The Brazos Valley African American Museum in Bryan, Texas and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have partnered to establish a family history and genealogical research center inside the museum.

The Pruitt-Sadberry Genealogy Family History Search will be unveiled to the public on May 10, 2022, and will be available for use by appointment only.

Appointments are available in one-hour time slots on most Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and include one-on-one assistance from family history and genealogy-trained volunteers.

In a joint statement, the Brazos Valley African American Museum board said, “We are very excited to offer this free service to the community. This is a resource that can benefit adults of all ages.” No previous experience with family history research is required to use this service, but the more information a patron brings to their first appointment, the more successful their experience will be. The volunteers who will be assisting at the center are trained in genealogical research.

Patrons will be able to schedule an appointment at www.bvaam.org or by visiting the museum beginning May 10.

I often highlight articles in other publications that I believe will be of interest to genealogists. Here is another example of that:

"You may have a flatbed scanner at home or perhaps one of those 'all in one' printer/scanner/copier machines, but did you know your smartphone’s camera can also double as a flatbed scanner?

"It’s not only fast and convenient to scan something when away from your computer, but the quality is surprisingly good, thanks to much better camera sensors and smarter software.

"Your iPhone or Android device is also ideal for digitizing old photos (in photo frames, albums or hanging on the wall), documents (menus, contracts, vaccination proof), notes, business cards, whiteboards and receipts (ideal for expense tracking or reimbursement) – and then storing those images for when you need them or sending them to someone else, if desired, via email or text."

I have used my smartphone many times to take images at local archives, of microfilm, and even of taking images of old family photographs when visiting a distant relative's home.

Today's "interesting article was written by Marc Saltzman and is published in the Yahoo/Finance web site at: https://yhoo.it/3whslXR.

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

While discovering the names and life details of our ancestors can be challenging, we can easily determine how many ancestors we have, right? We all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on. To determine the number of ancestors you have, all you have to do is grab a calculator and determine how many generations you wish to go back. That should be easy. Or is it?

For instance, here is a simple chart showing the number of ancestors you have, assuming an average of one generation every twenty-five years:

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/12770287.

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.

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

Fascinating English land tax records from the years before the First World War are being released today by TheGenealogist. Researchers are now able to search 31,394 newly added records of owners and occupiers to discover their ancestors from Merton, Mitcham, Morden and the Wimbledon areas.

Each record is linked to clear scanned pages of the actual IR58 Field books, sourced from The National Archives, and the properties plotted onto large scale contemporary IR121 maps. These maps are digital copies of the ones used at the time by the Valuation Office of the Board of the Inland Revenue to locate each and every parcel of land in the survey taken in between 1910 and 1915. TheGenealogist’s versatile Map Explorer™ allows their Diamond subscribers to view georeferenced modern and historical layers beneath the IR121 recordset map and so discover how the roads, fields and general environment has changed over the years.

Grazing land that would become the site of the Centre Court at Wimbledon in the following years

House historians and family history researchers alike will appreciate the ability to unearth valuable particulars about ancestors’ homes and land from these areas of south west London. They will also be able to see how similar, or even how very different the area where their ancestors lived had been at this time when compared to the map of the area today.

Included in those records being made available today is the past and present home of the iconic tennis tournament known as the Wimbledon Championship. The researcher is able to discover that the present day Centre Court, home to the only Grand Slam tennis event still to be held on grass, had in 1910 been rural fields put to use as “Grazing Land” by its owner Lady Sarah Lane.

The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, at the time of the survey, was then squeezed into a much smaller area of land in Wimbledon than it is today. That plot, where once the Championship played out, still plays a part in sport today albeit at a much lower level of competition.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: From Grazing Land to the Grass of Centre Court

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/wimbledon-from-grazing-land-to-the-grass-of-centre-court-1534/

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 Findmypast:

The following announcement was written by the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS):

Registration now open

The 42nd Annual IAJGS (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies) International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be held virtually Aug. 21-25.

Participants are expected from across the US and around the world. The Conference will feature approximately 60 live-streaming presentations, 100 pre-recorded presentations and 40 group meetings.

Registration is now open, with Early Bird fees available until May 31. Link to the conference website: www.iajgs2022.org for details.

For the first time ever, Early Bird registration offers an additional benefit beyond the reduced price. Several unique bonus pre-Conference recorded sessions from our sponsors – My Heritage, Ancestry. and Family Tree DNA, will be available starting May 2022 to Early Bird registrants only.

“Challenging the Conference Committee to create an exciting and memorable event, both pre-recorded and live-streamed sessions will cover the gamut of the 2022 themes,” said Judi Missel, lead co-chair. Themes will include Philadelphia and Western Pennsylvania research, and DNA experts explain the basics, as well as more sophisticated analysis in multiple presentations. Leaning how families lived across the world from small towns of America to Germany and the Caribbean allows researchers to add depth to their family experience. Those who want to document their family history will be able to listen to sessions on writing the stories and documenting them through multi-media and networking.

There will be a robust virtual Expo Hall with our Conference Sponsors and Exhibitors and an updated digital Resource Library. The Mobile App will be available for all attendees and our traditional Family Finder function will be found in the Attendee Service Center. Using a newly updated appointment system, mentors and translators will once again be available to help attendees.

Programs at the Conference will be geared from first-timers to conference veterans, and will include lectures as well as networking through Special Interest Groups (SIGs), Research Divisions (RDs), and Birds of a Feather (BOFs). An Exhibitor Hall and Resource Room will include genealogy experts and archivists for a one-stop research experience.

The Conference is hosted by IAJGS, an umbrella organization of more than 93 Jewish genealogical organizations worldwide. Judi Missel of AZ and Hadassah Lipsius of NY are Conference Lead Co-chairs. The Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia (JGASGP) is the Local co-host. Fred Blum, a past president of the Philadelphia Society is Conference Local Co-co-chair. “Although we are disappointed that visitors will not be coming to Philadelphia this summer, we are excited to still provide virtual information about the vibrant Jewish community and genealogical resources in our city,” he said.

The IAJGS coordinates and organizes activities such as its annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy and provides a unified voice as the spokesperson on behalf of its members.

The IAJGS’s vision is of a worldwide network of Jewish genealogical research organizations and partners working together as one coherent, effective and respected community, enabling people to succeed in researching Jewish ancestry and heritage. Find the IAJGS at: www.iajgs.org and like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/iajgsjewishgenealogy.

The following announcement was written by the Tamworth Regional Gallery:

Thursday 5 May, 2022

In 2021 Tamworth Regional Council was funded to digitise historic objects and artworks from the region’s museums, and Tamworth Regional Gallery. The project was managed by Tamworth Regional Gallery who partnered with five local museums and collections: Tamworth Power Station Museum; Australian Country Music Hall of Fame, Rocks, Gems, Minerals and Fossil Collections; Moonbi Museum and Tamworth Regional Film and Sound Archive. The project provided training and support to the New England and North West museum sector as part of a process of learning, knowledge sharing, sustainability and digitisation to national standards.

Nine local government authorities were funded to digitise significant artworks, museum objects and archives in their regions through the NSW Government’s Regional Cultural Fund, which supports the development of cultural infrastructure in regional NSW.  All projects have adopted a hub and spoke partnership model to deliver their projects, whereby small museums and historical societies share equipment and expertise to digitise significant objects.

The results of some of this work will now feature on Storyplace, a new website developed by Museums & Galleries of NSW that tells important stories from throughout regional New South Wales.

These stories are inspired by the digitised objects from the collections of regional museums, galleries and Aboriginal Keeping places that are part of this project. Storyplace is a living and evolving archive investigating people, places, communities and cultures from all over New South Wales. Behind the scenes of Storyplace are many paid and volunteer staff who have worked together to document, conserve and digitise these important regional collections. Storyplace is the result of this dedicated work. 

Regional museums, galleries and Aboriginal cultural centres are the custodians of vast collections that represent the history of regional NSW and in turn the state and the Nation. Many collections contain the only records of some aspects of historic day-to-day life in regional communities. 

The Storyplace project, managed by Museums & Galleries of NSW, has employed professional staff and story tellers to work with these newly digitised collections. Their work includes researching, writing, editing and publishing stories to Storyplace. 

The Storyplace website is unique and it will make available to a wide online audience the knowledge regional collections represent, and encourage visitors to regional museums, galleries and cultural centres.

Brett Adlington, CEO, Museums & Galleries of NSW said: Launching Storyplace has been a long but rewarding journey. M&G NSW is pleased to be leading such an exciting project. But, it would not have been possible to develop and launch Storyplace without the support of our many regional partners – including small volunteer-run museums.  

“The website provides a long-awaited online platform to help promote the importance and value of regional collections. It has, and will continue to assist, the regional museum and gallery sector to progress some important collection care issues – such as digital preservation and collection documentation. Both actions make important contributions to ensuring regional collections can be more thoroughly used now, as well as enjoyed in the future.”

Storyplace has been funded by the New South Wales Government through the Regional Cultural Fund.

The final published website address is: https://storyplace.org.au

Every year, Cherokee youth take to their bikes to explore the tragic history of the Trail of Tears on a 950-mile ride.

When 20-year-old Kaylee Smith of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, stepped into the sacred water of the Blue Hole Spring at Red Clay State Historic Park in Tennessee, she felt the emotional tug of her ancestors like never before. As part of a tribal cycling team made up of Cherokee youth from Oklahoma and North Carolina, Smith was taking part in a bike journey from her tribe’s original homelands in Georgia and Tennessee through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas to the capital of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah to experience sites that are part of her history. The Blue Hole was a sacred place for the Cherokee before the U.S. government brutally relocated them from their homelands to a land they didn’t know.

“That was a place where the Cherokee went to the water for traditional and spiritual purposes,” Smith says. “My team and I were allowed to enter the water. That was probably my favorite part of the ride because I never really learned about the traditional experiences that a lot of my people went through.”

While the dip into the sacred water was enlightening for Smith and her touring team, other experiences along the cyclists’ Trail of Tears route were shocking and emotional for the history they evoked. More than 180 years ago, tens of thousands of Native Americans were forcibly removed from their homelands in the Southeast (and other parts of the country) and made to march on foot to Indian Territory, now the state of Oklahoma. The Removal tribulation began in 1830; the Cherokee Trail of Tears mainly spanned a period from August 1838 to March 1839, including a particularly horrific winter that final year.

A quarter of the Cherokee population died in the Removal.

You can read more about the 2022 "Remember the Removal Bike Ride" at: https://www.cowboysindians.com/2022/05/remember-the-removal-bike-ride/.

Many genealogy books are self-published. A news article today caught my eye: What You Should Know Before Self-Publishing a Book.

The article written by Lindsey Ellefson  and published in the Lifehacker web site answers frequently-asked questions about creating such a book. Save yourself some problems later by first reading the article at: https://lifehacker.com/what-you-should-know-before-self-publishing-a-book-1848885033.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. has inspired hundreds of celebrities and public figures throughout the years to explore their ancestry and make insightful revelations about their past.

However, Gates’ interest in ancestry didn’t start after he became a renowned scholar, professor, filmmaker, journalist and cultural critic. Instead, it began when he was a young child in West Virginia interviewing his parents about their family tree.

That interest grew throughout the years, eventually serving as the foundation for his hugely successful PBS show “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.,” where he explores the ancestry of influential people from diverse backgrounds.

Gates discussed the origins of his show, his own interest in genealogy and family history research, and other topics during during “Past Connections That Bind Us All: A Conversation with Henry Louis Gates Jr.,” a Q&A event by Arizona PBS and ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on Saturday, April 30 at ASU Gammage. The event was graciously sponsored by Arizona Gammage, SRP and ASU Library.

You can read the full article at: https://bit.ly/3KOgu8K.