The 2024 Lumbee Genealogy Symposium will be held November 14-15 at Upchurch Auditorium

The Museum of the Southeast American Indian at UNC Pembroke will host the 2024 Lumbee Genealogy Symposium: Fighting for Native America – Lumbee, Coharie & Waccamaw-Siouan in the American Revolution. 

The event will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., November 14 and 15 in Upchurch Auditorium at James A. Thomas Hall. It will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days. The event is free and open to the public.

The symposium will explore the complicated histories surrounding Indigenous politics and service concerning the American Revolution. Historians, subject-matter experts and the community will share histories about Indigenous Colonial patriotism, loyalty to the British Crown and the complicated relationship and alliances with Scottish Tories. During the two-day event, participants can share their own stories in an oral history booth that will be recorded.

Dr. Donald Fixico, Regents and Distinguished Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University, will be the keynote speaker. A member of the Muscogee, Seminole, Shawnee and Sac and Fox tribes, Fixico was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor's, master's and PhD, all in history from the University of Oklahoma. He has worked on more than 25 documentaries on American Indians and is the author and editor of 17 books. He is an ethnohistorian, policy historian and oral historian.

The symposium is made possible through a grant from NC 250 and Mill Prong Preservation, Inc. To register or for more information, contact Blake Tyner at 910. 521.6282 or blake.tyner@uncp.edu.

It is common knowledge among those genealogists that I come in contact with that the FamilySearch.org Catalog has not been updated for over two years. What this means is that the millions of digitized records being added daily to the FamilySearch.org website are not in the Catalog. So where are they? I will leave that question for a while as I try to explain what is going on from the perspective of someone who uses the Catalog and other resources on the FamilySearch.org website many times in a single day. 

https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog

The main use of the Catalog is to find stuff (records, documents, etc.) on the FamilySearch website. It has worked sort-of well since the website was first put online on May 24, 1999. Its main use for serious genealogists is to discover the jurisdictional organization of the various geographic areas of the world. Now, I happen to do an extensive number of online consultations with people from Argentina. 

You can read the full article at: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-beginning-of-end-of-familysearch.html 

Eighty years after the liberation of Belgium and the end of World War II, a new database brings together all information on the resistance activities during World War II in Belgium. The national resistance database is the result of a pilot project run by expertise centre CegeSoma and the State Archives of Belgium.

On the Resistance in Belgium platform, anyone can research resistance activities in Belgium during World War II. There are already numerous scientific and social initiatives around the history of the resistance, but the new platform makes all information available online for the first time. 

The project is part of the mission and social role of CegeSoma, the Belgian centre of expertise on 20th-century conflicts.

The platform contains information on more than 42,000 people on whom the state security services produced a file related to the Intelligence and Action Services. New data will be added and the database will eventually include information on more than 200,000 people, drawn from more than 350,000 individual files.

The platform, resistanceinbelgium.be, is intended for the general public but also meets the needs of research and analysis. It completes the thematic portal developed by CegeSoma on World War II in Belgium, called Belgium WWII.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have created a dataset that contains data on agricultural productivity and farming techniques from 1888 to 2021. The researchers collected historical records on an agricultural experiment that has been continuously running since 1888 examining the impact of certain farming practices on maize. Studying long-term data from such agricultural experiments is key to developing innovative farming practices, and the dataset can help researchers assess current practices and develop new methods to improve crop yields and soil fertility.

Get the data.

Have you noticed the recent erratic publication of new articles on this web site? Here is the reason why:

In the past month, I have encountered:

I earlier purchased a new home in Maine.

I made plans to move to Maine.

I packed up all my belongings in preparation for the move (that required more than a week).

I scheduled a moving company to visit my Florida home on October 9, load a truck with all my belongings, and take everything to Maine.

The strongest hurricane in the past decade struck Florida (including my home) on the scheduled day (October 9) with winds of up to 140 mph. The driver of the moving truck postponed the visit to load my possessions due to dangerous conditions on the highways.

The driver of the moving truck finally arrived at my Florida home on October 13 and loaded all my possessions onto the truck but did not leave for Maine due to highway flooding along the route.

On October 14, I started driving my automobile via a round-about route (remember the highway flooding) from Florida to Maine. I had my laptop computer with me but drove so many hours every day that I didn’t touch it until after arriving in Maine.

On approximately October 16 the truck driver left Florida for Maine.

On October 20, the driver and the truck arrived at my new home in Maine and unloaded. 

I have since spent many hours unpacking, arranging furniture, made multiple trips to the grocery store to purchase food, and performed many related tasks...

I am exhausted.

Discover over 2.5 million individuals in this new release

Leading UK genealogy research website TheGenealogist has just launched a new, comprehensive collection of parish records for North West Kent. This monumental release includes over 2.5 million individuals, encompassing:

• Baptisms: 1538-1916

• Marriages: 1538-1939

• Burials: 1538-2000

The detailed transcripts include direct links to original images of the parish records, providing an invaluable resource for those looking to trace their ancestry or delve deeper into their family's history in Kent.

“We are pleased to announce this large release of new parish records broadening our coverage for Kent,” said Mark Bayley, Head of Online Development at TheGenealogist. “This release represents a significant addition to our growing Parish Record collection. Keep on eye on our news page as we’ll be adding further areas in the coming weeks!”

Parish records are an essential resource for anyone investigating their family history, offering insights into personal connections and local community histories. TheGenealogist is dedicated to providing high-quality resources and easy-to-use search tools that allow users to navigate their family’s past with ease.

Found in these records is Henry Tracey Coxwell a Victorian Aeronaut Extraordinaire, read his story here:https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2024/the-victorian-balloonist-who-defied-death-at-29000-feet-7850/

Explore the parish records and start your genealogical journey today with TheGenealogist. To celebrate this release, for a limited time you can claim a Diamond Subscription for just £99.45, a saving of £40. You can claim this offer here: 

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/MGBKPR1024

The offer expires 31st January 2025.

The following is an announcement issued by Findmypast.com:

There are over 13,000 new additions to discover.

We added a brand new military collection this week, consisting of 669 Volunteer Index cards from Fife, Scotland spanning 1860 to 1892. 

We also updated our existing set of Northumberland Fusiliers records - there are over 12,000 new transcriptions for you to explore. 

With two English titles also added to our ever-growing newspaper collection, there is so much to discover this Findmypast Friday.

British Army, Northumberland Fusiliers 1881-1968

If your ancestor served with Northumberland's Fusiliers between 1881 and 1968, their name may appear within these 12,444 new transcriptions.

Scotland, Fife Mounted Volunteers Index 1860-1892

We've enriched our Scottish military collection with a brand new set of Volunteer Index transcriptions from Fife.

These new additions span 32 years. 

New pages from Belfast to Burnley 

We added two new English titles to our newspaper archive this week - the Darlington Telegraph and the Sandwell Chronicle. There are hundreds of editions of each publication to discover, covering the years 1854-1855, 1858-1865, 1992 and 1996.

Darlington Telegraph.

We also updated 15 existing titles, adding a total of 315,856 new pages spanning 130 years.

Here's everything we added to our newspaper collection this Findmypast Friday.

New titles:

Updated titles:

Last week, we added almost a million parish records from the English county of Cornwall. Explore the release for yourself. 

Our family history challenge continues...

Using historical newspapers, can you uncover a sixth Griffiths brother who served in the military and add context to this moving family story? 

Using an open Creative Commons license on ConnecticutHistory.org helps CT Humanities ensure that its digital content is free and accessible for anyone wanting to share and learn more about Connecticut’s history. The license chosen by CT Humanities, known as the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, clearly states that anyone is free to share and adapt the text of ConnecticutHistory.org articles as long as they provide appropriate attribution and license any adaptations under the same license. By using an open license, CT Humanities is setting an example for other organizations around the state on how cultural content can be made accessible in responsible and thoughtful ways.

“CT Humanities has provided free access to public humanities content for decades,” said Dr. Jason Mancini, executive director of CT Humanities. “With our new open access initiatives, we are building knowledge about the benefits of open sharing in cultural organizations around Connecticut and setting an example through our projects on how to share knowledge responsibly. We look forward to seeing more Connecticut collections and stories made available to tell a fuller story of our state’s history and culture.”

Open and digitized collections allow organizations like museums, historical societies, and art galleries to share their stories more widely and to different audiences. Licensing content or providing copyright information for collection items encourages responsible reuse and sharing of Connecticut’s history and culture.

To build knowledge and expertise about open access throughout the state, CT Humanities has partnered with Creative Commons, an international nonprofit that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture, to offer training and resources. Additionally, to further implement open sharing, CT Humanities is encouraging cultural organizations across the state to take advantage of statewide resources such as Connecticut Collections and the Connecticut Digital Archive, a program of the University of Connecticut Library, to share their own digital content transparently and equitably.

Dana Meyer, Connecticut Collections digital projects manager at the Connecticut League of Museums, said this increases visibility, helps better preserve cultural heritage, encourages collaboration among organizations, and broadens “the impact of our collections, ensuring that they are effectively maintained and widely accessible.” Connecticut Collections is a collections management tool for the state’s organizations to use to make archival and museum collections more searchable.

Bridgeport’s Housatonic Museum of Art has recently digitized its collection and opened access to its online content. The museum digitized 700 paintings in their collection and worked with Meyer to include their digital collection in the Connecticut Collections platform. Now, a worldwide audience of students, educators, scholars, researchers, and members of the public can access 7,000+ objects in the Housatonic Museum of Art’s collection. CT Humanities provided partial funding for both the museum and Connecticut Collections to undergo professional development training through the Creative Commons Certificate for Open Culture/GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums).

“Everything really coalesced into this really amazing resource,” said Charlotte Lefland, collection manager for Housatonic Museum of Art. “Now we can engage folks who physically cannot get here. It’s a gamechanger – it can be accessed from anywhere, is more accessible, is user friendly. Students can use it for research projects, faculty can use with students, we can now share what we have with the whole world.”

Lefland encourages other organizations to reach out to CT Humanities to learn more about the open access certification.

“It helped us make sure the museum was doing the right thing with copyright and image use and intellectual property,” she said. “It’s eye opening, and it has made our world much bigger.”

Michael Kemezis, director of digital humanities for CT Humanities, said that the CT Humanities Board of Directors adopted an intellectual property policy in fall 2022 for its grants programs because it believes in the positive impact that better sharing humanities content has in building and sustaining vibrant and thriving societies. Open licensing ConnecticutHistory.org through Creative Commons is the next step in CT Humanities’ goal of promoting free sharing and access to Connecticut’s many stories.

“I am excited about all the work CT Humanities has done to advance open access in the state over the past several years,” Kemezis said. “We have gone from big ideas to concrete actions by partnering with Creative Commons to provide educational opportunities for employees at cultural institutions. I am extremely proud that we are openly licensing our own content on ConnecticutHistory.org. We will continue to find new ways to advance free access to cultural and historical content.”

For more information on ConnecticutHistory.org’s license, open access certification, digitized collections, and more, please email Michael Kemezis.

# # #

Connecticut Humanities (CTH) is an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. CTH connects people to the humanities through grants, partnerships, and collaborative programs. CTH projects, administration, and program development are supported by state and federal matching funds, community foundations, and gifts from private sources. Learn more by visiting cthumanities.org.

Creative Commons (CC) is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world’s most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all. CC empowers individuals and communities around the world by equipping them with technical, legal, and policy solutions to enable sharing of knowledge and culture in the public interest. Learn more at www.creativecommons.org

More than a hundred guests from as far as Massachusetts poured into the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, for a fun and historic space-themed sleepover during the third weekend in October. 

Enlarge

Families prepare for bed by bringing in sleeping bags, unrolling mats, and inflating mattresses in the Rotunda of the National Archives during the National Archives Sleepover, October 19, 2024. NARA photo by Susana Raab

It was the second National Archives Sleepover hosted by Dr. Colleen Shogan since her swearing-in as Archivist of the United States in May 2023. 

“Besides the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, how many documents do you think we hold at the National Archives?” Shogan asked guests during her welcome remarks. “13.5 billion! That includes 3 billion right here in this building in Washington, DC!”

“Talk about needing space!” remarked special guest Nicole Stott, who engaged guests with her experiences as a veteran NASA astronaut, author, artist, engineer, and aquanaut. 

“When you look at Earth from space, you feel a connection to it. I feel the same way when I look at our founding charters and all the work the National Archives has done to preserve them,” Stott said. “There is this sense of awe and wonder, seeing the foundations that are so relevant to life as we know it.”

Children asked thoughtful questions about Stott’s experiences as an astronaut. Other activities included arts and crafts and the opportunity to send a postcard to space through Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, a project to inspire youth interest in STEM. Guests of all ages loved posing for selfies and family photos as they explored the Rotunda after hours. 

The National Archives has hosted sleepovers since 2014. Children between the ages of 8 and 12 and their chaperones experience the rare opportunity to sleep at the National Archives beside the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights. They can also choose to watch National Treasure in the William G. McGowan Theater. The following morning, they are treated to a pancake breakfast served by the Archivist of the United States. 

“My kids are so lucky to experience something like this so early in their lives,” said guest Melissa Wiley. “People travel from all over the world to visit the National Archives and the founding charters in person.”

Adults enjoyed coffee and a buffet breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes. Children lined up for plain, chocolate chip, and banana pancakes served (and flipped with style!) by Shogan and Patrick Madden, Director of the National Archives Foundation. After breakfast, guests visited the National Archives Store before departing at 9 a.m.

The next sleepover is scheduled for February 1–2, 2025. For more information and to register for future sleepovers, visit www.archivesfoundation.org/sleepover. Questions about the event should be directed to info@archivesfoundation.org. 

This National Archives Sleepover is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation.

15 Sylvan St, Danvers, MA, 01923 More info here

Orphan Trains, which operated in the United States between 1854 and 1929, transported 200,000+ children from New York to the Midwest and beyond. Through oral history and genealogy research – with ongoing, diligent care of the unique records – over two million descendants live on to tell the stories of this uniquely American movement. Learn about the history, genealogy, and legacy of this movement. Led by Michael Brophy, a nationally known, professional genealogical researcher, heir search specialist, and lecturer from the Boston area. He has served as Program Director and Publicity Director for the Massachusetts Genealogical Council. Brophy was also the first Treasurer of the New England of Association of Professional Genealogists. He was featured on the Irish TV series Dead Money, a genealogy TV show about heir searchers. In 2010, Mr. Brophy was hired to conduct research for the NBC television program "Who Do You Think You Are?", on an episode dedicated to the family history of actress Gwyneth Paltrow. 

Click here to register.

RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program.

Presented in collaboration with the Tewksbury Public Library and other area libraries.