technology. I will suggest that all computer users should learn about this technology, whether you plan to use it or not.

The following is a press release written by the folks at Storj:

Storj, the leader in enterprise-grade, globally distributed cloud object storage, that’s globally faster and less expensive than industry giants AWS, Microsoft and Google, today unveiled the next evolution of its network. The number one service on the Web3 Index is also debuting the next phase of its economic model that provides for wider participation in the Storj ecosystem, with sustainable economic incentives for both storage node operators and independent satellite operators. Storj Next’s new features will enable both Web2 and Web3 businesses to reduce cloud costs, without sacrificing reliability or performance.

What’s New on Storj Next

The latest version of Storj adds to its already superior speed and savings, Web3 community earning opportunities, with upgrades and new features including:

• Expanded economic model: Storj plans to introduce an expanded deposit structure, enabling a new earning opportunity for satellite operators and accelerating earning opportunities for nodes, to promote network growth. 

• Community Satellites: For serious operators who wish to move beyond operating nodes to operating a storage network, Storj is adding capabilities with code, test data, and more to operate globally distributed storage networks without capital and energy intensive datacenters.

• Chainsnap.io Marketplace with Ankr: Accelerates blockchain node startup by 10x enabling faster and efficient node launching.

• Perpetual storage: Dedicated wallet addresses for Storj accounts unlock perpetual storage via Ethereum smart contract payments with STORJ.

“We made the switch to Storj from AWS and not only cut costs, but noticed an improved performance by at least 10x,” said Pocket Networks CEO Michael O’Rourke. “Plus, web2 hyperscalers can have outages in a way that sophisticated decentralized systems do not. With Storj, we not only get faster downloads, we get resilience and security, all for less.”

Defying the downturn and scaling what works 

While businesses around the world look to cut costs, including IT budget reductions, they are flocking to more cost effective cloud solutions. This has led to a 40x rise in Storj network use, with remarkable growth from both Web2 and Web3 customers. In the last year, Storj has scaled from 13,000 to 20,000 nodes as both the supply and demand sides realize the economic benefits. Storj has also outperformed Web2 cloud storage providers, driving Web2 adoption with SLA’s comparable to AWS, Google, and Azure. Early proven use cases include video and media distribution, fast sync for blockchain, IT backup and disaster recovery, and sharing large data sets for machine learning. The latest enhancements have gained even more speed, with 280% improvements in file downloads and uploads.

“Storj gets faster as we add more nodes due to parallelism for downloads. We eliminate dependency on a single data hub, instead using a distributed network of under utilized storage capacity on existing hardware, which allows for less latency and reduced data transfer times,” said Storj CEO Ben Golub. ”We have kept our heads down building a product that works and seen significant growth as a result: Storj is up to 90 percent less expensive and faster on a global basis than AWS and other hyperscalers, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to reduce costs – and emissions – while still benefiting from enterprise-grade durability, reliability, and security"

To learn more about Storj and save costs on your cloud storage bill, visit www.storj.io. To learn about the Fast Sync Marketplace with Ankr, visit https://www.chainsnap.io/. To learn about performance over AWS, download this on demand webinar at https://www.storj.io/resource/how-storj-is-consistently-faster-than-aws.

About Storj 

Storj is a leader in decentralized cloud object storage. Built for developers, architects, and IT ops professionals, Storj delivers blazingly fast, CDN-like performance at cold storage prices, enterprise-grade durability, and better security with no vendor lock-in and no single points of failure. Storj meets the leading-edge privacy and sustainability demands for traditional use cases, Web3, and dApps. Easily integrated into any existing stack with S3 compatibility, Storj is architected as a trustless globally distributed network that utilizes existing excess storage capacity making performance, privacy, and resiliency available to any size organization, at 1/5 to 1/20 the price of hyperscalers. Storj stores multiple petabytes and has petabyte-scale enterprise and Web3 customers and partners like Pocket Network, Atempo, iXsystems, Gabb Wireless at https://gabb.com/gabb-phone-3-pro/, and the University of Edinburgh. STORJ is an ERC-20 token used across the Storj network.