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.

As I wrote earlier today, I will be traveling later this week and into next week. Today, I obtained a new device to (hopefully) make my writing chores bit easier when traveling: an iPad Mini and External Keyboard.

When it comes to reading information, I love the compact size of the iPad Mini. It easily slips into a backpack or even into a large overcoat pocket. However, writing articles or even composing email messages with the "on-screen glass keyboard" is a pain. Therefore, when I ordered the iPad Mini, I also added a ProCase Detachable Wireless Keyboard to the order (Amazon item B09CTBY6N4).

I plan to write a review of the two devices in a week or two, telling how well (or how poorly) they worked for this traveling genealogist.

The first thing I noticed when I unpacked the keyboard is that it does not have a touchpad so it isn't an exact replacement for a laptop computer. However, my first 2 or 3 minutes of testing the keyboard demonstrates that it has an excellent "touch" typing capability.

Plaintiff lawyers hurled a personal attack on Blackstone Investment Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman in a proposed class action proceeding in federal court. 

Local counsel Gregory Shevlin pleaded that Schwarzman “has a notorious reputation for doing more harm to everyday consumers than good.” 

He cited as his sole source an article in Housing is a Human Right under headlines of “sins of Blackstone” and “modern day robber baron.” 

He and four colleagues claim Blackstone violated rights of Ancestry DNA customers in Illinois when it bought Ancestry DNA last year. 

They sued Blackstone for Carolyn Bridges of St. Clair County at circuit court in July. 

They propose a class action seeking statutory damages of $15,000 per person for reckless violation of the state’s Genetic Information Privacy Act. 

Further details are available at https://madisonrecord.com/stories/615083418-lawyers-in-ancestry-com-class-action-level-personal-attack-against-blackstone-ceo.

MyHeritage.com is celebrating a major milestone: the company just acquired its one-millionth customer!

The MyHeritage Blog has quite a lengthy article featuring the company's history and a recent surprise visit to the one millionth subscriber, Bénédicte Halpouter, at her home in Belgium. You can check it out at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2021/12/myheritage-surpasses-1-million-annual-subscribers/.

The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives:

WASHINGTON, DC, December 14, 2021 — With the scheduled April 1, 2022, release of 1950 Census records a little more than three months away, the National Archives is completing efforts to digitize those records and using technology to make them more accessible than ever.

“Employees from across the agency have worked on digitizing and indexing the records and developing and testing a new, dedicated 1950 Census website,” said Project Manager Carol Lagundo, who leads the 1950 Census project at National Archives. “It’s taken innovation and creativity to keep this project on track throughout the pandemic and to continue to meet our project milestones. We hope the public will benefit from our hard work.”

The new website will include a name search function powered by an Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology tool. This is important for genealogists and other researchers who rely on census records for new information about the nation’s past.

“The OCR being used to transcribe the handwritten names from the census rolls is about as good as the human eye,” said Project Management Director Rodney Payne. “Some of the pages are legible, and others are difficult to decipher. So, the National Archives developed a transcription tool to enable users to submit name updates. This will allow other users to find specific names more easily, and it provides an opportunity for the public to help the agency share these records with the world.”

National Archives officials are encouraging interested members of the public to use the transcription tool and assist the agency to make the records as accurate as possible.

“This is an exciting project for the National Archives, and we know it is important information for so many Americans. We are looking forward to collaborating with the public to refine and enhance the first draft of OCR-created names. This is a great example of automating as much as we can and then collaborating with the public to make access happen,” said Chief Innovation Officer Pamela Wright.

The website is currently in development and will undergo rigorous testing in the coming months to ensure a successful launch.

The National Archives is also working to provide bulk download access of the full 1950 Census dataset on launch day. This will be of interest to digital humanists, web developers, social scientists, and anyone wanting to explore aggregations of the records. Other organizations and companies will be able to use this functionality to provide 1950 Census data on their own websites.

When made available on the Amazon Web Services Registry of Open Data, the 1950 Census dataset—over 165 terabytes of data—will include the metadata index, the population schedules, the enumeration district maps, and the enumeration district descriptions for the 1950 Census records. This is approximately 10 times the size of the 1940 Census dataset.

Included in the dataset are approximately:

• • 6.5 million digital TIFF images and corresponding JPEG derivative images of the microfilmed “1950 Census of Population and Housing” forms for U.S. states and territories
  • 33,215 TIFF images and corresponding JPEG derivative images of the original paper “1950 Census of Population and Housing: Indian Reservation Schedule” forms
  • 9,600 digitized images of the 1950 Census Enumeration District Maps, which are annotated maps of counties, cities, and other minor civil divisions that show enumeration districts, census tract, and related boundaries and numbers used for each census
  • 63,000 digitized images of the 1950 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, which are written descriptions of geographic areas included within enumeration districts
  • 232,000 1950 Census Enumeration District Descriptions, which were produced by generating OCR output of the Enumeration District Description images. More than 25 NARA staff reviewed and cleaned up the OCR output.

For more information see, NARA’s 1950 Census blog posts on History Hub.

Resources for earlier censuses as well as tips for searching these records are available on Archives.gov.

Reports and statistics from the 1950 census are available through the U.S. Census Bureau.