Russia: Lenin's Jewish roots on display

A letter by Lenin's sister claiming their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew is on display in Russia's State History Museum.

The Jerusalem Post - reporting on the AP story on May 24 - indicated that Stalin told the sister to keep quiet.

Among newly released documents displayed at the museum is a letter written by Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova, claiming that their maternal grandfather was a Jew from the Ukraine who converted to Christianity to escape persecution in the Pale of Settlement and have access to higher education, the report said.

"He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of [the western Ukrainian city of] Zhitomir,” Ulyanova wrote in 1932 in a letter cited by AP.

In the letter written to Josef Stalin, who replaced Lenin after his death in 1924, Ulyanova wrote, “Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly. I am very sorry that the fact of our origin – which I had suspected before – was not known during his lifetime.”

Lenin, born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, adopted the name Lenin while in Siberian exile in 1901. Under Czarist anti-Semitism, he identified only as Russian.

According to the AP, he oversaw a brief period of promotion of Jewish culture ending in the early 1930s when Stalin encouraged anti-Semitic purges and planned to relocate Soviet Jews. Lenin's sister requested that her brother's Jewish background be made public to combat anti-Semitism.

Stalin ignored the request, telling her to “keep absolute silence," according to exhibit curator Tatyana Koloskova. Lenin's official biography (written by his niece Oga Ulyanova) refers to the family's Russian, German and Swedish roots.

In the early 1900s, Russian historians found the sister's letter, but questioned its authenticity.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Boston: "Fur, Fortune and Empire," Sept. 22

The NEHGS has a busy day September 22, with a morning Australian research seminar (see separate post), and an evening program on the American fur trade with best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin.

A presentation on "Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America," the recently-released new book from author Eric Jay Dolin is set from 6-7.30pm, on Wednesday, September 22 at the NEHGS, 99-101 Newbury St., Boston.

This sweeping narrative of one of America’s most historically rich industries, begins in the early 1600s. Dolin traces the rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the Indians to the rise of the conservation movement in the late 19th century.

The fur trade, driven by fashion demands, sparked controversy, fostered economic competition, and fueled wars among European powers, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. The trade in beaver, buffalo, sea otter, and other animal skins spurred the exploration and the settlement of the vast American continent, while it alternately enriched and gravely damaged the lives of America’s native peoples.

Populated by a larger-than-life cast - including Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant; President Thomas Jefferson; America’s first multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor; and mountain man Kit Carson - Fur, Fortune, and Empire is the most comprehensive and compelling history of the American fur trade ever written. Dolin’s talk, accompanied by slides, will tell the story of fur trade in America, from East to West.

Dolin's previous book - "Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America" - was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe. A graduate of Brown, Yale and MIT, where he received a PhD (environmental policy), he lives in Marblehead.

For more information visit AmericanAncestors.org.

New York: American Jewish History conference, June 15-17

The 2010 Biennial Scholars' Conference on American Jewish History will take place June 15-17.

Sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society, the venue is the Center for Jewish History. Read all the event details here.

In addition to panels, roundtables, lectures and workshops, there will be optional tours of Harlem and the Tenement Museum.

Here are the categories of presentations (see the link above for specific talks and presenters):

-- Anti-racism, Anti-psychiatry, and the Birth of American Feminism
-- Re-thinking the Relationship of American Jews to Zionism in the 20th Century
-- Center and Periphery: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Jews and Commerce
-- Religious Liberalism, Ethnic Patriotism, and Progressive Education
-- The Sound of the Jewish Avant-Garde: "Radical Jewish Culture" on New York City's Experimental Music Scene
-- People of the Picture Window: History, Authenticity, and the Power of Place in Postwar Jewish Suburbanization
-- Jews, Wars, and Foreign Affairs
-- The Yiddish Press as a Kaleidoscope of American Jewish Life
-- Utopias and Ambivalence: The Jewish American Worlds of Mordecai Noah, Gertrude Berg and Clifford Odets, 1825-1940
-- Gender, Race, and Anti-Communism
-- New Research on American Jewish Responses to Nazism and the Holocaust
-- American Jewish Exceptionalism: Considerations and Critiques
-- Reinventing Community on America's Pacific Edge
-- New Research on Immigration and Americanization
-- Jews, Entertainment, and Politics

There are also optional tours of Harlem and the Tenement Museum.

Read about the presenters and other aspects of the conference at the link above.

UK: 160 years of Illustrated London News now online

Researching your ancestors in the UK just became easier, with 160 years of the Illustrated London News now online.

Hosted by Gale, there are some 250,000 pages and about 750,000 photographs and illustrations, from its first issue on May 14, 1842 to the last in 2003. At a time when copper printing was expensive and took time, the ILN developed a fast, cheap woodcut print method for illustrations. Photographs first began to appear in print during the late 19th century.

"It was the multimedia of its day," said Seth Cayley, publisher of media history at Cengage Learning, which has digitised the ILN archive. "In one sense, people didn't know before then what the rest of the world really looked like. ILN was the strongest paper of its sort and helped shape the middle class."

According to the Guardian, highlights include articles by such writers as Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins and Agatha Chrstie. The first illustrated news publication included all the news of the day, such as wars, disasters, exhibitions and work by famed artists of the day.

While access is currently available only to subscribing institutions, there seems to be hope, as noted in the original Guardian story:

The online archive, which goes up to 2003, will initially be available only to libraries and educational institutions.

The archive presents articles both on an individual page, or to view in the original layout next to adverts and other editorial of the day. Pages are full-colour with both text and tagged images indexed for search, though the archive is not publicly accessible and has not been indexed by Google.

Cayley said the firm had improved the archive experience with each previous project, including its work on Times Online, the Economist, the British Library and the FT.

"The Times archive has been so successful it has almost distorted the way people research, because they assume that is the only newspaper archive. But more archives coming online will mean better representation of different reporting and a clearer perspective on the past," Cayley added.

He said it would be ideal for all newspaper archives to be cross searchable in the future, and that Cengage is exploring that option.

From a page at Gale, here's more on access:

Please note: The ILN Historical Archive is only available for institutions to trial and purchase.The archive is not available at this stage for individual subscriptions, although a pay per view site may be considered at some future time. Users of the archive can share images and articles for non commercial purposes only.

If you have access, here's what you'll find.

The Illustrated London News Historical Archive gives students and researchers unprecedented online access to the entire run of the ILN from its first publication on 14 May 1842 to its last in 2003. Each page has been digitally reproduced in full colour and every article and caption is full-text searchable with hit-term highlighting and links to corresponding illustrations. Facsimilies of articles and illustrations can be viewed, printed and saved either individually or in the context of the page in which they appear. Wherever possible Special Numbers covering special events such as coronations or royal funerals have been included.

For more from Gale, click here, which notes that the new archive will be of interest to researchers in many fields:

Use this remarkable resource to support scholarly and enthusiast research in social history, fashion, theatre, media, literature, advertising, graphic design and politics, as well as those interested in genealogy.

The Guardian noted:

The archive includes an 1850s illustration of a "sea serpent" seen by sailors from HMS Daedalus on a passage from the West Indies – which they promptly tried to shoot – and a column by feminist Florence Fenwick Miller. She describes using cocaine drops to combat sea sickness. "All chemists keep it, and my readers undertaking a sea-voyage should have no difficulty in procuring a supply."

Tracing the Tribe hopes for future access for all.

Family Tree Magazine: New issue

The March 2010 issue of Family Tree Magazine provides another great issue for researchers, providing many practical resources and articles.

It went on sale January 5 and, if you have a subscription, you're already enjoying it.

Diane Haddad covered the new issue in her Genealogy Insider post.

--Assess your genealogical fitness level with a “Shaping Up” survey. Find links to classes, websites, books and organizations to help everyone, from beginners to experts, brush up on skills or learn new ones.

--Learn about your ancestors with a social history of their times, such as childbirth practices in our grandmothers' and great-grandmothers' days, in"We Deliver for You." There's information on birth, hospital and midwives' records.

--"Flirting With Disaster” will help you understand about disasters our ancestors lived through ... or didn't. Find sources to victims' names.

--"Go Go Gadgets" tells researchers what to look for in seven technology tools - a practical article comparing popular models for each tool.

--There's a Toolkit Tutorial on Twitter and its new vocabulary for social networking.

--How to keep your family connected via a family website with the MyHeritage Web Guide, detailing how to use a tree on MyHeritage.com to do research and connect with family.

Other articles include Puerto Rican root tracing, color photography and sources to help African-American researchers.

Illinois: Digitizing the records

The availability of digitized records spurs interest in genealogy research.

More people, regardless of where they live, will be able to access more records and find the information required to advance their family's history.

In Pekin, Illinois, a project is making general research easier for Tazewell and Mason counties.

This week, Tazewell County Genealogical & Historical Society member Carol Hiller finished scanning in the last pages of two large history texts and converting them to CDs: “The History of Tazewell County, 1879” and “A Portrait and Biographical Record of Tazewell and Mason Counties, Illinois, 1894.”

Both books, which are 794 pages and 712 pages respectively, are now available on CDs, which the Genealogical Society is selling to any history buff who fancies one — or anyone who knows a history buff who would fancy one.

Both digitized books are searchable by name and are in PDF format, which can be read by the commonly used program Adobe Reader, Hiller said.

The article, by Tara Mattimoe, covers the advantages of such projects, covering the cost of reprints versus inexpensive scanning to CDs. With budget problems facing many groups, the for-sale CDs ($20 each) are expected to bring in needed funds.

The books offer personal accounts and memories, biographies, drawings, geographic features, houses and settlements, soldiers and more.

It took several months to scan the books and convert them to PDF format.

The project could be replicated by other societies using rare materials from their own libraries.

Read the complete story for more details.

The Jewish dimension of 9/11

An interesting column appeared in the New Jersey Jewish Standard posing the question if there was there anything distinctly Jewish about the suffering that resulted from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

Orthodox Rabbi Howard Jachter wrote in his Torah Commentary column that there was a uniquely Jewish facet to this horrific event despite it being an undiscriminating attack on all Americans.

The terrorist attacks left hundreds of individuals whose remains were not found or only small remnants of their bodies were discovered. Besides families waiting for a measure of clarity that their loved ones perished in order for them to begin the formal process of mourning, the plight of the women who wish to one day remarry loomed large in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks.

These women remained agunot, unable to remarry until a bet din (rabbinic court) was able to amass sufficient evidence to issue a ruling verifying the death of the husband and thereby permitting the wife to remarry. As a result of this tragedy, 15 cases of agunot were presented to batei din (rabbinical courts) in the New York metropolitan area.

Throughout history, rabbis have tried to resolve agunot cases. According to the rabbi, the Otzar Haposkim encyclopedia (1982 edition) devotes eight volumes and 1,500 pages to summarize responsa on this topic.

Throughout history, rabbinical authorites have wrestled with this problem during the Holocaust, Israel's various wars and following terrorist attacks. The New York tragedy, writes Jachter, also saw the rabbis focus on months of research, to find evidence that could be used to reach decisions.

The material used - including records for telephones, cellphones, subways, elevators, dental and DNA testing - connects the city's rabbinical court investigations with CSI.

This is a fascinating example of how the rabbinic courts tackled this problem:

The first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., between floors 93 and 98. Rabbinic courts determined (after consultation with experts) that this immediately destroyed the elevators and all stairways from the 92nd floor and above. Thus, anyone who was located in this part of the building at the time of the plane’s impact could not escape. Indeed, there are no known survivors from the 92nd floor or above. Thus, anyone who was determined to have been above the 92nd floor or above at 8:46 a.m. was presumed dead by Jewish Law.

The second plane hit the South Tower at 9:02 a.m. between floors 84 and 87. Of those who were at floor 78 and above at the time of impact, only 10 are known to have survived. The 10 who survived were standing by stairwell “A.” The elevators and stairwell “B” were destroyed by the impact of the plane. It seems that stairwell “A” remained intact only for a very brief time after the impact, and that only people who were standing immediately next to it were able to survive. The 10 survivors sustained very serious injuries and would not have survived without immediate hospitalization. Thus, anyone determined to have been in the South Tower at 9:02 a.m. regarding whom there was no record of being hospitalized on Sept. 11 was presumed by Jewish Law to have perished.

He goes further into the sources and presents specific examples such as a husband's phone call to a friend. DNA evidence was accepted and US rabbinic courts were authorized by eminent Israel rabbis to use that evidence.

Read the complete column for more details at the link above.

New York: A relatively cold case

Genealogists know all about cold cases. We may spend years looking for evidence, drawing lines between the dots and, if we are really lucky, ultimately making the proper connections.

While most genealogists may not have basement shelves lined with large cartons, each representing a very cold case (just like on television).

[Note: Oh wait a minute, hmmm .... many of us do have something similar - in folders, filing cabinets and piles of papers stacked in my favorite area - the floor]

The New York Times' Sam Roberts investigates the city's oldest cold case - the murder of John Colman - dating from September 6, 1609, long before there was such a thing as Labor Day Weekend or DNA evidence.

Not much is known about him, much less about his murder. His body was hastily buried and has never been found. A weapon was recovered, but it vanished. The only account of the crime is secondhand, pieced together from a few witnesses, some of whom might have harbored a grudge. The chief suspects were singled out because of racial profiling but were never questioned. No one was ever prosecuted.

It was on Sept. 6, 1609 — 400 years ago Sunday — when this, the first recorded murder in what became metropolitan New York, was committed. Colman was killed only four days after the first Dutch and English sailors arrived.

“There’s a reason it’s still a cold case,” said Detective Michael J. Palladino, president of the city detectives’ union, mulling the scant evidence that remains today.

The Colman case now involves some modern police brains and a few historians as well. The police are Palladino, former commander of the cold case homicide squad and now a John Jay College of Criminal Justice instructor Joseph A. Pollini, and Manhattan South homicide detective William McNeely.

According to Roberts, here are the facts:

Colman was an accomplished sailor, one of a handful of Englishmen in Henry Hudson’s largely Dutch crew of 16. They sailed into New York Harbor early that September on the 85-foot-long Half Moon, searching for a Northwest Passage to Asia, and anchored somewhere between Coney Island and Sandy Hook.

The only contemporary account of the murder is a journal kept by the first mate, Robert Juet (sometimes spelled Jouet or Ivet). His only sources were the four survivors of a reconnaissance mission that Colman had commanded, and their version was taken at face value.

Palladino said that today it wouldn't be accepted and said it didn't seem there was any intention to investigate. According to Tracing the Tribe's reading of the story, the police are suspicious of the actual event and outcome.

September 6 was a Sunday and, after prayers, Hudson sent Colman and four Dutch crewmen in a 16-foot boat, that may have gone as far as 18 miles north. At some point, two 40-foot dugout canoes approached (both carrying Indians). The crew said they were "set upon," so it may have been an attack.

The crew couldn't light their small cannon because of rain, but historians suggested they fired muskets to frighten the Indians, who shot arrows tipped with sharp stone. Two men were wounded, Colman was hit in the neck and bled to death. The other men finally made it back to the ship the next morning. Colman was buried later that day at a place Hudson named Colman's Point. This could have been, according to Roberts, Coney Island, Staten Island, Sandy Hook or Keansburg, NJ.

Pollini said they'd have to try to find the body and would then know how he was killed.

“Was it an arrow the Indians shot, or blunt force by some sort of instrument that was made to look like an Indian arrow by one of the men on the ship who didn’t like him? Two other people were injured. They would be key witnesses. We’d examine their injuries and see how they were inflicted. Everyone on the ship would have to be interviewed. Were there any disgruntled employees, any animosity toward him? Was this an opportune time to get rid of him?”

Apparently none of those questions were asked in 1609.

The answers might have added information.

The historians on the case are New York Historical Society public historian Kathleen Hulser and National Museum of the American Indian senior historian James Ring Adams.

Juet was described as mean-tempered - one historian even called it "evil genius" - and Hulser said "a typical crew was made up of sociopaths and working men." Ethnic tensions - English vs Dutch - may have played a part as well. Adams said it might have been a case of racial profiling or scapegoating, or the Indians were possibly renegades or from another tribe.

McNeely said everyone - under today's standards - would have been detained, including the Dutch sailors. A phrase we often hear on television news reports - "persons of interest" - seems to cover the surviving sailors.

All in all, an interesting look at a very cold case, and another one - take a reservation number! - for the time machine when it is invented.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Twitter: Teaching genealogy, history

Tracing the Tribe found an interesting blog post today - "100 Twitter Feeds That Teach You History" - at AssociateDegree.org.

It was prefaced:

With all the buzz about Twitter being the latest source for breaking news, it may be easy to overlook the fact that Twitter is also a good place to look for information about the past. Whether you are studying history and want a little additional knowledge to support what you are learning in class or are just a history buff, then you will want to check out these Twitter feeds that offer all sorts of historical facts ranging from American history to European history to history of specific places or building to history of families to history in the making.

Of course, I checked the list to see what gen feeds made it - here they are.

Genealogy

Learn about the rich history hidden among each family’s ancestors with these feeds that provide resources and history for those interested in genealogy.

@FamilyStories. Genealogy, history get equal billing.
@benotforgot. Genealogy resources, historical information.
@rootstelevision. RootsTelevision.com offers great family history information.
@michaelhait. Professional genealogist shares tips, resources for finding family history.
@geneabloggers. Information, stories about family history.
@genealogynews. Find genealogy resources, famous family trees.
@genseek. Resources, news about genealogy.
@MyHeritage. International company shares resources and more to help find your family.
@lagenealogy. If you had or have family in Louisiana.
@dickeastman. Updates from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.

The other history feed categories are: General History, History with an American Perspective, History with a European Perspective, Regional History, Museums and Libraries, History and Preservation of Structures, Cultural History, Political History, K-12 History Teachers, and Historical Figures Tweeting. There are many interesting feeds in the complete list.

Another posting offered "100 Essential Tips and Tools for Writers of the Future," with interesting resources. Categories include Marketing and Branding, Organization and Project Management, Business and Career, Collaboration, Brainstorming, Finding Work, Web Tips and Tutorials, Niche Writing, and Staying Cutting Edge.

Enjoy checking out the resources in both of these posts. Let me know what you've discovered for your own interests.