NEHGS: Research tours scheduled through July

The New England Historic Genealogical Society is offering a slate of research tours from January through July.

Check out these trips to Boston, London UK, Washington DC, Indiana and New York. Perhaps you can combine them with a visit already on your calendar.

For more information on any of these tours, visit AmericanAncestors.org, NEHGS's website, or send an email.

Winter Weekend Research Getaway: Effective Use of Technology
January 27-29
NEHGS, Boston, Massachusetts

NEHGS Weekend Research Getaways combine personal, guided research at the NEHGS Research Library with themed educational lectures to create a unique experience for every participant. Personal consultations with NEHGS genealogists throughout the program allow visitors to explore their own genealogical projects, under the guiding hand of the nation’s leading family history experts.

The Winter Research Getaway, “Effective Use of Technology,” offers a variety of lectures surrounding “best practices” in using technology including researching online, software, and other topics relevant to any genealogist.

English Heritage Long Weekend
February 22-28

Discover the rich heritage of London with NEHGS in February. This unique long weekend will feature memorable events led by renowned scholars George Redmonds and John Titford, including talks, a guided tour of historic London churches, a visit to the College of Arms, optional side visits, special guests, and dinner at an exclusive private club. The weekend also includes up to three full days at Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE! — the largest family history event in the world. Space is extremely limited. In addition to events, the NEHGS English Heritage Long Weekend includes six nights at the Hilton London Kensington Hotel, 179–199 Holland Park Avenue, London; daily coach service, daily English breakfast for five days, and two additional group meals. Participants are responsible for their own travel arrangements to and from the Hilton London Kensington Hotel and optional activities and all other meals not included in scheduled tour events.

Washington, D.C. Research Tour
March 6-13

Research in the repositories of the nation’s capital with NEHGS as we return to Washington, D.C. Researchers will visit the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Library, Library of Congress (LOC), and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) during this intensive week of guided research, individual consultations, lectures, and group meal events. Featured consultants include Henry B. Hoff, David A. Lambert, and Rhonda R. McClure.

Allen County Public Library Research Tour
Fort Wayne, Indiana
May 22-29

Join NEHGS for our inaugural visit to Fort Wayne, Indiana, as we explore one of the world's largest genealogical collections at the Allen County Public Library (ACPL). Fort Wayne has been dubbed the “Best Read City” by Places Rated Almanac as ACPL holds more than 350,000 printed volumes and more than 513,000 items of microfilm and microfiche. Consequently, ACPL is a destination for every genealogist. The tour includes individual consultations, group meals, lectures, and other events.

Weekend Research Trip to Albany, New York
July 13-17

Searching for ancestors from New York State? Join NEHGS as we explore the vast resources of the New York State Archives. The weekend includes individual consultations, lectures, and a group dinner. Featured consultants include Henry B. Hoff, editor of the Register, and Christopher C. Child, Genealogist of the Newbury Street Press.

For more information on each tour, use the link above to AmericanAncestors.org.

New Blog: Never Again!

"Never Again! An Online Holocaust Memorial" is a new blog written by Chris, who lives in Indiana.

What's interesting about this particular Holocaust-focused blog is that Chris is not Jewish. Here is his introduction:

Welcome to my new blog. I am a Gentile Christian who was not directly effected by the Jewish Holocaust. However, I had relatives who fought valiantly for the Allied cause, including my paternal grandfather. I am forever grateful to Grandpa Doyle and America’s “Greatest Generation” for their bravery in defending freedom. Likewise, I am grateful for the untold masses who were spared execution in Nazi-controlled Europe.

That said, I have dedicated the last year and a half to Holocaust research, devouring every book or video I could check out at the local library. I have subjected my wife to countless hours of documentaries and heated discussions about the unspeakable atrocities we call The Holocaust. And in January 2009, I took her and my two young children to the CANDLES Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute (IN) where we celebrated the 75th birthday of Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor.

Since my introduction to Eva, thanks to her video "Forgiving Dr. Mengele," I have researched The Holocaust with increased vigor, trying to find a way that I might help to ensure that it never happens again. Then, I picked up Abraham Foxman’s book "Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism" and realized that education is the only means to that end. Therefore, I present this blog as a lasting memorial to the 6-million-plus who suffered and died nearly two generations ago.

Shalom.

Visit Chris's blog at the link above.

Indiana: 5,600 Jewish graves databased

A three-year project in Indianapolis has documented 5,600 graves in the city's 11 old Jewish cemeteries on Kelly Street. The database is now online in JewishGen's Jewish Online Worldwide Burial Register (JOWBR).

Gloria Green recently completed effort has been hailed by genealogists and historians in the preservation of the city's Jewish past and was covered in this IndyStar.com story.

Green and volunteers sifted through handwritten congregational and mortuary records dating to 1935. And they went headstone to headstone through the crowded rows of graves. In some cases, Green dived into thickets searching for headstones lost to time and overgrowth.

The richest trove of new information may be the record of the dead buried by poorer ethnic immigrant groups whose recordkeeping was the spottiest -- those of Russian, Polish and Hungarian Jewish descent and one cemetery owned by a synagogue known simply as "the peddlers congregation."

The wave of Jewish immigration to Indianapolis began with a trickle of German Jews who arrived in the decade before the Civil War. Other groups followed. But at its peak in the 1920s, the area bounded by Bluff Road and South Meridian, McCarty and Raymond streets was a thriving Jewish enclave of merchants and tailors, butchers and scrap dealers -- roughly 6,000 in all.

In 1856, the city's first congregation -The Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation (IHC) - was established and recognized the need for a cemetery. The synagogue purchased land on Kelly Street alongside the Catholic and Lutheran cemeteries. In turn, it sold pieces of the cemetery to new congregations as they formed.

Older graves in the section that belongs to IHC's mostly German immigrants are spaced wide apart and sometimes feature towering monuments. But graves in the sections of poorer Poles, Russians and Hungarians -- cemeteries set aside for defunct congregations such as Shara Tefilo, Knesses Israel and Ohev Zedeck -- are wedged so close together there's barely room for a blade of grass.

"Poorer people have less space in this world and the next," said Rabbi Arnold Bienstock, whose Congregation Shaarey Tefilla in Carmel is the spiritual escendant of Shara Tefilo, Knesses Israel and the "peddler's congregation," Esras Achem.

Until Green's effort to document the burial sites, Bienstock's congregation had no records of its ancestors in the Kelly Street cemeteries.

Jewish burials are still conducted in the old Kelly Street cemeteries, but most burials today are in the newer cemeteries near today's center of Jewish life on the Northside and in Hamilton County; there are some 10,000 Jews in the Indianapolis area.

For Green, an office manager in a commercial real estate business, this journey into the past began during a meeting of her genealogy club at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck. A representative of a Jewish genealogy Web site said people from around the world would call for information about relatives buried in Indianapolis' Kelly Street cemeteries, but there was none to give. Green took up the cause.

The fruit of her labors -- and those of her volunteers -- is evident now that information is available on the Web site. As to why she took on the task, Green points to the song from "Fiddler on the Roof." It is all about "tradition," in this case, of honoring the dead.

Birth and death dates are recorded by the Hebrew calendar; some stones have only Hebrew, some have English on the back and there are Jewish symbols (Star of David and the menorah). Some stones bear black and white photos of the deceased.

Read the complete article at the link above.

History's mysteries: The walking stick returns

The Fort Wayne (Indiana) Journal Gazette offered a Jewish genealogy story about Congregation Achduth Vesholom's 160th anniversary and a piece of its 19th-century past brought back by modern technology.

The item is an engraved, golden-topped walking stick, presented by the congregation to its founder, that had been languishing in a Philadelphia-area man’s estate.

The tale worthy of PBS’ “History Detectives” began with an e-mail that arrived at the synagogue’s office in April, says Beth Zweig, of Fort Wayne, the congregation’s president and celebration coordinator.

“Hi, my name is Ed Romanofsky. I’m doing a favor for a friend. He has an old cane,” the e-mail began.

Romanofsky, 56, of Havertown, Pa., picks up the story. The friend, Ed Campuzano of Upper Darby, was cleaning out his brother’s house after his death and found the cane. It was inscribed “F. Nirdlinger Esquire from the members of Congregation Achduth Vesholom, Fort Wayne, Ind.”

Campuzano wanted to return the cane to the Nirdlinger family but didn't know how to find them. Romanofsky Googled Frederic Nirdlinger and found a hit on the synagogue's website history. Zweig, who wrote about the congregation's early history, recognized the name immediately.

Nirdlinger, she says, was not just anybody. The German-born merchant was the leader of the 23 founding members of the Society for Visiting the Sick and Burying the Dead, the predecessor to Achduth Vesholom.

Indeed, he had allowed the young, then-Orthodox, Jewish congregation, the oldest in Indiana, to meet in his brick home for services. Men sat in one parlor and the women and children in another, as was traditional then, she says.

Nirdlinger was a businessman whose New York Emporium grew to be one of the largest clothing stores in the state. While there were no descendants in the congregation as Romanofsky and Campuzano had hoped, Zweig knew where to find one.

A few years ago, she says, Roger and Mimi Arnstine of Cleveland had contacted the congregation while visiting Fort Wayne to research their genealogy at the Allen County Public Library. Roger Arnstine is Frederic Nirdlinger’s great-great-grandson.

Zweig contacted the Arnstines, and the stick was reunited with the family by August.

The story behind the story:

Campuzano’s brother found the stick some four decades ago on a train from Philly to New York. He liked it and took it home.

Zweig checked through the congregation's records - translated from German at the library, but found no mention of the stick as a gift. She thinks it might have been an 1865 gift after Nirdlinger had spent 15 years as president of the synagogue.

The Arnstines were planning to attend the anniversary celebration, along with another descendant who recently appeared on the scene.

Kristine Nirdlinger - great-great-great-niece of the founder - lives in the Chicago area and contacted the congregation at Rosh Hashana. She is coming with her fiancé and her parents. She recently learned about her Jewish ancestors as she prepared to marry a Jewish man. She has converted to Judaism and discovered her link to the congregation.

Read the complete story about the second-oldest Reform congregation west of the Rockies at the link above.

Indiana: Photos go high-tech

This Post-Tribune story about a library program on photographs is interesting not only because of its content but also for the list of genealogy magazines the library carries (Ancestry, Family Tree, Internet Genealogy and The Genealogical Helper).

Mary Shultz of Schererville recently acquired two unique photographs -- one of her great-great-grandfather in his Sunday finery, and another of him with one of his friends.

Although the pictures aren't unusual, the tintype on which they are printed certainly is. Shultz recently attended a program at the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville called "Repairing and Dating Family Heirlooms" to see what could be done with the tintype items, plus other photos dating to the late 1880s and early 1900s.

"There are a lot of pictures I need to work on," she said of her new quest to preserve family history. "I came here to see where I should start and what I can do."

The two-session event was co-sponsored by the library and the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society.

Eric Basir, a teacher and author of "Digital Restoration Book 1," led the program. Basir owns a retouching studio in Evanston, Ill., and sponsored the launch of Lostandfoundphotos.net, a free service to provide a forum for genealogists to identify lost or unknown photos. He serves the genealogical community as a teacher and writer of "Ask the Retoucher," a column for genealogical publications.

Basir used photographs of audience members to demonstrate the techniques. In a nutshell, a photo is scanned into a computer, then digitally altered. To do this at home, one needs a flatbed scanner and a graphics software package. Restored photos can be saved on a computer or CD and printed as needed.

With the advent of graphics software, genealogists can do this themselves. Previously, one would have to pay large amounts to retouch or restore an image.

In addition to Basir's presentation, there was a traveling exhibit from the Indiana Historical Society. "A Perfect Likeness: Care and Identification of Family Photographs" focused on identifying and caring for such common 19th-century photographic formats as the daguerreotype, tintype and cabinet card. The exhibit was co-sponsored by the Lake County Historical Museum.

Check with your own library and see if it carries genealogy magazines such as those listed above. Libraries usually respond to patrons' requests, so if your library doesn't offer them, request that they be offered. You might also suggest that a similar program on high-tech photograph restoration be offered. Contact your local genealogy society or historical society and see if they can schedule, co-host or sponsor such a program.

Chicago 2008: Chicago, Midwest program details

Chicago and Midwest Jewish genealogy research will be one focus of programming at the 28th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Chicago, August 17-22).

If you are searching ancestors who lived in the area, these programs will provide information on many sources:

• The Musical 'Chicago' and All That Genealogical Jazz: Ron Arons and Mike Karsen collected standard genealogical documents to piece together the lives of two women and related them to Chicago history.
• Resources for Jewish Genealogy in Chicagoland: Mike Karsen will highlight major sources for tracing Jewish roots in Chicago, including key cemeteries, vital records, census records and immigration records, newspapers and synagogue records.
• Q&A Breakfast on Chicago Research Resources: Mike Karsen will answer questions.
• Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois Genealogical Records: Phillip Costello will demonstrate how filed pleadings, judges orders and naturalization, divorce, or probate case files provide unintended secondary value to historians and genealogists.
• Polished Gems: Property Records Cook County, Illinois: Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG(SM) discusses real estate records held by the Cook County Recorder's Office.
• But ... It's Not Where It Is Supposed to Be! Unpolished Gems: Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG(SM) highlights additional records, such as Affidavits (Dates of Death Marriages and Marital Status; Kinship and Family Relationships); Petitions (Change of Surnames); Certificates (Naturalization); Agreements; and Military Discharge Papers.
• How I Almost Didn't Find Doda Channa from Tshikago (Chicago?): Rony Golan tells the story of how he reunited his Holocaust survivor mother with her Chicago family.
• Genealogy Research in Indiana: Autumn Gonzalez and Diane Sharp. Genealogy librarians from the Indiana State Library will assist Resource Room visitors.
• Midwestern Resources for Jewish Genealogy: Gayle Sweetwine Saini will demonstrate synagogue and community archives, Jewish federations and Jewish genealogical and historical societies, Jewish newspapers, community histories, university and historical libraries.
• Researching at Chicago's Newberry Library: Jack Simpson, curator of Local and Family History, will demonstrate how to use the library, emphasizing Jewish research.
• Genealogical Resources of Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin: Manning Bookstaff will demonstrate Wisconsin Jewish and general genealogical resources, such as libraries map collections, historical societies and libraries and more.
• The Jewish Agriculturalists' Aid Society: Philanthropy and Jewish Farm Settlement in the Heartland: Sandy Rikoon focus on the JAAS (1888-1910) which provided loans and other support to more than 425 Jewish families living on heartland homesteads and farms.
• Research in the Genealogy Center of Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IN: Curt B. Witcher will highlight the center's Jewish genealogical research resources, including the Yizkor collection, periodical collection, online databases, local history material from across North America, and share technological enhancements benefiting researchers in the newly expanded facility.
  
  To learn more about the program, speakers' bios, registration and other details, click here
  
  The conference is co-hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois, the Illiana Jewish Genealogical Society and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS).