Investigators have identified the killer of a Norton Shores, Michigan woman whose body was found on a Georgia interstate in 1988, marking the first time in the nation that both a victim and killer of a case were both identified using genealogy, they say.

In short, one DNA sample from the scene of the crime eventually identified BOTH the victim and her assailant.

You can learn more in a YouTube video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5hAdOG7lJo.

From an article by Lawrence Goodman published in the Brandeis.edu web site:

In 1827, in response to a czarist decree, kidnappers began abducting Jewish men from their homes for conscription into the Russian army.

Many were boys, some as young as 12, whisked away to military boarding homes, trained as soldiers and then forced to serve for as long as 25 years. It was one of the worst calamities that ever befell the Russian Jewish community, with approximately 75,000 Jews abducted until 1856, when reforms were finally implemented.

After completing their service, a small group of Jews settled in the Siberian town of Tomsk, where, in 1907, they built a wooden temple that became known as the Soldiers' Synagogue. With three domes, neo-Moorish flourishes and an exterior door shaped like a Torah scroll, it is a testament to the faith and perseverance of the Russian Jewish community in the face of trauma and oppression.

Michael Mail, MA'83, is working to save it from ruin. For decades, the Soldiers' Synagogue has languished in disrepair and was once even used as a homeless shelter. Many of its windows are now boarded up, and its floor is falling apart.

Mail's organization, the London-based Foundation for Jewish Heritage, exists to preserve Jewish architectural sites, monuments and places of cultural significance at risk worldwide.

"We have to save these buildings," he said. "They are often the last testimony to Jewish life in these places."

The Foundation, which started in 2015 with Mail as chief executive, has created an inventory of over 3,300 historic Jewish sites, many in urgent need of restoration. Among them are:

The list of historic Jewish sites maybe found at: https://bit.ly/3TIBnrP.

The following is a press release written by the Library of Congress:

Shippen Family Papers

The Manuscript Division has recently released the Shippen Family Papers, a collection of 6,500 items (15,666 images) digitized from 15 reels of previously produced microfilm, which document this wealthy and powerful group of Philadelphians connected by blood and marriage who reached the height of their influence in the mid-eighteenth century. The Shippens were merchants, doctors, lawyers, and landowners, who held offices in Pennsylvania’s colonial government and were connected by marriage to other influential colonial families, including the Livingstons of New York and the Lees of Virginia. The papers chiefly concern the family of William Shippen Jr. and consist of correspondence, diaries, account books, estate papers, and business, financial, and real estate papers, including maps and deeds. They reflect the family’s experiences during the Revolutionary War, their participation in the Philadelphia social circle that surrounded George Washington during his presidency, and the family’s engagement with national politics. The collection is notable for its documentation of the lives of women family members through diaries, letters, and such ephemera as embroidery patterns.

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve Collection

The Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve collection consists of interviews and photographs by Mary Hufford and Tom Tankersley in December 1985 for the American Folklife Center, comprising part of the preliminary fieldwork for a proposed cooperative project with the National Park Service’s Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in southern Louisiana. The collection includes audio recordings of a tour of Plaquemines Parish; interviews regarding fur trapping; and tours of the Barataria Marsh with park staff. Photographs document a local cemetery, boats, waterways, traditional foods and housing, the preparation of nutria hides, Park Service staff, and aerial photographs of the Mississippi Delta. Manuscripts include descriptive logs and a final travel report written by Mary Hufford.

Collection updates and migrations

Foreign Legal Gazettes: Legal Gazettes have been added for Morocco, Venezuela, and Paraguay, ranging in publication date from the 1970s to 2019.

National Screening Room: To celebrate Juneteenth, NAVCC/MBRS digitized and made available two classic films: Caldonia (1945; starring Louis Jordan) and Of One Blood. Additionally, 11 films from the George Stevens Collection (World War II color footage) are now available.

Military Legal Resources: The site migration has been completed, including the addition of Civil War Military Trials, and contextual guides to the presentation have been added to Articles and Essays.

Occupational Folklife Project: The following collections have been added to the Occupational Folklife Project online presentation in recent months: The Ransomville Speedway: Dirt Track Workers in Western New York and Cement workers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley

New datasets

The World Digital Library Dataset has been added to the Selected Datasets Collection! This LC-published dataset collects the metadata for all items from the World Digital Library (WDL) project in seven languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish). All item records include narrative descriptions submitted by the contributing partners and enhanced by WDL researchers to contextualize the item and its cultural and historical importance. For additional context on the WDL collections, please click here.

New OA eBooks

Over 500 new open access titles added to the collection! Some highlights include books about films and cinema including The greatest films never seen: the film archive and the copyright smokescreen, The cinema of Mika Kaurismäki: transvergent cinescapes, emergent identities, and Filmische Poetiken der Schuld: die audiovisuelle Anklage der Sinne als Modalität des Gemeinschaftsempfindens.

And check out titles about different languages recently added to the collection, such as The Flamingo Bay dialect of the Asmat language, English and translation in the European Union: unity and multiplicity in the wake of Brexit, and Language, nation, race: linguistic reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912).

New digitized books

So far this year, over 70,000 new digitized general collections books have been added to the Selected Digitized Books collection through the new digital content management platform, totaling over 18 million pages of content all with full searchable OCR text. Some highlights include Instructions for crochet work, Heller’s guide for ice-cream makers, Great cats I have met; adventures in two hemispheres, The Faery queen, first book, Card-sharpers, their tricks, exposed; or, The art of always winning, The busy beavers of Round-Top, Confessions of a palmist, and A library of wonders and curiosities found in nature and art, science and literature.

And some seasonal additions to the collection include Diary of a summer in Europe, 1865, Whoopee! the story of a Catholic summer camp, Brief summer rambles near Philadelphia, After icebergs with a painter: a summer voyage to Labrador and around Newfoundland, and How the “Fourth” was celebrated in 1911; facts gathered from special reports.

New crowdsourced transcriptions

The By the People crowdsourced transcription program recently added over 9,000 volunteer transcriptions into loc.gov, bringing the program’s lifetime total to over 132,000. These transcriptions now enable enhanced discoverability and accessibility of digital collections here at the Library. New transcriptions are now available for the following collections:

• • William A. Gladstone Afro-American Military Collection
  • Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress)

Additions to the Library’s Web Archives

The Web Archiving Team has added newly released content for 92 items on loc.gov. The archives coming out of embargo include additions to 28 collections and content spanning 22 countries and 18 languages. The new releases include content in government, political science, European studies, Latin American studies, law, journalism, public health, education, and more. A highlight this month is:

• • The East European Government Ministries Web Archive added 19 new items. The archives includes websites of East European government ministries and agencies, which are primary sources for the study of all aspects of political, economic, and social life in the region. The collection includes content from eighteen countries: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.

And a few more interesting finds include…

• • East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention, addition to the Comics Literature and Criticism Web Archive
  • Alice in the Pandemic: A Virtual Opera, addition to the Coronavirus Web Archive
  • Migrant Zine Collective, addition to the Zine Web Archive
  • Women in Music (WIM), addition to the Professional Organizations for Performing Arts Web Archive

A project led by the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford is looking for contributions to a free online archive of family stories, anecdotes, memories, and digitized objects relating to people’s experiences of the Second World War.

Their Finest Hour, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, aims to collect and digitally archive the everyday stories and objects of the Second World War in order to preserve these memories and make them freely available to the public.

Led by Dr Stuart Lee of the Faculty of English, the project team will:

Run a series of collection events at major museums, libraries, and heritage centres across the UK and encourage people to bring war-related stories and materials – letters, photos, diaries, memorabilia, or just stories handed down from family members – for digitization;

The team is especially interested in collecting contributions from people from underrepresented backgrounds. Working with the Burma Star Memorial Fund, the Gurkha Museum, the Sikh Pioneers and Light infantry Association, and ‘We Shall Tell Their Story’, the project aims to increase the diversity of people benefiting from Second World War heritage.

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3Bim6GS.

If you are searching for Irish ancestors, you will be interested in an article published in the IrishCentral web site. It starts off with:

"Genealogist Barry Griffin used data from the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses to plot out surnames on the map of Ireland

"More than 6,000 Irish surnames are included on a website compiled by genealogist Barry Griffin that lets users explore where in Ireland the surname was concentrated.

"Using data compiled from Ireland's 1901 and 1911 censuses, Griffin has pieced together information on thousands of Irish surnames.

"Where in Ireland each surname was most concentrated and the popularity of each surname are featured on Griffin's site. His database is sure to be a worthy tool for those researching their Irish genealogy."

You can read the full article at: https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/irish-surname-maps

The “Civil War Bluejackets” Project—so named because of the distinctive uniform worn by U.S. Civil War sailors—is a collaboration between historians at Northumbria University, Newcastle, and computer scientists at the University of Sheffield and the University of Koblenz-Landau. Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project launches on 6 September 2022 with a call for citizen volunteers to help transcribe tens of thousands of Civil War “Muster Rolls”, documents that were carried on board U.S. ships and which capture the personal details of the c.118,000 men who fought on water for the Union between 1861 and 1865.

The project team are making use of the online Zooniverse platform to share tens of thousands of these Muster Rolls, and are asking the public to help in revealing their contents.

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3Rno9z2

This online tool—called GFPGAN—first made it onto our radar when it was featured in the August 28 edition of the (excellent) Recomendo newsletter, specifically, a post by Kevin Kelly. In it, he says that he uses this free program to restore his own old family photos, noting that it focuses solely on the faces of those pictured, and “works pretty well, sometimes perfectly, in color and black and white.”

The tool is incredibly easy to use. If you are accessing GFPGAN on your phone, you have the option of selecting a photo from your library, or taking a new photo to use. When we accessed the page on a laptop, the only option was choosing a file from your computer.

Anyway, once you upload the photo, tap or click the green “Restore photo” button, and then wait for the final product. While the results aren’t instant, the restoring process takes roughly 15 to 20 seconds.

You can read all about this useful piece of software in an article by Elizabeth Yuko published in the lifehacker web site at: https://bit.ly/3qbPHeH

It was the setting for “National Treasure,” the movie in which Nicolas Cage’s character tries to steal the Declaration of Independence. It has long been among the most trafficked tourist destinations in the nation’s capital.

But what the National Archives and Records Administration has never been — until now — is the locus of a criminal investigation of a former president.

Yet that’s exactly where the agency finds itself after sending a referral to the FBI stating that 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in January contained dozens of documents with classified markings.

“I don’t think Donald Trump has politicized the National Archives,” said Tim Naftali, the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “I think what Donald Trump did was cross red lines that civil servants had to respond to.”

Those government workers operate out of the public eye, behind the marble façade of the Archives building in downtown Washington. It’s there, beyond the Hollywood plotlines, where a crucial component of the federal bureaucracy resides, with dozens of employees acting as the custodians of American history, preserving records that range from the mundane to the monumental.

After the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation, Congress passed a law in 1978 to ensure that all presidential records — written, electronic material created by the president, the vice president, or any other member of the executive branch in an official capacity — are preserved and turned over to the Archives at the end of an administration. The law states that a president’s records are not his or her own, but are the property of the federal government and must be treated as such.

When a new administration begins, White House staff receive a brochure on the law and step-by-step instructions on how to preserve records. The preservation requirements cover a wide range of items, including presents and letters from foreign leaders. “There are no such things as mementos,” said Lee White, the executive director of the National Coalition for History.

You can read more about the policies and requirements of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration  in an article by Farnoush Amiri published in the Associated Press at: https://bit.ly/3BglVvR.

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com:

(+) Finding Unmarked Graves with Ground Penetrating Radar

COPYRIGHTS and Other Legal Things for this Newsletter

Library Closures: Perhaps there is a Solution?

Genealogy vs Family History

US Life Expectancy Fell Nearly a Year in 2021

Free U.S. Census Records for Labor Day: Learn Your Ancestors’ Professions

Even Your DNA Isn't Your Own. The Government Can Take It Without a Warrant

Summer Institute to Reconstruct South Carolina’s “Black Archive”

New British Royal Air Force Records Are Now Online

Roots Ireland Has Added 26,210 Historic Records From County Armagh Dating From the 17th to the 20th Centuries to Its Online Database

Acting Archivist of the United State Appoints 2022–2024 FOIA Advisory Committee Members

National Archives Head Says Agency ‘Fiercely Non-Political’ After Anti-Trump Accusations

U.S. Government Asks Public for Input on Census Design for 2030

Judge Finds Contradictions in Ancestry.com Complaint

New Board of the International Confederation for Genealogy and Heraldry (CIGH) Elected

Musselman Family Photographs Now Available Through Milner Library’s Digital Collections

Australian Family Discovered as Rightful Recipients of $1.4 Million Inheritance

Another One Million Newspaper Pages Made Free by the British Newspaper Archive and the British Library

Findmypast Adds Thousands of Brand-New Yorkshire Records

The Family History Show is returning to London this Month!

Japan Declares 'War' on the Humble Floppy Disk in New Digitization Push

The following announcement was written by the British Newspaper Archive (part of Findmypast):

After making one million historical newspaper pages free in 2021, a further one million pages are now free to explore

• • As trusted partners of the British Library, Findmypast are committed to making five million pages free over five years on the British Newspaper Archive and Findmypast
  • Free pages across 244 titles make history more accessible for everyone, with additions from the United Kingdom, Ireland and India
  • Discover political intrigue, scandal and real-life stories in black and white 

This August, The British Newspaper Archive in partnership with the British Library, has made a further one million historical newspaper pages available completely free to the public, reaching a new total of two million free pages.

Together, the British Newspaper Archive and the British Library are committed to releasing a total of five million free pages over five years, which can be accessed online on the British Newspaper Archive website and on Findmypast.

Much of this content has been made available as part of several major digitisation projects based at the British Library: 19^th Century Newspapers; Heritage Made Digital, which seeks to transform digital access to the British Library’s rare and early collections; and the Living with Machines research project, a collaboration between the British Library, The Alan Turing Institute and five partner universities, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund.

These free pages, covering the years 1699-1900 across 244 titles, increase the accessibility of historical newspapers to more people around the world.  Researchers can browse the beautiful images of the Illustrated London Life, discover their Scottish roots in the Glasgow Herald, or explore the history of Ireland with the United Irishman. One particularly intriguing title is Berthold’s Political Handkerchief, famously printed on calico, a type of fabric, in order to get around paying the newspaper stamp tax of the time.

Also included are Welsh language titles Y Tyst and Y Llan, 22,113 pages from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and 167,534 pages from Scotland, including the Edinburgh Gazette of 1699, the oldest newspaper digitised by the project so far.

Other highlights of this year’s release include:

• • Friend of India and Statesman, 1852-1883 – published in Calcutta, this is another key title to support diverse research, continuing from the 2021 release of Royal Gazette of Jamaica and The Keys
  • Porcupine, 1800-1801 – its founder William Cobbett spent time in the United States in the 1790s and leant support to Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists. He was hailed as a ‘great British patriot’ on his return home
  • Francis’s Metropolitan News, 1895 – this family title showcased printer R.S. Francis’s ‘new style of illumination’, using blocks of colour to highlight sections
  • The Age, 1852-1853 – this title had a reputation for ‘scurrilous and satirical gossip’ about the celebrities of the day
  • The Anti-Gallican Monitor, 1811-1825 – this highly-divisive newspaper called for the assassination of Napoleon Bonaparte, and provides an intriguing glimpse into attitudes towards France at the height of the Napoleonic Wars
  • The Patriot, 1832-1866 – this paper represented itself as a moral and philosophical repository for political thought, with its editor Matthew Campbell Browne hoping to influence the reform of Parliament and an equal Representation of the People.

Mary McKee, Head of Content Publishing at Findmypast said; "This is a fantastic free resource for all those wishing to delve into the past and uncover the colourful stories that bring it to life. Each page offers a snapshot of what life was like at that moment, documenting family stories, local legends and momentous events alike. For those uncovering their family history, you might be surprised to discover your own ancestors hiding within these pages. I’d encourage everyone to go and explore this collection online, on the British Newspaper Archive or Findmypast.”

Xerxes Mazda, Head of Collections and Curation at the British Library, said: “We are delighted to be making a further one million pages from the British Library's newspaper collections available free to view online in conjunction with our digitisation partners Findmypast. Amongst the resources available we have released 245 regional newspaper titles from across the UK. Covering the years 1699-1900 and ranging from the Glasgow Herald and the Newcastle Courant to the Bristol Mercury and the Exeter Flying Post, these publications reflect the rich heritage of the UK’s media landscape and offer new opportunities for everyone to explore our collections from wherever they are in the world. 

The British Newspaper Archive was created back in 2011, when Findmypast set out to digitise the British Library’s entire newspaper collection and open it up to the public as the British Newspaper Archive. Today, it contains over 56 million pages, and counting.

And for anyone looking to explore more of the British Newspaper Archive, until 11 September get 20% off subscriptions using the code SAVE20.