The following is a press release from the Library of Congress:

Chronicling America Reaches 50 States
New Hampshire Joins the National Digital Newspaper Program, Expanding Online Access to America’s Historic Newspapers

Chronicling America, the searchable online database of historic American newspapers, will soon include digitized newspapers from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and housed and maintained online at the Library of Congress, Chronicling America offers free online access to 19.9 million pages of newspapers published in the United States between 1777 and 1963.

NEH recently awarded its first grant award to a National Digital Newspaper Program partner for the state of New Hampshire, ensuring access to significant newspapers from the entire United States. Dartmouth College will serve as the New Hampshire state hub, partnering with the New Hampshire State Library, the New Hampshire Historical Society, and the University of New Hampshire Library to identify historical newspapers that reflect the state’s political, economic, and cultural history for inclusion in Chronicling America. Among the first newspapers to be digitized and added to the online repository are the New Hampshire Gazette, the first newspaper known to be printed by an enslaved person; The Dartmouth, founded in 1799 as the Dartmouth Gazette, the nation’s oldest school newspaper; and Among the Clouds, a newspaper printed on top of Mount Washington between 1889 and 1917.

“Building on 40 years of collaboration between NEH and the Library of Congress, Chronicling America is a uniquely rich national resource that documents the histories of the events, ideas, and individuals that make up the American story,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “The addition of the 50th state partner to the National Digital Newspaper Program is a milestone achievement that will expand coverage of this unparalleled resource to encompass all U.S. states, giving the public access to the ‘first draft of history’ from the perspective of communities across the country.”

Established in 2005, Chronicling America gives users on a computer, tablet or phone direct access to American history as it was recorded locally in more than 3,700 newspaper titles in 22 languages. Users can browse the pages of the 1789 Gazette of the United States, a partisan paper friendly to George Washington’s administration and the emerging Federalist party; search for headlines related to the sinking of the Titanic or the United States’ entry into World War I; or read contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the 1963 March on Washington. NEH grants to state newspaper projects allow program partners across the country to select historically important newspapers published in their respective states and oversee the digitization of those titles for inclusion in the Chronicling America database.

“The Chronicling America collection is a treasure-trove of newspapers of record, community voices and local history unlike any other openly available primary source material,” said Deborah Thomas, chief of the Serial and Government Publications Division at the Library of Congress, and the Library’s program manager for the National Digital Newspaper Program. “Adding New Hampshire regional and local news to the Chronicling America collection will expand our understanding of American history and society.”

Join a Virtual Lecture on the Role of the Black Press in WWII

Members of the public are invited to learn more about Chronicling America and the National Digital Newspaper Program by tuning in to this online event:

“Double Victory in Black and White: What Digitized Historical Newspapers Reveal about the African American Experience of WWII” by historian Matthew Delmont on Sept. 29 at 4 p.m. EDT

In his plenary address as part of an annual conference of all state and jurisdictional partners of the National Digital Newspaper Program, Delmont will explore how Black newspapers led the Double Victory campaign during WWII to secure victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home. First championed in 1942 by The Pittsburgh Courier, the largest Black newspaper in the United States at the time, the “Double V” campaign was embraced by prominent Black newspapers across the country, which highlighted the vital role Black troops played on the frontlines; brought the triumphs and tragedies of the war home to Black readers; and helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement by promoting patriotism while raising questions regarding race, democracy, and citizenship.

Sponsored by NEH and the Library of Congress, this talk is free and open to the public. To register, visit: https://www.loc.gov/item/event-405634/ 

Matthew Delmont, the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth is an expert on African American History and the history of Civil Rights. He is the author of the forthcoming Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, which received research support from an NEH Public Scholars award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His previous books include Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African American Newspapers (Stanford University Press, 2019), and Making Roots: A Nation Captivated (University of California Press, 2016), among others.

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.

The Library of Congress: The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.

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

Genealogy research is a fascinating endeavor. After all, your family tree is a puzzle that needs to be solved. In fact, you are literally finding out where you came from. I strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in ancestry do their own research. Indeed, it is fun and challenging.

As author of this newsletter, I sometimes field questions from genealogy newcomers -- questions like how they can hire someone to research their family tree for a fee. I typically respond with still another question and a comment: "Would you pay someone to play a round of golf for you? While that might complete the objective, you will miss out on the entire experience."

Despite my rather cavalier remark, I will suggest that professional genealogists can be your best friends and assistants after you have started your own genealogy research. Yes, you should do the basics yourself. You should start with yourself and then find information about your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on, as far back as you can possibly go on your own. Researching your own family tree is fun and can be inexpensive. However, when you do hit a "stone wall" and cannot go back any further, it may be time to call in the professionals.

For instance, you may exhaust all the resources that you know of. At that point, you may wish to hire an expert who has years of experience in the same area to see if he or she can find information that eludes you.

Even when you do know where to look next, you may find it impossible to travel to a distant records repository to look at some record that has not yet been put on the web, on microfilm, or even in a printed book. You will find it far cheaper to pay a professional researcher who lives in that area to look at records for you and to make photocopies. That usually will beat the costs of traveling there yourself with all the expenses of airfare, hotels, and meals. The professional may also notice things that you missed on that document or possibly on other documents in the same repository.

Another good use of a professional's time is when you simply need advice from an expert. Paying for a few hours' consulting time from someone who is an expert in the geographic area or the ethnic group you are researching may provide an education, enhance your genealogy experiences, and point you in the right direction to continue your search.

All professional genealogists are not created alike. Almost all of them are specialists of some sort. A person who is expert in New England research or in Jewish research may not be as competent in the records of Pennsylvania German immigrants or Alabama Civil War veterans. You need to find a person with the expertise that you seek.

Professional genealogists may do research for hire based on their knowledge of, and access to, resources for a particular area of expertise. Researchers specialize in many different areas, including:

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/12921930.

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.

"Good-bye folks. It's been nice knowing you."

Actually, I'm not ready to say goodbye to the human race just yet. Then again, I do suggest we not ignore the warnings.

Writing in the Futurism.com web site, Victor Tangermann writes:

"An existential catastrophe is not just possible, but likely."

Existential Threat

Researchers at Google Deepmind and the University of Oxford have concluded that it's now "likely" that superintelligent AI will spell the end of humanity — a grim scenario that more and more researchers are starting to predict.

In a recent paper published in the journal AI Magazine, the team — comprised of DeepMind senior scientist Marcus Hutter and Oxford researchers Michael Cohen and Michael Osborne — argues that machines will eventually become incentivized to break the rules their creators set to compete for limited resources or energy.

"Under the conditions we have identified, our conclusion is much stronger than that of any previous publication — an existential catastrophe is not just possible, but likely," Cohen, Oxford University engineering student and co-author of the paper, tweeted earlier this month.

Computing Catastrophe

In their paper, the researchers argue that humanity could face its doom in the form of super-advanced "misaligned agents" that perceives humankind as standing in the way of a reward.

You can read a lot more at: https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-oxford-paper-ai-humankind

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Findmypast adds thousands of school and parish records this Findmypast Friday  

Ancestry CEO Deb Liu shares her experience working at Facebook and explains her move to Ancestry.com in a video on Yahoo! at https://news.yahoo.com/deb-liu-explains-why-she-102342861.html. (Click on the icon that looks like a loudspeaker with an "X" to enable the audio.)

For 12 long years, former beauty queen and long-time US actress Eva LaRue was being stalked by a psychopath, who regularly sent letters to her southern California home, threatening to rape and kill her and her young daughter. Sustained efforts by law enforcement agencies to nail the perpetrator failed.

The FBI’s sharp minds then turned to genetic genealogy, a science that can be used to identify remains by tying DNA to a missing person’s family member or to point to the likely identity of a perpetrator. They extracted DNA from the envelopes of the threat letters and ran it through a DNA database, which yielded a list of the suspect’s relatives. The 58-year-old stalker was identified after his DNA was extracted from a discarded straw at a restaurant

Details may be found in an article by Vikram Sharma published in the Deccan Chronicle web site at: https://bit.ly/3LfyQRY.

OK, so this article certainly IS about genealogy although certainly not the sort of genealogy normally featured here:

Embark, a canine DNA testing company founded in 2015 by brothers Ryan and Adam Bokyo in Cornell’s Incubator for Life Science Companies, is now taking strides in studies of the canine genome. With the swab of a dog’s cheek, Embark can provide information about the dog’s genetic risk factors and ancestry. 

Embark is working on building a data set of cutting edge genetic information of dogs for research purposes, while simultaneously helping dog owners accumulate as much knowledge about their dog’s health as possible.

“Our message is that we can help owners take the best care of their dog with preventable issues that could come up and help owners maximize the time and quality of time they get to spend with their dog,” said founder and Chief Executive Officer Ryan Boyko. 

Embark has made landmark discoveries in the field of canine genetics such as inbreeding depression in golden retrievers, blue eye coloration in huskies and hearing loss in rhodesian ridgebacks. 

You can read more in an article by Brooke Greenfield published in The Cornell Daily Sun web site at: https://bit.ly/3DsRV12.

From an article by David Nutt and published in the Cornell University web site:

A new report from the Cornell-led Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) has compiled decades of high-resolution satellite imagery to document the complete destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan beginning in the late 1990s.

Moreover, the latest finding of CHW’s heritage monitoring project suggests that the same policy of cultural erasure now threatens Armenian monuments in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. CHW has recently discovered the destruction of an historic church in Karabakh, one of hundreds of Armenian monuments in territories ceded to Azerbaijan under the terms of a 2020 ceasefire to a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The destruction of St. Sargis church in the village of Mokhrenes between March and July 2022 provides evidence of the first major violation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice, which ordered Azerbaijan in December 2021 to prevent such acts.

, Click to open gallery view

Satellite images show St. Karapet Monastery of Abrakunis (founded in 1381), its destruction (between 1997 and 2001) and the reuse of the monastery grounds for a mosque built in 2013.

According to CHW’s report on Nakhchivan, of the 110 medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries that CHW identified from archival sources, 108 were destroyed between 1997 and 2011 in what the authors describe as “a systematic, state-sponsored program of cultural erasure.”

CHW was founded in 2020 by Lori Khatchadourian, associate professor of Near Eastern Studies, and Adam T. Smith, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Anthropology, both in the College of Arts and Sciences, along with Ian Lindsay, associate professor of Anthropology at Purdue University.

“Cultural heritage faces more significant threats right now than ever before, from economic development to climate change. But the most serious threat to heritage comes from autocratic governments ready to reshape the past into a fiction that legitimates their domination,” Smith said. “Luckily, there are also new tools for researchers to uncover the facts that counter these fictions.”

The researchers have built an interactive web platform that provides detailed historical background for each site and also allows users to swipe between images from “before” and “after.” For some sites, such as the Holy Mother of God church in Ramis, satellite imagery captured the destruction in progress.

Researchers at the University of Toronto are providing valuable insight into Canadian history by creating an accessible, free database of the nation’s first newspapers.

The front page of issue No. 1 of Le Canadien, which was published November 22, 1806 (image via U of T Scarborough Library)

Led by Sébastien Drouin, an associate professor in the department of language studies at U of T Scarborough, the bilingual project, “Early Modern Canadian Newspapers Online” is a collection of newspapers from the second half of the eighteenth century – from 1752 to 1810 – printed in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Québec and Ontario.

“There are libraries at other universities that have started some digitization of Canadian newspapers, but there are no other projects right now dedicated to early modern Canadian newspapers,” says Drouin, an expert in early modern clandestine literature and early modern journalism.

“We’re very excited about giving access to documents that are almost impossible to find right now.”

You can read a lot more in an article in the University of Toronto web site at: https://bit.ly/3RJ70A9.

The Utah lab working on the Tulsa Race Massacre graves investigation said people are starting to turn in information and DNA. People sharing that information are hopeful they could be a match with the remains found in a mass grave at Oaklawn Cemetery last summer. Intermountain Forensics said it has received dozens of submissions, of family stories and family trees.

The genealogy team said about 70 percent of people sharing information have already taken a consumer DNA test, through places like Ancestry.com or “23 and Me.”

Intermountain Forensics Genealogy Case Manager Alison Wilde said many of those people have uploaded their information to the databases the lab will be using going forward, which she said is "fantastic."

So far, Intermountain Forensics said it only has two samples from the remains found at Oaklawn last summer, that it feels confident about trying to find matches with. Archeologists said they sent remains to the lab from 14 individuals found at Oaklawn.

You can read more in an article written by Amy Slanchik and published in the newson6.com web site at: https://bit.ly/3RZd8nu.