Digital Curator Dr Mia Ridge writes, In case you need a break from whatever combination of weather, people and news is around you, here are some ways you can entertain yourself (or the kids!) while helping make collections of the British Library more findable, or help researchers understand our past. You might even learn something or make new discoveries along the way!

Mia Ridge writes: Living with Machines is a collaboration between the British Library and the Alan Turing Institute with partner universities. Help us understand the 'machine age' through the eyes of ordinary people who lived through it. Our refreshed task builds on our previous work, and includes fresh newspaper titles, such as the Cotton Factory Times.

Your contributions will not only help researchers - they'll also go on display in our exhibition! 

You can read more at: https://blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2021/12/crowdsourcing-opportunities-with-the-british-library-.html 

From an article by Vera Miller published in the LostRussianFamily web site:

For years, I have heard my grandmother’s brother was named after a brother who died as a baby. No one could tell me when this child was born, except he was born before 1927.

On Christmas morning, I discovered a new database from the City of Kyiv archives. The archives has indexed more than 190,000 birth records for 1919-1936 here. Yes, it is in Ukrainian but it is a very simple database. (See below for directions on using this database without knowing Ukrainian.)

I searched for my great-grandfather’s surname to see how many people would appear for Trunov. Only a mere 16 results appeared for this common Russian surname.

Only two people have the same full name as my grand uncle and his brother in this database. One person has been confirmed as the grand uncle I knew so I am confident the other boy born in 1923 is my other grand uncle. I have already found my grand uncle’s scanned birth record from Kyiv on another database. It would be shocking if the baby born in 1923 is not my grand uncle.

My mother remembers that her mother told her that the child died before he turned two years old. Besides requesting the 1927 birth record, I will request a search of death records to completely close the story on this grand uncle.

You can read the remainder of the story, including details on how you can use this new Ukrainian Database, at: https://bit.ly/3pq0LFA.

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

Nicka Sewell-Smith offers some great ideas for adding more data to your family tree. You can find her article at https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/how-to-trace-your-family-history-on-a-heritage-trip-according-to-a-genealogist/ar-AAS3NO6?li=BBnbklE

Analysis of ancient DNA from one of the best-preserved Neolithic tombs in Britain has revealed that most of the people buried there were from five continuous generations of a single extended family.

By analyzing DNA extracted from the bones and teeth of 35 individuals entombed at Hazleton North long cairn in the Cotswolds-Severn region, the research team was able to detect that 27 of them were close biological relatives. The group lived approximately 5700 years ago—around 3700-3600 BC—around 100 years after farming had been introduced to Britain.

Published in Nature, it is the first study to reveal in such detail how prehistoric families were structured, and the international team of archaeologists and geneticists say that the results provide new insights into kinship and burial practices in Neolithic times.

You can read the full story at https://phys.org/news/2021-12-ancient-dna-reveals-world-oldest.html.

My thanks to newsletter reader Dean McLeod for telling me bout this story.

Two other newsletter readers also sent links to a DIFFERENT and more comprehensive article that describes (partially) the above story at https://phys.org/news/2021-12-harvard-geneticists-ancient-britain-insights.html

The following is an announcement written by TheGenealogist:

Travel back in time and locate an ancestor’s address from the 1911 England and Wales census using contemporary and georeferenced maps on TheGenealogist.co.uk’s Map Explorer™.

1911 census records identified on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™

This groundbreaking feature allows you to pin down your ancestors to properties on a contemporary map at the time of the census in 1911. With this feature family historians are able to walk the streets where their ancestors lived as not only can it be accessed on a computer but also on the move on a mobile phone!

This is an invaluable tool for house historians making it easier than ever to link census records to properties and complementing the already rich georeferenced Lloyd George Domesday Survey and Tithe records that are already available on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™.

For the first time the properties recorded in the 1911 census can now be matched with georeferenced mapping to show where our English or Welsh ancestors had lived at the time of the census taken on the night of the 2nd April 1911. The majority of London can be seen all the way down to property level, while the rest of the country will identify down to the parish, road or street.

With this new release, viewing a household record from the 1911 census will now show a map, pinpointing your ancestors house. Clicking this map loads the location in Map Explorer™, enabling you to explore the area and see the records of neighbouring properties.

Discover the neighbourhoods in which your ancestors lived, and gain an insight into their lives from local churches to employment prospects in the area and the roads, rail or water links that were available.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: Where did they live? – Mapping Your Ancestors home in 1911: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/where-did-they-live--mapping-your-ancestors-home-in-1911-1513/

The following legal action was filed by Ancestry.com Holdings:

Ancestry announced in connection with a Rule 144A/Regulation S offering of $250 million aggregate principal amount of 4.25% Senior First Lien Notes due 2028 (the “Additional Notes”). The Additional Notes were issued as additional notes under the same indenture governing Ancestry’s $700 million aggregate principal amount of 4.25% Senior First Lien Notes due 2028 that were issued on December 4, 2020 (the “Original Notes”). Ancestry intends to use the net proceeds of the offering, together with cash on hand, to fund a distribution to the owners of the economic interests in their indirect parent company and to pay fees, costs and expenses related to the offering.

Ancestry is the global leader in family history, which includes its subscription business and AncestryDNA products. Ancestry has approximately 3.8 million subscribers and also has the world’s largest consumer DNA network of more than 20 million genomes.

The Simpson Thacher team for the transaction included Jonathan Ozner (Picture) and Adriana Estor Restrepo (Capital Markets); Elizabeth Cooper and Michael Chao (M&A); Jon Pall (Collateral); Alysha Sekhon (Intellectual Property); Michael Mann and Scott Grundei (Tax); Gregory Grogan, Jeanne Annarumma and Alan Fenyes (Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits); and Brian Gluck and Adam Moss (Credit).

Involved fees earner: Jeanne Annarumma – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Michael Chao – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Elizabeth Cooper – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Adriana Estor-Restrepo – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Alan Fenyes – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Brian Gluck – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Gregory Grogan – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Scott Grundei – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Michael Mann – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Adam Moss – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Jonathan Ozner – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Jonathan Pall – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Alysha Sekhon – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett;

Law Firms: Simpson Thacher & Bartlett;

Clients: Ancestry.com Holdings LLC;

From an article by Mike Schneider and published by the Associated Press:

"U.S. population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nation’s founding during the first year of the pandemic as the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies and killed hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents, according to figures released Tuesday.

"The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021, bringing the nation’s count to 331.8 million people, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

"The U.S. has been experiencing slow population growth for years but the pandemic exacerbated that trend. This past year was the first time since 1937 that the nation’s population grew by less than 1 million people.

“'I was expecting low growth but nothing this low,' said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro. 'It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography.'”

You can read the rest of the article at: https://bit.ly/3svMbhT.

I would love to see the location of birth as recorded on the birth certificate:

A Philadelphia mother has given birth to what is believed to be the world’s first Tesla baby: an infant delivered in the front seat of an electric smart car while it was driving on autopilot.

The remarkable delivery, reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, took place in September while Yiran Sherry, 33, and her husband Keating Sherry, 34, were taking their three-year-old son Rafa to pre-school.

Yiran Sherry’s waters broke while the family was stuck in traffic. With contractions increasing rapidly and traffic barely moving, the couple realized they were not going to make it in time.

Keating Sherry placed the vehicle on autopilot after setting the navigation system to the hospital, 20 minutes away in the western suburb of Paoli.

Details may be found in an article by Richard Luscombe and published in The Guardian at https://bit.ly/3Jbra1B.