A new article in The New Republic web site, written by Colin Dickey, caught my eye. I haven't yet read this book but it just moved up to the top of my "to read" list:

"It’s never been easier to piece together a family tree. But what if it brings uncomfortable facts to light?

"From an early age, I’d known that my grandfather had been an alcoholic, and the common wisdom that the disease skips generations burned in me, leading me to believe that the merest taste would doom me to a short life of addiction bound to end ignominiously in a ditch somewhere. This was an extreme response, perhaps, but I certainly wasn’t alone in how I let stories of my forebears determine my beliefs and behaviors, and in how for years I saw ancestry—with its heady mix of genetics and family lore—as nearly inescapable destiny.

"In the same way we talk regularly of certain diseases as hereditary, we also often allow the stories of our grandparents and great-grandparents to influence our behavior and identity. It’s this sticky web of expectations that Maud Newton’s Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation attempts to untangle, sifting through the anxiety of influence that is inheritance, genetics, and how they conspire to create a human life.""

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3iv0NHO.

An article by the New York Times asks a moral question: “The New York Police Department’s primary motivation for collecting DNA is to legally identify the correct perpetrator, build the strongest case possible for investigators and our partners in the various prosecutors’ offices, and put an end to the victims and their families.”

The city medical examiner’s office, which manages the database, said it complied with applicable laws and was operated “with the highest scientific standards” set by independent accrediting bodies.

However, civil liberties advocates and privacy groups are questioning the methods used to collect the DNA. The DNA database has come under fire in recent years for tactics used by police to collect DNA samples, often without a person’s consent, lawyers say. The department’s guide to detectives asks detectives to offer a bottle of water, soda, cigarette, gum, or food to a person being questioned in connection with a crime whose DNA is wanted – and recover the object once they are gone.

The civil liberties advocates and privacy groups have argued that progress comes at the expense of communities of color, infringes on the rights of people who have not been convicted of crimes and exposes them to a risk of wrongful conviction if mistakes are made.

“You can change your social security number if you are a victim of identity theft. You can’t change your DNA,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “You create this constant threat not for months, not for years, but the rest of your life, that you can be targeted by this information.”

You can learn more at https://bit.ly/3ixxiFe.

The live event is over, but the content continues to be available online for free. You can view 1,000+ sessions of various genealogical topics. From research methods to DNA, locations to languages, and everything in-between, there's something for everyone. View RootsTech at their site or by clicking here.

This is a follow-up to an article posted here last week at: https://eogn.com/page-18080/12671842:

A Louisiana Legislature committee advanced a bill Monday that would give adopted people access to their birth certificates once they turn 24, despite concerns from abortion opponents that it would discourage birth mothers who want to remain anonymous.

Rep. Charles Owen, R-Leesville, R-Rosepine, brought his bill before the House Committee on Civil Law and Procedure last week, when a vote on the proposal was deferred. Ben Clapper with Louisiana Right to Life had asked Owen to consider an amendment that would require the birth mother’s consent to be identified. Owen and supporters of his bill have said identifying information is already successful through genealogy and DNA-tracking websites such as 23andMe.com and Ancestry.com.

You can read more in an article by Greg Larose published in the Louisiana Illuminator at: https://bit.ly/37KoXMp.

This probably is an education for many of today's young adults. It shows how life was in "the old days."

Written by Sister Mary Francis Clare, the Nun of Kenmare (according to the book's cover), the book is a mix of religion and practical advice about the every-day life of an Irish immigrant lady. The book is aimed at young, single, Irish Catholic ladies who emigrated to America. Most of these young women were looking for jobs as servants or similar work.

Your great-grandmother probably read this book.

You can find Advice to Irish girls in America at http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23269378M/Advice_to_Irish_girls_in_America. To read the book online on your computer screen, click on READ ONLINE. You will also find several other options there as well.

The following was written by the Augusta (Georgia) Genealogical Society:

When:  Saturday, March 26, 2022

 

Where:  On Line - Webinar 

 

Time:  1:00 to 2:00 pm

 

Cost:  Free to AGS members and $10.00 for non members

 

Speaker:  Curt B. Witcher, MLS, FUGA, IGSF

 

 

Program specifics:   The presentation will cover how to explore the holdings of the Genealogy Center both to plan a research trip to Fort Wayne and, equally, to use the Genealogy Center remotely.

 

Curt Witcher is the Director of Special Collections at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN, managing the widelyacclaimed Genealogy Center. He is in his forty-second year of service at the Allen County Public Library.

 

Curt is a former president of both the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society and the founding president of the Indiana Genealogical Society. He has penned many hundreds of articles on topics of interest to family historians, librarians and archivists; and he has presented lectures to historical and genealogical groups across the country. Curt also serves on the Indiana State Historical Records Advisory Board, co-chairs the Indiana Historical Society’s publications committee, and serves as a member of the board of the Friends of the Indiana State Archives.

 

Registration deadline is March 22.  To Register please visit www.augustagensociety.org

It will happen to all of us someday: We'll be gone, but our data will persist. Photo albums are a thing of the past, but your memories don't have to be.

Enough people have been locked out of a dead parents’ device that Apple and Google have now made it possible for you to grant posthumous access. Apple calls the program Digital Legacy. Your selected Legacy Contacts can present the access key you give them along with your death certificate to gain access to any data you have stored on iCloud.

Google takes a slightly less morbid approach. You can configure Inactive Account Manager so that if you ever don’t log in for three, six, 12, or 18 months, your chosen contacts will be emailed with a link to download all your data.

You can read more in an article by Harry Guinness published in the Wired web site at: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-leave-photos-behind-when-you-die/.

NOTE: This article contains personal opinions.

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

In case you have not heard the news, many genealogy libraries are struggling financially these days. For this article, I will focus solely on the larger societies that have their own buildings or perhaps rent a significant amount of space in other buildings. I will also look only at societies that have libraries that are not funded by taxpayer dollars. Many of them have paid employees, although not all do.

An example of one such library would include the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The same may be true of the Society of Genealogists’ library in London. The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) library in Washington, D.C. also is a huge, non-profit resource, although the sponsoring organization is not limited to genealogy interests. The DAR library does seem to fit in the same business model as the libraries of large genealogy societies.

You can find hundreds of smaller examples, including the Vesterheim Genealogical Center/Naeseth Library (VGC/NL) in Madison, Wisconsin; the Erie County Historical Society’s Library in Erie, Pennsylvania; and the American French Genealogical Society in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and many more. The Godfrey Memorial Library in Middletown, Connecticut, may also fit into this category although it is not a part of any society. It is an independent genealogy library, but with business and financial realities similar to the libraries sponsored by societies.

Each of these libraries holds thousands of books of value to genealogists. Yet I believe that each of these libraries is in danger of extinction. Like so many species of creatures that saw their source of sustenance dwindling, some will evolve and others will disappear.

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/12672036. 

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. 

It is with sadness that I send news of the death of Lorine Olive McGinnis Schulze Massey.

After retiring from teaching in 1996 Lorine started her own online business Olive Tree Genealogy which is now one of the oldest online genealogy companies in the world. The author of over 30 books and numerous publications, Lorine was well known and highly regarded in the genealogy community.

You may find Lorine's obituary at: https://www.arbormemorial.ca/nicholls/obituaries/lorine-olive-mcginnis-schulze-massey/79489.

How do you capture the idea of historical memory? History professor Fitz Brundage got the idea over a decade ago to create a comprehensive digital collection of the state’s monuments, shrines and commemorative public art. At the time, he thought the project team might be able to include about 400 monuments in the archive.

Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina, or CommLand, a partnership with University Libraries, now features the stories of over 1,000 monuments across the state in all 100 counties. It is the largest and most extensive curated site devoted to a single state’s historical monuments and memorials. It has become a resource for K-12 and college educators, genealogists, public officials, journalists, historians, activists, historical reenactors, nonprofit groups and others. The content from the site has been incorporated into NCpedia.org.

You can read more in the University of North Carolina web site at https://college.unc.edu/2022/03/a-monumental-visual-history/.