I have written about the Digital Public Library of America or DPLA quite a few times. Their free online images, texts, videos, and sounds have grown to 22,361,822. They have many valuable family history resources and lot more. Recently, they launched a new online resource, the Open Bookshelf. Here is a quote from their announcement.
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce the launch of Open Bookshelf, a digital library collection of popular books free to download and handpicked by librarians across the US. The collection currently has more than 1,000 books, with new titles added daily. Open Bookshelf is designed both for libraries and for readers: it is currently available to libraries through the DPLA Exchange and to readers via the SimplyE mobile app.
Open Bookshelf contains an exciting, diverse collection of titles spanning a myriad of genres. Readers will find: the classics they know and love, from Austen to Twain, updated for EPUB 3.0 format with beautiful covers; the best Creative-Commons licensed works from innovative authors like Cory Doctorow; freely available textbooks and academic titles representing the push for open scholarship; and an exciting multicultural children’s collection.
“With Open Bookshelf, free-licensed ebook content will no longer be a second class citizen in libraries,” said Eric Hellman, president of the Free Ebook Foundation. “The Free Ebook Foundation is thrilled to be contributing feeds from Unglue.it to the project."
Open Bookshelf titles are selected by DPLA’s Curation Corps, a team of librarians and information professionals representing communities across the US. They have built the collection on a title-by-title basis, using their expertise to add books readers will enjoy.
Here is a screenshot of the information about the Open Bookshelf.
Quoting from an announcement by MyHeritage.com dated 21 June 2018:
We have just announced that, following the recent separation of immigrant parents and children in the United States, MyHeritage is expanding its pro bono initiative, DNA Quest — which helps reunite adoptees with their biological families through DNA testing — to help those parents who were detained at the US border reunite with their children. We are pledging 5,000 additional free DNA tests for separated parents and children who are interested in this opportunity.
For the DNA kits to reach the affected people, MyHeritage has begun contacting relevant government agencies and NGOs that are able to provide assistance with distribution of the DNA kits — to parents in detainment facilities and to their children placed in temporary custody. MyHeritage is also calling the public to assist — anyone who can help with the distribution of the DNA kits and is in touch with the separated families is requested to contact dnaquestsupport@myheritage.com. The DNA results will be processed by MyHeritage and not shared with any third parties.
If you have been doing genealogical research for many years or have just started, it may not be obvious that genealogy as a persuasion is in a state of rapid transition and transformation. From my perspective working on digitizing records in a major state archive, over the short time we have been here, I have seen some dramatic changes. Those changes involve some of the following issues and many others:
Our ability to access records around the world is increasing dramatically
Time restraints on finding and accessing those records are decreasing
The time from acquiring the record to when that record is digitized and available online is decreasing
The time it takes for individual researchers to publish genealogical findings and make them available around the world is collapsing into being almost instantaneous
The ability of individuals to collaborate and share research tasks is becoming ubiquitous
DNA is adding a scientific twist to the old process of identifying and locating relatives
What does all this really mean to those who are still in the paper/search the records stage of genealogical development? It means that the vision of the future expressed by MyHeritage.com's CEO Gilad Japhet is rapidly becoming a reality. Here is the video for reference.
For example, I recorded the number of Historical Records available on the MyHeritage.eom website about ten days ago. That number was exactly 9,067,418,625. Now, ten days later that number has grown to exactly 9,078,987,922. MyHeritage.com has added 11,569,297 records in ten days. At that rate, they could add over 400 million records in one year (about 422,279,340.5). This is just one of the companies digitizing and adding records online.
The number of genealogists who have to spend hours and hours in obscure repositories is diminishing rapidly. My experience recently helping people from Latin America find their ancestors online is an excellent example. Let's suppose that you come from Colombia in South America. The FamilySearch.org website has digitized, online, free Catholic Church records for the country from 1600 to 2012. These records contain 12,555,984 images.
What do these numbers actually mean? They are simply part of a trend that will continue to provide more and more records which will ultimately feed the record hints of the large online database programs and coupled with DNA will make finding relatives and ancestors in ever larger areas of the world more tied to online family tree programs. So, if you were to start your family tree today and you were from someplace in America or Europe, as time passes, you will be more and more likely to have the process fully or partially automated.
Where does that leave the library/archive bound researcher? Here is one example. The New England Historic Genealogical Society has just added the Mayflower passengers and five generations of their ancestors to their online database. This means millions of people around the world will now have a verified and extensively documented source for some of their ancestors. How many more such databases will there be in the future? As we get millions of sources added to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, to Ancestry.com family trees, to MyHeritage.com family trees and Findmypast.com's family trees, and Geneanet.org's family trees, and Geni.com's family tree, and so forth. Then we add in millions of DNA tests and what do we get? Now I am back to the beginning of this post.
Sarah, from Fort Wayne, Indiana (now living in the Netherlands) was placed in adoptive care as young child by her mother. To try and find her biological family, she took a MyHeritage DNA test that her husband purchased for her. She was shocked when she got a match to her biological father, Arland, who didn't even know she existed.
Sarah and Arland then spoke on the phone numerous times, but today was the first time they met.
These types of reunions are going to become more common as MyHeritage.com and the other DNA testing and matching companies keep growing. I am glad this one turned out so well.
Many of the genealogy database programs, both online and desktop, show entries for a birth date and a christening date. The christening date is a church recorded date of the baptism. In many countries, particularly those with Catholic or Protestant heritages, birth dates may not be recorded as frequently as the christening date. Frequently, the christening was performed shortly after birth, but there are a lot of exceptions. For example, it is not unusual to find some or all of the children in a family with the same christening date. It is also not unusual to see a christening or baptism date when the person was much older or even as an adult.
The example above shows a common practice of estimating the birth date the same as or the same year as the christening date. In the case above, this might be accurate, but since there are no records of the birth date, the date should either be shown as estimated or calculated. I prefer to leave the date blank unless I have a record that actually provides a birth date. In the case of this John Sutton, a marriage record shows he was married at age 22 in 1705, so the christening date is consistent. The marriage date could also be used to estimate a birth date.
The issue of the unsupported birthdate is made more serious due to the very common name of the person. There may be a "John Sutton" born in Winwick, Lancashire in 1683, but it might not be the one married to Elizabeth Robinson or the father of the listed children.
Genealogy is not a "fill in the blanks" pursuit. You do not get a prize or more credit for filling in all the blank spaces. The information used to make the detailed entries should be entirely supported by the source records. Speculation may help with research but it should never become the basis for entering data in your database unless clearly understood and clearly marked to be speculation, especially if your family tree is online.
So, how do you find out if you have ancestors who were Mayflower passengers? The real answer is by doing exactly what genealogists have been doing for quite some time: you do the research necessary to connect to one of the descendants of the original passengers. The advantage of having the database online is that once you get back into the mid-1800s with your research, you could check the database to see if any of your ancestors show up as descendants. If they do, then you could apply for membership in the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, commonly called the Mayflower Society.
If one of your relatives has already become a member of the Mayflower Society, you may be able to find a more recent connection and speed up the process of applying for membership. An explanation of the process is found on the Society's website on a page entitled, "Join GSMD." There are annual fees for membership in both the New England Historic Genealogical Society and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Because of my own New England ancestors and other ancestors such as Mormon Pioneers, I am aware of several lineage societies I could join. Specifically, I have at least three documented original Mayflower passengers. My Fourth Great-Grandmother, Thankful Tefft, is already a documented descendant.
The significance of the database to me personally is that it provides documentation for probably thousands of people in my ancestral family. Now that it is searchable, assuming I pay the subscription price to NEGHS, I can search for specific ancestors and save a huge amount of time documenting known lines. I will likely find that I am also related to additional Mayflower passengers.
These dates come directly out of the Northiam Parish Register and they are correct. So how is that possible? If you are a very experienced genealogist with a lot of time doing English research, you may know the answer immediately. But if not, you may have to spend some time doing some historical research before you can resolve what seems to be conflicting dates.
The answer turns out to be both simple and complicated. Before 1752 in England and most of its colonies, the New Year was on March 25th. Here is the explanation from The Connecticut State Library, Colonial Records and Topics article, "The 1752 Calendar Change."
In accordance with a 1750 act of Parliament, England and its colonies changed calendars in 1752. By that time, the discrepancy between a solar year and the Julian Calendar had grown by an additional day, so that the calendar used in England and its colonies was 11 days out-of-sync with the Gregorian Calendar in use in most other parts of Europe.
England's calendar change included three major components. The Julian Calendar was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar, changing the formula for calculating leap years. The beginning of the legal new year was moved from March 25 to January 1. Finally, 11 days were dropped from the month of September 1752.
Learning about the calendar changes will help explain many other seemingly difficult dating issues.
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