The following was written by the Kentucky Genealogical Society:

Larry Bleiberg has written an article about places to go to get started in finding your family tree. Writing, in USA TODAY, Bleiberg suggests all sorts of things from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City to cruise ships and even at a five-star resort in Ireland (useful for Irish ancestry, obviously). The article was published in 2014 but is still useful today.

You can read 10 Great Places to Trace Family Roots by Larry Bleiberg at https://bit.ly/3JTR49T.

As I read the article, I had to agree that each place listed was a great resource but I believe Bleiberg overlooked the best place of all: start at home. Talk to your older relatives first as they often can provide more information than any (expensive) trip to a distant archive.

If you still live within driving distance of your most recent ancestors, you also should check out local resources. Local libraries, courthouses, and other resources often provide much more information than do distant archives.

Visit a local Family History Center near you. There are thousands of them around the world and they provide huge resources. You can find your nearest Family History Center by starting at https://familysearch.org/locations/centerlocator.

Traveling to a distant archive without preparation and expecting to find information there is usually disappointing. You cannot walk in and say "Please show me the book of all my ancestors." It simply doesn't work that way. More than one unprepared would-be family tree seeker has been disappointed after visiting a major genealogy archive.

Always do your homework first. Learn as much as possible BEFORE you make the trip. The better prepared you are, the higher the odds of success.

As good as Larry Bleiberg's article may be, I would suggest it should be the SECOND article you read. I'd suggest the first one should be Getting Started With Your Family History at https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/getting-started-with-your-family-history.

The following is a press release issued by U.S. Congresswoman Alma Adams (D-NC-12) and Representatives A. Donald McEachin (D-VA-04), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA-01):

The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:

We are pleased to announce the publication of 5.8 million records from 28 historical record collections of Jewish historical records. The collections span the 18th–21st centuries and contain vital records such as birth, marriage, death, as well as tax, voter, immigration, and obituary records, from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Germany, Hungary, the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, and more. These records are invaluable for anyone researching their European Jewish heritage.

The release of these records — made possible thanks to MyHeritage’s collaboration with the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust and its affiliate, JewishGen, a leading website for Jewish genealogy — constitutes the first installment of a licensing agreement that will ultimately make almost all the JewishGen records accessible on MyHeritage. Future installments will include important Jewish historical record collections from North Africa, the Middle East, North America and more European collections.

These collections further expand MyHeritage’s extensive resources for Jewish genealogy.  Through its member base of one million users in Israel, MyHeritage is home to the world’s largest collection of Jewish family trees and is the only major commercial genealogy company to support Hebrew. Furthermore, MyHeritage’s collections of global historical records include millions of records that are valuable to individuals researching Jewish heritage, such as passenger and immigration lists that document the wave of Jews seeking refuge in North America, South America, and Israel after their communities were devastated by the Holocaust.

The full announcement may be found at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/02/myheritage-adds-28-collections-of-jewish-historical-records/

The following book review was written by Bobbi King:

Call Me John

By Michael Schoenholtz. Self-published. 2021. 149 pages.

Isadore Katz, 14 years young, walked through and out the door of his family’s home and never returned. If he glanced around with residual doubt about his deliberate leave-taking, he saw nothing that would draw him back. The mystery of his forever absence and the shadow of his loss hung over the family for nearly a century.

Decades later, when Michael Schoenholtz’s father saw his son beginning research on the family, he asked if he could possibly resolve the mystery of his vanished uncle Isadore.

Early on, the author enjoyed the company of a whole new clan of cousins recruited via their shared DNA matches. Emails full of family information brought excitement and enlightenment to Mr. Schoenholtz, but the conclusions he came to, and shared with this other side of the DNA family, were not so joyfully received by the new cousins. Gradually, his online family relationships fizzled, but Mr. Schoenholtz had his answers, and he was satisfied they were certain ones.

This must be the most gratifying of family discoveries to find when a researcher begins the search into the unknown. Hoping for the best, apprehensive about the worst, the family genealogist plows ahead and can only present the story that emerges from the proofs.

Here, Mr. Schoenholtz researched apart the curtains that concealed the extinct life of his father’s uncle. Isadore may have disremembered his origin family, but his origin family always remembered him.

Call Me John, with answers now to aged questions, narrates the second life of the mourned Isadore. It’s a memoir devoted to an uncle and ancestor whose enigmatic decision to leave, and puzzling determination to be eternally anonymous to his founding family, can never be positively identified, but at least now his explorations, encounters, waypoints, jobs, and destinations can be told.

The Whys can never be answered, but at least now, the Wheres are known.

Call Me John by Michael Schoenholtz may be purchased from Amazon at https://amzn.to/3s7A6Pg as well as from the author at https://www.callmejohn.info/.

While one University of South Florida anthropologist continues her work further exploring more than 40 unmarked cemeteries and burial grounds in Hillsborough County, another is focusing on lost Black cemeteries.

Forgotten cemeteries are an issue nationally and here in the greater Tampa Bay region. A disproportionate number of them held Black graves.

Last week, Hillsborough County commissioners voted to further explore — with ground-penetrating radar and other technologies — three possible forgotten burial grounds in the county.

You can read the remainder of this story by Daylina Miller in the WUSF News web site at: https://bit.ly/3LQ4CVC.

Like any new mother, Kathryn Jones thought the baby she was handed at Duncan Physicians and Surgeons Hospital on May 18, 1964, was the most beautiful child she had ever seen. “I loved her from that second that they laid her in my arms,” she said in a recent interview, pausing before adding: “Never once did I think she was not mine.”

But according to a lawsuit filed in Stephens County District Court in Oklahoma, the infant Jones cradled and took home was not her biological daughter at all. Citing multiple home DNA tests, Jones alleges that employees at the hospital handed her the wrong baby more than 50 years ago, leading her to raise a child who was not her own.

Now, she and her daughter are struggling to pick up the pieces.

You can read the rest of the story in an article by Emily Shugerman published in The Daily Beast web site at: https://bit.ly/3p4QhL5.

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.