The Stars and Stripes – news for the average guy in a foxhole

The Stars and Stripes – news for the average guy in a foxhole

A few years ago, a project necessitated that I look into The Stars and Stripes newspaper.  Back at the time, this necessitated a trip to the Library of Congress (not that I’m complaining!).

Did you know that this iconic military-based newspaper is now partially digitized?  I learned this via World War I: From Red Glare to Debonair on the Library of Congress blog.

The handful of enlisted men who began cranking it out insisted that it be written with flair and cover the things the average guy in a foxhole would want to know about.

The digitized collection is called -- Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918 to 1919.

This online collection includes the complete seventy-one-week run of The Stars and Stripes World War I edition. The Stars and Stripes was published in France by the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) of the United States Army from February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919.

If your ancestor served in the Army during WWI, read the news just as they did.

Did your ancestor serve during World War II (WWII) or later?  There is a subscription-based online archive of the newspaper (including various editions produced) 1942-1999 via The Newspaper Archives of Stars and Stripes.



What other military newspaper archives are you aware of?

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Runaway Slave Advertisements -- Invaluable to descendants of the slaves & their former owners

As Black History Month winds down, let’s look at another invaluable research resource – Runaway Slave Advertisements.

Slaves did not always want to remain on the plantation or on the most recent plantation where they found themselves either to resist slavery, or, if relocated far from family, to try and reunite with kin.

There are xx projects focused on these records though you can access them using other techniques also.

• Louisiana Runaway Slave Advertisements, 1836-1865 [database]
• NC Runaway Slave Advertisements, 1751-1840 [database]
• Virginia Run away from the Subscriber – Runaway Slave Advertisements 1745-1775: A selection [article]
• The Geography of Slavery (Advertisements) (1730s-1800s) [database] -- is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers.
  
• Texas Runaway Slave Project
• Documenting Runaway Slaves [MS]

You are not limited to finding these advertisements through these databases.  Search on “runaway slave” in databases like Chronicling America (free), Newspapers.com, Genealogybank, and other digitized newspaper services and you will find many entries, possibly in a newspaper local to where your ancestors lived.

Often these advertisements provide a detailed description of the individual and sometimes with information on what plantation s/he was born on, who sold to and where, and other helpful details.

Have you found an ancestor mentioned in a Runaway Slave advertisement?

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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British Library Using Robots to Preserve Newspapers

Newspapers are crumbling faster than they can be preserved, or at least that is how it often feels!

An article, Not fade away... how robots are preserving our old newspapers, about part of the efforts by the British Library to preserve the British newspaper heritage has a Sci-Fi feel to it and yet this technology is in use right now rushing against time ...

A gigantic robotic vault, the National Newspaper Building in Boston Spa, near Leeds, is the British Library’s high-tech approach to safeguarding what it rather endearingly terms “the national memory” – 750m pages of news, covering more than three centuries of goings-on, as reported in papers across the nation. From political turmoil to humanitarian crisis, murder cases to local marriage notices, it’s all here. And it’s growing. “We’re adding something like 1,200 titles every week,” says Alasdair Bruce, manager of the British Library Newspaper Programme.

The article goes on to discuss other preservation elements, the challenges of preservation and digitization and recognition that even when digitization occurs, can we ensure that the digital format will be preserved and accessible!

Kind of reminds me of when it seems for every question I get an answer to, about ten or more new questions emerge ...

Yet, that doesn’t stop us from answering questions nor will it stop entities like the British Library from doing all they can to preserve its holdings for future generations.

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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It's not too late -- FREE access to Toronto Star (ends 31 May 2015)

Just learned that the Toronto Star Archives has been offering FREE access since May 17!

It’s not too late to check out this neat newspaper!

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Toronto shares ...

Free Access To Toronto Star Archives

The Toronto Star is offering free access to their archives May 17-May 31.

The archive dates covered are January 1, 1894-December 2011 for images.

Searches are by date or subject.  To access the archives go to: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/search.html  ...

  

Read the full blurb here.

Editor’s Note:  This really caught my eye as my daughter and I have been watching Murdoch Mysteries (via Netflix) which happens to be set in Toronto and revolves around a lot of true historical events.  With every episode we are always vetting some element of historical context.  It’s been fun.

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Join the Hive & the New York Times in a New Crowdsourcing Project

Crowdsourcing projects are always neat & fun!

The most recent large-scale one I’ve heard about involves The New York Times. NYT asks readers to help identify print ads, using a platform for crowdsourcing called Hive.

The New York Times’ research and development lab has launched a new project asking readers for help in identifying old advertisements from its print archive — and the project is the first to be built on a new open-source platform for crowdsourcing called Hive

When you visit the Madison interface you can jump right into finding, tagging and /or transcribing ads.  Here is some context for the genesis of the project.

The digitization of our archives has primarily focused on news articles, thus the ads have no metadata (company names, product categories, ad text, etc.) that would allow for either discovery or research. Madison invites Times readers to explore the past through these advertisements, and to contribute to the archive by finding, tagging, and even transcribing ads. Your contributions will aid researchers and projects both inside and outside of The New York Times for years to come.

Ads do contain fascinating information, not just for social context and also possibly about the very ancestors you are researching.  I have researched many individuals who have placed advertisements in the newspaper about their business.  I’ve learned about their business, where is was located, when it went out of business (if it did), where it moved (if expanding), taking on a partner, etc.

Now that we’ve discovered our insatiable appetite for newspaper content, let’s help make sure that we have access to ALL newspaper content and not just the articles.

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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Upfront Mini Bytes – Ashkenazic Jews, The Vault, Congregational Archive, British WWI Army Diaries, Google Newspaper Archive, Canadian Parliament, Durham (NC), American-Canadian Marriages

Welcome to our newest edition of our periodic feature Upfront Mini Bytes.  In Upfront Mini Bytes we provide eight tasty bits of genealogy news that will help give you a deeper byte into your family history research. Each item is short and sweet.  We encourage you to check out the links to articles, blog posts, resources, and anything genealogical!

We hope you found the past editions helpful.  Use your favorite search engine with “Upfront with NGS” “Mini Bytes” or use this Google search link.

Do you have questions, suggestions for future posts, or comments?  Please post a comment or send an e-mail to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org.

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Understanding of the origin of a surname can be very helpful as we research our ancestors.  If you are researching Ashkenazic Jewish ancestry, consider reading Here's The Fascinating Origin Of Almost Every Jewish Last Name (Business Insider). [1 June 2014, Editor's note: the hyperlink to this article has been disabled.  The article as originally written and as edited has been found to be filled with assertions which are non-referenced/sourced, myths, and contain untruths and inaccuracies. Rather than perpetuate this error-filled content, Upfront with NGS hopes to soon post an editorial about this article and the critical reaction it received from the community.]

If you don’t read The Vault on Slate.com with posts by Rebecca Onion, you might want to add it to your list.  It is a neat blog where interesting historic information is often posted – typically in the form of a visual graphic that tells a story.  Some examples are: Some Everyday Words That Meant Really Different Things to Early American Colonists, Chart Shows Occupations of Soldiers Most Likely to Be Rejected by the Union Army. (Sorry, Editors, Barkeeps, and Tailors.), and A Map of Hundreds of Noise Complaints in 1920s Manhattan, and Four Other Stupendous Digital History Projects. You can access the blog version here, which gives you a sense of the esoteric and interesting history tidbits shared.

Church archives and their records are fascinating.  For some ancestors, early mentions in church records may be the only documentation of their existence, especially if they were landless, female, or just generally “under the radar” of who was documented.  If you had practicing Congregationalist ancestors who lived in New England in the Colonial Era, check out the Congregational Library & Archives History Matters digital collection.

 

British Army war diaries (1914-1922) are online with more to be added. These are British Army unit war diaries for both Flanders and France. Note that these are not personal diaries.

Though the Google news archive of newspapers is no longer being added to, this doesn’t mean that you can’t access its really neat historic archives.  Go to this page and you will see a list of all newspapers (or you can search for a title). Select a newspaper of interest and then you can browse the available issues.  You can also search through the newspapers though I suggest you put the name of the newspaper in quotes along with your search term.  The absence of a result may not truly mean that there is no matching content. Between the vagaries of the search feature and OCR indexing technology, don’t completely trust the search feature!

If you want a view of the Canadian Parliament in action, the historical debates (in English and French) of both the Senate and the House of Commons from 1867-mid 1990s are now online. Who knows, maybe a member of your family was a topic of conversation either directly or as part of a group impacted by the outcome of a debated topic.

Community digitization projects are always fascinating.  Durham (NC) has a project, Digital Durham that includes Personal Papers, Business Records, Maps, Photographs, Printed Works, Miscellany, Public Records, and Audio all accessible online thanks to funding from Duke University and the North Carolina State Library.

The Maine Franco-American Genealogical Society has created a summary of American-Canadian Marriages 1599-1984 that reflects “Marriages from Canadian Parishes with American descendants.”

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

Freedom's Journal, First African-American Owned & Operated Newspaper Published in the US

The Wisconsin History Society has placed online all 103 issues of the Freedom’s Journal; the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. The Journal was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829.

Besides accessing the newspaper archive, you can learn more about its history and its editors.

Do you know of other “early” African-American owned and operated newspapers?  

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

The British Newspaper Archive is now Live!

Have British Ancestors?  For those that do, there is an online digital British Newspaper Archive becoming available!  The British Library and brightsolid will be digitizing up to 40 million newspaper pages from the British Library's vast collection (which contains most of the runs of newspapers published in the UK since 1800) over the next 10 years.

You can search for FREE.  Results can be filtered by date, newspaper, region, county and place.  To actually see any found entries there are several subscription options available ranging from 2 day to 12 month access.

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.
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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.
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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!
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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com.

Southern GA Newspapers Online



The Georgia Historic Newspapers Collection (part of the Digital Library of Georgia) has a nice South Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive.

The South Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive spans the years 1845-1922 and includes the following titles:

Albany News, 1870-1883

Albany Patriot, 1845-1866

Americus Times Recorder, 1881-1921

Sumter Republican (Americus), 1870-1885

Thomasville Times Enterprise, 1873-1922

Valdosta Times, 1908-1912

You can browse by title/year or year/title or search in various ways!
Newspapers for this time period can so enrich our genealogical research into our ancestors, especially for that 1880-1900 time period where with the almost complete loss of the 1890 census, we can often lose track of people for 20 years!

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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com.

The Growth of Newspapers Across the U.S.: 1690-2011

The Rural West Initiative, Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University has created a very interesting visualization which plots over 140,000 newspapers published over three centuries in the United States. The data comes from the Library of Congress' "Chronicling America" project, which maintains a regularly updated directory of newspapers.

This is not just fascinating and also helpful to us genealogists!  Though created to give a sense of journalism’s voyage west (which it does), it also allows anyone researching ancestors anywhere in the US, to get a sense of the density of newspapers in existence at any given point in time.  For example, in the 1770s, as expected, newspapers were pretty much only published along the eastern seaboard.  By 1807, there was a much more extensive network of published newspapers, though, if your ancestors lived in western NC, the graphic suggests that there were not newspapers being published.



1770s Map of Newspapers



1807 Map of Newspapers

Additionally, it is clear when newspapers were at the peak of their existence and the subsequent and persistent decline since as the visualization includes through the current year (2011.)



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copyright © National Genealogical Society, 3108 Columbia Pike, Suite 300, Arlington, Virginia 22204-4370. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com.