The following message was posted to the IAJGS (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies) Public Records Access Monitoring Committee mailing list and is republished here with permission:

David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States announced in his blog AOTUS, the granting of projects about making historical records happen. Archivist Ferriero chairs the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

The latest round of grants resulted in 36 grants totaling nearly $3 million for projects in 28 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

Nineteen of the grants went to state historical records advisory boards which will go on to fund dozens of projects at the local level. They also support workshops for archivists, both professional and amateur, as well as traveling archivists, National History Day competitions, emergency preparedness, and much more.

To read about the funded project see:

https://aotus.blogs.archives.gov/2020/12/10/supporting-public-access-to-historical-records/

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

This week’s Findmypast Friday sees substantial updates to collections from the United States, Ireland and England, including;

United States Obituary Notices

This mammoth index has recently been updated with over 18.2 million new entries covering all 50 American states. Now containing over 50 million records, each result consists of a transcript that will reveal a combination of the deceased’s

• • Name
  • Birth year
  • Birth date
  • Death year
  • Death date
  • Obituary text
  • Place
  • Source link

Additional information such as images and details about the original obituary can be found on the source’s website.

Ireland Billion Graves Cemetery Index

New additions from all 32 Irish counties have been added to the Ireland Billion Graves Cemetery Index. BillionGraves is the largest online resource for GPS-tagged headstone and burial records. Each transcript will reveal the birth date, death date and burial location of your ancestor. Images links to the Billion Graves website are also included.

By partnering with BillionGraves, Findmypast aim to make all the cemetery records held on their site available to subscribers. Indexes covering England, Scotland, Wales, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are also available and, all of which are updated regularly.

Yorkshire Monumental Inscriptions

Over 28,000 new records covering over 300 years of Yorkshire history are now available to search. The new additions date from 1663-2008 and cover the following West Riding parishes;

• • Greetland, Methodist Chapel
  • Mytholmroyd
  • Norland
  • Northowram
  • Ogden
  • Ovenden
  • Pecket Well
  • Queensbury
  • Ripponden
  • Rishworth
  • Scammonden
  • Shelf
  • Sowerby
  • Sowerby Bridge

Monumental inscriptions can reveal when your relative died, where they are buried and the often detail-rich epitaph inscribed on their memorial.

Newspapers

With five brand new papers and additional pages for a further nine, Findmypast’s newspaper collection continues to grow. Titles published online for the first time include:

• • Cotton Factory Times covering 1885-1888, 1891-1895, 1897-1899, 1902-1911 and 1913-1920
  • Blackpool Gazette & Herald covering 1881-1886, 1888 and 1890-1893
  • Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette covering 1881-1886
  • Kenilworth Advertiser covering 1900
  • Bridgend Chronicle, Cowbridge, Llantrisant, and Maesteg Advertiser covering 1888

Branding itself as the voice of the cotton trade worker, the Cotton Factory Times provides fascinating insights into the lives of those who worked in Britain’s Cotton Mills. Sections including ‘Notes from the Factories’, ‘Thoughts on Home Life,’ and ‘Voices from the Spindle and the Loom’ paint a vivid picture of working conditions and daily life, from reports of accidents to reports of dismissals.

Findmypast have also added thousands on new pages to the following titles; 

• • Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore) from 1889-1890
  • Leicester Evening Mail from 1946-1954, 1956-1959 and 1963
  • Kinematograph Weekly from 1945, 1950 and 1952
  • Widnes Examiner from 1883-1884, 1891, 1899, 1903, 1905, 1907, 1912-1914 and 1916
  • Runcorn Examiner from 1883-1884
  • Warrington Examiner from 1904
  • St. Helens Examiner from 1883, 1900
  • Oxford Chronicle and Reading Gazette from 1871, 1874-1892, 1894-1895, 1900-1902, 1904-1906, 1908-1909, 1912, 1914, 1916 and 1927-1929
  • Fulham Chronicle from 1888-1904, 1907-1912 and 1923-1933

The following article is a brief excerpt from the MyHeritage Blog. The blog article is much longer and also contains some nice example images of original records from this collection:

We are delighted to announce the addition of two new collections of Norway Census records — the 1875 Norway Census and the 1870 Norway Census. Digitized in collaboration with National Archives of Norway (Arkivverket), the 2 million records in these collections include high-quality scans of the original documents.

Search the new Norwegian Census Records 

The collections hold particular interest as they cover a unique time in Norwegian history. The largest single wave of emigration from Norway occurred between 1879 and 1893. Spurred on by the promise of new opportunities, 250,000 Norwegians left Norway for other countries like the U.S. The 1875 census offers the opportunity to catch a snapshot about these Norwegian ancestors while they were still in Norway. For those in the U.S. and abroad with Norwegian heritage, this census collection may unlock important details about their Norwegian roots.

Beyond their historical significance, the collections are important as they contain details that are not often found within a typical census collection. In addition to listing the person’s name, residence, position within the family, gender, marital status, and occupation, the census also includes information on languages spoken, birthplace of the residents, and their birth years. In specific cases, even medical conditions are listed.

Also included are individuals who were temporary residents of the household or those registered to a household who may have been absent at the time of the census count. This means that a single individual may have been listed in more than one entry, if they were visiting another home at the time the census was taken.

Here is more information about each of the collections.

1875 Norway Census

The 1.8 million records from this country-wide census collection includes the names, residence, position within the family, gender, marital status, occupation, birthplace, and birth year. The census was officially conducted on December 31, 1875 and was the first census in Norway to record information about a birthdate rather than age. Additionally, individuals were asked to report their permanent residence and any temporary residence where they may have lived at the time of the census.

Search the 1875 Norway Census

1870 Norway Census

The 1870 census consists of records from 60 cities and towns in Norway, of which records from 50 cities and towns survive. Recognizing the need for updated information due to the rapid population growth in urban centers, the government requested this special census of cities and towns. The records contain names, gender, place of birth, year of birth, marital status, and place of residence. 

Search the 1870 Norway Census

The full article, including example images of Norwegian census records, may be found at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/12/myheritage-releases-two-norwegian-census-collections/.

Records about Confederate soldiers are certainly less prevalent than those for their Union counterparts. But many more Confederate records exist than are widely known – and many of those records are online.

Unfortunately, they are spread across multiple web sites, some of which require a subscription, so they can be hard to find. It is also not widely known that some of the databases on subscription sites are available elsewhere for free.

The new GopherRecords.com web site offers a chart showing the most significant Confederate records that are available online with direct links to the search engines for those databases.

Note that these charts to not attempt to itemize county-specific Confederate records, veteran lists, specific Confederate cemeteries, or specific prisoner of war camps. FamilySearch.org, in particular, offers free access to hundreds of such records online and through their Family History Centers.

You can read a lot more information at https://www.gopherrecords.com/blog/confederate/.

* Rose Lerer Cohen will fill the one-year vacancy on the board, term ending 31 December 2021.

The words Certified Genealogist and its acronym, CG, are a registered certification mark, and the designations Certified Genealogical Lecturer and its acronym, CGL, are service marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists®, used under license by board certificants after periodic evaluation.

Here is a web site you probably should bookmark: https://cloudconvert.com. You probably won't need to use it often but when you do have a need it can be a lifesaver. Best of all, it is a free service if you only want to convert a few files. However, if you want to convert dozens of files, there is a modest charge.

CloudConvert converts almost any file from one format to almost any other format. It recognizes files in more than 200 different formats, and connects with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. I find it useful for converting PNG images into JPG format. It also can can turn a PDF file into a DOCX file, which you may open in Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, or Google Docs. It also can convert Macintosh Keynote presentation files into PowerPoint PPTX files. In fact, CloudConvert can convert about 200 different file formats into other file formats.

I find that CloudConvert does an excellent job of converting PDF files into editable .DOC or .DOCX files as its translation seems to be very accurate.

CloudConvert also allows you to extract audio from a video file. For example, I selected a .MOV file and converted it to .MP3 format. That gave me an audio-only .MP3 file. It also converts .MOV video files into .MP4 video files as well. Did you download a video from the web, only to find it doesn't display in your computer's video player? CloudConvert probably can fix the problem for you.

CloudConvert is a cloud-based application. That is, the program runs from a web site. There is no software to install in your computer. It works equally well on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Chromebooks, and even on mobile and portable devices running Android or Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch).

For occasional use, CloudConvert doesn't charge. If you convert files smaller than 1 gigabyte, fewer than five files at a time, and use less than 25 minutes of file conversion time a day, CloudConvert's services are free of charge. For high volume users, CloudConvert does charge fees as described at https://cloudconvert.com/pricing. I suspect most in-home users will never encounter a need for fees.

CloudConvert is one of those useful web tools that you may not need immediately. But, the next time you say, "I can't open this file...," give it a try. CloudConvert may be able to convert that file you can't use into one you can.

CloudConvert is available at https://cloudconvert.com.

The following announcement about Online Repository Assistant (often called "ORA") was written by John Cardinal, the author of the program:

ORA v1.16 Released

Now Supports Hundreds of Repositories

Narragansett, Rhode Island, December 7, 2020 - Family History Hosting is pleased to announce the release of ORA version 1.16. ORA is the "Online Repository Assistant", a web browser extension combined with a Windows program to help you extract data from online repositories and capture the information in your preferred genealogy program. ORA has several features that will save time, reduce errors, and increase the consistency of yourdata entry.

Originally released in June with support for four popular repositories, ORA now has custom support for thirteen repositories and with its new Generic Service it supports thousands of sites that publish genealogy data!

Here's an example where ORA's Generic Service extracted data from a record on FreeCen.org.uk, a site that provides free access to 19th century UK censuses:

Using ORA's Auto Type feature, users can automatically copy the items shown in ORA's Control Panel to fields in the genealogy program of their choice.

Some of the many sites that are now supported by ORA via its Generic Service include vital record collections for many US states and several other countries, probate and will collections in several jurisdictions, BMD indexes for most of the counties in the UK, and hundreds of other sites. ORA can extract data from any site that publishes data in a tabular form as long as the site follows web standards and conventions, and most sites do.

If you publish a One-Name Study or similar, you need ORA. It will dramatically reduce the time you spend gathering data.

For more information about ORA, see its Introduction slideshow at https://www.ora-extension.com/en/intro.htm?v=1.01. The Introduction includes several videos that show ORA in action.

ORA is sold as a subscription service, $24 USD per year. ORA is not affiliated with any of the repositories it supports. ORA does not do any searching for you; it evaluates pages you visit during your normal use of a repository and makes it faster and easier to extract the information you find. For Ancestry, Findmypast, and other fee-based repositories, you must have an account with that repository.

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

This week on FamilySearch explore nearly 3M parish and civil registrations for France, Nord 1524–1893 and Seine-Saint-Denis 1523–1932, plus millions of new Catholic Church records for Mexico, Durango 1604–1985, and Ecuador 1565–2011. Discover your ancestors in  more new records for the Dominican Republic, Germany, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, S. Africa and the United States (Georgia voter registrations 1856–1941 and Chicago Illinois 1888–1892, tax records for Boston, Massachusetts 1822–1918, and more records for Alabama, Arkansas, California, Mississippi, New Jersey, Utah and Washington).  

Search these new records and images by clicking on the collection links below, or go to FamilySearch to search over 8 billion free names and record images.

The full list is very long, too long to fit in this space. You can read the entire list at https://media.familysearch.org/new-free-historical-records-on-familysearch-week-of-7-december-2020/. 

I received a rather pleasant surprise this past weekend: He's back!

An old friend is announcing the formation of a new company that will provide a valuable service to genealogists.

Many long-time genealogists will recognize the name Bob Velke. Bob probably is best known in the genealogy community as the founder and CEO of The Master Genealogist (TMG), genealogy software for Microsoft Windows first released in 1993. Bob founded the company Wholly Genes Software to sell and support the program.

Those who were able to learn more about Bob also soon realized he was an expert researcher and a person who demanded true source citations to all facts that he added to his own genealogy database. He strongly encouraged the users of The Master Genealogist to do the same with their record keeping. Indeed, The Master Genealogist was the experts' preferred tool for proper record keeping. Nothing before or since has the source citation capabilities of The Master Genealogist.

Time marches on and Wholly Genes Software eventually went out of business and faded away. However, here is a new press release I received from Bob this past weekend:

Introducing Gopher Records, LLC: a new way to retrieve records from the  National Archives.

For a limited time, you can get a Civil War pension  file for just $25 and a service file for just $10. This introductory offer represents a 50% discount from our regular prices which are already the lowest in the industry.

When ordering directly from NARA, a digital copy of a full pension file  is $80 for the first 100 pages and $0.70 per page thereafter. For a  300-page file, that's $220.00 - but our price is just $25 with this  amazing offer.

NARA is closed for COVID-19 but we are taking advanced orders now. When  NARA opens, orders will be processed in the order that they are  received. Best of all, you won’t be asked to pay until your documents  are ready to be delivered to you.

This 50% discount offer expires on 31 Dec 2020.

Please visit us at https://GopherRecords.com/de/.