This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it is important news for those of us who value our online privacy in order to protect ourselves from hackers, ransom thieves, credit card thieves, and government spies:

Encrypted messaging service Signal is now testing usernames, which will offer people a more private way to share their contact details on the app. Signal kicked off the public test today through a new beta build available in its community forums. "After rounds of internal testing, we have hit the point where we think the community that powers these forums can help us test even further before public launch," says Signal VP of Engineering Jim O'Leary. 

The development is a big deal since Signal -- an end-to-end encrypted messaging app -- has long required users to sign up with a phone number. That same number also needs to be shared in order to message other users on the app. This can be problematic since sharing your phone number exposes you to privacy and hacking risks. For example, a contact on Signal could choose to call and message your number over an unencrypted cellular network or pass off the number to someone else.

Fans of British folklore are championing a campaign to safeguard a unique archive cataloguing traditions from Britain and Ireland. The collection – of more than 20,000 books, 4,000 tape cassettes and 3,500 hours of reel-to-reel audio – has been amassed by one man. David “Doc” Rowe is a 79-year-old folklorist who has travelled the UK since the 1960s, visiting calendar customs such as the Straw Bear Festival, the Krampus Run or the Hunting of the Earl of Rone.

Director Rob Curry and actor/director Tim Plester set up the crowdfunder, which has been supported by Eliza Carthy, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. The co-directors previously collaborated on two acclaimed documentaries about the British folk scene – Way of the Morris and The Ballad of Shirley Collins. They started work at the end of lockdown on a film about Rowe and his annual odyssey around the rituals of Britain, then expanded the project to help him find a permanent home for his archive.

“There are few collections of working-class histories of the British Isles,” says Curry. “The opportunity to save one of this scale is worth anybody’s money.”

The archive is currently stored in a former pharmaceutical unit in Whitby, North Yorkshire, a repository that puts Plester in mind of another British institution. “Doc is like Doctor Who. His storage facility has a small door into this Tardis-like space, and going through his archive is like travelling through time and space.”

Like the Doctor Who show, many events recorded by Rowe are extremely creepy. The trailer for Plester and Curry’s documentary evokes the current love of folk horror, dramas that use the aesthetics and style of folklore, such as this year’s cult hit Enys Men and the TV series The Gallows Pole.

“We do embrace that Wicker Man element as filmmakers,” says Curry. “There’s a theory that the British love folk horror because we were the first country to industrialise, so we are most disconnected from our agrarian roots.”

Plester says that, as a child growing up in the village of Adderbury, he was terrified by the morris men’s fool, a performer who interacts with spectators during a dance. “He prided himself on scaring us – it’s part of the bag of these traditions. They’re an opportunity for anarchy, for communities to take back the streets for a day.”

You can read more in an article by Alice Fisher published in The Guardian at: https://tinyurl.com/3zeaeynf.

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Remember all of your wartime ancestors this weekend with millions of new records 

Plus, explore most of Findmypast’s records, including newspapers, for free*  

Britain, First World War Campaign Medals 

Over 6.5 million new records have been added to Findmypast this week, in the form of this brand-new collection. It contains the names of men and women who were awarded campaign medals during the First World War. You’ll typically find their name, rank, regiment or unit, medals awarded, theatre of war, and any additional notes. 

Cheshire, Macclesfield WW1 Hospital Records 

This second new collection includes 1,880 hospital records from Macclesfield in Cheshire, covering the years 1914 to 1918. The transcripts include a name, birth year, event date, place, and details such as rank, service number, regiment and unit or corps, plus an admission and discharge date. 

Crimean War Causalities 

Rounding off the trio of new military records is an update to Crimean War Causalities for 1853-1856. The 5,893 new records can include a name, date, soldier number, rank, regiment, in addition to a description of the casualty and the action it was caused by. 

Newspapers 

Did your ancestors make the news? One new title, updates to a further four, and 138,191 new pages make up this week’s newspaper release.   

New titles: 

·         Ulster Star, 1957-1987, 1989-1999 

Updated titles: 

·         Belfast News-Letter, 1994 

·         Mid-Ulster Mail, 1922, 1926, 1938, 1941, 1943, 1949, 1952-1957, 1978, 1985-1986, 1990, 1996-1998 

·         Western Evening Herald, 1988 

·         South Wales Daily Post, 1995 

* Free access to Findmypast runs from 10:00 GMT on Thursday 9 November to 10:00 GMT on Monday 13 November. After the free access ends, you can only view most family tree hints, newspapers and records with a valid subscription. Almost all of Findmypast's family tree hints, newspapers and records are free to access. The 1921 Census of England and Wales and Tree Search are not included in the free access period. To view any excluded resources during the free access period, you'll need a valid subscription. 

Most every schoolchild in the U.S. has heard the story about the First Thanksgiving celebrated in Plimoth, Massachusetts.

NOTE #1: It wasn't the first Thanksgiving held in North America but that is another story for another time...

Most school children are taught that the first Thanksgiving was held in 1621 with the Pilgrims and Indians holding a feast that celebrated the bountiful harvest of the first summer in the New World. 

Note #2: The people we call "Pilgrims"never used that word to describe themselves, but that is another story for another time...

The previous year, the (so-called) Pilgrims sailed to North America aboard the Mayflower. The story told to schoolchildren is that the Pilgrims were originally members of the English Separatist Church (a Puritan sect). Well, that story is mostly true. However, it seems that most of the people on board the Mayflower were non-Pilgrims, non-Separatists who were hired to protect the company’s interests. Only about one-third of the original colonists were Separatists in search of religious freedom.

While all the Mayflower passengers did suffer through a terrible winter in their first few months in what is now called Plymouth, the springtime planting resulted in an excellent harvest in the late summer and early autumn. In addition, members of the small community had excellent luck in obtaining meat and fish as the forests and the sea was well stocked. The Native Americans also helped greatly in helping the new settlers learn how to hunt, fish, and also to cultivate crops.

It seems the Native Americans weren't always so friendly, however. In addition, this wasn't the first encounter the natives had with Europeans. Adventurers, fishermen, and an occasional pirate had been sailing up and down the east coast of North America for many years and often had met with Native Americans. 

Earlier visitors and immigrants included the Spanish in 1565, English settlers in Roanoke in the 1580s, the English settlement Jamestown in 1607, an English settlement on the coast of what is now Maine in 1607 and 1608 (which then failed and was abandoned), and probably numerous others that were not well documented or remembered.

In 1605, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed past the site the Pilgrims would later colonize and noted that there were "a great many cabins and gardens." He even provided a drawing of the region, which depicted small Native towns surrounded by fields. Captain John Smith, who coined the term "New England," wrote about 1615 that the Massachusetts, a nearby indigenous group, inhabited what he described as "the Paradise of all those parts." 

We can assume that the English settlers to Plimoth in 1620 did not arrive to find a barren land.

Many of these early meetings between the natives and the European invaders were friendly while others were not. The different groups fought a number of battles prior to 1620. However, perhaps the worst problem of all was the infectious diseases that natives received from the Europeans. 

According to an article by Peter C. Mancall, published in the CNN web site, "The absence of accurate statistics makes it impossible to know the ultimate toll, but perhaps up to 90 percent of the regional population perished between 1617 to 1619."Yes, that's before the Pilgrims ever set foot in Plimoth.

Peter C. Mancall also writes, "The epidemic benefited the Pilgrims, who arrived soon thereafter: The best land had fewer residents and there was less competition for local resources, while the Natives who had survived proved eager trading partners." 

As a result, the settlers at Plimoth had few battles with the natives and were able to seize all the land and resources for themselves.

You can find many stories about what really happened before, during, and after the English settlement at Plimoth by searching the Web. Here are a few web sites to get you started:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)#History

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/25/health/pilgrim-survival-disease-conversation-wellness/index.html

https://historyofmassachusetts.org/the-first-thanksgiving/

https://wilstar.com/holidays/thankstr.htm

There are many more web sites describing the full story of the Plimoth settlement. Start at your favorite search engine to find more.

The Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) Center is a relatively new addition to Ramapo’s campus. Few would suspect such a monumental step forward, for the field of IGG is tucked away on the first floor of the Learning Commons. The center is the first of its kind “to offer case work, research, and hands-on education in [IGG],” according to a press release.

The developing field of IGG gained prominence in 2018 when it was used to solve the Golden State Killer case. An article in Forensic Science International defines IGG as “the use of SNP-based relative matching combined with family tree research to produce investigative leads in criminal investigations and missing persons cases.”

IGG Center Assistant Director Cairenn Binder described the process as two steps. The first is an outsourced lab process including extraction, genotyping and bioinformatics of a DNA sample.

The center then receives a file that they can upload to the databases GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA for an ethnicity report and a match list. The center uses these tools “to reverse-engineer the family tree of the person that [they’re] trying to identify.”

You can read more in an article by Rebecca Gathercole published in The Ramapo News at https://tinyurl.com/42tntha3.

The following announcement was written by the University of Maine:

Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections has published oral history recordings from MF144, the “Women in the Military” collection of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. The full collection features recorded interviews with nearly 70 female military veterans serving between World War II and the Gulf War. Forty-nine of these interviews were published in the institutional repository, DigitalCommons@UMaine, in advance of Veterans Day, 2023.

Between 2000-2003, the Maine Women Veterans Oral History Project collected oral interviews with female veterans through a collaborative effort of the Maine Commission on Women Veterans and the University of Maine Women Studies and Maine Studies programs. The collection includes interviews with Mainers who were among the first American women to join the U.S. armed forces during World War II as members of the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). According to the USO, nearly 350,000 women served in uniform during the Second World War.

“The collection was largely created by undergraduate students conducting the oral history interviews as part of their course work,” said Kimberly J. Sawtelle, of Fogler Library. “It provides valuable first-person accounts about individual women’s military experiences. Interviewees discuss not only the training they received, but also the social stereotypes they had to overcome to succeed.”

The collection can be accessed online through the library’s ArchivesSpace database or DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, contact the Special Collections and Projects Department  by email, um.library.spc@maine.edu, or phone, 1-207-581-1686.

Over 100 letters sent to French sailors by their fiancées, wives, parents and siblings – but never delivered – have been opened and studied for the first time since they were written in 1757-8.

The messages offer extremely rare and moving insights into the loves, lives and family quarrels of everyone from elderly peasants to wealthy officer’s wives.

The messages were seized by Britain’s Royal Navy during the Seven Years’ War, taken to the Admiralty in London and never opened. The collection is now held at the National Archives in Kew.

The letters provide precious new evidence about French women and labourers, as well as different forms of literacy.

“I could spend the night writing to you … I am your forever faithful wife. Good night, my dear friend. It is midnight. I think it is time for me to rest.”

So wrote Marie Dubosc to her husband, the first Lieutenant of the Galatée, a French warship, in 1758. She didn’t know where Louis Chambrelan was, or that his ship had been captured by the British.

Louis would never receive Marie’s letter and they would never meet again. Marie died the following year in Le Havre, almost certainly before Louis was released. In 1761, he remarried, safely back in France.

“I cannot wait to possess you” wrote Anne Le Cerf to her husband, a non-commissioned officer on the Galatée. She perhaps meant “embrace” but also “to make love to you”. She signed “Your obedient wife Nanette”, an affectionate nickname. Imprisoned somewhere in England, Jean Topsent would never receive Nanette’s love letter.

Professor Renaud Morieux, from Cambridge University’s History Faculty and Pembroke College, spent months decoding these and 102 other letters written with wild spelling, no punctuation or capitalization and filling every inch of the expensive paper they appear on. He published his findings today in the journal Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales.

You can read more about these letters in an article by Tom Almeroth-Williams published in the University of Cambridge web site at: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/french-love-letters-confiscated-by-britain-read-after-265-years

PhotoDater™ is now available on the MyHeritage mobile app and on the Reimagine app! PhotoDater™ is a revolutionary FREE feature that uses AI technology to estimate when historical photos were taken, and it’s available only on MyHeritage. MyHeritage first released PhotoDater™ on the MyHeritage website back in August 2023. Now, users can enjoy PhotoDater™ on the MyHeritage app for iOS and Android and on the Reimagine app. It’s also available when using a mobile web browser! 

PhotoDater™ reduces the guesswork regarding undated historical photos that may have puzzled you until now. A date estimate can unlock additional clues about a photo, helping you to figure out who appears in it and at what event it was taken. Each new clue has the potential to open up new avenues of discovery in your research. If you aren’t familiar with PhotoDater™ yet, watch this video to see what it can do. 

PhotoDater™ is a welcome addition to the suite of photo features, and was warmly received by MyHeritage users, who have enjoyed exploring the new clues it provides for their family history research. With Thanksgiving and the holiday season on the horizon, family gatherings provide the perfect opportunity to reminisce, scan old family photos, and unlock the mystery of when they were taken, all from your mobile device.

You can read a lot more about PhotoDater™ in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/11/photodater-now-available-on-the-myheritage-and-reimagine-mobile-apps/. 

The following was written by Findmypast:

• Findmypast is free this Veteran’s Day weekend, enabling anyone to trace the wartime experiences of their ancestors

• Unearth your ancestors’ remarkable stories in the newspaper archives

• Honour and share their legacies on a Findmypast family tree and discover the details of their lives in Census, military records and more

• Share your discoveries on social media with the hashtag #RememberThemAll
  

To mark Veteran’s Day, Findmypast is making its website and collections completely free to the public*. From Thursday 9 November to Monday 13 November, anyone will be able to uncover the wartime experiences of their ancestors, from nurses to soldiers to home front civilians. 

With free access to over 14 billion records and an interconnected tree network, it’s easier than ever to uncover your ancestors’ wartime stories. 

Explore the rich stories of bravery, community and tragedy in over 70 million searchable historical newspaper pages, digitised in partnership with the British Library. You’ll find details about your ancestors that you won’t get in other records, helping you to make connections and gain a deeper understanding of their wartime experiences. 

Research by Findmypast into the newspaper collection has already uncovered some remarkable stories – like that of Jessie Eskdale Walker and Captain Albert Angel White: 

• Jessie Eskdale Walker was part of a first aid party assisting air raid victims, when another bomb fell nearby, killing or injuring most of the party. Eskdale Walker, despite suffering from shock, remained at her post and began rescue work. Assisted by two local Constables, she attended to the injured despite a gas meter nearby having caught fire, creating dangerous conditions. Eskdale Walker was awarded the British Empire Medal for her brave actions despite the present risk to her safety and went on to become an ambulance driver.

• Captain Albert Angel White: Captain White was master of the West Hartlepool steamer Stonepool. In 1939 at the beginning of World War II, Capt. White was engaged in the first straight fight of the war between a defensively armed merchant-man and a U-Boat. The merchant vessel exchanged ‘shot for shot’ with the submarine, fighting it off but receiving damage. Accounts from the era suggest that “by his resolute and skilful action the Master saved his ship.” For his bravery, White was awarded the O.B.E. in December 1939.

You can also delve into the exclusive 1939 Register, military records, hospital and migration records, and many more, to build a detailed picture of your ancestors’ lives. 

Preserve your findings with Findmypast’s simple online family tree builder. Allow the clever hints to get your family history going further, faster and with more accuracy, and share your wartime ancestors’ legacy with friends and family.

Jen Baldwin, Research Specialist at Findmypast, said: “We’re making our entire site free this Veteran’s Day weekend to help everyone to discover their ancestors’ experiences and stories from this tragic and momentous period in recent history. We hope that people will feel more connected to the people in the past who gave so much for our present. From soldiers and nurses to civilians and volunteers, we will remember them all this Veteran’s Day weekend.”

Search for free at https://www.findmypast.com/ 9-13 November. 

*Records on Findmypast will be free to access for all signed-in users from 10am GMT Thursday 9 November, until 10am GMT Monday 13 November.

NOTE: This webinar is being held in the UK and will describe UK laws and customs. It will not be of much interest to people in other countries:

Register for Title Research’s next informative webinar for free.

On Wednesday 29th November at 12pm, Title Research will discuss how historical events play a significant part in the make-up of a family, impacting the genealogical research that they carry out today. In under 20 minutes, Technical Manager Simon Barber will cover:

• A selection of case studies
• The use of genealogy to resolve apparently complex family relationships
• How insurance can be used to support research

Even if you can’t join on the day, all registrants will receive a link to the recording after the webinar has taken place.

Click here to register for the free webinar.

Title Research provides a range of genealogical research and asset repatriation services for legal professionals. Their services are designed to streamline the estate administration process, take the effort out of locating the correct people or assets, and mitigate the risk of future disputes or complications. If you have any questions about genealogical research, asset repatriation, or how you can work with Title Research, call them on +44 (0) 345 87 27 600 or email info@titleresearch.com.