The Center for Brooklyn History was awarded a $105,500 grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation to hire an archivist to help assist with recovering, organizing and increasing public access to the Center’s materials related to the history of Long Island.

Established in 2020 in partnership with both the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn Public Library, the Center for Brooklyn History is one of the most expansive collections of materials relating to the borough’s history and houses items which have been collected over the past 161 years.

After an extensive renovation, the center, located in Brooklyn Heights, officially opened to the public in September of 2023 and, with the aid of the grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, is looking to further extend their accessibility.

“Since 2020, the Center for Brooklyn History is proud to serve the borough of Brooklyn as part of the Brooklyn Public Library system, but CBH’s history actually stretches back to 1863 with our founding as the Long Island Historical Society,” said Chief Historian Dominique Jean-Louis in a statement Tuesday. “Long Island’s people, artifacts, and stories shaped the earliest collections of this institution, and we’re thrilled that with generous funding from The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, we will be able to bring new access and understanding to these collections on Long Island’s history for a wide public audience.” 

Among the Long Island historical materials housed at CBH are a collection of six ledgers kept by Long Island property owner and merchant, Henry Lloyd. The ledgers include records of financial transactions and accounts in the area from 1703 through 1744, including fascinating details of the management of the Manor of Queens Village, a 3,000 acre plantation in today’s Suffolk County which was owned and operated by Lloyd’s family.

You can read more in an article by Isabel Song Beer published in the brooklynpaper.com web site at: https://www.brooklynpaper.com/center-for-brooklyn-history-grant/. 

From the petition.parliament.uk web site:

Please #SaveOurWills! The Ministry of Justice proposes to digitise and then allow the destruction of original wills after 25 years. We call for the original wills to be preserved in perpetuity in line with current legislation. Do not agree to legislative changes that would allow the destruction of these documents.

1. We think costs of digital preservation and storage could be astronomical.

2. The loss of digital files may be more likely than the loss of physical documents, for example via file corruption and cyber attacks.

3. Flaws and errors made during the digitisation process may happen.

4. The proposed changes to legislation may set a detrimental precedent for the destruction of other archive collections.

5. Physical documents provide additional information, such as the materiality of the documents.

You can read more and even sign the petition (if you are a UK citizen) by first going to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/654081.

The following book reviews were written by Bobbi King:

The Story of Yorktown, Told by the Men Who Were There by Jack Darrell Crowder. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2023.) 238 pages.

Victory or Death: Military Decisions that Changed the Course of the American Revolution by Jack Darrell Crowder. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2023.) 179 pages.

So You Think You Know George Washington? by Jack Darrell Crowder. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2023.) 228 pages.

More than two centuries later, American students of history continue to carry a deep interest in the Revolutionary War, that pivotal juncture of time that, at the weary end, gave us our glorious, though sometimes conflicted, nation. But it could have all ended up quite differently, leaving us with a Boxing Day more celebrated than any Fourth of July.

Jack Darrell Crowder writes three books of research that offer his perspective on the significance and consequences of certain events of the American Revolution.

In The Story of Yorktown, the account begins on 28 September 1781, when the Yorktown Siege begins, and ends on 26 October 1781, when the siege ends. From the journals, diaries, letters, and pension files of the combatants, the author has transcribed the day-to-day accounts of the soldiers and officers, from both sides of the battle lines, that bring us into the immediacy of the fight.

In Victory or Death, military decisions that were made at what became pivotal turning points of the war are assessed from both the American view and the British view. Major episodes are: the appointment of Washington to become Commander of the Army, the assault on Bunker Hill, Howe’s hesitation of employing British troops in New York, the British loss at Saratoga, and more milestones of the war.

In George Washington, the author dispels a myriad of myths about his subject, familiar legends that we were taught to believe in school and grew up reading about in his biographical stories. The author describes his evidence that explains what really did happen, offering a more realistic and logical insight into Washington the Man, the General, and the President.

The bedraggled, rebellious, upstart colonials took on the mighty British generals, and emerged victorious. Their story of independence, solidarity, and birth-of-a-nation triumph still holds our imagination., 2023.) 228 pages.

The Crowder books are available from the publisher, Genealogical Publishing Co. at http://tinyurl.com/bdfsbnuy and from Amazon at: http://tinyurl.com/ha92hfw2.

A man who kidnapped and raped a teenage woman a quarter century ago, Mark Thompson, now 66, was brought to justice and sentenced to 130 years-to-life in state prison after his DNA was identified using a genealogical program.

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan last week reported that defendant Thompson, 66, was sentenced to 130 years-to-life in state prison for kidnapping and raping a teenage girl multiple times on February 17, 1999 in Escondido, California. Judge Robert Kearney handed down the lengthy sentence after Hunter was convicted by a jury in October of 2023 of seven felony counts including kidnapping, rape, and sodomy. 

“The victim was 19-years old when she was brutally attacked by this defendant and put through a nightmare scenario,” said DA Stephan. “Justice was delayed, but thanks to investigators at the FBI, Sheriff’s Crime Lab, Escondido Police Department and District Attorney’s Office, who leveraged the power of modern DNA and never gave up, this rapist is now being held accountable for his crimes.”

You can read more in an article in the times-advocate.com web site at: http://tinyurl.com/ytmpevbj.

Digging into the city's history — and your own — has become incredibly easy thanks to the Fall River Public Library’s initiative to digitize its collection of newspaper microfilm. 

The library’s reference department has been quietly uploading decades worth of Herald News pages online — complete copies of every page, every story, every ad, with all the text searchable. In the past week, the library’s latest batch of editions came online at fallriver.advantage-preservation.com, digitized by Advantage Archives. It comes to more than 310,000 pages of Fall River and national history from 1926 to 1968.  

It’s the first time that Fall River newspapers from this era have been freely online and searchable. 

“It's a free site,” said Conor Murray of the library’s reference department. “There’s no paywall or anything.” 

Those with a nose for news archives — historians, researchers, genealogists, or those just curious about their past — may know that it’s been difficult to access most of Fall River’s newspapers from the 20th century. 

You can read more in an article by Dan Medeiros published in The Herald News at: http://tinyurl.com/4kcsazcx.

The subject of printed books and electronic books (or e-books) has been featured in numerous past articles in this newsletter. Therefore, I was interested today to see an online Associated Press article and video about numerous universities that are purging many printed books from their shelves. In many cases, the libraries simply don't have the room for all the old books, and the idea of expanding libraries is subject to budget constraints. If they want to purchase new books, even printed publications, the libraries have to free up shelf space. Also, according to one 2009 study of libraries, between staffing, utility costs, and other expenses, it costs about $4 to keep a book on the shelf for a year. 

In one example at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, (yes, there really is an Indiana University of Pennsylvania, see https://www.iup.edu/ for details), nearly half of the university's collection remained uncirculated for 20 years or more. Unused books obviously do no one any good.

Of course, an increasing number of books exist in the cloud where publishing costs, shipping costs, and storage costs are only a fraction of the expense of printed books. In addition, most students and even many older library users prefer the convenience of Wikipedia, Archive.org, Google Books, and other free sources of information along with paid services, such as Kindle.

Of course, genealogists are a part of this trend. The specialized genealogy libraries that many of us have used for years suffer from the same budget constraints as other libraries. They probably also have the problem of books that are not accessed for years at a time. Today, there are more genealogy books available through your home computer than at any single genealogy library. Just ask the folks at FamilySearch, an organization that has downsized their printed book collection in favor of making the same books and other publications available online whenever copyright laws allow.

Libraries aren’t the only ones facing these decisions. Individuals face the same issues. For instance, my Kindle now contains more than 150 e-books, including numerous genealogy books, old county histories, and more. I carry all of them with me almost every time I travel. Try to do that with printed books! In addition, most of the e-books are easier to search than are the printed books. I can find any word or phrase in an e-book within seconds with the exception of some of the books printed electronically in PDF format. For those few books, I have to search the old-fashioned way, one page at a time, the same as in a printed book.

I admit I love the feel and the smell of old and even new printed books. However, when purchasing a book, the funds available in my wallet usually dictate my choice. The cost of purchasing a printed book, shipping, buying yet another bookshelf (and finding a place for it in my home!), usually swings my decision in the opposite direction. Sometimes we don't have a choice; but, if a choice is available, I usually will select the ebook version of a book I want to read.

Which do you prefer?

NOTE: The idea for this article was triggered this morning when I purchased a new book from Amazon. I had to make a choice between paperback or Kindle. The Kindle version was much cheaper, requires no additional storage space, and was delivered (electronically) to my Kindle or iPad seconds later with no shipping charge. The choice was obvious to me.

DNA obtained from the bones and teeth of ancient Europeans who lived up to 34,000 years ago is providing insight into the origin of the often-disabling neurological disease multiple sclerosis, finding that genetic variants that now increase its risk once served to protect people from animal-borne diseases.

The findings stemmed from research involving ancient DNA sequenced from 1,664 people from various sites across Western Europe and Asia. These ancient genomes were then compared with modern DNA from the UK Biobank, comprising about 410,000 self-identified "white-British" people, and more than 24,000 others born outside the United Kingdom, to discern changes over time.

One striking discovery related to MS, a chronic disease of the brain and spinal cord that is considered an autoimmune disorder in which the body mistakenly attacks itself.

The researchers identified a pivotal migration event about 5,000 years ago at the start of the Bronze Age when livestock herders called the Yamnaya people moved into Western Europe from an area that includes modern Ukraine and southern Russia.

They carried genetic traits that at the time were beneficial, protective against infections that could arise from their sheep and cattle. As sanitary conditions improved over the millennia, these same variants increased MS risk. This helps explain, the researchers said, why Northern Europeans have the world's highest MS prevalence, double that of Southern Europeans.

You can read more in an article by Will Dunham published in the Reuters web site at: http://tinyurl.com/myzkpuc3.

Toronto police say the use of DNA alongside genetic genealogy has helped them identify a suspect in a cold case murder of a 47-year-old man in 1982.

On May 17, 1982, Kevin McBride died of multiple stab wounds inside of his apartment on Sheppard Avenue East near Markham Road, police said.

McBride was last seen two days before his body was discovered by officers who went to his apartment for a wellness check after he did not show up to dinner plans with friends, police said.

Det. Sgt. Steve Smith, with Toronto Police’s cold case unit, told Global News that McBride was an art dealer.

“It appears to us as though it was a robbery,” Smith said. “Obviously our victim had numerous pieces of art that were valuable. We know that the offender actually lived in the same place as the victim during a small portion of time.”

You can read more in an article by Gabby Rodrigues published in the globalnews.ca web site at: http://tinyurl.com/4xu456b5

Over the past year, the Armenian Museum of America’s Sound Archive program has taken a giant step forward. Each month, the Museum posts a handful of songs digitized and restored from its collection of 78 rpm records on its website along with a historical writeup about the artists. 

Along with more conventional musical recordings, some of the recordings touch on Armenian cultural, political and educational history, as well as the history of recording technologies. The program is sponsored by a generous grant from the SJS Charitable Trust.

The Museum hosted musicologist Ian Nagoski at its galleries to weave the story of the influential but largely forgotten soprano Zabelle Panosian, who was born in Bardizag and emigrated to Boston in 1907. Nagoski’s talk drew from his recently published book Zabelle Pansoian: I Am Servant of Your Voice, co-authored with Harout Arakelian and Harry Kezelian. 

In November, the Museum welcomed world-renowned composer and musician Ara Dinkjian. Speaking to a packed house, Dinkjian discussed the early history of some of the first recordings of Armenian music through the 1940s. The presentation built on his book and CD compilation Armenians in America on 78 rpm. 

“As we approach our fourth year presenting the Sound Archive at the Armenian Museum of America, we are proud to make this content available to people around the world,” says Executive Director Jason Sohigian. “For half a century now, the Museum’s collection of 78 rpm records has grown thanks to generous donors who have been entrusting us with their personal collections.”

You can read more in an article by  Jesse Kenas Collins published in the armenianweekly web site at: http://tinyurl.com/2uh3eap5