Pope Francis has named an Augustinian priest as the new prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Archive, which preserves Church documents dating back to the eighth century.

The Vatican announced on July 5 that Father Rocco Ronzani, a patristics professor from Rome, will serve as the head of what was formerly called the Vatican’s “secret archive.”

The Vatican Apostolic Archive contains 53 miles of underground shelving preserving documentation from historic papacies, ecumenical councils, conclaves, and Vatican nunciatures, or embassies, around the world. 

Pope Leo XIII opened the archive to scholars in 1881. Qualified researchers can request permission to visit and view specific documents.

You can read more in an article by Courtney Mares published in the catholicnewsagency web site at: https://bit.ly/4bxYQ6B.

If you have a pile of handwritten documents that beg to be digitized to allow for easy editing, sharing, and storage, handwriting to text (HTR) technology is here to rescue you. With its help, you can convert handwritten documents to text in a few simple steps, and all you need is a scanner and software.

The Challenge of Scanning Handwritten Documents

Scanning handwritten documents and converting them to digital text can be a real pain, as it comes with a unique set of challenges:

• Handwriting varies from person to person, making it difficult for standard Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to recognize and transcribe the text accurately.
• Handwritten documents often contain errors, such as crossed-out words and misspellings, which can further confuse scanning software.
• Many documents that have been written by hand are old, and the quality of the paper, the ink used, and even the presence of stray marks or folds can further complicate the scanning process.

To cope with these and other challenges, software developers have created specialized Handwriting to Text (HTR) software, designed specifically for the job of converting handwritten documents to text.

HTR tools use advanced algorithms to adapt to different handwriting styles, differentiate between intentional text and stray marks or corrections, and deal with old or damaged documents. 

Convert Handwritten Documents to Text Using Transkribus

You can read a lot more in an article by David Morelo published in the maketecheasier web site at: https://bit.ly/3VOnYA4.

I stumbled across an interesting web site recently. It claims, "Start your own Gravesite Maintenance Business right now to make money providing Grave Plot Maintenance, Gravestone Cleaning, and Summertime Floral Grave Decorations! We'll show you how."

I'm a bit busy right now, so I will pass on this "opportunity." Instead, I'll pass it on you you if you are interested.

You can read it for yourself at: http://www.gravesitebusiness.com/.

Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement by me. I have no idea of the reputation of this company. But the web site sure does look interesting!

The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

On July 22, 1934, FBI agents tracked down notorious gang leader John Dillinger at a movie theater in Chicago, IL. Dillinger's months-long crime spree came to an end in a hail of bullets as he attempted to elude capture. The demise of Dillinger and other Great Depression-era gangsters captivated Americans who followed their exploits in newspapers, crime novels, radio broadcasts, and even trading cards. The capture of Dillinger and other violent criminals is a tribute to the thousands of dedicated first responders who risk their lives every day to serve and protect the American people.

John H. Dillinger was born in Indianapolis, IN, in 1903. A troubled teen, he dropped out of school and began stealing cars. In 1923, Dillinger enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was assigned to the battleship USS Utah as a machinery repairman. Five months later, he deserted the ship. In 1924, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 to 20 years at the Indiana State Reformatory for the assault and robbery of a Mooresville, IN, grocer. Paroled on May 10, 1933, he quickly returned to a life of crime. On June 21, 1933, his first bank robbery in New Carlisle, IN, netted $10,000. He stole $2,100 during a second bank robbery in Bluffton, OH, on August 14. Police tracked Dillinger to Dayton, OH and arrested him in September 1933. But Dillinger escaped from the county jail in Lima, OH, where he was being held awaiting trial, assisted by four friends impersonating Indiana State police officers. Over the next several weeks, Dillinger and his gang robbed several banks and broke into and stole weapons from police armories. On January 25, 1934, police arrested Dillinger and several accomplices after firefighters recognized the gang leader when a fire broke out at the hotel where the men were hiding out. Extradited back to Indiana, Dillinger used a whittled wooden gun to trick guards into releasing him from the "escape-proof" Lake County jail in Crown Point, IN, on March 3, 1934.

Upon exiting the Lake County jail, Dillinger stole a nearby sheriff's car and crossed the Indiana–Illinois state line. In doing so, he violated the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act which formally brought the FBI into the hunt for Dillinger alongside state and local law enforcement officers. In late March 1934, FBI agents tracked down Dillinger and began surveilling an apartment in St. Paul, MN. When agents knocked on the door on March 31, Dillinger's girlfriend Mary Evelyn Frechette opened and quickly slammed the door shut signaling that the "most wanted" criminal in the United States was probably inside. Moments later, amidst a hail of gun fire, Dillinger and his girlfriend escaped. The duo retreated to Dillinger's father's home in Mooresville. On April 9, 1934, FBI agents arrested Frechette while she was visiting a friend in Chicago. Dillinger remained on the run, though, and brazenly robbed a Warsaw, IN, police station of guns and bulletproof vests on April 12.

On April 20, 1934, FBI agents received a tip that the Dillinger and several gang members were staying at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, WI. As agents attempted to surround the lodge on April 22, they were met with heavy gunfire. Dillinger and gang members again escaped after killing an FBI agent, wounding another agent and local constable, and injuring several lodge patrons. Incensed that Dillinger continued to evade arrest, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover listed John Dillinger as the agency's "Public Enemy Number One"—the nation's most dangerous and threatening criminal. He assigned agents to establish an office in Chicago to work with East Chicago police officers to investigate every tip they received about the Dillinger Gang.

Investigating every tip about Dillinger was an exhaustive effort, but it paid off the following month when a Dillinger acquaintance named Anna Sage contacted the FBI and agreed to accompany the gangster to the movies on July 22. Implicated in the murders of several law enforcement officers, there was a large reward offered for Dillinger's capture. In exchange for reward money and favorable handling of a deportation case against her, Sage told agents she would accompany Dillinger and his girlfriend Polly Hamilton to the movies the next day. As promised, FBI agents observed Dillinger enter the Biograph Theater in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood with Sage and Hamilton on the evening of July 22. As Dillinger watched the movie Manhattan Melodrama starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and William Powell, law enforcement officers surrounded the theater. When Dillinger and his companions left the theater, he sensed trouble. Agent Melvin Purvis signaled nearby agents to move in. Dillinger instinctively reached for his gun as he ran towards a nearby alley. Agents Clarence Hurt, Charles Winstead, and Herman Hollis fired at Dillinger, hitting him three times. He died 20 minutes later. Thanks to the tireless efforts and bravery of hundreds of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers, Dillinger's violent crime spree was over.

You can learn more about John Dillinger and our nation's law enforcement officers and first responders using Census Bureau data and records. For example:

• John Dillinger was convicted of assault and battery with intent to rob and conspiracy to commit a felony in 1924 and incarcerated from 1924 to 1933. He served time at the Indiana Reformatory in Fall Creek Township, IN, and later moved to Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, IN. According to Dillinger's 1930 Census record, he worked as a machine operator in the prison's shirt shop. In 2020, Indiana's group quarters population in correctional facilities for adults—including the Indiana Reformatory (now Pendleton Correctional Facility) and the Indiana State Prison where Dillinger served time—was 41,962. Nationwide, the group quarters population in correctional facilities was 1,967,297 in 2020.
• John Dillinger's year-long bank robbing spree began at the First National Bank in New Carlisle, OH, on June 10, 1933. In 1930, New Carlisle's population was 1,089. It grew to 1,237 in 1940. The 2020 Census found that the city was home to 5,559 people. Dillinger's last bank robbery took place on June 20, 1934 at the Merchants National Bank in South Bend, IN. Between 1930 and 1940, South Bend's population fell from 104,193 to 101,268. In 2020, its population was 103,453.
• Shortly before John Dillinger began his 1933–1934 crime spree, the 1930 Census revealed that 130,687 people identified themselves as police officers and 41,823 reported they were "marshals, sheriffs, detectives, etc." According to data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 761,830 people worked as police officers in the United States in 2018. Of this number, 656,240 were police officers were male and 105,590 were female. An estimated 67.6 percent of the nation's police officers identified as White alone; 12.6 percent as Black alone; 2.1 percent as Asian alone; 0.7 percent as American Indian and Alaska Native alone; and 0.2 percent as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone. Approximately 14.8 percent of these police officers also reported being of Hispanic or Latino origin.
• In 2018, there were 324,225 firefighting and prevention workers in the United States, including 307,860 males and 16,365 females. An estimated 73.8 percent of the nation's firefighting and prevention workers were White alone; followed by 7.3 percent Black; 1 percent American Indian and Alaska Native; 1 percent Asian; and .2 percent Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. Approximately 10.6 percent of firefighters and prevention workers reported being of Hispanic or Latino origin.
• By Spring 1934, most Americans easily recognized John Dillinger from newspaper and magazine photos and the sensational newsreels shown at movie theater. His January 1934 arrest in Tucson, AZ, was the result of firefighters recognizing the gangster from recent media coverage. Having escaped from jail for a second time, Dillinger underwent several plastic surgery procedures in May 1934. He hoped to change his appearance and avoid being recognized. He even attempted to have his fingerprints surgically removed! Today, data for plastic and cosmetic surgeons are collected as part of the "Offices of Physicians (Except Mental Health Specialists)" sector (NAICS 621111). The sector included 196,996 establishments with 2,544,650 employees during the pay period that included March 12, 2021.
• Following Dillinger's outside the Chicago movie theater, an ambulance rushed the mortally wounded gangster to a nearby hospital. In 2018, nearly one-third (32.7 percent) of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics in the United States were female. The Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates a growing demand for EMTs and paramedics who earned a median annual salary of $44,780 in 2023.
• The 1930s were a "golden age" for crime dramas as Americans of all ages eagerly read about the exploits of gangsters and outlaws in newspapers, comic books, and novels. This literature made John Dillinger household name along with other infamous outlaws like bank robbing duo Bonnie Thornton and Clyde Barrow; 19th century outlaw gang leader Jesse James; and Prohibition-era gangsters like Al Capone and Charley "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Equally popular among readers were the stories of the nation's law enforcement officers, including 1881 O.K. Corral gunfighter and Deputy U.S. marshal Wyatt Earp and Prohibition agent Eliot Ness. "True Crime" novels remain a popular genre today, with many popular new titles added to bookstores and libraries from some of the 2,386 Book Publishers (NAICS 511130) identified by the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns series in 2021. During the pay period that included March 12, 2021, these publishers employed 63,254 people.
• John Dillinger's crime spree and evasion of law enforcement came to an end on July 22, 1934, when he was shot and killed outside Chicago's Biograph Theater by FBI agents Clarence Hurt, Charles Winstead, and Herman Hollis. Hollis died later that year in a shootout with Chicago bank robber Lester Gillis aka "Baby Face Nelson." At the time, Chicago was the nation's second-largest city with a population of 3,376,438 in 1930 and 3,396,808 in 1940. With a population of 2,746,388 in 2020, Chicago was the third most populous city in the United States, behind only New York City, NY (8,804,190), and Los Angeles, CA (3,898,747).
• Thousands of first responders have lost their lives while serving their communities and are remembered for their sacrifice at national and state memorials. Among them:
  • The National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Emmitsburg, MD, honors fallen firefighters from every state, territory, and Washington, DC. States that have erected monuments to honor their fallen firefighters, include the Iowa Firefighters Memorial in Coralville, IA; the New York State Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Albany, NY; and the California Firefighters Memorial in Sacramento, CA.
  • The National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, DC, honors the more than 23,000 officers who died in the line of duty throughout the United States as far back as 1786. Included among those remembered at the memorial are U.S. Marshals Robert Forsyth and C.R.V. Schefsky. Forsyth was the U.S. marshal responsible for enumerating Georgia during the 1790 Census. He was the first federal law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty when serving a summons on January 11, 1794. During the 1870 Census, Schefsky was killed by assailants who may have believed he was collecting tax money, not census data.
  • On November 3, 2018, President Donald Trump signed PL 115-275 authorizing the National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Memorial Foundation to build a permanent memorial in Washington, DC, to honor the nation's EMS providers killed or injured in the line of duty.
  • Many local and state highway department and public works employees are classified as first responders because they are often on the "front lines" assisting police, firefighters, EMS workers, and their communities when natural disasters and accidents occur. States that have erected memorials honoring public workers who lost their lives in the line of duty include the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Memorial in Harrisburg, PA, and the Public Works Employee Memorial in Concord, NH.
• Data about companies that manufacture protective equipment used by our nation's law enforcement officers—including bulletproof vests—are collected as part of the Surgical Appliance and Supplies Manufacturing sector (NAICS 339113). The same sector also accounts for many other vital supplies used by first responders, including bandages and dressings, firefighting suits and accessories, medical stretchers, and wheelchairs. According to the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns series, there were 1,842 establishments in the Surgical Appliance and Supplies Manufacturing sector in 2021. During the pay period that included March 12, 2021, these establishments employed 100,340 people. The Annual Survey of Manufactures found that the sector had sales, value of shipments, or revenue of nearly $38.6 billion in 2021.

From 1790 through the 1870 Census, U.S. marshals and their assistants visited every home to collect census data. Frances William Edmonds 1854 painting "Taking the Census"
depicts a marshal and his young assistant collecting data for the 1850 Census. It was the first census in which marshals recorded the name of the head of each family as well
as the name of every person living within the household.

Beginning in 1880, specially hired and trained enumerators conducted the censuses, allowing thousands of U.S. marshals to focus on law enforcement duties.

Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A Gift of Diane, Daniel, and Mathew Wolf, in honor of John K. Howat and Lewis I. Sharp, 2006.

Citing Our Internet Information

Individual census records from 1790 to 1950 are maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration, not the U.S. Census Bureau.

Publications related to the census data collected from 1790 to 2020 are available at https://www.census.gov/library.html.

Visit the National Archives Web site to access 1940 and 1950 Census records.

Decennial census records are confidential for 72 years to protect respondents' privacy.

Records from the 1950 to 2010 censuses can only be obtained by the person named in the record or their heir after submitting form BC-600 or BC-600sp (Spanish).

Online subscription services are available to access the 1790–1950 census records.  Many public libraries provide access to these services free of charge to their patrons.

Join the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center (in Colorado) for another wonderful and intriguing virtual genealogy program presented by Terri Meeks. If you had early 20th-century immigrant ancestors, they may have taken advantage of the social services offered by the Settlement House Movement. Join them to hear about those who served and those who were aided by these “homes”.

This program is free and open to the public. To register for this program please go to the museum’s calendar which can be located at https://www.canoncity.org/Museum to register
for the event. Please register online or contact the museum for more information. This program will be held over Zoom from 9-10 a.m. on Saturday, July 20.

The Museum and History Center is located in the City of Cañon City’s former Municipal Building at 612 Royal Gorge Blvd. The hours of the Museum and History Center are Wednesday through Saturday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. For more information, call the museum at (719) 269-9036 or email historycenter@canoncity.org.

An international conference on the restoration of damaged cultural heritage will take place next week at the National Palace Museum of Korea in Seoul.

The conference entitled “Damaged Cultural Heritage of the World: Its Restoration and Future,” hosted by the state-run museum, will bring together government officials and experts on heritage from Korea, Japan and France. The Wednesday gathering will draw on the three countries’ shared experience in restoring and using cultural heritage.

Korean officials will kick off the discussion, revisiting efforts to revive Sungnyemun, a revered landmark destroyed in a 2008 fire. It took five years to restore the gate colloquially known as Namdaemun, which sits between Seoul Station and Seoul Plaza.

Experts from Japan will discuss the restoration of Shuri Castle in Okinawa. The UNESCO World Heritage Site was also damaged by a fire, in 2019, requiring five years for a complete restoration.

French culture officials, meanwhile, will present ways to mark restoration efforts, such as establishing a museum dedicated to the destroyed cultural heritage. An example of such an effort is Notre Dame Cathedral, scheduled to reopen in December following an April 2019 fire. An exhibition exploring the highlights of the medieval Parisian cathedral’s history is underway at the National Palace Museum of Korea.

Officials from Histovery -- the French startup that specializes in augmented reality and has teamed up with the NPMK for the exhibition -- will speak about making museum experiences more immersive using digital devices.

Here is an article that is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, I hope it finds a job for an unemployed person in Alabama:

Go Build Alabama Job Board is helping workers connect with career opportunities in the construction industry and beyond.

If you haven't heard, there's a new tool for job seekers in Alabama. It's called Go Build Alabama Job Board. The tool is helping workers connect with career opportunities in the construction industry and beyond. Thanks to Go Build Alabama Job Board, they'll be easier to find. 

Alabama Construction Recruitment Institute Executive Director Jason Phelps said they're about thirty days into the launch of the job board and it's very user friendly. "So for a career seeker, they just need to put in some directory information and verify an email address so that, you know, they can connect to the employers. Once they've done that, they can actually start applying for jobs that are listed on the job board. This year we're looking at close to almost 5,000 new construction jobs in the state of Alabama."

Phelps continued that this is an opportunity for us to add to the services that we have for the public and contractors out there to help them connect people with jobs that are available. In the future, other job positions beyond construction could also be listed. "Don't be too surprised to see a commercial contractor posting some of their administrative or supervision jobs there."

Phelps said another thing to note about commercial industrial construction, "... generally speaking, it's going to have higher pay wages, it's going to have benefits. And for those entry level jobs, generally speaking, they're going to be access to career development and advancement going forward. So it's really the trifecta."

On August 8, that opportunity will expand to an in person hiring event right here in Huntsville. "We are piloting or starting out with right here in the Huntsville area, August 8th at the Jaycee Community building. This is really just taking that that online presence of the job board and let's do it in person and make some of those face to face connections."

You can read more in an article  by Jasamine Byrd published in the RocketCityNow web site at:  https://bit.ly/3xQ3aAw

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

One prestigious coeducational college preparatory boarding school recently made a radical change to its library. With 159years of academic excellence, one would expect the school to be steeped in tradition. However, a visitor to the campus might be surprised to learn that the 159-year-old school's library has gone almost all digital.

In a newspaper interview, the former headmaster said, “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books."

The school reportedly is very happy with the now-completed changes. Most of the library's previous 40,000 books have since been replaced with 24 million ebooks, academic journals, image and film libraries, and other educational content. The result has been a huge increase in the information available to students, along with the cancellation of any thoughts of adding a multi-million dollar expansion to the library's building. 

That sounds like a winning combination: better service with lower expenses.

I will suggest that there is a lesson here for many specialized libraries, including genealogy libraries.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13378658. (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

Tens of millions of descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities, whose ancestors were forcibly converted from the 14th Century onwards, can now apply for and receive a Certificate of Sephardic Ancestry. Recent academic and genetic research has demonstrated that there are as many as 200 million people, largely in Latin and North America and Europe, who have “significant Jewish ancestry” dating back to the time of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal.

The historic initiative is run by Jewish Unity Through Diversity Institute, Reconectar, an organization dedicated to helping the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities reconnect with the Jewish people, and Genie Milgrom, an award-winning author, researcher, documentarian, and genealogist who was able to fully document her unbroken maternal lineage 22 generations going back as far as 1405 to pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal. Her recent film The Stone and the Flower is debuting at film festivals around the world tracing Genie’s personal story of connecting to her heritage.

To find out if you have Jewish Roots, visit: www.SephardicCertificate.com. 

Milgrom is also leading work to digitize Inquisition records that provide an unprecedented amount of genealogical information for those who seek to discover their possible Jewish roots. These and a vast array of other information on the certification website will help the descendants, otherwise known as Anousim, Marranos, Conversos or Crypto-Jews, discover their heritage.

“The Certificate of Sephardic Ancestry is historic for so many around the world and especially in Latin and North America who yearn to connect with their past and up to now have had no way to do accomplish this,” Milgrom said. “The Certification, in connection with my collection of genealogy tools specifically for those with Crypto -Jewish and Sephardic lineages that is on the website will allow them to also search for their own past and empower them in the process.”

You can read more in an article in the israel365news.com website at: https://bit.ly/3zwSMy3.

The following is an announcement written by Findmypast:

Explore new records from Peterborough to Pennsylvania.

If you have East Coast branches on your family tree, you may find a familiar name or two within over 36,000 Huguenot Society Application Papers, or within the 195,000 Roman Catholic baptism and marriage records from New York that we added this week.

Women’s Land Army Service Cards, 1939-1950

We added 36,438 Women's Land Army service cards this week. These images and transcriptions may reveal new information about your wartime ancestors.

Huguenot Society of Pennsylvania Application Papers

Was your relative a member of the Huguenot Society of Pennsylvania? Explore these 36,438 new records to find out.

New York Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms and Marriages

Researching your New York ancestors just got easier, as we've added 170,637 baptisms and 125,977 marriages from the city's Roman Catholic parishes.

Explore over 80 million pages from across the globe

We added two new English titles to our newspaper archive this week. We also updated a further existing 20 publications, taking our total page count to over 80 million. With so many fascinating titles to explore, what will you discover?

Boston Independent.

Here's everything that's been added this week. 

New titles:

Updated titles:

Episode 3 of Was Justice Served? out now

Episode 3 of our new podcast Was Justice Served? sees Jen and David dive into the mysterious death of Rose Harsent in 1902. Listen as they examine the evidence, hear testimonies from the trial, and ultimately determine whether the person responsible for this grizzly crime was brought to justice.

Listen now

Listen as they examine the evidence, hear testimonies from the trial, and ultimately determine whether the person responsible for this grizzly crime was brought to justice.

More on this topic:

English RecordsHistorical Newspapers