After a month long hiatus Saturday Serendipity returns with the following suggested reads for this very cold weekend.
1. The Weekly Genealogist of NEHGS highlighted an important article recently published by The Washington Post. It is titled, "Help Us Identify Members of Congress Who Enslaved People." After researching more than 5,500 members, the article publishes a link to the current list of every member of Congress known to have enslaved people . . . but there are still about 600 members where more research and information is needed. You can read the article and get more information on how to help with remaining research by going here.
2. The Legal Genealogist, Judy Russell, posted a concise piece on the difference between dower and dowry, which you can read here. She also explains what this can mean for the existence of records for genealogical purposes.
3. As the countdown continues to the release of the 1950 Federal Census, the blogosphere is abuzz with information in anticipation of the event and all the data that will become available. Marian Burk Wood, of Climbing My Family Tree blog, posted some very useful advice on an activity to prepare for the census release. Read here about why and how you should start to collect "50ish home addresses" for those you want to research in the 1950 Census. And speaking of Marian, Janine Adams, of Organize Your Family History blog, spotlighted Marian in the latest installment of Janine's "How They Do It" interview series. You can read the interview here.
4. James Tanner, of Genealogy's Star blog, posted a very interesting piece about the publication of so-called surname books, why they are so expensive, and alternative sources for finding much of the same information. You can read his post here.
5. Nancy, of My Ancestors and Me blog, posted a YouTube video she found at Eastman's Online Genealogy Blog, and it is well worth viewing. It runs just under ten minutes and it is a colorized version of an original 1929 film interview of an 87 year old man who lived in the Catskill region of New York, not far from the Hudson River. The original and the colorized versions can be viewed side-by-side in the latter part of the film. Have a look here.
6. Birth certificates are an important resource for genealogical research, but anyone who has done much genealogy work knows that birth certificates are a fairly recent record document. For example, half to three quarters of births in the late 19th and early 20th centuries went unregistered. Get a link to a new book," The Birth Certificate: An American History" by Susan J. Pearson, and find out what legal and social change in the U.S. created the need for more uniform and reliable records of births by going here.
7. Just for fun, Heather Rojo, of Nutfield Genealogy blog, posted photos of signs around Plymouth, MA that use Pilgrim names or dates and they can be viewed here, but for those with roots going back to a Mayflower passenger should read Heather's more serious recent piece in The Mayflower Quarterly Magazine (Winter 2021) reporting on changes and new publications for the Mayflower Silver Book Project.
8. And finally, in a rare indulgence in self-promotion, I recommend anyone with family roots in Rhode Island to look at the longest post ever done on this blog. It appears immediately below this post. The piece involves a history of the Cadet Nurse Corps of World War II, but it focuses on the young women who trained and served in Corps in Rhode Island. For genealogists with Rhode Island ancestors and relatives, the post provides many hundreds of names of women who joined the Cadet Nurse Corps in Rhode Island and it explains how to obtain a wealth of genealogical information about the women and their families using the Cadet Nurse record cards in a database available on Ancestry.com. If anyone believes that they have a sister, mother, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother, or cousin who was a nurse in Rhode Island, they will want to check out this post and the table I created from a review of the 2,000+ record cards for Rhode Island nurses in the database. Here is a direct link to the post https://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-women-who-served-in-rhode-island.html
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Copyright 2022, John D. Tew
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Honored to be in included in your list this week! Stay well.
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