This may be of interest to some people, especially those with Vermont ancestry:

Silver Special Collections is pleased to announce the launch of our latest digital collection, Diaries. The collection provides access to more than thirty digitized and transcribed Vermont diaries from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, with three-fourths of the diaries authored by women. Special Collections staff (Ingrid Bower, Erin Doyle, Hannah Johnson, Sharon Thayer) and student employees (Ella Breed, Dorothy Dye, Ibrahim Genzhiyev, Tabitha Ireifej, Mike Malone) transcribed the diaries during the work-from-home portion of the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest Special Collections blog post features five of the women diarists, including Genieve Lamson, Mandana White Goodenough, Mary Kelley, Mary Farnham and Caroline Crane Marsh. In the coming months we will add an additional thirty-plus diaries from Mary Jean Simpson and two diaries that Henry Brownell kept during his time in Japanese-occupied China in the late 1930s.

You can learn more in the University of Vermont web site at: http://library.uvm.edu/news/diaries.

If you own books printed in the Ukrainian language (or Russian or English), you may be interested in this article published in the Internet Archive Blog:

The Internet Archive is requesting donations of Ukrainian books and books useful to Ukrainians. The books will be preserved, digitized and lent (for free to one user at a time) over the Internet. The Internet Archive is prioritizing the digitization and hosting of relevant materials for Ukrainians.

Already the University of Toronto and University of Alberta has sponsored the digitization of sizable Ukrainian collections, where the total collections on archive.org total over 8,000 items in Ukrainian.

But we need much more to support Ukrainians, many of whom are displaced and do not have access to their schools and libraries.

We need your help.  Together we can preserve all published works and make them as widely available as we can.  

The Internet Archive provides free downloading of public domain materials, services for those with print disabilities, free Controlled Digital Lending of books, free interlibrary loan services, free hosting for materials that are uploaded to archive.org, and supports web archiving efforts.  These services can be more relevant to Ukrainians with your help.

Please donate physical books and other materials, upload relevant materials to archive.org, and also consider financial support for our activities.  

The following "help wanted" advertisement was written by the North Carolina Genealogical Society:

The North Carolina Genealogical Society is seeking an Executive Director to support the consistent achievement of the mission, goals and objectives of the Society. The Executive Director has administrative, operational and strategic responsibilities, and must be able to communicate effectively with members, prospective members, volunteers, support staff, board members, and others in the genealogical community.

This is a part-time, work from home position with an expectation of 30-35 hours of work per week. Qualified candidates must demonstrate the ability to set and meet goals and to achieve successful outcomes in a self-directed work environment. A Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of three years of experience in a leadership role in a nonprofit environment and/or professional education or certification in nonprofit management are required. The pay range for this position is $35,000-45,000 per year depending on experience and qualifications.

NCGS was founded in 1974 for the purpose of increasing interest in and raising the standards of genealogy research and compilation, acquainting members with resources, serving as a medium of exchange of information, and promoting the collection, preservation, and utilization of materials of genealogical and historical value. Visit the website, NCGenealogy.org, to learn more about the organization.

The Search Committee will be accepting resumés until 30 April 2022, or until the position is filled. Contact Laurel Sanders, president@ncgenealogy.org, for more information and to apply.

Click here for complete job description.

After researching my family tree for about the past 40 years, I had a great day this weekend. I finally found myself (in the 1950 U.S. Census) records on MyHeritage.

When the census records became available on Friday, April 1, 2022, the first thing I did was look for myself. Lo and behold, there I was in the Penobscot County, Maine records (Enumeration District 10-68). I was listed as a 4-year-old, living with my parents, older brother, and older sister.

Unlike most other census records I have read in years past, the handwriting was exceptionally clear and easy to read, and all the accompanying information seems to be correct as well. Amazing!

I even recognized most of the neighbors listed on the same page. After all, I grew up with most of them.

It was a great feeling seeing myself listed in the census!

Ancestry.com has sent a notice stating that the entire 1950 U.S. census is also now available on the company's servers. Here is the announcement I received from Ancestry.com:

All the images are live on our site! We’ve confirmed that includes the full 6.57 million that NARA reports, plus the 33k from the Indian Schedules and Overseas Islands.

https://www.facebook.com/AncestryUS/posts/10158317313276630

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb3a5lUPcV3/

A quick check shows that MyHeritage is the first company to publish the entire 1950 US Census image collection. You can browse it for FREE now at https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/04/myheritage-publishes-the-1950-u-s-census-search-for-free/.

I wrote about this once before (at https://eogn.com/page-18080/10711377). However, today is April 1st, also known as April Fools' Day. It seems appropriate to me to celebrate the day by publishing something about the 3 Stooges. This article is especially appropriate on today, the day the 1950 U.S. census records are being released, because this movie is all about the earlier 1940 U.S. census.

Census enumerators (census takers) have a difficult job at best. Can you imagine The Three Stooges interviewing local residents?

In a 1940 Three Stooges movie, Larry, Curly, and Moe obtained jobs as census enumerators and were to be paid four cents per name recorded. Now I understand some of census records I have looked at in the past! I think this is the same group that visited my great-great-grandfather's house.

You can watch The Three Stooges at their best, or worst, in No Census, No Feeling at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAcSFskC0aI.

Here is a bit of trivia:

The football sequences in “No Census, No Feeling” were filmed at USC in the autumn of 1940. Some of the crowd scenes apparently were filmed during a real game.

Curly's Thanksgiving remark alludes to the 1939 law establishing Thanksgiving as a legal holiday to be celebrated on a Thursday, something that was still controversial when the movie was made a year later.

At one point, Moe says, "Wait a minute, flathead! We just got a job. We're working for the census."

Curly replied, "You mean Will Hays?" Will Hays was a reference to William Harrison Hays Sr. a United States politician, chairman of the Republican National Committee (1918–21), U.S. Postmaster General (1921–22), and, from 1922–1945, the first chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). He became the namesake of the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, informally referred to as the Hays Code, which spelled out a set of industry moral guidelines for the self-censorship of content in Hollywood cinema.

April Fool!

Does this include you?

The following is an announcement written by Ancestry.com:

LEHI, Utah--Today, a new survey from Ancestry®, the leader in family history, found more than half (53%) of Americans can’t name all four grandparents – demonstrating a knowledge gap in key information about more recent family history. Released every 10 years, census records are one of the most valuable ways people can learn about their family’s past, as they provide rich insights into what an ancestor’s life was like at the time.

On April 1, the 1950 U.S. Census will be made public by the National Archives and Records Administration. Ancestry will then begin indexing the records state by state to make them searchable for everyone for free. People born in the U.S. before 1975 are now likely to find their parents in the 1950 census if they were U.S. residents – and those born before 2000 could find a grandparent.

While many Americans don’t know a lot about their family’s past, they want to know more. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they want to learn more about their family history and over half (51%) want stories about when their ancestors were young and what life was like at a moment in time. The 151 million newly released 1950 U.S. Census records will be a valuable resource for learning about their family members’ lives – with details like home address, occupations and salaries, names and ages for members of the household, education level, military service, and more. In fact, nearly one out of three discoveries for Ancestry customers in the U.S. is made using a census record.

“It’s exciting that younger generations now have the opportunity to learn more about family members they know, like parents and grandparents,” said Crista Cowan, Corporate Genealogist at Ancestry. “The 1950 Census provides a fascinating look at an era in our collective history but the magic happens when you discover a more complete picture of not only what your family member's life was like at a moment in time, but also how it had changed over the decades."

Ancestry will debut exclusive product features to make the most comprehensive and searchable 1950 U.S Census index, including:

• • A Personalized Guide to the Census: The Record Tour feature will provide a step-by-step guided experience, showing what’s in each census record and what it means. It can help people better understand their story and reveal new details about their relatives and their world in 1950.
  • AI Powering Quicker Discoveries: Ancestry developed precise machine learning to power its proprietary AI Handwriting Recognition technology to make every field of these records searchable, rather than just names–enabling anyone to quickly and more accurately find family members. For example, someone looking for John Smith may see hundreds of names, making it difficult to know which one is their ancestor. The Ancestry AI better pinpoints specific people to reduce the time it takes to make discoveries.
  • Look at Your Ancestor’s Life Over Time: Get snapshots of relatives’ lives across the decades by comparing multiple records–even adding additional historical context to discover what remained the same and what changed from one decade to another. For example, a great-grandfather may have been a factory worker in the 1930 Census and later a factory owner in the 1950 Census.
  • An Interactive Way to Explore Then vs. Now: By combining a census enumeration map overlay with a modern-day interactive map, users will be able to compare landmarks, roads, new developments, and other marked features on the maps to see how much has changed over the years, and how much is still the same.
  • Short Shareable Stories, Without Any Research: Simply input a grandparent’s or parent’s name, where they might have lived, and birth year and users could get brief shareable stories about an ancestor’s life at the time. With a few clicks, Ancestry technology will quickly extract key details from 1940 U.S. Census records and add historical context in short story form, including insights like where they lived, if they owned their home and its value, the level of education of everyone in the household, and more. Once the 1950 Census is fully indexed, this experience will provide stories using those records.

To build a family tree for free and stay up to date on when census records from each state are fully searchable, visit Ancestry.com/1950Census. Share your discoveries using #MyAncestryStory and tune into the Ancestry Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to learn more tips and tricks for exploring the 1950 U.S. Census.

About Ancestry
Ancestry®, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, empowers journeys of personal discovery to enrich lives. With our unparalleled collection of more than 30 billion records and over 20 million people in our growing consumer DNA network, customers can discover their family story and gain a new level of understanding about their lives. For over 30 years, we’ve built trusted relationships with millions of people who have chosen us as the platform for discovering, preserving and sharing the most important information about themselves and their families.

*Data from a survey conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Ancestry from March 17 to March 22, 2022, with a panel of 2,113 Americans, including 1,911 from top 10 DMAs and 202 from Salt Lake City, UT.

Will you soon have drugs that are custom-made for your DNA? Your genetic code or DNA is an instruction manual for how your body operates. The field of matching drugs to your DNA is known as pharmacogenomics.

Some drugs are completely ineffective or become deadly because of subtle differences in how our bodies function.

The British Pharmacological Society and the Royal College of Physicians say a genetic test can predict how well drugs work in your body.

You can read more in an article by James Gallagher published in the BBC News web site at: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-60903839.

More than two decades after the draft human genome was celebrated as a scientific milestone, scientists have finally finished the job. The first complete, gap-free sequence of a human genome has been published in an advance expected to pave the way for new insights into health and what makes our species unique. Until now, about 8% of the human genome was missing, including large stretches of highly repetitive sequences, sometimes described as "junk DNA." In reality though, these repeated sections were omitted due to technical difficulties in sequencing them, rather than pure lack of interest.

Sequencing a genome is something like slicing up a book into snippets of text then trying to reconstruct the book by piecing them together again. Stretches of text that contain a lot of common or repeated words and phrases would be harder to put in their correct place than more unique pieces of text. New "long-read" sequencing techniques that decode big chunks of DNA at once -- enough to capture many repeats -- helped overcome this hurdle. Scientists were able to simplify the puzzle further by using an unusual cell type that only contains DNA inherited from the father (most cells in the body contain two genomes -- one from each parent). Together these two advances allowed them to decode the more than 3 billion letters that comprise the human genome.

The science behind the sequencing effort and some initial analysis of the new genome regions are outlined in six papers published in the journal Science. You can read more by starting at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8653.