Genealogy Blog 

The targeted libraries and archives contain valuable historical collections that focus on the lives of enslaved Africans and free blacks in Jamaica during the period 1655-1800. The documents are important to scholars studying the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, and supplement the extensive records that are held in Britain on the forced migration of Africans to Jamaica.

The materials are located in Kingston, specifically in the National Library of Jamaica and the Roman Catholic Chancery, as well as in the Elsa Goveia Reading Room at the University of the West Indies at Mona. Also targeted are the Jamaica Archives located in Spanish Town.

The physical condition of documents ranges from very poor to fair, with many documents crumbling and in danger of disappearing. The most urgent attention should be directed at the Chancery, which does not have a preservation department and is not a formal archive. There is concern within the Chancery at the decaying state of the documents and this initiative to digitise documents is welcomed.

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This month sees the launch of the first phase of the Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR), as part of the Mingana Day at the University of Birmingham on 8 July.

The presentation of the collection online is a crucial part of JISC’s £1.8 million Enriching Digital Resources programme, a set of 25 projects which enhances the use of online content for teaching, learning and research.

In this first launch, the VMR project making available over 10000 images from 70 Eastern manuscripts from the university’s Mingana collection, including a full set of images of one of the oldest copies of the Qur’an in existence.

A full program for the day (including lunch!) is available from the VMR launch website.

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British researchers have announced the discovery of a rare original copy of America's Declaration of Independence - just in time for the Fourth of July.

Katrina McClintock, a spokeswoman at the National Archives, said Thursday that a researcher accidentally discovered the "Dunlap print," named after a printer, several months ago. The find was announced only after it could be properly catalogued.

Edward Hampshire, the National Archives' specialist in colonial materials, said the find was "incredibly exciting."

"It is likely that only around 200 of these were ever printed, so uncovering a new one nearly 250 years later is extremely rare, especially one in such good condition," he said.

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Full Featured - Windows - Shareware

The Complete Genealogy Builder 2009 build 90630 has been released.

Changes:

• Fixed: Unexpected program error that could occur when preparing data for the Reporter module.

Web Publishing - Windows - Purchase

Our Family Book 6.0.1 has been released.

Changes:

• Error correction at "Privacy protection" methode "3", output error corrected at de-selection of sources and the output in reduced font for optional data elements corrected.
• For naming of "DB-Id" und "RefId-nbr", similar to the enclosing parentheses, some of the left characters of the data text can be eliminated, e.g. the leading "I" of the DB-Ids.

Nobel laureate and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel last Friday expressed anger at the opening of an international conference in Prague at the failure to ensure restitution of assets seized from Holocaust victims.

"Why did it take so long? ... The easiest response would have been to give back after the war, the buildings, the money, the artworks that were confiscated," he said.

"The fact it was not done is scandalous," he added at the conference held more than ten years after 44 countries pledged in Washington to go ahead with assets restitution.

The principles adopted in Washington about restitution and compensation of Jewish assets seized between 1939 and 1945 are not legally binding and some countries, above all in eastern Europe, have not implemented them.

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NASA is taking the rare step of reaching out to the public for help. The space agency is looking for the best way to analyze and electronically catalog a precious collection of notes that chronicle the early history of the human space flight program.

“We’re looking for creative ways to get it out to the public,” said project manager Jason Crusan. “We don’t always do the best with putting out large sets of data like this.”

The notes [pdf] are those of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the fist director of NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and are typed with copious hand written notes in the margin. According to the official request for information [pdf], NASA needs ideas on what format to use, how to index the notes and how to create a useful database.

The unique nature and historical value of the data, literally discovered in boxes six months ago, is what motivated NASA to ask the public for ideas.

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Gale (www.gale.com), a part of Cengage Learning (www.cengage.com), introduced a new electronic resource offering an archive that chronicles slavery dating from the 16th century through the early 20th century. Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, represents the first large-scale database to make available historical books, manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, court records, and other sources in one cross-searchable location.

The first of the four-part series, Debates Over Slavery and Abolition, explores the varying viewpoints and debates that surrounded the practice, experience, and eventual abolition of slavery in the U.S., as well as in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It will be followed by part 2 in 2011. Once completed, the entire four-part digital archive will comprise 5 million pages of documents.

With documents from 7,242 books and pamphlets, 80 newspapers and periodicals, and more than 600,000 pages of manuscripts, teachers and researchers will have access to a comprehensive array of opposing views and perspectives in one database.

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St Mary's Church in Wimbledon Village, south-west London had been charging £20 a day to park in its cemetery. The money goes to three charities.

The church said cars were allowed to park on the graves of people whose descendants cannot be traced but this year some were put in wrong places.

Parking in the graveyard has now been stopped as a result.

Speaking to BBC London 94.9FM, Melanie Allcock from Balham, who parked in the cemetery, said: "We were told: 'Go and reverse between these gravestones'.

"I thought: 'This is very odd'. But we did it and went to Wimbledon.

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For decades, it was a secret encased in brick and plaster, undetected by the thousands who passed by each year.

Then on June 4, a laborer working on construction of the new American Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts knocked a hole in a wall and saw an envelope sticking out of the rubble.

At first, Rick Brendemuehl thought it might be a stash of money. But instead he found a typewritten note from 1926, a letter to the future from a long-ago laborer who helped build the wall Brendemuehl was tearing down.

Thomas F. Crowley, who signed the letter, died in 1979, according to initial research, but the story of who he was has become a fascination for Maureen Melton, historian and director of the museum’s libraries and archives, who has enlisted the help of history buffs, genealogists, and archivists - as well as the power of the Internet - to piece together his story.

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