Nu? What's New? Vol. 20 No. 13

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Reclaim The Records Gains Access to New York State Marriage Index Post-1965

Reclaim the Records (RTR) won its fourth law suit against government agencies who refused to give them copies of records accessible to the public. In this case it is the New York State Department of Health, and the records are the index to post-1965 marriage records. RTR indicated it might take a few months for them to acquire the data, but when it is received it will be available on the internet at no charge.

The courts did not award RTR attorney’s fees; therefore, there was a cost to acquire the records. People who want to make a tax-deductible contribution to future projects of the organization can do so at https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/donations/general-fund/.

The full announcement is at https://tinyurl.com/RTRNYSMarriages.

Reminder: Many RootsTech 2019 Lectures Available Online

A total of 45 lectures given at the recent RootsTech conference are available online for viewing at no charge. A sample of the lectures available are:
• Writing and Publishing a Family History: 10 Steps
• Getting the Most Out of Billions of Records on MyHeritage SuperSearch
• Connecting Your DNA Matches
• What You Don’t Know about Ancestry(.com)
• How to Write Your Life Story in Five Pages or Less

A list of all the lectures that are available for free viewing are available at: https://www.rootstech.org/category/2019-rootstech-sessions.

FamilySearch April Webinars Include One for Polish Archival Records

If access to Polish archival records would be valuable to your family history research, FamilySearch is presenting a webinar on “Using the Polish Website Szukaj w Archiwach”, April 3 at 1pm Mountain Time. There are also a number of webinars in April on learning how to use DNA in genealogical research.

The website http://szukajwarchiwach.pl identifies the record holdings of the various national and state archives of Poland. At the site you can search for, as an example, the Jewish records of a particular town. The results will include the archives with the records and links to the actual record group.

If you are unable to attend a class in person or online, most sessions are recorded and can be viewed later online at your convenience at http://tinyurl.com/FamilySearchApril2019Webinars.

A complete list of April webinars is at https://media.familysearch.org/free-family-history-library- classes-and-webinars-in-april-2019/.

JewishGen Director Provides Progress Report

JewishGen Director, Avraham Groll, announced some plans for the growth and improvement of the JewishGen site. They include:
• The current InfoFiles section is being revamped and will be renamed the JewishGen Knowledge Base. This page will incorporate and centralize many of the resources and materials that currently exist in a decentralized format throughout the JewishGen site.
• There will be a system-wide modernization effort. Nearly four months ago, JewishGen engaged a technical consultant to help define their strategies for significant improvements to their technological infrastructure and database operations.
• There is a new JewishGen Research Division. It will incorporate various “JewishGen SIG websites” and will focus on:
– Expanding JewishGen’s collection of records
– Adding informational content to the new JewishGen Knowledge Base
– Encourage the creation of more KehilaLinks entries for towns which once had a Jewish community.

The complete announcement can be found at https://www.jewishgen.org/jewishgen/updates.html.

Yad Vashem Will Build a New Shoah Heritage Collections Center

Since its inception in 1953, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center located in Jerusalem, has been gathering artifacts, documentation and testimonies from the period of the Holocaust. To date, Yad Vashem's collections include more than 210 million documents, 500,000 photographs, 131,000 survivor testimonies, 32,400 artifacts and 11,500 works of art—all related to the Holocaust.

The institution has announced it will build a new Shoah Heritage Campus that will house at its heart a Shoah Heritage Collections Center. The Center will provide state-of-the-art solutions for optimal preservation of the artifacts, photographs, artworks and documents housed at Yad Vashem.

The announcement can be found at https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release/25- march-2019-09-48.html.

FamilySearch Adds Nearly 3 Million Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, nearly 3 million indexed records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch032519. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from France, Germany, Peru, Sweden, and the United States: Colorado, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia.

Note that at the website, announced collections may not be complete for the dates specified and will be added at some later date. Also note that counts shown in the announcement are the number added, not the total number available in the collection, which can be greater.

New Collections at Ancestry.com

Ancestry has added/updated the following record groups at their site. The list with links to individual collections can be found at https://www.ancestry.com/cs/recent-collections. Announced collections may not be complete for the dates specified and will be added at some later date.

New Collections
U.S., Baseball Questionnaires, 1945–2005

Updated Collections
Massachusetts, Boston Archdiocese Roman Catholic Sacramental Records, 1789–1900
Netherlands, Birth Index, 1784–1917
Netherlands, Marriage Index, 1575–1938
U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942
England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916–2005