 |
| http://nsdcgs.org/ |
The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported orphaned and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating about 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children.
Three charitable institutions, Children's Village (founded 1851 by 24 philanthropists),the Children's Aid Society (established 1853 by Charles Loring Brace) and later, the New York Foundling Hospital, endeavored to help these children. The two institutions developed a program that placed homeless, orphaned, and abandoned city children, who numbered an estimated 30,000 in New York City alone in the 1850s, in foster homes throughout the country. The children were transported to their new homes on trains that were labeled “orphan trains” or "baby trains". This relocation of children ended in the 1920s with the beginning of organized foster care in America.The controversy comes from the fact that some (or perhaps most) of these children were treated like indentured servants or worse, although some were well cared for. Here is a selection of books and other media items on the subject. You can probably tell from this partial list that the subject was and is highly controversial.
The mission of the National Orphan Train Complex is to collect, preserve, interpret, and disseminate knowledge about the orphan trains, and the children and agents who rode them. The museum’s collections, exhibitions, programming, and research will engage riders, researchers, and the general public and create an awareness of the Orphan Train Movement.The website contains lists of resources including a number of related websites. See also the following:
 |
| http://thefamilynexus.com/2017/04/19/find-data-problems-using-the-family-nexus-app/ |
Open Google Maps and search for “PA.” Although a common abbreviation for “Pennsylvania,” without context Google Maps shows you Panama! The Family Nexus iPhone app automatically maps birth, marriage, death, and burial locations of 6+ generations of your FamilySearch family tree. It uses the “standardized” place associated with locations of life events stored in FamilySearch. Seeing these locations instantly plotted on a map is awesome. It can also be a very convenient way to spot data problems in your Tree. Let’s review 2 ways you can find data problems using The Family Nexus App.The post goes on to explain a lot about how the FamilySearch.org Family Tree utilizes dates and places. Here is an example.
FamilySearch stores each date and each place for each event in two different locations. First, it stores it in the white box where you enter the information (the “display” value). Second, it stores a “standard” date or place in the green (or yellow) bar below that. This “standard” is what helps you and others find matching records and individuals. It is a “behind-the-scenes” value the computer uses to match to a specific date in history and a specific location on the globe.I am not going to reproduce the entire post, but I suggest that even if you do not own an iPhone, you will find the information about the way the Family Tree stores and uses geographic information informative and interesting.
Professor Jeffreys’ research at Leicester focuses on exploring human DNA diversity and the mutation processes that create this diversity. He was one of the first to discover inherited variation in human DNA, then went on to invent DNA fingerprinting, showing how it can be used to resolve issues of identity and kinship and creating the field of forensic DNA. The subsequent impact of DNA on solving paternity and immigration cases, catching criminals and freeing the innocent has been extraordinary, directly affecting the lives of millions of people worldwide.
His current work is aimed at trying to understand how variation is generated in human DNA, by developing new and very powerful techniques to detect spontaneous changes in the genetic information as it is transmitted from parent to child.The conviction came as a result of a mass DNA testing. Here is an excerpt from Explore Forensics, a website from Great Britain entitled, "Forensic Cases: Colin Pitchfork, First Exoneration Through DNA." The exoneration referred to in the title involved a suspect arrested during the investigation of the murder of two girls who was exonerated due to the DNA evidence. Colin Pitchfork was later convicted after an extensive DNA testing survey. Here is the quote:
In 1987, in the first ever mass DNA screen, the police and forensic scientists screened blood and saliva samples from 4,000 men aged between 17 and 34 who lived in the villages of Enderby, Narborough and nearby Littlethorpe and did not have an alibi for murders. The turn out rate was 98%, but the screen did not find any matches to the semen samples. The police and scientists expanded the screen to men with an alibi, but still did not find a match.The first forensic DNA conviction in the United States was in the case of The People v. George Wesley. Here is the full citation to the case.
In August 1987, a woman overheard a colleague, Ian Kelly, boasting that he had given a sample posing as a friend of his, Colin Pitchfork. Pitchfork had persuaded Kelly to take the test as he claimed he had already given a sample for a friend who had a flashing conviction. The police arrested Colin Pitchfork in September 1987, and scientists found that his DNA profile matched that of the murderer.
Out of the 350 blogs found in my reader that hadn’t had a post in over 30 days, 63% hadn’t been posted to within the last 12 months! Of the blogs that had been posted to within the last 12 months, just over half had been posted to within the last 6 months. What’s more, of those 350 blogs, over half hadn’t seen a post in over two years. Here’s how the numbers look:A while back, I made some of the same observations and had a huge amount of blowback from genealogists who took my observations as a personal insult. So, I will refrain from mentioning any blogs or bloggers. But I am even more convinced now than I was a couple of years ago that Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have basically killed blogging. Sure, I get hundreds of blogs clogging up my reader. Today I had over 1000+ blog posts to deal with. But very few of those turn out to be substantive genealogy blog posts. Almost all of the numbers come from commercial enterprises. So how did Julie Cahill Tarr avoid the dreaded blowback from the genealogy bloggers? Statistics.
 |
| http://nsdcgs.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/2017-flyer_Spring-Seminar_Final.pdf |
 |
| https://kindexblog.org/2017/04/14/announcing-new-batch-collections-features-for-your-kindex-archive/ |
1. Add & Organize Records into Collections
Archive owners can now create Collections within their archives to organize their records. With collections, you can organize your records any way you wish. For example, your collections can be named as family names, record types, dates, or subjects.
2. Add Multiple Records & Assign Record Info (Metadata) to a Batch
You may now add multiple records to your archive quickly and easily, with the added benefit of designating Record Info (metadata) to a batch of records. This feature allows users to apply common metadata to an entire batch of records, instead of applying metadata individually. Metadata may include Record Info such as descriptions, provenance, dates, places, and keywords.The blog post goes on to explain the details of creating these batches. Kindex.org is a way to share documents and have family members assist in indexing and transcribing those documents. Here is a video that shows how the program works.
