The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

• • Over one million Scottish epitaphs, monuments and memorial inscriptions now fully searchable online at Findmypast.
  • Spanning 1000 years of Scottish history, new collection covers over 800 burial grounds across the country and includes monuments that have long been lost to time
  • Published online for the first time thanks to new technology and a grassroots project between Findmypast and local volunteers
  • Contains some of the most interesting figures for Scottish history including Kings, Queens, the Maid of Norway, Flora MacDonald and Adam Smith.

Leading UK family history website Findmypast has today announced the publication of a vast new online collection of Scottish Monumental Inscriptions in collaboration with Society partners across the country.

Published online for the first time and available exclusively at Findmypast, “Scotland Monumental Inscriptions” enables anyone, anywhere in the world to discover their Scottish ancestors and explore the nation’s historic burial grounds from the comfort of home.

Spanning almost 1000 years of history with records dating back to 1093, this comprehensive online archive covers over 800 burial sites in 688 parishes (80% of the nation) across all 34 historical Scottish counties.

Inscriptions from some the most famous burial sites in Scotland such as Edinburgh Greyfriars & Canongate Kirkyards, the Dundee Howff, and Dunfermline Abbey Churchyard can now be accessed by family historians and history enthusiasts alike, to discover the stories behind the stones. 

This revolutionary new resource is the result of a collaborative grassroots project between Findmypast and 10 Scottish local and national family history societies including:

• • Aberdeen & North East Scotland FHS
  • Caithness FHS
  • Dumfries & Galloway FHS
  • East Ayrshire FHS
  • Highland FHS
  • Lanarkshire FHS
  • Moray Burial Ground Research Group
  • Scottish Genealogy Society
  • Tay Valley FHS
  • Troon@Ayrshire FHS

The work of hundreds of passionate volunteers to transcribe memorials and gravestones from all over Scotland has now been made fully searchable online for the very first time.

Names, dates, locations and other biographical details such as additional family members, occupations, causes of death and more were transcribed and then digitally converted thanks to new, proprietary technology to create a national index that unlocks the long-forgotten secrets of Scotland’s dead.

Chronicling the lives and deaths of almost 1.1 million deceased, the collection has been created by merging almost 600,000 newly created records with existing documents already available on Findmypast, to create the largest single collection of its kind.

This collection also includes records of inscriptions found on buried stones, uncovered through archaeological survey with their details recorded for the first time in centuries. In addition, old books and local histories were used to document memorials that have long since been lost due lost to erosion, weathering or simply time itself, allowing researchers to gain unique new insights into to the lives of those who lived and died many centuries ago.

Some of Scotland’s most renowned sons and daughters can be found within the collection, including monarchs and their favored courtiers, Covenanters, Jacobites and revolutionaries, not to mention many thousands of poets, artists, musicians, artisans, tradespeople, laborers and more.

Myko Clelland, Regional Licensing & Outreach Manager at Findmypast said ‘Scotland is a nation of stories, but so many lie forgotten in cemeteries across the country. Through the tireless efforts of local expert volunteers, combined with new technology, these stories can be told for the first time online. What better way to bring these tales to life, than to let descendants tell these tales for themselves?’

Other new additions available to search this Findmypast Friday:

Caribbean First World War Rolls of Honour

Find out if your Caribbean ancestor fought for Britain in the First World War with new rolls of honour from The Bahamas, Barbados, St Kitts & Nevis and Bermuda. Many of the men listed in this collection served in the British West Indies Regiment. These records can reveal their names, service numbers and, sometimes, how, when and where they died.

United States, World War II Casualty Lists

Held by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), these records can tell you your family heroes' names, ranks and parents' details. This initial release covers the U.S. Navy. Records from the other arms of the military services will be added over time.

British Army, Coldstream Guards 1800-1947

Now available in their own standalone record set, Findmypast have added even more service records from this famous regiment. Each record features a transcript and a full-colour, digitised copy of the original record. Use them to discover details about your army ancestors that you won't find anywhere else.

Newspapers

Four brand new publications and updates to over 20 others are now available to search on Findmypast. New to the collection are:

• • Coleshill Chronicle from 1874, 1878-1880, 1882-1887, 1889-1895 and 1897-1900
  • Leicester Evening Mail from 1929-1931
  • Rugeley Times from 1926-1984
  • Warrington Examiner from 1870-1875, 1884-1888, 1891, 1894, 1903 and 1905-1908

While the following 23 newspapers have been supplemented with additional coverage:

• • Aberystwyth Times covering 1870
  • Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, Glamorgan, Monmouth, and Brecon Gazette covering 1845, 1848-1849, 1854-1855, 1858 and 1866-1867
  • Cardiff Times covering 1871 and 1876
  • Carmarthen Weekly Reporter covering 1896-1900
  • Civil & Military Gazette (Pakistan) covering 1881-1883, 1885, 1887, 1895-1898, 1900-1905 and 1907-1909
  • Dundee Courier covering 1992
  • Glamorgan Free Press covering 1899
  • Halifax Evening Courier covering 1960
  • Kinematograph Weekly covering 1932
  • Lynn Advertiser covering 1913-1925 and 1929-1944
  • Mansfield & Sutton Recorder covering 1989
  • Monmouthshire Merlin covering 1841-1842, 1844-1848, 1852-1853, 1856-1870, 1872-1873, 1875-1877 and 1879-1880
  • Montgomery County Times and Shropshire and Mid-Wales Advertiser covering 1894-1896 and 1899-1900
  • Pontypool Free Press covering 1886-1889
  • Reynolds’s Newspaper covering 1901-1911
  • Rhyl Record and Advertiser covering 1878 and 1888-1900
  • South Wales Daily News covering 1874, 1891, 1893 and 1898
  • South Wales Daily Post covering 1895
  • South Wales Echo covering 1881, 1886 and 1889
  • Tablet covering 1908
  • Usk Observer covering 1856-1858, 1861 and 1866
  • Widnes Examiner covering 1885-1886, 1888, 1890 and 1892
  • Wrexham Guardian and Denbighshire and Flintshire Advertiser covering 1875 and 1877-1879

Recordings of the last native Manx speakers and wartime internees from the Isle of Man's "rich sound archive" are to be digitised and put online as part of a British Library project.

About 600 recordings held in the Manx National Heritage (MNH) archives will be converted as part of the £9.3m Unlocking Our Sound Heritage scheme. The pieces, which were degrading due to age, were at risk of being lost.

Manx National Heritage's Jude Dicken said digitising them would "protect" the originals.

She said the island's "rich sound archive" had been "tricky" for people to access previously, but putting them online would mean people could listen to them without damaging the original formats.

You can read more in an article by Ellan Vannin in the BBC News website at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-55077067.

For some time, Progeny Genealogy Software has offered an excellent program for Windows users that creates gorgeous genealogy charts. Now the company has introduced a very similar from for Macintosh users. If you are a Mac user and if you would like better to produces better chart printouts, you need to investigate Charting Companion for Macintosh!

Progeny Genealogy Software is offering introductory pricing for the Macintosh version. Even better, the company is also offering discounts on the Windows version at the same time!

Instead of my trying to describe all the features of both the Windows and Macintosh versions of Charting Companion, I will simply republish the company's advertisement.

NOTE: I am not compensated in any way by Progeny Software for publishing this article. I am simply a fan of the program and, as a Mac user, I especially appreciate the release of the new Macintosh version.

With Charting Companion™, you can create beautiful-looking family tree charts! Share your research with friends & relatives.

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According to Wikipedia:

"Saint Andrew's Day, also known as Andermas is the feast day of Andrew the Apostle. It is celebrated on 30 November.

"Saint Andrew's Day (Scots: Saunt Andra's Day, Scottish Gaelic: Là Naomh Anndrais) is Scotland's official national day. It has been a national holiday in Romania since 2015. Saint Andrew is the disciple in the New Testament who introduced his brother, the Apostle Peter, to Jesus as the Messiah. He is the patron saint of Cyprus, Scotland, Greece, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, San Andres Island (Colombia), Saint Andrew (Barbados) and Tenerife."

Saint Andrew's Day is perhaps best-known as the official national day of Scotland and is celebrated amongst Scottish descendants throughout the world. The celebration of Saint Andrew as a national festival is thought to originate from the reign of Malcolm III (1058–1093). It was thought that the ritual slaughter of animals associated with Samhain was moved to this date so as to assure enough animals were kept alive for winter. But it is only in more recent times that 30 November has been given national holiday status.

You can learn a lot more about Saint Andrew's Day at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Andrew%27s_Day and in dozens of other web sites.

If you have Scottish ancestry, you might be able to find information about noble ancestors. Genealogy researchers at the University of Strathclyde have compiled a progress report on the men who signed or attached their seals to the Declaration of Arbroath. 

The Declaration of Arbroath Family History Project has, to date, gathered information on 40 of the document’s 48 signatories, while the remaining eight were covered in the previous Battle of Bannockburn Family History Project. The new report focuses on 15 of them, along with King Robert the Bruce.

The new report is based on latest research by postgraduate diploma students at Strathclyde and staff from the university’s Genealogical Studies postgraduate programme. It is being published to coincide with St Andrew’s Day.

You can read more in an article by Martin Hannan in The National at https://bit.ly/3micHVQ.

Archivists and curators have long required the use of white cotton gloves for handling very old paper or old books, when the paper is brittle and threatens to crumble. In fact, on one episodes of the popular television series Who Do You Think You Are? the guests and even some of the experts shown in the program were criticized for not wearing cotton gloves when handling old documents. However, experts now say that the use of white gloves not only provides a false sense of security but even can induce more damage than handling the same documents with bare hands! On the other, um, hand, simple frequent washing and drying of the hands may be the better solution.

In an article that first appeared in the December 2005 issue of International Preservation News, conservation consultant Cathleen A. Baker and librarian Randy Silverman argued that for the handling of most types of materials, white gloves don’t help and actually may contribute to the damage. As they pointed out, handling books with gloves is apt to do more harm than good. Gloves are just as likely to be dirty as fingers, especially if they have been used a number of times previously and have already absorbed dirt and chemicals from previously-handled papers. Once absorbed into the cotton, dirt, abrasive grit, and chemicals are easily spread from one old document to another. Washing the gloves frequently is only a partial solution since chemicals from detergents are retained in the cotton fibers and then spread to documents handled later.

A second issue is the loss of dexterity when wearing gloves. Without tactile "feel," wearing gloves actually increases the potential for physically damaging fragile material through mishandling. This is especially true for ultra thin or brittle papers that become far more difficult to handle with the sense of touch dulled.

Baker and Silverman wrote, "Routine hand washing is recommended as a more effective means of preventing the spread of dirt while improving the user's haptic response to and tactile appreciation of the collections."

They also stated, "Institutional insistence that patrons and special collections staff don white cotton gloves when handling rare books and documents to prevent dirt and skin oils from damaging paper-based collections is inherently flawed; gloves are as easily soiled as bare hands. Cotton gloves are extremely absorbent, both from within and without; for example, even a scrupulously clean reading room provides numerous opportunities for gloves to pick up and transfer dirt to surfaces such as a text page."

Finally, they wrote: "White cotton gloves provide no guarantee of protecting books and paper from perspiration and dirt, yet they increase the likelihood of people inflicting physical damage to collection material. Implementing a universally observed, hand-cleaning policy is a reasonable and effective alternative to glove-use, and it follows the standard protocol employed by book and paper conservators before handling the very same material."

The authors did point out that their recommendations are limited to paper. Other materials, such as photographic prints, negatives, and slides, have their own unique set of requirements.

You can read the entire report by Cathleen A. Baker and Randy Silverman at http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/pac/ipn/ipnn37.pdf

Other preservation organizations agree. Rather than wearing gloves, the American Institute for Conservation of Historical and Artistic Works instructs conservators to “handle books only with freshly washed hands.” Then they recognize that “wearing white cotton gloves for handling rare bindings is a good preventive measure, but turning fragile or brittle pages with gloves may cause damage and is not advised.” Thoroughly washing hands with lotion-free soap will remove most of the dirt, grease, and oils that may be left on pages.

Microfilm and digitization crews at The National Archives in London now follow the same rules for handling documents as those in the reading rooms – they have to remove their white gloves!

Census records are amongst the primary tools of genealogists. Yet, those of us who have been reading them for a while can tell you that the records are not as reliable as we would wish. I am still trying to find great-great-granddad in the 1850 census although he appears hale and hearty in the enumerations of 1840, 1860, 1870 and 1880. His absence in 1850 is still unexplained. Yet my quandary is minor compared to some others. For instance, The 1990 census is thought to have missed one native American in eight. Thousands, perhaps millions, of others have been missed in census records taken over the past two centuries.

America's first census was carried out in 1790, and it was groundbreaking in many ways. It was the first to be mandated in any country's constitution. It also caused America's first presidential veto when George Washington, on the advice of Thomas Jefferson, disagreed with legislation defining how this “apportionment” was to be carried out. Washington’s primary objection to the proposed amendment was that “there is no one proportion or divisor which, applied to the respective numbers of the States will yield the number and allotment of representatives proposed by the Bill.”  It is interesting to note that today’s fixed allocation of 435 seats also does not pass the test established by President Washington.

An older article in The Economist compares the U.S. census with similar efforts in other countries. “Where government is oppressive, people want to keep out of censuses, lest information they provide is misused. Where government provides, people want to be in censuses, and to boost their numbers, in order to claim a larger share of the goodies.”

The Nazis used population records to round up Jews into concentration camps. As a result, Germans are still reluctant to be counted. In 1936 Stalin told his officials that the following year's census would find a total population of 170 million—a figure that did not account for his slaughter of millions in famines and purges. The enumerators (census takers) found only 162 million people, and also revealed other unwelcome facts, including that nearly half the population of his supposedly atheist country was religious. So Stalin denounced the count as a “wrecker's census” and had the census takers either imprisoned or shot.

A new count in 1939, apparently conducted by a new team of enumerators, gave Stalin his figure of 170 million.

You can read more about census records at http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10311346

New Zealand's Law Commission has made 193 recommendations in total which would provide clear guidelines to the police on how to obtain, use and retain DNA.

A new report from the commission found the current way DNA is used in criminal investigations ignores human rights values, tikanga Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi.

The review looked into the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995, and found there was no clear and robust process which guided police on how to collect, use and store DNA. It would also protect individuals' human rights and privacy, and address the disproportionate impact the current system has on Māori.

You can read more in an article by Harry Lock in the Radio New Zealand website at: https://bit.ly/2UTk7D3.

An article in Bloomberg News says that the "Blackstone Group Inc. is looking to sell $2.8 billion of debt for its buyout of Ancestry.com Inc. this holiday-shortened week, while just a handful of investment-grade borrowers are expected to come forward.

"Marketing for Ancestry’s $1 billion high yield portion ends Monday, while commitments on its $1.8 billion leveraged loan are due the same day. Ancestry is the sole deal currently slated to price in high-yield, but it follows the busiest week for issuance in about two months with about $15.7 billion sold, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."

You can read more at: https://yhoo.it/33aKubW.

The following announcement was written by Rick Brewer:

Let’s Reminisce is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Pocket Casts, and anywhere podcasts are found.