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Nu?
What's New? Gary Mokotoff, Editor Volume 21, Number 12 | March22, 2020 Every
government puts value on preserving its history. That is why we have
national archives. Genealogy preserves history; the history of a
family. It cannot be done without access to records, just as historians
cannot preserve a nation's history without access to records. It is a
greater good than the right to privacy. It is a greater good than the
risk of identity theft.
Past issues of Nu? What's New? are
archived at http://www.avotaynu.com/nu.htm
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Underlined words are links to
sites with additional information.
For Avotaynu It Is Mostly Business as Usual  Avotaynu’s
operations are almost all internet oriented, therefore, the pandemic is
having little effect on our operation. AVOTAYNU editor, Sallyann Amdur
Sack-Pikus is diligently working from home on the Spring issue. Our New
Haven, Connecticut, office building is shared with only one other
company and they moved out in December to another facility and their
space is vacant, so there is no contact with others while we work in
the office. An AVOTAYNU Special Offer. The pandemic is an excellent time to stay at home and do online genealogical research and improve your skills in doing such research. If you are not a subscriber to our quarterly journal, AVOTAYNU, we are making the following offer. Subscribe to the 2020 editions of our quarterly and we will send you—now—the latest published edition: the Winter 2019 issue. Subscribe at https://www.avotaynu.com/Journal5for4.html. For current subscribers. If you are already a subscriber to AVOTAYNU and received a yellow sheet with the Winter 2019 issue, it is time to resubscribe. If you have not done so already, you can now resubscribe online at https://www.avotaynu.com/Renew.html. U.S. subscribers can now renew their subscription online. People are coming to grips with the pandemic. The proof is that humor now is being injected into the crisis. My favorite is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw-cKeHwmkM. JewishGen Abandoning Most Discussion Groups  JewishGen has
announced they will be discontinuing most Special Interest Groups
Discussion Lists. The organization stated that the software used to
create these mailing lists is antiquated, and they cannot find a
technical contractor to maintain the lists. In the past, volunteers or
paid staff at JewishGen kept those lists running.The main JewishGen Discussion Group was modernized last fall and participants will be encouraged to submit inquiries to this common list. U.S. 2020 Census Information Being Gathered  Last week,
the U.S. Census Bureau started to send postal mails to the households
of the United States asking them to go online and answer questions that
will allow the Bureau to capture a picture of the population as of
April 1, 2020. This is the first time the Census Bureau is asking
citizens to fill out the form online. Alternately, they can respond by
phone or mail.Projecting what benefit this census will be to genealogists 73 years from now when the content of the census will be released, the answer is that it will not tell much to our descendants about us. The questions asked are not much more than the name of the individuals residing in the household and relationship to the head of household. A small plus is that the census asks for exact date of birth rather than age. There is one strange question asked of white Americans: “Enter origins, for example, German, Irish, English, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.” This is literally how it is presented. In my opinion, the question is vague can be misinterpreted. What does a Jew whose ancestors came from Eastern Europe answer? If a Jewish American had ancestors that came from L’viv, is the proper answer Ukrainian? Polish? Austro-Hungarian? Some people may respond that the origins are “Jewish.” Census results help determine how billions of dollars in federal funding flow into states and communities each year. Also the results determine how many seats in the House of Representatives each state gets. The census website is at https://2020census.gov/.  Carol Skydell (1925–2020) z"l Carol Skydell passed away on March 4. She, along with Joyce Field, helped JewishGen founder Susan King grow the organization from a bulletin board service to very much what it is today. Among her many roles, she was Vice President of Communications and the first moderator of the JewishGen Discussion Group. She also was on the JewishGen Board of Directors for a number of years. May her memory be for a blessing. ArkivDigital Has 87M Swedish Records  The
Swedish website, ArkivDigital, now has more than 87M images online. The
image database consists of about 210,000 historical books, documents
and records including church records, estate inventories, court
records, tax/census records and other historical records.The site is at https://www.arkivdigital.net/. FamilySearch Adds More Than 5M Records This Week  A
list of recent additions to FamilySearch, 5M index records and images,
can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch031620.
This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They
include records from American Samoa, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,
England, Guatemala, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, Peru, Puerto Rico,
Sierra Leone, South Africa and United States.Notable are more than 2M United States, GenealogyBank Historical Newspaper Obituaries, 1815–2011, and nearly 3M U.S. World War II Draft Records. 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. There is also no indication of how
many records were added to the updated collections.New Collections UK, Household Cavalry Records, 1799–1920 London, England, Newgate Calendar of Prisoners, 1785–1853 Updated Collections Berlin, Germany, Births, 1874–1906 Montana, Birth Records, 1897–1988 Montana, Marriage Records, 1943–1988 Montana, Divorce Records, 1943–1988 Ohio, Death Records, 1908–1932, 1938–2018 U.S., Northern Pacific Railway Company Personnel Files, 1890–1963
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| Nu?
What's New?
is published weekly
by Avotaynu, Inc. Copyright 2020, Avotaynu, Inc. All rights reserved To change an e-mail address, send a request to info@avotaynu.com To subscribe to AVOTAYNU, The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, go to http://www.avotaynu.com/journal.htm To order books from our catalog, go to http://www.avotaynu.com/catalog.htm To contact us by postal mail, write: Avotaynu, Inc.; 794 Edgewood Ave.; New Haven, CT 06515 Telephone (U.S.) : 475-202-6575 |
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