Nu? What's New? Vol. 21 No. 36

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Find Out How You Are Related to Famous People

Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People, located in Tel Aviv, is in the process of developing an app that will show how you are related to famous people. It requires that you have your family tree on Geni. It first presents a list of the people for whom they could find a connection, listing the most closely related first. Then clicking on the image of the person, the exact relationship is shown.

For example, in my case, I am most closely related to the baseball player, Sandy Koufax. It requires only 10 connections to complete the link. Koufax is my wife’s mother’s brother’s daughter’s husband’s mother’s father’s son’s son’s son.

A mere 14 connections links me to Arthur Rubenstein. Not all the personalities are famous. Some are notorious. I am only 15 links away from Bernie Madoff.

Try it out at https://bh.jhn.ngo/.

RootsTech 2021 Will Be a Free Global Virtual Event

FamilySearch, sponsor of RootsTech, has announced the annual conference will be virtual and at no charge. It will be held February 25–27, 2021. Previous years, when there was a registration fee, the event attracted more than 20,000 people.

Classes will be taught in many languages, and presenters will teach from a number of international locations. RootsTech Connect 2021 will offer a combination of both livestream and on-demand content to accommodate differences in time zone for participants. In addition, sessions will be available to view on-demand after the event concludes.

The complete announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FSRoosTech1.

Use of MyHeritage Photo Editors at No Charge Ends September 10

MyHeritage Photo Enhancer and MyHeritage In Color are still available for free, unlimited use until September 10. Thereafter it will be available only to paid subscribers.

I have been using an older version of the Paint Shop Pro software to enhance the images published in AVOTAYNU and Avotaynu’s books. The MyHeritage system is clearly superior.

MyHeritage has a number of articles on use of photos in family history research They are:
• How to Scan Old Family Photos: Using MyHeritage’s photo tools requires digitizing them first. In this article, you will learn about different ways to scan your photos to upload to MyHeritage — including the scanner feature on the MyHeritage mobile app.
• Use Photos to Enrich Your Tree on MyHeritage: In this recording of an Ask the Expert session with Daniel Horowitz, you will learn all about how to work with photos on MyHeritage; utilizing folders and albums to stay organized, tagging your family members, colorizing and enhancing your photos, and sharing them with your loved ones.
• How to Add and Change a Profile Photo: This how-to video shows you how to add or change the profile photo of an individual on your family tree, so when you view your tree, you’ll see the image of your choice representing that person.

Take advantage of the offer at https://tinyurl.com/MHFreeOffer.

U.S. National Archives Digitizes 125M Records

The graphic to the right looks like a chart of the number of deaths due to the coronavirus. In actuality it demonstrates the tremendous progress made by the U.S. National Archives in digitizing its record collection. When they first announced this goal in 2010, they had less than a million digital copies in their catalog. Now there are nearly 125 m-illion digitized.

The Archives states, “We are well on our way to 500 m-illion digital copies in the Catalog by fiscal year 2024. Yet, with more than 13 b-illion pages of records in our holdings, we know, we have only just begun.”

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/NARA2024Goal.

French National Archives Has Naturalization Records Online
Miriam Bulwar David-Hay posted to the JewishGen Discussion Group that the French National Archives has placed online naturalization decrees for the years 1931–1948. This extends the online collection from 1883 to 1948. There is no name index, but the older records, 1883–1930 have the name of the person extracted from the record making for quicker searching. It can be assumed that sometime in the future the new records will also be extracted.

The data can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/FrenchArchivesNaturalizations.

How to Avoid Being a Victim of Vishing
Hal Bookbinder’s latest (63rd) essay in his series “Practicing Safe Computing” addresses the problem of vishing. Vishing, or voice phishing, is a phone call you receive from a person claiming s/he is an official with the government, your bank, or a utility provider. They sound legitimate. But, how do you know? The essay discusses how to recognize and avoid being “vished.”

Links to all 63 articles can be found at https://tinyurl.com/SafeComputingArticles.

Two Veteran Jewish Genealogists Receive Awards from FGS
Two genealogists, each with having more than 35 years of experience growing Jewish family history research, have receive awards from the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS).

Miriam Weiner was awarded the Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Humanitarian Award which “recognizes the lifetime contributions of a rare individual whose positive personal influence and example have fostered unity in the genealogical community, provided leadership to its individual members, and helped make family history a vital force in the community at large.” The awards committee noted that “Weiner has been described as the genealogist who lifted the ‘Archival Iron Curtain.’ For years, she has actively worked to make previously inaccessible records available to those interested in researching the history of their ancestors.”

Gary Mokotoff was awarded the Loretto Dennis Szucs Award which “recognizes the contributions of an individual whose positive personal influence and extraordinary service to FGS and the genealogy industry have gone above and beyond the norm, impacting the overall benefit to the genealogical community at large and spreading the awareness of family history to the general public.” Mokotoff was cited “for his many years of dedicated service and for helping to revolutionize the way we do research. He became involved in genealogy in 1979 and has spent many years serving the genealogical community in many leadership positions. He used his computer background to develop some of the earliest databases for Jewish genealogy.”

The full announcement including other award recipients can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FGSAwards2020.

FamilySearch Adds Nearly 2M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, nearly 2M index records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch083120. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, Peru, South Africa, Wales, United States and Zambia.

Included is a new collection: Oregon Passenger and Crew Lists, 1888-1956. Also 200K additions have been made to the index of Wisconsin, County Naturalization Records, 1807-1992.

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
Various Arkansas vital records. Consult link above for specific ranges of dates.
Colorado, Select County Marriages, 1863–2018

Updated Collections
Find A Grave Index for Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden
Netherlands, Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death and Civil Marriage Index. Consult link above for specific ranges of dates
U.S. Circuit Court Criminal Case Files, 1790–1871

Additions to FindMyPast Include 15M Travel Records and a Private Messaging System

FindMyPast has added 15 m-illion U.S. passenger and crew lists to its collection. They are:
• California, San Diego Passenger Lists, 1904–1952
• California, San Diego Airplane Arrivals, 1929–1954
• New York City, Book Indexes to Passenger Lists, 1906–1942
• Alien Arrivals at Eagle Pass, Texas, 1905–1953
• Texas, Alien Arrivals by Airplane, 1944–1952

The company has also added a Private Messaging System. This allows a person to contact other FindMyPast members via tree-to-tree hints and start a conversation about their shared past. This feature already exists on competitive systems such as MyHeritage.

Additional information can be found at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/passenger-lists.

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Published quarterly, our contributing editors from 15 countries throughout the world regularly gather important information that appears in our issues. Our publishers, Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack, are on a first name basis with officials at institutions containing genealogical data throughout the world. Some institutions are U.S. National Archives, U.S. Library of Congress, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Leo Baeck Institute, Yad Vashem and Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.

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