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.

It is said that true love stands the test of time.

For Carol Bohlin of Tinmouth, Vermont, it’s her parents' World War II-era love letters that proved indelible when they were gifted to her by a complete stranger who found them nearly 80 years after they were written. 

"I was really so surprised they found these," Bohlin, 76, told Fox News Digital. 

"I never expected this."

Bohlin, the daughter of Claude Marsten Smythe and Marie Borgal Smythe of Staten Island, New York, said she had no idea her parents had saved and hidden away their only means of communication while her father was serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

You could tell she opened them with care and cherished them," Kearney said. "Everything was still intact. Nothing was smudged, nothing was discolored. They were pretty amazing."

Kearney said she desperately wanted to return the letters to the family, but did not know how to track down the descendants of the couple.

"I couldn't find any contact information, where I could send them or who they belonged to," Kearney said. 

Twenty-eight years later, Kearney saw New York-based heirloom hunter Chelsey Brown, 30, on "The Kelly Clarkson Show." 

She realized she might have found someone who could help her locate the rightful owner of the World War II love letters. 

Brown, a New York-based interior decorator, has a passion for reuniting historical artifactswith long-lost family members.

Brown used her resources, including the MyHeritage.com database, to connect Kearney with one of Bohlin’s sons — and eventually with Bohlin herself.

"In the end, why did Carol’s parents hide those letters?" Brown said. 

"They wanted them to be found one day. Those letters were meant for Dottie [Kearney] to find."

You can read more in an article by Gretchen Eichenberg published at: https://tinyurl.com/yj5abvvj.

Students can license historical footage for their own work for free, while most filmmakers must pay to do so 

When filmmakers want access to historical footage of the Bay Area’s past, they turn to San Francisco State University, home to a massive and unique archive of local television news-film and documentaries from the 20th century. While Academy Award-winning films such as “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Milk” and “O.J.: Made in America” paid market rate to license the footage, San Francisco State students may do so for their own work at no cost.  

Based in the J. Paul Leonard Library on campus, the Bay Area Television Archive features more than 135,000 videos from Bay Area television stations. A visit to the new Bay Area Television Archive website is a YouTube-like rabbit hole of a time machine dedicated to the issues and events that gripped the region decades ago.  

The original daily news coverage allows one to learn how major events unfolded and how communities responded when the word was spread. Curated collections feature the civil rights movement (including the Third World Liberation Front student strike at SF State), the Zodiac Killer, 1970s adult entertainment, old-school hip hop and much more. One can watch speeches by Martin Luther King and Maya Angelou’s entire KQED-TV series “Blacks, Blues, Black” from 1968 — rediscovered and restored by Alex Cherian, the Bay Area television archivist on staff, after not having been seen for decades. 

Footage from the archive has been used in more than 1,000 documentary, television and community projects in the last 15 years, with dozens more coming out every year.

Film scanning equipment, funded by a donation from the Friends of the J. Paul Leonard Library, digitizes footage into 4K resolution.    

To inquire about licensing footage from the Bay Area Television Archive, visit the Using the Collections page or contact archivist Alex Cherian.  

You can read more in an article by Matt Itelson published in the San Francisco State University web site at: https://news.sfsu.edu/news/sf-state-bay-area-television-archive-treasure-trove-history-film-and-streaming-online .

Lincolnshire Baptisms 

We’ve added 216,638 new records to this existing collection, covering 1754-1812 and 269 churches and chapels across the county. Typically, you can find key biographical information for your ancestor, and often their parents’ names and the date of the baptism. 

Suffolk Marriage Index 

A further 52,387 records have been added to this set, covering 1813-1837 and over 500 churches. You’ll normally find your ancestor’s name, marital status and parish, plus that of their spouse, and the date and place of the marriage. 

National School Admissions Register 

5,709 records for Halifax, Yorkshire have been added this week, helping you uncover more about your ancestor’s early years. With these, you might find your ancestor’s address, father’s name and occupation, and even notes on their school days, such as exam results and reasons for absence.  

Newspapers 

Another 139,000 new pages, including new title the Special Financial, have been added to the newspaper archive this Friday.  

New titles: 

·         Special Financial, 1899 

Updated titles: 

·         Bristol Evening Post, 1976-1977, 1982-1983, 1985 

·         Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 1877-1878, 1881, 1909 

·         Eastern Mercury, 1903 

·         Finsbury Weekly News and Chronicle, 1910 

·         Glamorgan Gazette, 1991 

·         Hamilton Advertiser, 1921, 1930 

·         Holborn and Finsbury Guardian, 1909, 1916 

·         Irish Independent, 1940 

·         Kensington News and West London Times, 1889, 1909 

·         Richmond Informer, 1988 

·         St. Pancras Chronicle, People’s Advertiser, Sale and Exchange Gazette, 1900, 1905-1906, 1914 

·         Thomson’s Weekly News, 1902, 1908, 1910, 1917, 1921 

·         Wandsworth Borough News, 1908-1909 

·         Willesden Chronicle, 1923, 1942 

The following announcement was written by the Ohio Genealogical Society (OGS):

The Ohio Genealogical Society (OGS) announces a request for lecture proposals for the 2024 conference to be held April 9-14, 2024, at Kalahari Resort & Conference Center in Sandusky, Ohio.

Topics being considered include but not limited to the following: immigration, census records (especially the 1950), religious groups, migration, origins of early Ohio settlers, and the Old Northwest Territory, utilizing land records, military records, technology (including usage mobile devices, apps, social media), DNA, organization, society management and development, and methodology, analysis, and problem solving in genealogical research, Ohio history and its records, archives and repositories, and unique 1950’s topics.

The program committee is specifically seeking new, unusual, and dynamic proposals. Think outside of the box! Interested speakers are strongly encouraged to submit multiple proposals for either one-hour general sessions, or two-hour workshops. There is no limit to the number of proposals a speaker may submit. The deadline for submission of lecture proposals is May 31, 2023.

Submit proposals in PDF format. Each proposal must include the following to be considered:

Selected speakers receive an honorarium, travel compensation, conference registration, hotel, and per diem based on the number of days lectures are presented. (Sponsored speakers will only receive conference registration and syllabus materials. See more about sponsorships below.)

Sponsors

Societies and businesses are encouraged to submit proposals for sponsored talks. The sponsoring organization will cover speaker’s lecture(s) honorarium. Sponsored speakers will abide by all speaker deadlines. Sponsored speakers will receive complimentary OGS conference registration and electronic syllabus materials. The deadline to submit sponsored lectures is also May 31, 2023.

Additional information

Camera-ready syllabus material, due February 1, 2024 is required for each general presentation and will be included in the syllabus distributed to all conference registrants.

Invitations to speak will be issued by mid-June, 2023. Syllabus format guidelines will be sent to speakers at that time. The deadline for acceptance and submission of signed speaker contracts is July 15, 2023. Letters of regret will not be sent out until all invited speakers have responded.

Allan J. Pinkerton (25 August 1819 – 1 July 1884) was a Scottish American detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Pinkerton emigrated as a young man to seek his fortune in the United States of America. A self-educated man, he had little formal training in any of the professions usually available to immigrants. However, that never slowed the ambitious young man.

He settled in Dundee Township, Illinois, fifty miles northwest of Chicago. He built a cabin and started a cooperage (making barrels). His home soon became a stop on the Underground Railroad, smuggling escaping slaves northward to Canada.

Pinkerton worked with the local sheriff to identify some counterfeiters who were working nearby. Soon he was appointed as the first police detective in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. In 1850 he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the North-Western Police Agency, one of the nation's first private detective services. The company later became Pinkerton & Co and finally Pinkerton National Detective Agency, still in existence today as Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a subsidiary of Securitas AB. 

Pinkerton's business insignia was a wide open eye with the caption, "We never sleep." People in the area soon started referring to the company as "private eyes," a term still in use today.

Pinkerton's agency solved a series of train robberies during the 1850s, and he soon had all the business the fledgling company could handle. He never seemed to be afraid of danger. In many cases he personally chased down and arrested dangerous criminals. As a staunch abolitionist, he attended the secret meetings held by abolitionists John Brown and Frederick Douglass in Chicago along with abolitionists John Jones and Henry O. Wagoner. At those meetings, Jones, Wagoner, and Pinkerton helped purchase clothes and supplies for Brown. Jones' wife, Mary, guessed that the supplies included the suit Brown was later hanged in after the failure of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in November 1859.

During the first two years of the Civil War, Pinkerton served as head of the Union Intelligence Service and reportedly was involved in numerous dangerous undercover missions. He not only sent his men out as spies, but Pinkerton often personally became a spy himself. If captured, he undoubtedly would have been hanged.

After the Civil War, Pinkerton continued his pursuit of train robbers. He was hired to capture the infamous train robber Jesse James but failed at first. The railroad canceled the contract. Frustrated, Pinkerton refused to concede defeat. He continued to chase Jesse James at his own expense and even paid his employees out of his own pocket to continue the chase. He still failed and eventually gave up after James allegedly captured and killed one of Pinkerton's undercover agents (who was working undercover at the farm neighboring the James family's farmstead).

Allan J. Pinkerton continued to manage his detective agency and to find and apprehend outlaws, often doing the most dangerous work himself.

There is a bit of a question about the cause of Pinkerton's death. As an older man, he developed several ailments, including malaria, which he had contracted during a trip to the southern United States. He also suffered a mild stroke when he was about 65 years of age. However, the most common story is that this man – who had spent his life personally chasing many of the most dangerous outlaws in the country and being a spy in wartime – was walking his wife's poodle one day when the dog reportedly wrapped its leash around Pinkerton's legs. Pinkerton tripped, fell to the concrete, and severely bit his own tongue. He died of a gangrene infection of the tongue a few days later.

After Pinkerton spent a lifetime of danger, a poodle brought him down, something the most notorious badmen of the time had been unable to accomplish.

Allan J. Pinkerton is buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago.

References:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pinkerton

Encyclopædia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/461110/Allan-Pinkerton

Works by or about Allan Pinkerton at the Internet Archive: http://bit.ly/2v3Svjw

The "Jews" archival series of the Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State—Section for Relations with States and International Organizations (ASRS)—is now fully available for consultation on the internet.

The series consists of 170 volumes containing requests for help addressed to Pope Pius XII by Jews, both baptized Catholics and many who were not, from all over Europe, after the beginning of the persecutions by fascist governments in the 1930s and 1940s.

You can read more in an article in the Vatican News at: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2023-02/vatican-secretariat-state-jews-archives-fully-online.html.