by Lisa Cooke | Jul 9, 2014 | 01 What's New, African-American, Digital Archives, Libraries, Oral History
A video archive of oral history interviews about African-American life, history and culture and struggles and achievements of the black experience in the United States has been donated to the Library of Congress.
It’s called the HistoryMakers archive, and it’s the single largest archival project of its kind since the WPA recordings of former slaves in the 1930s. According to a press release, “The collection includes 9,000 hours of content that includes 14,000 analog tapes, 3,000 DVDs, 6,000 born-digital files, 70,000 paper documents and digital files and more than 30,000 digital photographs.”
“The collection comprises 2,600 videotaped interviews with African-Americans in 39 states, averaging three to six hours in length. The videos are grouped by 15 different subject areas ranging from science, politics and the military to sports, music and entertainment.”
“The HistoryMakers archive provides invaluable first-person accounts of both well-known and unsung African-Americans, detailing their hopes, dreams and accomplishments—often in the face of adversity,” said James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. “This culturally important collection is a rich and diverse resource for scholars, teachers, students and documentarians seeking a more complete record of our nation’s history and its people.”
“The collection is one of the most well-documented and organized audiovisual collections that the Library of Congress has ever acquired,” said Mike Mashon, head of the Library’s Moving Image Section. “It is also one of the first born-digital collections accepted into our nation’s repository.”
This African American oral history archive was donated so it would be preserved and accessible to generations yet to come. However, this doesn’t mean the HistoryMakers organization is done gathering stories. According to the press release, “oral histories are continually being added to the growing archive. The oldest person interviewed was Louisiana Hines, who passed away in 2013 at 114. She was one of the iconic “Rosie the Riveter” workers during War World II. One of the youngest is a prima ballerina, Ayisha McMillan, who was 29 at the time of her interview.”
Visit the HistoryMakers Archive here.
by Lisa Cooke | Oct 13, 2017 | 01 What's New, British, Newspaper, Records & databases
A brand new archive of Portuguese Lusitanian Church newspapers and historical records is now available online! Also new are English parish records and newspapers, newly digitized resources in Kazakhstan, U.S. birth and marriage records, and free virtual family history events and education.
Portugal: Church newspaper and historical records database
The earliest copies of the Jornal Igreja Lusitana 1894 to 1923 – the Lusitanian Church Newspaper – have been digitized and made available online by the Portuguese public archive. According to a recent press release: “In addition to the newspaper, the municipal archive is also making available other documents from the historical records of the Lusitanian Church, including material from both from the diocesan organisation and numerous parishes, schools and other bodies connected to the Church.” Click here to access the archive. 
Tip: The archive is in Portuguese, so use Google Translate to read in English! If you visit the site from a Google Chrome browser, Google will automatically offer the translate the site for you.
Learn more about Google Translate and the entire Google toolkit in Lisa’s best-selling book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, 2nd Edition! Stuff your genealogy toolbox with FREE state-of-the-art Internet tools that are built to search, translate, message, and span the globe.
English bastardy indexes, parish records, and newspapers
Uncover secrets of your ancestor’s past! Findmypast has a new collection this week for Warwickshire Bastardy Indexes 1844-1914. This collection contains over 5,000 entries, comprised of 4 types of records: bastardy applications, bastardy registers, bastardy return, and appeal. “Each record provides the name of the mother, and most records include the name of the putative father. The records do not contain the name of the child.”
New at Ancestry.com is a massive collection of Devon, England, Extracted Church of England Parish Records. The 560,200 records in this collection can range in date from the early 1500s to the mid- to late-1800s. More records for England are new at Ancestry.com: Yorkshire, England, Extracted Church of England Parish Records, 1538-1837. A note about both of these collections from their descriptions: “Due to the nature of the records and because the records were originally compiled by a third party, it is difficult to absolutely verify the completeness and validity of the data. The information in this collection is as correct as it was when Ancestry.com received it, and has merely been reproduced in an electronic format.”
Next, we head over to the British Newspaper Archive for two new titles. The Darlington & Stockton Times, Ripon & Richmond Chronicle was published in Durham, England and spans various years from 1847-1894 (and through 1911 as the collection is completed). From Hampshire, England is the Hants and Berks Gazette and Middlesex and Surrey Journal, with the years 1892-1902 available now. Completion of the collection http://www.mindanews.com/buy-effexor/ will cover the entire 1878-1910.
Kazakhstan: Periodicals, books, and more being digitized
Over 42,000 pages from the general fund of the national library of Kazakhstan have been digitized, totaling more than 5 million pages. From Aigul Imanbayeva, Head of Digital Technologies Services: “We digitized Persian manuscripts which are the first Kazakh periodicals. This is the Kazakh newspaper. Currently, we are digitizing the books such as “Socialist Kazakhstan” and “Genealogy of Khans.” Click here to learn more and see a short video about the project.
United States
New York. Over at Ancestry.com is a new collection for New York City Births, 1910-1965. Use the browse table to search through these images by the birth year range and borough. The images for this collection are provided courtesy of www.vitalsearch-worldwide.com.
New Jersey. Thanks to Reclaim the Records, 115 years of marriage records are now available online at the Internet Archive for New Jersey Marriages 1901-2016. Each file is listed year-by-year (or occasionally by a year range), and then the marriages are listed alphabetically by surname.
Free virtual family history events
Mark your calendars! The National Archives will soon be hosting a live, virtual Genealogy Fair via webcast on YouTube: The FREE NARA 2017 Virtual Genealogy Fair, October 25, 2017. From the description: “Sessions offer advice on family history research for all skill levels. Topics include Federal government documents on birth, childhood, and death; recently recovered military personnel files; Japanese Americans during World War II; 19th century tax assessments; and a “how to” on preserving family heirlooms.” Simply tune in to their YouTube channel to watch live!
November 4, 2017 is the North Carolina Virtual Family History Fair. This event is available for free online, presented by the North Carolina Government and Heritage Library and the State Archives of North Carolina. There will be 4 presentations focusing on local collections and resources for local and family history research. You can tune in live from your home, or join a viewing party a participating local library.
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by Lisa Cooke | Aug 19, 2016 | 01 What's New, British, Records & databases |
England emigrants to its U.S. colonies appear in new genealogy records online this week. Also: the 1891 New South Wales census; Czech church, land and school records; English parish records; and U.S. collections from the Freedmen’s Bureau, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and New England towns and cities.
Australia – New South Wales census
Findmypast.com has published over 200,000 records from the 1891 New South Wales census. The census collectors’ books are the source, as these are the only surviving documents. “While they provide less detail than a full census would, they can still be a useful aid to historians and genealogists alike in placing people at a specific moment in time,” states the collection description. “Each result will provide you with a transcript and image of the original collector’s books from the 1891 census. Original images may provide you with additional details, such as the number of individuals living in the same household or the number of residents who were Aboriginal or Chinese.”
Czechoslovakia – Church, Land and School
FamilySearch.org has added to its collection of Czech Republic Church Records spanning more than 400 years (1552-1963). You’ll find “images and some indexes of baptisms/births, marriages, and deaths that occurred in the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Reformed Church parishes, as well as entries in those registers for Jews.” These are taken from parish registers and synagogue records now in regional archives. Though not fully indexed, the browse-only records number over 4 million! (Click here to learn how to use browse-only collections on FamilySearch.org; remember you can use the FamilySearch wiki for help in translating records in another language.)
FamilySearch has also added more than 850,000 browsable images to its existing collection of Czech Republic Land Records 1450-1889 and more than a million browsable images to the existing collection Czech Republic School Registers 1799-1953.
England Emigrants
Remember recently when we blogged about emigrant records, or those created about people leaving a country? Ancestry.com recently posted a new database called Emigrants in Bondage, which it says is “the most important list of ships’ passengers to be published in years.” Indexed are names of “more than 50,000 English men, women, and children… sentenced to be deported to the American colonies for crimes ranging from the theft of a handkerchief to bigamy or highway robbery.” The collection dates cover 1614 to 1775, after which time the British empire was not permitted to ship its “undesirables” to U.S. shores.
England – Parish records – Staffordshire and Sussex
Findmypast has added to its collections of church vital records for Staffordshire, England. Its browsable parish registers, 1538-1900 now includes 300,000 full-color page-by-page images. Separate databases of baptisms, wedding banns, marriages and burials have also been updated.
Also, more than 1.2 million indexed records have been added to FamilySearch’s collection of England, Sussex, Parish Records, dating 1538-1910. Sussex parish registers contain baptisms, marriages/banns, and burials. Date ranges of available records vary by locality; you will want to use the coverage table at the FamilySearch wiki to see what’s available.
U.S. – Freedmen’s Bureau Records
Now that the Freedmen’s Bureau collections have been fully indexed, FamilySearch is dumping them onto its website in batches. This week, they added these new databases:
U.S. – Military
FamilySearch.org has added just over 4 million indexed records to its database of United States Muster Rolls of the Marine Corps (1798-1937). The collection is described as an “index and images of muster rolls of the United States Marine Corps located at the National Archives. The records are arranged chronologically by month, then by post, station or ship.”
This week, the Fold3.com blog reminds us of its Coast Guard collections, in honor of the Coast Guard’s 226th birthday. Hundreds of thousands of search results on the site relate to Coast Guard history, from disapproved Navy survivors pension files to photos dating to the Civil War; accounts of shipwrecks or accidents, WWII war diaries for several units, images of insignia and Navy cruise books.
U.S. – New England
FamilySearch has posted a new index of New Hampshire Vital and Town Records Index for the years 1656-1938. It contains shy of half a million records of births, marriages and deaths. Entries were sourced from multiple archives in New Hampshire; the citation for each record is included in the index entry at the bottom of the record screen.
The New England Historic Genealogical Society has announced improvements to its databases for three New England cities, which now include more searchable fields and images. “Hartford, CT: General Index of Land Records of the Town of Hartford, 1639-1839, is now searchable by grantee and grantor name, and results provide the record type and volume and page of the record (available on microfilm at the Connecticut State Library). Boston, MA: Births, 1800-1849, and Dover, NH: Vital Records, 1649-1892, are now searchable by first name, last name, record type, family member names, date, and location.”
by Lisa Cooke | Jun 5, 2013 | 01 What's New, FamilySearch, Records & databases
Millions of new images and indexed records are added to FamilySearch.org every week. But here’s one that particularly caught my eye: 5.6 million records from Massachusetts Land Records dating from 1620 to the 1980s.
Massachusetts Land Records, Hampshire County, sample deed from browsable record set at FamilySearch.org.
It’s a browsable collection of “land and property records from the Massachusetts Land Office and county courthouses. Records include land grants, patents, deeds, and mortgages. This collection includes all counties in Massachusetts.” Though these images aren’t indexed in FamilySearch per se, I noticed that when I clicked on a sample county (Hampshire), there were alphabetical deed indexes dating back as far as the records themselves. So it looks like in at least some cases, you’ll be able to browse those indexes and then find the deeds you want.
Looking for other new records just added to FamilySearch.org? Check out the table below.
|
|
| Collection |
Indexed Records |
Digital Images |
Comments |
| Austria, Seigniorial Records, 1537–1888 |
0 |
237,988 |
Added images to an existing collection. |
| Brazil, Piauí, Civil Registration, 1875-2012 |
0 |
116,423 |
Added images to an existing collection. |
| China, Cemetery Records, 1820-1983 |
0 |
72,747 |
New browsable image collection. |
| China, Collection of Genealogies, 1239-2011 |
0 |
204,422 |
Added images to an existing collection. |
| Honduras, Civil Registration, 1841-1968 |
0 |
337,367 |
New browsable image collection. |
| Luxembourg, Civil Registration, 1793-1923 |
0 |
84,251 |
Added images to an existing collection. |
| Peru, Amazonas, Civil Registration, 1939-1995 |
0 |
5,417 |
Added images to an existing collection. |
| Portugal, Beja, Catholic Church Records, 1550-1911 |
0 |
94,902 |
Added images to an existing collection. |
| Portugal, Braga, Priest Application Files (Genere et Moribus), 1596-1911 |
0 |
69,030 |
New browsable image collection. |
| Portugal, Évora, Civil Registration and Miscellaneous Records, 1554-1938 |
0 |
5,708 |
New browsable image collection. |
| Portugal, Viana do Castelo, Catholic Church Records, 1537-1909 |
0 |
83,446 |
Added images to an existing collection. |
| Switzerland, Fribourg, Census, 1811 |
0 |
2,387 |
New browsable image collection. |
| Switzerland, Fribourg, Census, 1818 |
0 |
2,369 |
New browsable image collection. |
| Switzerland, Fribourg, Census, 1834 |
0 |
2,436 |
New browsable image collection. |
| U.S., Hawaii, Honolulu Passenger Lists, 1900-1953 |
0 |
191,701 |
New browsable image collection. |
| U.S., Idaho, Gooding County Records, 1879-1962 |
0 |
52,108 |
New browsable image collection. |
| U.S., Maine, Piscataquis County, Deed Books, 1838-1902 |
0 |
56,970 |
New browsable image collection. |
| U.S., Massachusetts, Land Records, 1620-1986 |
0 |
5,766,135 |
New browsable image collection. |
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