On June 15, 1904, (tomorrow is the anniversary of the event), the awful General Slocum steamboat disaster in New York City decimated the German-American community of Kleindeutschland: over a thousand women and children perished.

Geneanet, has honored the victims and survivors of the tragedy by documenting the lives of every known passenger. It’s a free and collaborative project, open to all. Over a thousand birth, marriage, and death certificates of the passengers' families, nearly all from the New York City Municipal Archives, have been digitized.

Geneanet also has over 100 photos of passengers; Geneanet volunteers searched through historical newspapers and the "instant books" of the era to find those.

The web site also has a scoop, not previously published: the handwritten telegram of condolences from the Kaiser who was attending the Gordon Bennett Cup road race in the Taunus mountains near Frankfurt. The Political Archive of the German Foreign Office in Berlin dug that out for Geneanet.

The article may be found at: https://en.geneanet.org/genealogyblog/post/2023/06/general-slocum-genealogies-a-thousand-source-documents-added

The collaborative family tree is available at:  https://gw.geneanet.org/generalslocum?lang=en

The following announcement was written by the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG):

The Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) wishes to announce that registration for SLIG Fall Virtual 2023 began on Saturday, June 10, and is ongoing.

Limited seats remain in the following courses:

Courses will be held online via Zoom from September - November 2023.  Learn more by accessing detailed course schedules and course requirements here.

A registration guide is available and can be accessed here.

The following is a press release written by the Muscogee Nation:

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation National Library and Archives will go live with a new digital archive on June 14th, 2023. The digital archive will be available to Mvskoke citizens and the public and will feature a wide variety of historical documents and resources pertaining to Mvskoke history, culture, and language, and will include video and audio interviews from our recent oral history project titled, “A Twenty-First Century Pandemic in Indian Country: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against Covid-19.” In January 2021, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Historic and Cultural Preservation Department a $100,000 community-based archives grant to fund the Covid-19 oral history project and the creation of a new digital archive.

Supported by Mukurtu (Mook-oo-too), meaning “dilly-bag” or “a place of safekeeping” in the Aboriginal Warumungu language, this Indigenous archival platform created in Australia was selected for its ability to provide a safe space to store and share heritage items, stories, and knowledge. Interactive features of the archive include a comment section to share information or ask questions. Visitors can also set up an account and create a personal “collection” from items found within the digital archive. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation National Library and Archives will continue to digitize archival collections and make them accessible on the digital archive.

 As we launch the new digital archive, we want to highlight the forty Mvskoke citizens and community members who have shared their experiences with Covid-19 and the pandemic. Visitors can listen to amazing stories of Mvskoke sharing experiences of hardship, grief, resilience, and survival during the Covid-19 pandemic. The oral histories can also be accessed at the library’s new Oral History Research Station. According to MCN Oral Historian Midge Dellinger, “The digital archive is a game changer in how Mvskoke people can now access library resources online. I hope people engage with the archives as learners and teachers; it belongs to all of us, and we all have much knowledge to share.”

The digital archive is available at mvskokenationallibraryarchive.org.

For more information, please call the Muscogee (Creek) Nation National Library and Archives at 918-732-7733.

Here is an offer that is difficult to beat: FREE. From an article by Zaid Jilani published in the newsnationnow web site:

Equipment used in the Memory Lab in Johnson County, Kansas. Photo courtesy of Johnson County Government

A network of libraries and nonprofit organizations are establishing “memory labs,” where patrons bring in photos, VHS tapes and other old media formats, learn at no cost how to digitize them, and then do it themselves to preserve their family histories and their memories.

Millions of Americans have stored their memories on older forms of media, which are difficult to pass on to future generations because they can’t easily be shared over the Internet. Sometimes this older media can degrade, too, making digital preservation even more valuable.

Yet, Americans are arguably more interested in genealogy than ever, and physical media are often the key to learning about what life was like for a distant ancestor. The multibillion-dollar genealogy industry has boomed in recent years as people seek to learn more about their family history. 

Private companies can help digitize these old films and photos. But they are both expensive and anxiety-provoking. For example, companies like Legacybox or Digmypics will charge between $30 and $50 to convert a few film reels. Plus, people have to send their one-of-a-kind memories through the mail (allying this concern is at the top of the FAQ at ScanCafe).

One of the memory labs is in Johnson County, Kansas. There, the local genealogical society teamed up with the county library system to offer free digitization services to the local community. 

When organizers opened up slots in early April, they were overwhelmed with demand.

“By 8:30 in the morning, all the slots for two months were filled up,” said Marsha Bennett, the vice president of education and outreach at the Johnson County Genealogical Society.

The memory lab has equipment including a flatbed scanner and a Wolverine Movie Maker, which looks like an old 8mm film projector that passes old film over scanner glass, converting it to digital videos. 

Residents who want to take advantage of the service are able to go online and reserve 2 1/2-hour blocks of time for free. When they arrive, a volunteer teaches them how to digitize their records and then they get the rest of the time to use the equipment. They’re asked to bring a USB drive or hard drive to do the transfer.

You can read the full article at: https://tinyurl.com/mnu43p9c.

What do I use and recommend for storing all my genealogy notes?

Two words: “multiple means.”

I certainly hope that MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Ancestry, Findmypast, Archive.org, and all the other websites will last forever and will keep my information online and visible to the public forever. However, in this ever-changing world of high technology, I doubt that will happen.

Instead of expecting other organizations to preserve my data for me, I make multiple backup copies of my own data and store the copies in multiple places. I have written about this often in this newsletter, so I won’t repeat everything here. Making my own copies gives me confidence that my information will remain available to me FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE.

There is a bigger, long-time issue however: How do I make sure the information is available to other family members after my demise? I don’t have a single, simple answer, but I can describe what I do: I make sure that as many of my relatives as possible have copies.

I doubt if all my relatives will care about our family tree. Some of them undoubtedly will throw the information away. What I am betting, however, is that quite a few of my relatives will keep the information and preserve it. I suspect one or two or maybe more relatives will even copy it and make everything publicly available on whatever technology replaces the World Wide Web in the future. They may simply copy what I supplied, or (hopefully) they will copy it to newer and better formats and even update and improve the information and the source citations I offered. Then at least a few of these relatives will pass the updated information on to other relatives at that time.

Proof

Earlier this week, I discovered an online family tree that seemed to include all of my family tree, including both my father’s and my mother’s families. It was amazing: there was all the same information I had spent years collecting. Somebody else had collected the same information and all of it seemed to agree with mine!

Then I noticed the name of the person who uploaded it to the genealogy web site: it is the name of my grandniece. Apparently, she obtained the printed information I had given her mother many years ago and laboriously re-entered everything by hand into some genealogy program. Her information did not include my newer discoveries found in recent years, but that is easily resolved if I send updates to her and to her mother as well.

When reading my grandniece’s uploaded data, I smiled. It is a great example of how sharing information with multiple relatives allows the information to be handed down to later generations.

Is this guaranteed to preserve my information forever? No! Nothing is ever guaranteed. But I suspect this idea of sharing everything with everybody will greatly increase the odds of preservation.

The following is a press release written by the National Genealogical Society:

FALLS CHURCH, VA, 14 June 2023—The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has published Research in the District of Columbia by Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG Retired (2021), FUGA, and Richard G. Sayre, CG®, CGL, FUGA. The 

guidebook is the latest addition to the Society’s Research in the States series, which now covers research in thirty-one states, the District of Columbia, and the tribal records of Oklahoma’s American Indians.

Research in the District of Columbia offers a detailed overview of the many repositories and records for family historians researching ancestors who may have lived in the District of Columbia (DC) as well as anyone for whom a federal record may exist such as

Given the scope of records housed in DC, the authors warn, "Genealogical research in the District is more confusing and difficult than almost any other locality in the United States." This book is, therefore, a welcomed guide for new and seasoned genealogists.

The authors provide concise descriptions of the collections housed in the District’s libraries and archives. The information includes atlases, gazetteers, and maps; business records, cemetery records and surveys, and federal and police censuses; records from DC committees; and directories. Additional archival records discussed in the book are institutional records such as hospitals, orphanages, and prisons; court, land, military, immigration, and naturalization records; and religious, schools, and vital records

Research in the District of Columbia also discusses records of ethnic groups including African Americans, Asian, German, Irish, Jews, and Native Americans.

Research in the States series is edited by Barbara Vines Little, CG®, FNGS, FVGS. Its newest book, Research in the District of Columbia, is available for purchase in the NGS online store exclusively in a print version.

Reconstruction-Era Methodist Episcopal Church conference journals now available freely online in the Digital Library of Georgia

ATHENS, Ga., June 8, 2023 — Selected by statewide cultural heritage stakeholders and funded by the DLG’s competitive digitization grant program, this collection is the Pitts Theology Library’s first collaboration with the DLG and is available here: Georgia Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church Collection.

The collection is comprised of bound conference journals dating from 1867 to 1939, produced by the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), a Northern church that established missions in Georgia during the Reconstruction Era, working closely with the Freedman’s Aid Society to find schools and colleges for the formerly enslaved while integrating the then-separate Black and white churches into the same conference. MEC churches were established in both rural and urban areas throughout the state.

The conference journals contain the minutes, reports, and statistics of the Methodist Episcopal Church and its individual congregations throughout the state of Georgia. They present value for researchers interested in the history of religion and race in Georgia, genealogical records of the clergy, the disparity between Black and white congregations, and other statistical data. The materials are useful for genealogists, scholars of Methodism, and historians of Georgia during the Reconstruction Era as well as the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Thomas Elliott, Jr., D.Min., associate professor in the practice of practical theology and Methodist studies and the director of Contextual Education II, Teaching Parish, and Internships Candler School of Theology, Emory University, defines the importance of digital access to this content:

“This particular subset of Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) journals, 1867-1925, documents an important period in Georgia Methodism spanning from the Reconstruction Era to the period preceding the unification of the MEC with two other Methodist denominations. As a lifelong Methodist and Elder in the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church, these journals significantly contribute to my own denomination’s history despite the relatively small size of the MEC Georgia conferences. These materials are essential tools for researching Methodist history, and having them more accessible to my students and the wider public further helps preserve the Methodist tradition. I know I speak for my “Methodist at Candler” colleagues in saying that interaction with these types of primary sources is a significant part of the educational experience in Methodist Studies at Candler.”

[View the entire collection online]

The following announcement was written by Pharos Tutors:

Pharos Tutors offers short online courses and certificate programmes in family history, local history and related topics. We are delighted to announce that we have today launched the brand new Pharos Tutors website and online course experience. 

The new system better serves the current Pharos Tutors business, which now has twenty tutors and over fifty courses, with more in development. The key features are:

The default view shows all courses and may be ordered by start date or course title. However, the course list can also be filtered by course type, e.g. just courses in the Intermediate Certificate programme, by level of difficulty, e.g. beginner’s courses, by Tutor or by start month. There is also an option to search by keyword, e.g. ‘parish registers’

The Student Area is now organised by course, as we know many of our students take more than one course simultaneously and wanted things more easy to find. Lesson notes and other course documents are now located in the Course materials area. Messages from the tutor are in the Messages area and students can also contact their tutor directly from here. We also have a brand new forum and chat room system. Times for chat sessions and the links to them will appear in the Chat / Zoom area. Many of our tutors are now running some of their tutorials using the Zoom video system, and the links to those can also be found in the Chat / Zoom area. 

The new Pharos Tutors website has been developed as an intuitive system with simple navigation, providing a much enhanced visitor experience for both current students and those considering taking a course with us. We look forward to seeing you on a Pharos Tutors course in the near future.

During the month of May 2023, MyHeritage added 46 million records from 30 collections around the world, with records from Belgium, Canada, Finland, New Zealand, Scotland, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. The collections include birth, marriage, divorce, death, military, naturalization, and student records.

You can find a full list of the newly added collections and some sample records from them in the MyHeritage blog at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/06/46-million-historical-records-added-in-may-2023/.

On May 1, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a putative class action alleging violations of the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA) against the asset management firm Blackstone Inc. over its all-stock acquisition of the genealogy company Ancestry.com. In a case of first impression, the Seventh Circuit held that a “run-of-the-mill corporate acquisition, without more alleged about that transaction,” does not result in a compulsory disclosure of genetic information in violation of Section 30 of GIPA.

GIPA

GIPA provides that “genetic testing and information derived from genetic testing is confidential and privileged and may be released only to the individual tested and to persons specifically authorized, in writing in accordance with [statutory requirements], by that individual to receive the information.” 410 ILCS 513/15. Section 30 of the act provides that no person or company “may disclose or be compelled to disclose the identity of any person upon whom a genetic test is performed or the results of a genetic test in a manner that permits identification of the subject of the test.” Id. at 30(a). Under Section 40, “[a]ny person aggrieved by a violation of this Act shall have a right of action.” Id. at 40.

Factual Background

Lead plaintiffs Carolyn Bridges and Raymond Cunningham purchased DNA testing products from Ancestry.com and submitted their saliva samples. Ancestry processed and stored plaintiffs’ genetic information with other personal identifying information, such as their names, emails and home addresses.

In December 2020, Blackstone acquired Ancestry for $4.7 billion in an all-stock acquisition. In July 2021, Bridges and Cunningham filed a putative class action in Illinois state court alleging that the acquisition compelled the disclosure of their genetic information in violation of Section 30. Blackstone removed the case to federal court and then moved to dismiss. The district court dismissed the complaint on the grounds that a corporate acquisition of a company that stored genetic information, without more, did not result in a compulsory disclosure of genetic information in violation of GIPA. Plaintiffs appealed.

You can read the details of this court case at: https://tinyurl.com/23x36sav.