An archival activist who’s long been a thorn in the side of New York bureaucrats says an attempted cash grab by the city sparked her bid to get millions of its historical records — so she can put them online, for free, “forever,” according to a lawsuit.

Brooke Schreier Ganz’s nonprofit, Reclaim the Records, has already put online more than 30 million public documents since 2015, including searchable indexes listing old births, deaths and marriages. The group targets records it says are “wrongly restricted” by local governments.

A New York native who lives in California, Ganz and Reclaim the Records have already beaten the city in court three times as it fights for records. Brooke Schreier Ganz and Reclaim the Records have already beaten New York City in court three times over records issues.

The fed-up group filed its largest Freedom of Information request yet in October 2020, after the Municipal Archives proposed new restrictions and new fees on how the public could use the city’s historical records, none of which are restricted by copyright and “some of which predate the founding of the United States,” Ganz said.

“No one else is trying to make a buck off historical records like New York has,” Ganz told The Post.

Since then, Ganz and Reclaim the Records have sought copies of all historical records the city has already digitized, which could amount to about 8 million documents, genealogist Alec Ferretti said.

“And we are going to put them all online for free public use, without any restrictions, costs, paywalls, subscriptions, or copyrights,” the group says on its web site.

You can read more in an article by James Thompson at: https://www.reportdoor.com/nyc-sued-by-archivist-over-release-of-historical-records/.

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

This week FamilySearch added 4 million church and civil registrations from Brazil, plus new records for South Africa (Western Cape Deceased Estate Files 1951–1958), and more from England, Finland, Samoa, Venezuela and elsewhere. For the United States collections, check out additions to RecordAGrave Index, New Jersey Death Index, Virginia County Marriages, and new records for Alabama, Illinois, and Indiana. Search them now for free by clicking on the links below.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Millions of new genealogy records are added each week to help increase your discovery success. Check back each week and in the meantime, search existing records on FamilySearch.

For other exciting genealogy content, peruse over 1,000 free, on-demand sessions from RootsTech Connect 2021.

Country	Collection	Indexed Records	Digital Images	Comments
Argentina	Argentina, Catamarca, Civil Registration, 1888-2000	10,241	0	Expanded collection
Austria	Austria, Carinthia, Gurk Diocese, Catholic Church Records, 1527-1986	4,841	0	Expanded collection
Austria	Austria, Vienna, Jewish Registers of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1784-1911	5,112	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Bahía, Catholic Church Records, 1598-2007	315,325	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Bahia, Civil Registration, 1877-1976	15,672	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Ceará, Catholic Church Records, 1725-1971	762,072	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Maranhão, Catholic Church Records, 1673-1962	4,464	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Minas Gerais, Catholic Church Records, 1706-1999	37,786	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Minas Gerais, Civil Registration, 1879-1949	2,072	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Pará, Catholic Church Records, 1930-1976	127,530	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Paraíba, Catholic Church Records, 1731-2013	699,875	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Paraná, Catholic Church Records, 1704-2008	107,314	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Pernambuco, Catholic Church Records, 1762-2002	989,912	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Rio Grande do Norte, Catholic Church Records, 1788-1967	638,073	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, Catholic Church Records, 1738-1952	83,165	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Santa Catarina, Catholic Church Records, 1714-1977	41,501	0	Expanded collection
Brazil	Brazil, Santa Catarina, Civil Registration, 1850-1999	2,178	0	Expanded collection
Costa Rica	Costa Rica, Civil Registration, 1823-1975	6,752	0	Expanded collection
Denmark	Denmark, Århus Municipal Census, 1896	4,288	0	New collection
Denmark	Denmark, Military Conscription Rolls, 1789-1792	2,331	0	Expanded collection
El Salvador	El Salvador Catholic Church Records, 1655-1977	18,380	0	Expanded collection
England	England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988	89,745	0	Expanded collection
England	England, Northumberland Non-Conformist Church Records, 1613-1920	12,415	0	Expanded collection
Finland	Finland, Tax Lists, 1809-1915	22,994	0	Expanded collection
France	France, Calvados, Census, 1856	3,084	0	Expanded collection
France	France, Saône-et-Loire, Parish and Civil Registration, 1530-1892	738	0	Expanded collection
Germany	Germany, Saxony, Church Book Indexes, 1500-1900	7,530	0	Expanded collection
Grenada	Grenada Births and Baptisms, 1866-1891	9,128	0	Expanded collection
India	India, Madras Diocese Protestant Church Records, 1743-1990	6,100	0	Expanded collection
Jamaica	Jamaica, Church of England Parish Register Transcripts, 1664-1880	8,244	0	Expanded collection
Malta	Malta, Passport Applications, 1865-1943	11,971	0	Expanded collection
Mexico	Mexico, Puebla, Catholic Church Records, 1545-1977	1,858	0	Expanded collection
Norway	Norway, Probate Index Cards, 1640-1903	3,035	0	Expanded collection
Paraguay	Paraguay, Asunción, Cemetery Records, 1842-2011	3,214	0	Expanded collection
Paraguay	Paraguay, Military Records, 1870-1965	14,562	0	Expanded collection
Poland	Poland, Lublin Roman Catholic Church Books, 1784-1964	70	0	Expanded collection
Samoa	Samoa, Vital Records, 1846-1996	33,735	0	Expanded collection
Scotland	Scotland, Lanarkshire Church Records, 1823-1967	10,811	0	New collection
South Africa	South Africa, Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801-2004	14,648	0	Expanded collection
South Africa	South Africa, Dutch Reformed Church Registers (Cape Town Archives), 1660-1970	5,464	0	Expanded collection
South Africa	South Africa, KwaZulu Natal, Vital Records, 1868-1976	7,483	0	Expanded collection
South Africa	South Africa, Reformed Church Records, 1856-1988	7,156	0	Expanded collection
South Africa	South Africa, Western Cape, Deceased Estate Files, 1951-1958	99,003	0	Expanded collection
Switzerland	Switzerland, Fribourg, Census, 1850	2,652	0	Expanded collection
United Kingdom	England, Lincolnshire, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1574-1885	1,354	0	Expanded collection
United States	Alabama Marriages, 1816-1957	1	0	Expanded collection
United States	Illinois, Monroe County, Deed Records, 1816-1900	5,085	0	Expanded collection
United States	Indiana Marriages, 1811-2019	3,161	0	Expanded collection
United States	New Jersey, Death Index, 1901-1903; 1916-1929	34,830	0	Expanded collection
United States	RecordAGrave Index	140,280	0	New collection
United States	Virginia, County Marriage Records, 1771-1989	24,403	0	Expanded collection
Uruguay	Uruguay Civil Registration, 1879-1930	2,556	0	Expanded collection
Venezuela	Venezuela Civil Registration, 1873-2003	32,579	0	Expanded collection
Venezuela	Venezuela, Catholic Church Records, 1577-1995	4,362	0	Expanded collection
Zimbabwe	Zimbabwe, Voter Registration, 1938-1973	6,641	0	Expanded collection

From an article by Annalise Knudson published in the Staten Island Live web site:

The Staten Island Museum partnered with the Staten Island Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and Frederick Douglass Memorial Park to transcribe newly digitized family history records to make them more easily searchable and accessible for families and historical research.

“We are honored to partner with such important organizations dedicated to Black history on Staten Island,” said Janice Monger, Staten Island Museum president and CEO. “The variety of programming this month enables participants to look forward at the future and back in reflection and tribute. Through programs across art, science, and history, participants are able to connect with rich local history and the cultural legacies of past and present.”

It is part of a larger collaboration between the museum and its partners called the Access, Collaboration, and Equity in Genealogy Initiative (ACEGen).

You can read the full story at: https://bit.ly/36uAiQc. 

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

Congratulations if you have scanned your old family photos and documents or invested in a digital camera to preserve today’s pictures for future family historians. Before resting on your laurels, take a moment to recall all the old photos you’ve come across that you wish had labels describing the people, places, or events pictured. Your digital images have a built-in capability to create such labels – descriptions that won’t get separated from their subjects – with ease that would amaze our forebears. With today’s image files, what you see is only part of what you get! Let’s take a look “behind the scenes” of your digital photos.

All sorts of information can be stored inside the digital file itself, such as:

• Date and time information. Many digital cameras will print this on the picture, but they also can save it with the image file.
• Camera settings. This includes static information such as the camera model and make, and information that varies with each image such as orientation, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, metering mode, and ISO speed information.
• A thumbnail for previewing the picture on the camera's LCD screen, in file managers, and in photo manipulation software.
• Descriptions and copyright information.
• Longitude and latitude where the picture was taken
• Any information about the picture or its subject that you choose to add, ing one of the free or cheap photo editing packages I’ll describe in a bit.

This extra information is called metadata.

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/12611159

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. 

Ah, the good old days: Super-8 movies, playing music on an audio tape, TV channels with a single digit, rotary dial televisions with no remote control ("Hey Junior, will you change it to channel 5?"), 8-track cartridges, or vinyl records. How about Betamax tapes?

I was a bit surprised when I recently talked with my daughter and mentioned I would call her. I made a rotary motion with my forefinger, as if I was dialing an old-fashioned rotary dial phone. You know: the kind of phones we all had before touchtone phones became available. My daughter had no idea what I was doing.

Boy, did I feel old!

Wired Magazine has a list of 100 such things that your children or grandchildren will never know about your life. I found this to be an interesting article. Strangely, it was nostalgic. You can find it at http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/100-things-your-kids-may-never-know-about/.

Remember the "good old days" of booting your computer from a floppy disk? Or when Spam was just a meat product?

For years, handwritten records and large books of onionskin paper detailing Indiana University Bloomington's earliest graduates were kept locked inside a vault on campus. A recently launched, first-of-its-kind online database makes it easier for people to access information about when alumni graduated and what they studied.

All records prior to 1966 were paper, so the Office of the Registrar hired a third-party vendor to digitize them and put the data into a spreadsheet.

Degrees awarded from 1830 through 1890 are presently available and the data will soon be expanded for later years.

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3LJHPuB.

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

Thaís Pacholek has a degree in performing arts and journalism. Born in Curitiba, Brazil, she first went on stage when she was 9 years old. When she turned 18, she moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's film capital. Thaís's acting talent was widely recognized a few years later, when she accepted her first of many telenovela (soap opera) roles at age 23. In a country generally recognized as a pioneer in the genre, participating in telenovelas in Brazil was a rare achievement. Now the Brazilian public can see her in Record TV's new super production, Reis.

We are pleased to welcome Thaís Pacholek as a guest speaker from Brazil among the keynote speakers at RootsTech 2022! Join us on 3–5 March where Thaís will share her story of family connection.

The Role of Family in Thaís Pacholek's Success

Thaís Pacholek is not a one-dimensional talent. She was elected Miss Curitiba in 2005 and has starred in 15 live theater productions, 3 films, and 5 television shows in addition to the 8 telenovelas in which she played a prominent role. She recognizes that much of the reason for her professional success is due to her family. "My family made me feel secure that this was the path I should take," she said. "Without them, I wouldn't have had the confidence to venture to Rio de Janeiro. My family—my family is my foundation; they were there for me. They guided me emotionally, as they still do to this day."

In contrast to her acting roles, Thaís says her family is a "very true family" and that all her relationships are "always very true." Although her family did not have many resources, she describes her childhood as a beautiful journey where the things she most appreciated were the moments they had together. "These are very good memories that I carry in my heart—the struggle of a family to succeed in life and never give up. And when the whole family is together, the result is always prosperity," she said.

She found similar traits in her husband, country music star Bruno Belucci Pereira, who performs as part of the famous duo under the stage name Belutti. Together, Bruno and Thaís have a son, Luis Miguel, who Thaís describes as her "soulmate." Her son is also the inspiration for her passion as an advocate for respectful childhood education. She said, "I think change in the world comes through children because they are what all of us adults should be."

Thaís also values her family history, saying: "I really believe that we are what we are today because of all those stories that exist in our family tree, which we all belong to. So, I believe that the strong woman that I am, the positive woman that I am, the optimistic woman that I am, the hardworking woman that I am—it's all because of all these [family] stories."

Thaís Pacholek at RootsTech 2022

Learn more about Thaís Pacholek's story of family connection at RootsTech 2022 on 3–5 March. RootsTech is the world's largest genealogy and family history conference, which will be held online this year for free. You can participate by registering today at www.rootstech.org.

NOTE: This article is off-topic. That is, it does not concern anything to do with genealogy, DNA, or related topics normally found in this newsletter. However, I suspect that many newsletter readers will be interested in this article for many different purposes:

I have written often about the numerous advantages of Chromebooks. I own two Chromebooks and love 'em both. One Chromebook has become my primary traveling computer, even though I already own an expensive and much more powerful Macintosh laptop. In short, I prefer to risk the low-cost laptop when exposing it to travel damage and theft. Besides, the Chromebook does everything I need to accomplish when traveling.

Now Google has announced a future product that will convert older, lower-powered Windows and Macintosh computers into Chromebooks. If you have an older computer in the closet that you are not using any more, this might be a great zero-cost project for you to use, either for yourself or for a family member (either an adolescent or adult) who does not yet have their own computer.

Google today announced early access to Chrome OS Flex, which makes the Chrome OS operating system found on Chromebooks downloadable onto a Mac or Windows PC.

Chrome OS Flex allows individuals, schools, or businesses to download Chrome OS onto a USB drive for free and install it onto their Mac or Windows PC. The OS could also be booted from a USB drive instead of installed or launched via network deployment by an IT department.

Google is positioning Chrome OS Flex as an answer to old Mac and Windows PCs that might not be able to handle the latest version of their native OS and/or that might not be owned by folks with budgets to replace the devices. Rather than buying new hardware, consumers or IT departments could install the latest version of Chrome OS Flex.

Google's Chrome OS Flex is currently available as early access in the dev channel with bugs expected. You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3HWzbXn.

If you are researching Black ancestry in Nashville, you will be interested in a new spreadsheet listing more than 14,000 rows of data, which might bore you – until the names stop you cold: Eliza, age 3; Peter, 11; Martha Foster, 1. After each, it reads “child of Albert and Betsy.”

On Nov. 1, 1852, it says, John Nichol sold Albert and Betsy, along with Eliza, Peter, Martha Foster and their other five children to Bradford Franklin. Davidson County legally recorded this enslaved family as property, bought and sold.

Metro Archivist Ken Fieth has spent some 25 years compiling a searchable spreadshee. Transaction by transaction, it lists buyer, seller, enslaved person’s name, gender, age and relatives (if known).

These transactions are part of what made us who we are, what made Nashville the place that it is. It is the big “how” and the big “why” of the racism that still plagues us.

You can read more in an article by Karen Johnson and Learotha Williams, published by the Tennessean, at https://bit.ly/3I2CE6U.

The spreadsheet may be found at: https://data.nashville.gov/Genealogy/Nashville-Slave-and-Free-People-of-Color-Database/fqu3-hv5z.

Jackson State is one of the inaugural recipients of Getty Images grants to help historically Black colleges and universities digitize their photo archives to preserve the photos and help document Black history at the universities. "The goal is that everybody knows what we have," Locord Wilson, Jackson State University interim dean of libraries, said Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022. "It's a hidden treasure."

You can read more and view a number of pictures at: https://bit.ly/3gOn6ra.