In 1920, after the passage of the 19th Amendment, Boston's women registered to vote by the thousands. The 1920 Women's Voter Registers now live at the Boston City Archives and document women's names, addresses, places of birth and occupations. Sometimes women provided additional information about their naturalization process to become a US citizen, including where their husbands were born because in 1920, a woman's citizenship status was tied to her husband's nationality. 

The Mary Eliza Project, named after African American nurse, civil rights activist, and Boston voter Mary Eliza Mahoney, is transcribing these valuable handwritten records into an easily searchable and sortable dataset. We've recently finished transcribing the Ward 11 registers and have added them into our dataset. Transforming the Ward 11 Women Voters Registers into a dataset gives us new information and insights into the lives of women in northern Dorchester. 

Most Ward 11 women voters were born in Massachusetts, but we also found large numbers of women born in Ireland and Canada. Women born in Germany, Denmark, France, Belgium, Norway, Poland, and more also make an appearance. 

You can read more at: https://www.boston.gov/news/mary-eliza-project-ward-11-voter-records-now-available.

An estimated 80,000 Estonians fled the country during World War II and the Institute of Historical Memory is now establishing a database to enable further research. It is also seeking people's help.

"Despite great public interest in the matter during the past decades, we still do not have a clear overview of the number of refugees, their origin, nor their social background," the institute says. "The database creates a necessary foundation for further research, and tells the story of our previous generations."

Initially, the project is focusing on refugees' first destinations – Sweden and Germany.

"We endeavor to compile a primary database of refugees using existing directories in archives. However, we will need people's help in collecting the names of those refugees who went missing on the journey," the institute says.

It is hoped the first stage will be completed by September 2024. President Alar Karis is the project's patron.

More information about the project can be viewed here.   

(+) Some Thoughts About Organizing Documents and Folders on Your Hard Drive

MyHeritage Adds New Themes to AI Time Machine

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New U.S. National Archives Catalog Debuts

NARA to Award $1.9 Million for Historical Records Projects

Ft. Ticonderoga Acquires Major Collection as It Prepares for 250th Anniversary of American Revolution

The Spooky Quest to Build a Google Maps for Graveyards

1881 Census on Map Explorer

Archives New Zealand Services Worst in Decades, Say Experts

LOD.Lu - the "Lëtzebuerger Online Dictionnaire" Now Available

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From an article by André Chumko and published in the Stuff.co.nz web site:

Archives NZ is in its worst state in decades, those who use its services say, but the minister responsible for the national archive disagrees, saying the current arrangement is working “really well”.

Last week the Government’s record-keeping authority removed public access to its widely used online collections search tool – which had only been live since February – due to a potential privacy and security breach, after restricted files became visible.

Late on Tuesday Archives reinstated access to the search tool, with chief archivist Anahera Morehu saying she was satisfied there was no breach.

“These issues are not what we anticipated, or expected, from a new system when it was introduced. Collections search will continue to be monitored closely ... and we’re prepared to quickly respond to any potential future issues,” Morehu said.

You can read the full article at: https://tinyurl.com/hbff494z.

The following is a press release written by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

A new, modernized National Archives Catalog launched online today. The new Catalog’s focus on scalability will allow the agency to reach its goal to get 500 million digitized pages in the Catalog by September 2026.

The fully redesigned online public access Catalog makes accessing the agency’s holdings more intuitive for the user and improves the search experience by generating faster results.

New features, such as a mobile-first design and enhanced image viewing, allow for an improved visual experience. A full list of all the new features, as well as those to come, can be found on the National Archives website.

“We are happy to introduce a new, streamlined user experience and a modernized platform that will scale for the growth in the Catalog during the years ahead,” said Jill Reilly, Director for Digital Engagement. “The new OCR (optical character recognition) tool is a game changer for enhancing search, discovery, and access to digitized records.”

Catalog users will now be able to access their accounts and make Citizen Archivist contributions via Login.gov. All Catalog user accounts have been migrated, and users will be able to sync their preexisting Catalog accounts with Login.gov. 

The Citizen Archivist community on History Hub is available for tips on navigating these changes and is also where Citizen Archivists can ask and answer questions, or see if their question has already been answered.

The legacy Catalog will still be available until March 2023, but results of searches that yield a high number of Catalog entries may be limited.

Earlier this year, the Catalog topped 200 million digitized pages, and the latest additions are regularly updated on What’s New in the Catalog on the National Archives website.

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

A while ago I wrote an article and mentioned “search your hard drive for the file.”  A newsletter reader wrote and and suggested, "Maybe sometime you could talk about how you organize so you find all of this."

Good idea! In fact, I will suggest that how to organize and file documents and pictures is only the first part of “the problem.” The bigger question is: “Can you quickly find and retrieve files in the future?”

This article is the result of the reader's suggestion. Indeed, the "problem" of organizing your files and photographs in a computer becomes even bigger as you store more and more information. However, one thought keeps popping to my mind as I ponder this "problem."

First, a little background. Most of us who are in our forties or beyond learned about filing and organizing long before computers became available in the household. We learned a lot about organizing printed things in a logical manner so that we could easily find and retrieve filed information when needed. We often filled 3-ring notebooks and even filing cabinets with folders containing all sorts of things. When we later moved into the computer age and saw things organized in digital documents that are then saved in something called folders, our minds naturally reverted to what we already had learned about printed documents and paper file folders. I will suggest, however, that sometimes reverting to old habits can be a good thing, and at other times it might be a bad thing.

In the past, we have been taught to file everything in a logical sequence. Depending upon the documents in question, we might file alphabetically or sequentially. This works well for simple documents that are easily categorized as either alphabetical or sequential. However, that simplistic filing system tends to fall short when filing and retrieving more complex documents that serve multiple purposes.

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/13002862.

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.

The following is a press release from TheGenealogist:

Where did my ancestors live? Were the shops, churches and pubs nearby?

These questions and more are now easier than ever to answer using TheGenealogist. This online family history website has just linked all of its 1881 census records of England, Scotland and Wales to its powerful Map Explorer™ so that users can see the locations of houses plotted on georeferenced historic and modern map layers.

Uniquely on TheGenealogist viewing a household record from the 1881 census will now show a map pinpointing its location. Clicking on this pin opens Map Explorer™, enabling subscribers to explore the area and see the records of neighbouring properties.

With this new release family and house historians are able to research the streets, lanes and neighbourhoods in which their ancestors had lived at the time of the 1881 census. Joining earlier releases that saw the 1911, 1901 and 1891 census linked to the powerful mapping tool, researchers can easily identify with just the click of a button, where their forebears had once lived.

With properties plotted on a map researchers can see the routes their ancestors could have used to get to the shops, drop into their local pubs, worship at their nearby churches, travel to their places of work and relax with a walk in the nearby park. Historical maps make it possible to find where the nearest railway station was to their home, important for understanding how our ancestors could have travelled to other parts of the country to see relatives or visit their hometown.

Using this powerful resource, Starter, Gold and Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist can investigate their ancestors’ neighbourhood from home on their computer screens, or even access the census and the relevant maps on their mobile phone while walking down the modern streets.

The majority of the London area and other towns and cities can be viewed down to the property level, while other parts of the country will identify down to the parish, road or street.

Charles Darwin’s home, Downe House

See TheGenealogist’s article: Darwin at Downe

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/darwin-at-downe-1637/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

From an article by Jim Levulis and published in the WAMC Northeast Public Radio web site:

Fort Ticonderoga has acquired a private collection of more than 3,000 objects, including over 200 rare firearms, as the historical site prepares to commemorate the 250^thanniversary of the American War for Independence.

WAMC's Jim Levulis spoke with Matthew Keagle, Fort Ticonderoga Museum Curator, and Fort President and CEO Beth Hill about the significance of the acquisition.

Keagle: The Robert Nittolo collection is perhaps the single largest, most important collection of material culture relating to the conflicts that shaped our nation really, in the 18th century, primarily the American Revolution, but the French and Indian War and other colonial conflicts as well. And so, it contains objects from almost two centuries worth of time in the 1600s and 1700s, including weaponry, muskets and swords, and that kind of thing, all the way to soldiers’ clothing, their personal equipment, their accoutrement, all the tools that they used in the field, manuscripts, books that they used to learn the art of war. It really crosses almost every object type of the things that actually saw service during the military conflicts of the 18th century.

You can read the full interview at: https://tinyurl.com/yd5wurxt

The following is a press release from the Luxembourg Ministry of Education, Children and Youth:  

Den LOD fir ënnerwee

You're on the bus and can't remember a word? You're out and about and don't know how to say Clemency in Luxembourgish? You're in a restaurant and wonder what a Ziwwi is? Just ask the LOD app !

The brand new website of the Lëtzebuerger Online Dictionnaire was introduced five months ago, with a new look and enhanced features.

Since then, more than 4 million words have been searched on the new site and about 3,5 articles have been read. More than half of the traffic came from mobile devices.

To make the dictionary's content even more accessible, the LOD is now also available as a free app (LOD.lu), which can be downloaded from Google's Play Store or Apple's App Store.

apps.apple.com
play.google.com

An intuitive design, advanced search functions, word categories and much more - all this is now available via direct access on the home screen of the tablet or smartphone: an additional way to access the 32,000 dictionary articles, 35,000 described terms, 173,000 translations, 54,000 example sentences and 10,000 synonyms.

During the development of the app, the many constructive feedback messages from LOD users were of course also taken into account.

Compared to the website, the loading times have been shortened and the display improved: The structure of the dictionary is saved on the device and unnecessary elements of the browser were removed.

The linguistic content always comes from the same database and is therefore constantly up to date, regardless of how it is accessed, whether on the website or the app.