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Wanda recently retired from the Federal Government after 35 years of service and moved to Lexington, KY from Indiana to be near her family. She now has more time to devote to research on the Rowan and Wickliffe families of Daviess, Ohio and Muhlenberg counties in Kentucky. She has published two family reunion booklets, one in 2004 and another in 2006. The latter one contains about 124 pages of the information that she compiled along with about 30 pages of pictures. The books are sold at reunion near cost with any profit given to the college award program which present awards to the high school students who will be attending college the following school year. Wanda told us that it's just her small way of contributing to their future. Wanda says that she also has more more time to devote to posting records to AfriGeneas. Denise Oliver-Velez is currently a Professor of Anthropology, and Women's Studies at SUNY New Paltz, an ethnographer and data analyst for AIDS research projects, and a priest of Yemaya in the Lucumi Yoruba faith. She was the Executive Director of The Black Filmmaker Foundation, Program Director of WNYC-TV, Program Director and co-founder of WPFW-FM Pacifica radio, and Grants Manager for the Minority and Women’s Training Grant Program of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). She is also a former member of The Young Lords Party, serving as their Minister of Economic Development and the first woman on the Central Committee, and a former member of The Black Panther Party. She lives on a Hudson Valley NY farm, where she raises goats, and grows roses and garlic. We are extremely honored and grateful to have Wanda and Denise as part of our team. Please join us in congratulating them. The AfriGeneas Staff
The new agreement provides critical access to these important historical records at a faster rate than ever before due to the placement of Ancestry.com technicians and scanning machines at NARA to continually digitize content for online access. The initial NARA collections to be digitized under the new agreement include INS Passenger and Crew Arrival and Departure Lists from 1897-1958 and Death Notices of U.S. Citizens Abroad from 1835-1974, which have not been available to the public outside of NARA research rooms before now. "The mission of the National Archives and Records Administration is to provide access to the nation's historical records, and we are proud to have The Generations Network among our valued partners," said Professor Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States. "With this new agreement, citizens can discover and learn from these records in remote locations faster than ever before." For more than a decade, Ancestry.com and NARA have collaborated to make important historical records available to the public, demonstrating their dovetailing commitment to preserving America's heritage. Ancestry.com currently has the largest online collection of digitized and indexed NARA content, including the complete U.S. Federal Census Collection, 1790-1930, passenger lists from 1820-1960 and WWI and WWII draft registration cards. Through this new agreement, Ancestry.com and NARA have greatly enhanced their working relationship. More on the agreement and the long-term relationship between Ancestry.com and NARA can be found at http://www.ancestry.com/nara. "We are honored to be a part of NARA's progressive vision to provide access to our nation's historical records through this kind of public-private partnership," said Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer of The Generations Network, Inc. "We hope the Ancestry.com-NARA relationship can help millions more Americans learn about their own family's history and then pass these stories to their children and grandchildren." Formal Signing Ceremony at NARA Ancestry.com and NARA will celebrate their new agreement with a formal signing ceremony at NARA headquarters at 10 a.m. today. In keeping with the Memorial Day theme, veterans as well as Ancestry.com members who have made important family discoveries in the NARA military documents already digitized and available on Ancestry.com will also be in attendance and on hand to share their stories. Free Public Access on Ancestry.com To commemorate the NARA-Ancestry.com agreement on the eve of Memorial Day, Ancestry.com is making its entire U.S. Military Collection -- the largest online collection of American military records -- available for free to the public. From May 20 through May 31, people can log on to http://www.ancestry.com/military to view more than 100 million names and 700 titles and databases of military records, the majority of which come from NARA, from all 50 U.S. states. Source: The Generations Network
Information from about 700 registers from 23 British territories and dependencies include Information available on these records includes: name of owner, parish of residence, name, gender, age, and nationality of slave. Colonies were required to conduct censuses of slaves and their owners every three years. Records were kept on site and copies submitted to the Office for the Registry of Colonial Slaves. After the office was disbanded, some 200,000 pages of names were placed in the National Archives in Kew, in west London. Although estimates vary, researchers say tens of millions of African men, women and children were enslaved and shipped to the Caribbean and the Americas. Many of these were sent to British-controlled islands such as Barbados, Jamaica and the Bahamas, where they were forced to work in plantations. In 1807 The Abolition of Slave Trade Act came into force. The act made the trade in slaves from Africa to the British colonies illegal. To combat illicit transportation following this act many of the British Colonies began keeping registers of black slaves who had been so-called “lawfully enslaved”. In 1819 the Office for the Registry of Colonial Slaves was established in London and copies of the slave registers kept by the colonies were sent to this office. Registration generally occurred once every three years. The registers continue through to 1834 when slavery was officially abolished. This database contains the slave registers for the following colonies and years: Source: Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
The yearlong project, sponsored by the Magnolia Plantation Foundation of Charleston, South Carolina, has focused on gathering, compiling and interpreting records from all known Drayton family plantations. The Draytons held plantations in Barbados, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas. Researchers from the University of South Florida Africana Heritage Project and descendants of former Drayton family slaves worked together to rediscover the scattered document trail which may reveal the family and cultural heritage of many thousands of African Americans living today. Drayton Hall Plantation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who hold the Drayton family papers, were major partners in the research. Because Charleston was a major port of entry and a hub for the international and domestic slave trade, African Americans throughout the United States may discover their families’ roots among the records to be released March 29. No former slaveholding family has ever funded such research in their plantation records to rediscover the names and life stories of former slaves. "This is a wonderful example of enlightened stewardship," said Toni Carrier, director of the USF Africana Heritage Project. "The Drayton family is taking an unflinching look at its history; a history shared by the hundreds of Africans and African Americans who lived and worked on Drayton family plantations. This research demonstrates, in a remarkable way, that we have nothing to fear from bringing this painful history out into the light." In addition to sponsoring this groundbreaking research, the Magnolia Plantation Foundation has also funded the development of the Lowcountry Africana website, which will be an enduring archive for those researching African American genealogy, history and culture in the Lowcountry Southeast. The project will continue to gather and interpret records for the former rice-growing areas of the coastal Southeast, which gave rise to the rich Gullah-Geechee cultural heritage. Access to the entire content of the Lowcountry Africana website will always be free. The website will feature a searchable database of primary historical documents, book and multimedia excerpts, a research library with articles of interest to genealogists and scholars, information on key archives and websites with significant holdings pertaining to the Lowcountry Southeast, and a members area where readers can keep a research journal and bookmark links. The Lowcountry Africana website development has been a collaborative effort of the USF Africana Heritage Project and WeRelate.org (www.werelate.org), a free public-service wiki for genealogy sponsored by the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy, Inc. in partnership with the Allen County Public Library. WeRelate.org is the world’s largest genealogy wiki, with pages for more than 1,500,000 people and growing. "We are honored to be a part of this exciting effort to make records documenting the history of African Americans freely available to all," said Dallan Quass, President of the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy. WeRelate.org has customized its family tree software for African American genealogy by adding events and document categories that are relevant for research in plantation and other Antebellum records. Readers will be able to navigate seamlessly between Lowcountry Africana and WeRelate, where the lineages of known descendants of Drayton family freedmen will be posted. In addition, many of the original document images will be hosted at WeRelate.org. The major Internet archives Footnote.com and GenealogyBank.com have contributed many document images to the Drayton family research presentation, and to the Lowcountry Africana website. The March 29 launch event at Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina will include a commemoration ceremony to honor those once enslaved on Drayton family plantations. The Lowcountry Africana website will be live at www.lowcountryafricana.comSaturday morning, March 29, 2008. For more information about the Lowcountry Africana website, please contact Toni Carrier at 813-246-2201 or email to toni@africanaheritage.com. For more information about Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, please contact Jane Taylor Knight at 843-571-1266, or visit the Magnolia Plantation website at www.magnoliaplantation.com. Source: LowCountry Africana
Kimberly Powell's Genealogy Blog
SALT LAKE CITY & PAVIA, Italy--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In the most comprehensive study to date on the genetic origins of Native Americans, an international research team confirmed that Native Americans who descended from ancestors who crossed from Asia to the Americas approximately 20,000 years ago are offspring of six founding, or ancestral, mothers. The study also confirms the presence of genetic subgroups of more rare, less known and geographically limited genetic groups who arrived later. This study is the first time all known Native American mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences and lineages have been compiled, corrected and organized into a single tree with branches dated. Researchers from the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF), a non-profit foundation building the world's largest collection of integrated genetic and family history information, the department of genetics and microbiology at the University of Pavia, and others today published online at the Public Library of Science (www.plos.org) the results of their study of more than 200 full mtDNA sequences from Native Americans. mtDNA traces maternal ancestry for both men and women and is inherited exclusively from mothers. Researchers combed GenBank, the National Institutes of Health genetic sequence database, and earlier scientific publications for scans of Native American mitochondrial lineages and added previously unpublished sequences to this work, said study co-author Ugo Perego, director of operations at SMGF. The genetic sequences are pan-American, including native North, Central and South American populations. "This is the first comprehensive overview of the principal pan-American branches of the Native American mtDNA tree," said Antonio Torroni, study co-author heading the University of Pavia group. Torroni is considered one of the fathers of genetic research on Native Americans and was the first to discover, 15 years ago, the four major genetic groups to which 95 percent of Native Americans belong. The study released today identifies the six surviving Native American mtDNA lineages that are dated to approximately 20,000 years ago, designated as A2, B2, C1b, C1c, C1d and D1. Today's study also confirms the presence of five more rare, less known and geographically limited genetic groups: X2a, D2, D3, C4c and D4h3. The five more rare genetic groups will help researchers isolate branches within the pan-American groups that are younger or come from a better-defined geographic area, said lead author Dr. Alessandro Achilli, researcher at the University of Pavia and assistant professor at the University of Perugia. "For example, we learned one branch is only found among Aleuts and Eskimos," he said. "The presence of these additional subgroups suggests different migratory events from Asia or the Bering Straits. This study will be used as a reference for all future research on Native Americans. It is essential for reconstructing the history of specific Native American groups and for reliable association studies between mtDNA haplogroups and complex disorders," said Achilli. Comprehensive data from the study is available online at www.plos.org, said Perego, and may be used to improve tests by commercial genetic genealogy firms, such as GeneTree. GeneTree (www.genetree.com) is a DNA-enabled family history-sharing Website helping people understand where their personal histories belong within the greater human genetic story. GeneTree was developed by the Sorenson family of companies and draws on the expertise of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. People are increasingly using genetic testing to learn about their roots, said Perego. "I receive calls and emails regularly asking, 'With a DNA test, can you prove I have Native American ancestry?' Our new research has the potential to fine-tune genetic genealogy tests for these people." He noted genetic testing is not currently accepted as proof of ancestry for admission into a tribe. Source: Business Wire
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NEWS ARCHIVE Jun 2008 |
Contributor of the Year Wanda Bennett has quietly and steadily worked behind the scenes to build the AfriGeneas Death Records Database. Since 2002 she has contributed more than 10,000 obituaries from the Indianapolis Star, the Evansville Courier, the Messenger-Inquirer, and other newspapers from Indiana and around the country.
Manager/Editor of the Year Denise Oliver-Velez has deftly managed the Surnames and Family History Forum (formerly the Beginner's Forum) since 2002 and in the process has helped hundreds of researchers just starting out or advancing their work. She has personally posted almost 3000 messages on the Surnames, Genealogy and other boards.
National Archives and Ancestry.com Partner to Place New Records Online
WASHINGTON and PROVO, Utah, May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and The Generations Network, Inc., parent company of Ancestry.com, today announced an agreement that makes millions of historical records more easily available to the American public. The agreement, which will be signed today at the NARA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and celebrated with a military theme in honor of this Memorial Day, allows for the ongoing digitization of a wealth of historical content, including immigration, birth, marriage, death and military records.
Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation Publishes Most Comprehensive Answers to Date on Genetic Origins of Native Americans