Since her time at Parabon Labs, CeCe Moore has helped solve more than 200 cases in four years, which is about one case per week.

On Tuesday, law enforcement officials credited investigative genealogy for helping close the case of the “I-65 Killer,” who was identified as Harry Edward Greenwell. The FBI’s Gang Response Investigative Team (GRIT) compared DNA evidence with traditional genealogy research and historical records.

Before that, this type of genetic genealogy was most notably used in the case of the “Golden State Killer” in 2018. It was also used earlier this year to track down a serial rapist in Shelby County who committed crimes in the 1980s. This week he was sentenced to 650 years in prison.

CeCe Moore helped work on that case. She is the chief genealogist at Parabon Labs. Even though she did not assist in the case of the “I-65 Killer,” she said the process is similar.

You can learn more in an article by Lauren Kostiuk published in the WTHR web site at: https://bit.ly/3DMU1Y1.

With its Mission Revival-style architecture and red-tiled roof, the historic Thistle Cottage stands out from the other homes along Cherry Street in Greenville.

Today, the house built in 1912 is operated by the Muhlenberg County Public Library as a gallery, museum and, most recently, genealogy center.

“This house was built by William Graham Duncan, he was a coal mine owner here in Muhlenberg County,” archivist Amie Waltrip said.

The home was donated to the City of Greenville in 1986 by Duncan’s grandson, and it was opened in 1989 as the Duncan Center Museum and Art Gallery. The property was transferred to the Muhlenberg Public Library in 2013.

While the upstairs portion of the house is undergoing renovations, it is typically used as a gallery and museum space. The downstairs is the new home of the library’s history and genealogy collection, which was previously in a separate annex adjacent to the main branch in Greenville.

You can read more in an article by Nathan Havenner published in the Messenger-Inquirer web site at: https://bit.ly/37prECW.

Here is a name that many people will recognize: Margo Georgiadis is the former CEO of Ancestry.com. The following is a press release written by Flagship Pioneering:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 7, 2022 -- Flagship Pioneering, the bioplatform innovation company, announced today that former Ancestry.com CEO Margo Georgiadis is joining Flagship as CEO-Partner. Georgiadis brings extensive expertise in technological innovation and high-performance business transformation. As a CEO-Partner, she will serve as the CEO of a Flagship Pioneering company currently in stealth mode, play an instrumental role in Flagship Pioneering's efforts to scale its focus on preemptive health and medicine, as well as efforts to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance biotech innovation.

Georgiadis was most recently an Endurance Partner in Residence at venture capital firm General Catalyst, where she focused on building next-generation healthcare platforms that improve clinical outcomes while making healthcare more customer-centric, accessible and affordable. During her tenure as President and CEO of Ancestry.com, she scaled the company to over 3.6M subscribers, doubled its genomics network to over 20M consumers, increased subscription revenue to over $1B, and oversaw the sale of the company to Blackstone for $5B.

"The future of health lies in two forces advancing and converging: the development of diagnostics and therapeutics that preempt and deter disease, and AI and ML generating new classes of programmable medicines." said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering. "Margo is uniquely positioned to accelerate Flagship's efforts to help transform the sick care system to a true health care system, and to help drive our company-building activities in this arena."

With an extensive background in data-driven ecosystem transformations across multiple sectors, Georgiadis will draw upon her experience serving as President of the Americas at Google, where she led the hyper scaling of Google's commercial operations and advertising sales across all digital solutions and platforms. She has also served as Chief Executive Officer of Mattel, Inc., Chief Operating Officer at Groupon, Executive Vice President of US Card Services and Chief Marketing Officer at Discover Financial Services, and Partner at McKinsey and Company.

"I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join Flagship Pioneering and contribute to building new models for preemptive health. With an unrivaled team of world-class scientists and technologists, Flagship is bringing to market transformational technology platforms that are reshaping the future of health and sustainability," said Margo Georgiadis, Flagship Pioneering CEO-Partner. "I am excited to join an organization creating boundary-pushing life sciences platforms to improve health outcomes for as many people as possible."

Georgiadis is a champion of organizations that inspire women and girls to pursue education and careers in STEM and advancing the next generation of women leaders. She has received multiple awards for her business and community leadership including the Forbes "Excellence Award in Innovation," Chicago Innovation's "Visionary Award," the Eastman Medal from the University of Rochester, Executive of the Year in Utah, and was named to Crain's "Most Powerful Women in Business" and Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" lists.

Her appointment complements recent executive appointments of Tom DiLenge, Senior Partner, Global Policy, Regulatory & Governmental Strategy; Vaithianathan "Palani" Palaniappan, Chief Technology Officer of Pioneering Medicines; Justine Levin-Allerhand, Senior Partner, Corporate Development; Kathy Biberstein, General Counsel; and Dr. Stephen Hahn, CEO-Partner and Chief Executive Officer, Harbinger Health, among others.

About Margo Georgiadis

Margo Georgiadis is a seasoned CEO and company builder with a passion for innovation, technology and health. A mission-driven leader with a track record for delivering results, Georgiadis brings more than two decades of distinguished leadership, business transformation and technological innovation to drive growth. Most recently, she served as an Endurance Partner at venture catalyst firm General Catalyst, where she focused on building and scaling health technology companies focused on improving clinical outcomes, access and affordability. Previously, she served as President and CEO at Ancestry.com, where she led the democratization of access to everyone's family story and built new platforms in personalized health. Georgiadis spent nine years at Google as President of the Americas and Vice President, Global Sales Operations, where she led the company's commercial operations and advertising sales for Google's largest region. As Chief Executive Officer of Mattel, Inc., she spearheaded an 18-month turnaround to reset the mission and align the organization, product and channel strategy, partnerships and operating platform. Georgiadis has also served as the Chief Operating Officer of Groupon, Executive Vice President of US Card Services and Chief Marketing Officer at Discover Financial Services, and as a Partner at McKinsey and Company. She holds a BA in economics as well as an MBA from Harvard.

Georgiadis sits on several boards, including McDonald's Corporation, AppLovin, Handshake, Neeva, WorkBoard, and Ro. Margo has received multiple awards for her business and community leadership including the Forbes "Excellence Award in Innovation," Chicago Innovation's "Visionary Award", the Eastman Medal from the University of Rochester, Executive of the Year in Utah, and was named to Crain's "Most Powerful Women in Business" and Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" lists.

About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $140 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $2.6 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $19 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 42 transformative companies, including Axcella Therapeutics (NASDAQ: AXLA), Codiak BioSciences (NASDAQ: CDAK) Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Indigo Ag, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Sigilon Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SGTX).

I get questions occasionally about the two different email messages that I send out. I decided to write about the process here in the newsletter in case other people have questions about them:

There are TWO different newsletters: one that gets delivered 6 days a week (Tuesday through Sunday, if there are any new articles) plus a different email newsletter that gets delivered on Monday late morning or in the afternoon (Eastern U.S. time). 

The Monday newsletter is the only one that's first sentence says, "This is the once-a-week Email Update for all subscribers to Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter..."

The daily newsletters have a first sentence that says, "This is a daily email message that lists all the new articles..."

The two different email messages are sent by two different email servers and have two different lists of addresses to send them to. The two different email newsletters are not connected together in any way. You may subscribe to both or to one or the other or to none at all. Your choice.

In both cases, at the bottom of both newsletters, there is a link that says "UNSUBSCRIBE." On the newsletter you do not want, click on that link. That will stop that one newsletter and not affect the other one.

If you want to subscribe to the daily newsletters, go to https://eogn.com/Subscribe-to-the-Daily-Email-List-of-New-Articles

- Dick Eastman

Ellis Island seems to receive all the publicity for immigrants arriving in New York City. Many people do not realize that Ellis Island did not begin operations until 1892. More than 73 million Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants who arrived in New York City prior to that year. From 1830 until 1890, these new arrivals first stepped ashore at Castle Garden in lower Manhattan.

The site of Castle Garden remains as one of the oldest public open spaces in continuous use in New York City. American Indians fished from its banks, and the first Dutch settlers built a low stone wall with cannons as a battery to protect the harbor and New Amsterdam. The stone wall was later converted to a street that is now the well-known financial center called Wall Street.

The Castle Garden immigration processing center started operation in 1830. By 1890, the arriving throngs were overcrowding the center, and there was no room to expand the facility since the ocean and the city surrounded it.

After reviewing several possible sites, the United States government selected Ellis Island for the establishment of a new federal immigration center for New York. On the island, it would be easier to screen and protect the new immigrants before they proceeded out onto the streets of Manhattan. Castle Garden processed its last immigrant in April 1890.

After the closing of Castle Garden in 1890, immigrants were processed at an old barge office in Manhattan until the opening of the Ellis Island Immigration Center on January 1, 1892. Then a huge fire at Ellis Island occurred during the night of June 14, 1897. The fire burned the entire immigration complex to the ground. Nobody was hurt, and nobody knows why it happened or who started it. However, many state and federal records were lost in that fire.

Immigration processing was moved back to the old barge office in Manhattan while Ellis Island was being rebuilt. In December of 1900, the new Main Building on Ellis Island was opened, and 2,251 immigrants were received that day. In a single day in 1907, 11,747 immigrants were processed at Ellis Island. 

Castle Garden was soon forgotten by almost everyone, with the exception of those who processed through the facility and later generations of family genealogists. Castle Garden was soon converted to other uses. A theater stood on the site for many years and was used by the likes of Phineas T. Barnum. Today it is a city park, called Battery Park, and is the departure point for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Today's Battery Park is actually bigger now than it once was, having been extended into the harbor over the years by landfill.

While the Ellis Island fire of 1897 did destroy some of the records of Castle Garden, the ships' manifest records of those years survived.

The Battery Conservancy has created an online database of information about 10 million immigrants for the years 1830 through 1892, the years before Ellis Island opened. All these records are extracted from the original ship manifests. If you are one of the more than 73 million Americans who are descended from those who entered at Castle Garden, you can probably find your ancestors in this database.

This week I went to the Castle Garden site and conducted several searches with great success. I found that the site's free search allows you to search by first name, last name, date range, place of origin, occupation, and name of ship. You can search by any combination of those elements. Anything that is unknown can be left blank. The result will be a display of all the matches to the parameters you supply.

As usual, I started with my own surname. A few seconds later I was looking at a list of 78 immigrants who share the same last name as mine. I was a bit disappointed to find that one immigrant was listed with a first name of “Mr.” while his wife's first name was listed as “Mrs.” Another's first name was listed as “A.C.,” and a fourth seemed to have the first name of “Miss M.” However, the rest of the entries had true first names, as expected.

By clicking on menu items, I found that one person named Eastman was 34 years old when he arrived from Liverpool, England, on the ship Abyssinia on February 17, 1871. He was a music professor. Perhaps that is enough information for a descendant to make the connection, even without a listed first name.

The following is an example of a more typical entry:

THOMAS EASTMAN

Occupation: Farmer

Age: 35

Sex: M

Literacy: U

Arrived: 1884-05-05

Origin: England

Port: Liverpool & Queenstown

Last Residence:

Destination: USA

Plan: Unknown

Ship: Alaska

Passage: Unknown

All searches are FREE of charge. Donations are solicited to help maintain this site for all.

CastleGarden.org is a great resource for educators, scholars, students, family historians, and the interested public.

For more information about the online Castle Garden immigration database or to search the records, go to http://castlegarden.org.

The following announcement was written by the Slt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG):

SLIG Scholarship Applications Due May 1st Applications are now being accepted for several scholarships available to participants in upcoming SLIG events. The deadline for each scholarship is May 1, 2022. Summaries are included below.  Click on each scholarship title for links to additional details and application procedures. UGA Jimmy B. Parker Scholarship The UGA Jimmy B. Parker Scholarship provides a guaranteed seat and full tuition to one course of choice at either SLIG 2023 or SLIG Academy for Professionals 2023. This scholarship will be awarded to an individual who has demonstrated commitment to genealogical excellence and community involvement.   Laura G. Prescott Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy Scholarship The Laura G. Prescott Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy Scholarship provides a guaranteed seat and full tuition to one course of choice at SLIG Fall Virtual 2022, SLIG 2023, or SLIG Academy for Professionals 2023. (In years when SLIG meets in person, this scholarship also covers lodging.) Applicants may be of any age or skill level but should exhibit a passion for genealogy, appreciate the importance of education and standards in our field, and serve the community through volunteerism.   SLIG Scholarship for First-Time Institute Attendees The SLIG Scholarship for First-Time Institute Attendees provides a guaranteed seat and full tuition to one course of choice at SLIG 2023. (In years when SLIG meets in person, this scholarship also can include a waiver for one night's lodging during SLIG at the Hilton.) Applicants should meet these qualifications: (1) never have attended, nor will be attending, any of the national genealogical institutes prior to SLIG 2023; (2) have previously sought to improve their genealogical education through formal or informal means; (3) have an intermediate or above level of research knowledge and skills, and are ready for an in-depth learning experience; and (4) have identified a SLIG 2023 course that meets their ongoing educational objectives.   MyHeritage Chris Darrington Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy Scholarship The MyHeritage Chris Darrington Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy Scholarship provides a guaranteed seat and full tuition to one course of choice at SLIG 2023. Applicants may be of any age or skill level (most SLIG courses require at least an intermediate level of skill) and have a genuine passion for family history, a strong desire to improve their research skills through quality education, and an enthusiasm for serving the genealogical community.   SLIG Intermediate Foundations Scholarship The SLIG Intermediate Foundations Scholarship provides a guaranteed seat and full tuition to the Intermediate Foundations course offered at SLIG Fall Virtual 2022. For more information about the Intermediate Foundations course, click this link. Applicants should meet these qualifications: (1) have a strong working knowledge of basic genealogical research principles and have had several years of experience applying those principles using a variety of record sources to identify ancestors and confirm relationships; (2) have utilized a variety of formal and informal educational opportunities to obtain and strengthen knowledge, and now feel ready for an in-depth, curriculum-based learning experience; (3) have time available each week during the course to spend at least three hours in class sessions plus five to ten hours to complete homework; and (4) have reviewed the course description and outline to identify how this course will help meet their educational objectives.

Majority-Black Detroit has become the largest U.S. city to challenge its figures from the 2020 census following a national head count in which the U.S. Census Bureau acknowledges that a higher percentage of African Americans were undercounted than last decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Leaders of Michigan's largest city, which is more than three-quarters Black, had questioned the results of the 2020 census since last December when they released a report suggesting that more than 8% of the occupied homes in 10 Detroit neighborhoods may have been undercounted.

Detroit filed its challenge late last week, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In a letter to the Census Bureau, Mayor Michael Duggan said insufficient resources and not enough census takers were devoted to the count in Detroit, resulting in an undercount of unoccupied homes that could amount to tens of thousand of residents being overlooked.

You can read more in an article by Mike Schneider and Corey Williams published in Yahoo News at: https://news.yahoo.com/detroit-largest-city-challenge-2020-204315520.html.

What a great idea! A new time capsule feature could start some bigger conversations amongst Irish descendants — 100 years from now.

At the end of this year's census form, people were given the chance to voluntarily add a time capsule message, which is set to remain private until 2122. It could be an opportunity to leave a message to future generations or historians.

The census, which took place Sunday, encouraged those filling out the voluntary form to consider what insights descendants might be able to learn about life in 2022 a century from now. Then today's citizens could write anything they wish their descendants (and others) to read.

"Will they feel a strong connection with us, as we do now when we look up the individual census records from 1901 and 1911?" the census website asks.

You can read more in an article by Rina Torchinsky published in the NPR web site at: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/05/1091045484/ireland-irish-census-time-capsule-100-years

I hereby propose we do the same thing in the 2030 U.S. Census.

In March 2022, MyHeritage added 18.1 million historical records in 12 collections from countries across the globe, including Australia, Austria, France, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Switzerland, and Ukraine. With this addition, the total number of historical records on MyHeritage now adds up to 16.9 billion.

You can find more details about each of the collections in the MyHeritage Blog at https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/04/historical-records-added-in-march-2022/.

Without an every-name census index it might be harder to find your people, but it's still possible. Nancy Messier's suggestions for the steps that will make it easier may be found at https://bit.ly/38yZt5j.