Saturday Serendipity (November 4, 2017)

Here are a few recommended reads for this weekend .  .  . 

1.  Yesterday, James Tanner of Genealogy's Star blog, posted the news about MyHeritage adding 94 MILLION Ellis Island and other New York passenger lists. You can read more about this important new development here -- complete with a couple of screen shots to illustrate the new resource. Mr. Tanner also had an interesting post this past Wednesday about the verifiability of family stories passed down from generation to generation.  These stories are almost always fascinating and out of the ordinary or else they would not be preserved, but are they verifiably true? Read Mr. Tanner's take on this issue here.

2.   Barbara Poole of Life From the Roots blog, celebrated 8 years of blogging recently! She posted this week about an important project completion for the Old Burying Ground in Lexington, Massachusetts -- and as always with Barbara it is illustrated with photos. The big news is that the cemetery has completed its names and map project for the burying ground! This is obviously an important historical cemetery and this new tool will be very helpful to genealogists and historians. Read Barbara's post, "If Only All Cemeteries Would Do This," here to find out more.  

3.  While I have been aware of, and have participated in, Heather Rojo's marvelous seven-years-old Honor Roll Project, which collects blogger posts of war memorial photographs and transcribed lists of names from the memorials to create a searchable database, I only just became aware of an equally splendid project covering heroic men and women of World War I who were from New Hampshire. Janice Brown of the Cow Hampshire blog posted yesterday the latest additions to this series of hers. The project posts contain lots of links and informative biographies of the New Hampshire men and women who served in WWI. There is a link for earlier posts in the series. If you have ancestors or relatives from New Hampshire who you know (or suspect) served in WWI, you should really check out this ongoing series. You can start by reading the most recent addition to the project here.            
        
4.   In a previous Saturday Serendipity I provided a link to a piece on the 19th century phenomenon of creating and keeping posed postmortem photographs of dead children and other relatives. This past week The Vault blog by Slate.com posted about a related practice that began in about 1860 -- that of child ghost portraits. When grieving parents could not tolerate the idea of posing the dead bodies of their children all dressed up, they could go to a so-called "spirit photographer" who would take pictures of the living and the "souls" of the deceased could supposedly appear in the finished photograph. Read more about this practice and see some examples here.   
 
5.  In my humble opinion all genealogists have a good dose of the pack rat in them and they are constantly collecting items of "genealogical gold" for themselves and their posterity. This, of course, ultimately leads to the reckoning of space vs. desire. Marian Wood of Climbing My Family Tree posted this week about her method of dealing with this occupational hazard. Read Marian's post on genealogy downsizing here.      

6.  Long time readers of this blog know of my deep interest in the 1918 Influenza epidemic (see "Influenza" in the Post By Topic listing), which is now considered the worst and most deadly outbreak of disease in human history. Worldwide some 50 to 100 MILLION people died in a space of 15 months and 670,000 of them were Americans. The Weekly Genealogist by NEHGS this week noted a Smithsonian article by John Barry (author of the phenomenal book about the epidemic, The Great Influenza) titled, "How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America,"  you can read Mr. Barry's informative article here and then go read his book and one by Gina Kolata of the NY Times titled simply, Flu.  And if you have not already done so, I think you will want to go out right away and get your flu shot!  
      
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Copyright 2017, John D. Tew

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