Nu? What's New? Vol. 21 No 24

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

IAJGS Will Hold Its Annual Conference as a Virtual Conference in August

The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies announced that it will hold its 40th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy as a virtual (online) conference. It is scheduled for Monday, August 10 through Thursday, August 13.

No further details have been disclosed. Watch for future announcements in Nu? What’s New? and at the conference website http://www.iajgs2020.org.

MyHeritage Adds Photo Enhancer Feature

It was only this past February that MyHeritage announced a photo colorizing function for its users. Now the company has announced a Photo Enhancer feature it states will improve the quality of blurry and grainy photos. The company says that it also improves photos of large family gatherings with many faces that are too small to recognize clearly.

I matched the MyHeritage feature with the graphics software I use (a 2013 version of Paint Shop Pro) and the difference is quite dramatic. The MyHeritage Photo enhancer is clearly superior to the graphic software I use. You can see the results at http://avotaynu.com/PhotoMatching.html.

The complete announcement can be found at https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/06/ introducing-the-myheritage-photo-enhancer/.

Latest DNA Prices for Father’s Day
Here are the latest (Father’s Day) prices on autosomal DNA tests.

23andMe. Ancestry + Traits Services $99. Regular price.
Ancestry. $59. Discount ends June 21.
Family Tree DNA. $59. Discounts on other services. Discounts end June 21.
MyHeritage. $49. Offer ends June 21.

Wanted: Brick Wall Cases for Summer Issue of AVOTAYNU

Starting with the Spring 2019 issue of AVOTAYNU, we initiated a column titled “Brick Walls.” In it, readers presented seemingly insurmountable problems in their family history research. Our team of experts were able to assist some in getting around these “brick walls.”

We are now working on the Summer 2020 issue of AVOTAYNU. We would like to continue to run the “brick wall” feature and invite people to send us their favorite, most pesky problem. Then we will secondarily invite readers (and outside experts) to offer suggestions. With so much online these days, it is easy to think that genealogy is a piece of cake, but we know the reality is that a fair number of seemingly intractable problems are still hanging around. Send your problem to sallyann.sack1@verizon.net.

JewishGen Plans Series of Webinars Called "JewishGen Talks”

JewishGen is hosting a series of educational webinars called “JewishGen Talks” presented by Jewish genealogical experts. The next webinar, titled “Researching New York City Records Remotely” will be given on June 17 at 3pm ET. The presenter is Jordan Auslander, a professional genealogist based in New York. This webinar is co-hosted with the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York.

Advance registration is required. Register at http://bit.ly/JewishGenTalks-NYC. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about how to join the webinar. Direct any technical questions to webinars@jewishgen.org.

A list of future JewishGen webinars can be found at https://www.jewishgen.org/live.

UK Family History Show Goes Virtual

The UK Virtual Family History Show will take place on June 20 from 10am until 4:30pm. The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain will participate. Society member Jeanette Rosenberg states, “The event will provide all the features of a physical show (apart from the catering!) and everyone is invited to take part from the comfort of their own home.”

The online show will have more than 85 virtual exhibitor stalls, an “Ask the Experts” stand, video lectures and an expert Q&A panel session.

All attendees need to purchase a ticket. They are currently available for £5.50 each. Rosenberg states that all attendees will receive a Virtual Goody Bag on the day worth more than £10.

Additional information, including ticket purchasing, is at https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/online/.

MyHeritage Health Test Now Has Seven New Reports

MyHeritage Health Test now has seven new reports for a total of 42 risk reports on a wide range of health conditions. The new reports include a polygenic risk score for obesity and high BMI that is based on thousands of genetic variants, a significantly enhanced hereditary BRCA cancers report, and five carrier status reports that indicate if an individual is a carrier of a disease that may be passed down to their children. They are Joubert syndrome 2, congenital amegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia, Bardet-Biedl syndrome 2, hereditary fructose intolerance, and tyrosinemia type I.

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/MHNewHealthReports.

Dutch Research that Can (and Can’t) Be Done Online

“People don’t always realize how many Dutch records are already available online,” exclaims an article on the dutchgenealogy.nl website. The record types shown are divided into three categories:
• Records usually available online
• Records sometimes available online
• Records typically not available online

The complete article can be found at https://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/dutch-research-that- can-and-cant-be-done-online/.

Ldsgenealogy.com Now Has 1M Links to U.S. Genealogy Websites

LDSgenealogy.com is a website that now has more than 1M links to other websites that have information relevant to American genealogy. The company states, “The directory is designed to help people to easily locate the available genealogy records for a specific town, county, or state so that you can go to one place and find the relevant genealogical records.”

At the risk of belittling the effort, the website does not contain links to 1M websites; there are many duplications. For example, looking at the page that includes links to New Jersey deaths, it includes a link to the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). Clearly there are 50 such links; one for each state in the Union. There are six links to the SSDI on the New Jersey Deaths page because it exists at six different websites. This means there are actually 300 links to the SSDI at the Ldsgenealogy site. This duplication can be looked at as a plus because you do not have to look at both the country and state levels.

See the complete announcement at Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/EOGNldsgenealogy.

Arolsen Archives Reports Indexing 1M Records in Seven Weeks
Arolsen Archives reports that since it started its “Every Name Counts” program to index its vast collection of Holocaust-related records, volunteers have completed 1M names in the first seven weeks. If you have idle time, especially during this period of the pandemic, join the indexing project at https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/cseidenstuecker/every-name-counts.

MyHeritage Adds Greek Records

MyHeritage has added three Greek record collections: Greece, Electoral Rolls (1863–1924); Corfu Vital Records (1841–1932); and Sparta Marriages (1835–1935), comprising 1.8 million historical records. All three collections have been transcribed by MyHeritage and are searchable in English as well as in Greek.

Links to each collection can be found at https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/06/ historical-record-collections-added-in-may-2020/.

Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada Places Two Major Collections Online
Jan Meisels Allen reports that the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada has digitized two of its major collections: oral histories and a newspaper archive.

The oral history collection consists of 200 recordings made between 1968–2011 by rabbis, businesspeople, Holocaust survivors and others. The newspaper collection dates back to the early 1900s and includes Der Yiddishe Vort (Israelite Press), a Yiddish-language newspaper published in Winnipeg; the Jewish Post, an English-language weekly founded in 1925; and Western Jewish News, also founded in 1925.

Photos in the collection are of family life, work and Jewish organizations.

To access the collections, go to https://www.jhcwc.org/search-the-archives/.

FamilySearch Adds More Than 5M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, more than 5M index records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch060820. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from American Samoa, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, England, Ireland, Micronesia, Niue, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, United States, Wales and Zambia.

A major portion of these records is United States, GenealogyBank Historical Newspaper Obituaries, 1815–2011, 3,901,937 records; Minnesota Deaths, 1887–2001, 448,980 records; and Wales, Monmouthshire (Gwent), Electoral Registers 1839–1889, 455,348 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 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.

UK, Officer Service Records, 1764–1932
UK, WWI Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914–1923

Additions to FindMyPast This Week

Some of the additions to the FindMyPast collection possibly relevant to Jewish family history research are:
• Scotland, Linlithgowshire (West Lothian), Electoral Registers 1864–1931
• Scotland BillionGraves Cemetery Index

Additional information can be found at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/ new/scottish-family-records.

Attend the 40th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy

Visit the website at http://iajgs2020.org