Geneabloggers: 18 new geneablogs this week

Geneabloggers.com now includes 1,243 geneablogs, with the addition of 18 new ones discovered this week by Thomas MacEntee.

Many focus on individual family history, although the list also includes New Zealand, genealogy education, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and African-American.

Here is the name, link and type for each. Click here for Thomas' take on each one.

American Pomeroy Historic Genealogical Association
Individual family history, surname

Durham-Orange Genealogical Society
Genealogical society, North Carolina

Familypast Blog
Individual family history

For Your Family Story
Genealogy education (newbie-focused)

Genealogic Abounds
Genealogy education, individual family history

Genealogy Clues By The Ancestry Detector
Genealogy education

Genealogy New Zealand
New Zealand genealogy

Johnston Genes
Individual family history

MyBlood blog
Genealogy vendor

NEK Ramblings
Individual family history

Nodwell Genealogy Project
Individual family history

Quilt Stories by Sherry Ann
African-American genealogy, crafts, individual family history, Texas genealogy

Relating Our Past
Genealogy education, Tennessee genealogy

The Family Griot
African-American genealogy, individual family history

The Misadventures of a Genealogist
Individual family history

The William A. Earp Family of Lincoln Co., Oklahoma
Individual family history, Oklahoma genealogy

Timespanner
New Zealand genealogy

Read Thomas' complete post here.

Washington DC: Civil War Jews, May 27

Are you familiar with Civil War General Ulysses Grant’s Order No. 11? It called for the expulsion of all Jews in his military districts comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

On December 17, 1862, Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Orders No. 11. The New York Times called it "one of the deepest sensations of the war."

The order read:

The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.

Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.

To commemorate Jewish American Heritage Month, a panel will discusses the contributions of Jewish men and women during the Civil War, including the infamous order above. Each panelist will discuss a key text, including documents and events.

The program takes place Thursday, May 27, at 7pm, in the William G. McGowan Theater

The moderator will be Dr. Gary P. Zola, executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives and Professor of the American Jewish Experience at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institution of Religion.

Panelists:

-- Eli Evans, former president of the Revson Foundation and author of "Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate;"

-- Dr. Pamela S. Nadell, director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University and co-editor of "Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives."

For more information about the program, click here.

For more information on Grant's Order, click here for images of the document and here for the background and chronology of the order and its revocation.

Mississippi: Natchez Jewish history at conference

Most of the world's Jews might not recognize Natchez, Mississippi as a hotbed of Judaic activity, but the eighth biennial Historic Natchez Conference is including this topic on its program.

And, in November, the 10th Angels on the Bluff Cemetery Tour takes place, in which historic characters come to life. This year, one of them will be Clara Lowenburg Moses (see below for more).

On Thursday, October 8, the conference begins at the Eola Hotel and among the sessions are will look at post-Civil War Natchez merchants, yellow fever epidemics, and a session on the Southern Jewish experience (3pm, Temple B’nai Israel). Photo above right is the synagogue in 1872.

The Institute on Southern Jewish Life has an excellent history of Natchez Jewish community, click here.

When the US took over the Natchez territory in the late 1790s, peddler Henry Jacobs got full American citizenship, a first for the Jews of the area.

Some early Jewish families in the town were MONSANTO, ABRAMS, BUCKHOLTZ/BUCKELS, LEHMAN, HARRIS, BEEKMAN, TILLMAN, DAVID, BLOOM, ADLER, BENJAMIN, FRANK, LOWENBERG, GEISENBERGER, LEMLE, ROOS and MOSES.

Friday sessions cover archeology, Natchez Indians, the Black experience, slavery, the Civil War, church history, Natchez women during the war and more.

On Saturday, there will be a genealogy workshop with Teri Tillman at the Armstrong Library at 2 pm.

See the Natchez Democrat article for more details on the conference.

For more on the Angels on the Bluff Cemetery Tour, click here.

The tour is set for 5-8pm, Friday and Saturday, November 6-7, at the Natchez City Cemetery; tickets are $15.

An event organizer said that people enjoy history when it comes alive to them. “And that is what our actors do. They don’t just stand and recite a bunch of facts. They bring these people to life.”

Funds raised benefit preservation projects of the cemetery association. This year's Jewish character (of the six characters to "come to life" this year) is high on the cemetery's Jewish Hill. For the index to individuals buried in the city's Jewish cemetery, established in 1843, click here.

Clara Lowenburg Moses was born into a prominent Natchez Jewish family. While privileged, she also experienced tragedy.

According to event publicity organizer Teri Tillman, Moses was a wonderful story teller and wrote down stories to be passed through her family. “Anytime I want to study anything about the Jewish history of our city, I can look to those stories,” she added.

The other characters are Louis Winston, Isaac Hathaway, the Rev. Joseph “Buck” Stratton, Hunter Course, T. Otis Baker and S. Quinn Booth.

See more about these individuals at the second newspaper article link above.

Tennessee: Jewish history spotlighted

A free exhibit on Tennessee's Jewish history will run from August 10-September 16 at Chattanooga State Community Colege's Kolwyck Library.

"Bagels & Barbeque: The Jewish Experience in Tennessee" documents the history of Jewish immigration to the state, according to Chattanooga.com

The exhibit is a joint project of the Tennessee State Museum in collaboration with the Jewish Federation of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, Jewish Community Federation of Greater Chattanooga, Knoxville Jewish Alliance, and Memphis Jewish Federation, with the participation of other Jewish communities around the state. The exhibit’s statewide tour is supported in part by a grant from Humanities The exhibit will tour various communiities.

It opens with early Jewish settlers emigrating from Europe where most suffered religious persecution. In the 1770s, some of them traveled into East Tennessee and, by the 1820s, Jewish families were moving west into middle Tennessee. By 1870, there were thriving communities in Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga; they were building synagogues and acquiring land for cemeteries.

It highlights historic contributions Jews made during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Stories of interest include the beginnings of one of America’s most respected newspaper empires, which began when 20 year-old Adolph Ochs, son of Julius and Bertha Ochs from Knoxville, bought The Chattanooga Times in 1878. In 1896, Adolph Ochs purchased The New York Times, which is still today a family-controlled enterprise.

It continues with major immigration wave from 1880 to 1923, as Jews fled pogroms, persecution and anti-Semitism. World War II's section accounts some of the more than 1,000 Tennessee Jews who served in the armed forces.

It also covers the secret Manhattan Project and the arrival of many Jewish scientists in 1943 to Oak Ridge. The families built a synagogue by hand, and Holocaust refugees and survivors also were welcomed to the state.

The state's Jewish ppulation declined to less than 17,000 in 1960 as young people left. During the Civil Rights Era, the Jewish communities lived through intoleranve and other challenges such as the bombing of the Nashville Jewish Community Center in 1958, and the 1977 bombing of a Chattanooga synagogue.

The exhibit looks at the contempporary community with an influx of Jewish residents from around the world to work in such areas as health, music, univesities and art.

You might have heard of the Six Million Paper Clips project. This project was developed in Whitwell in 1998 to help non-Jewish middle-school children understand the Holocaust. An award-winning film, "Paperclips," was the outcome. -sided Jewish experience in Tennessee.

Read the complete article at the link above, and more information, click here.

Tennessee: Nashville's Jewish history

Nashville: Past and Present, written by freelance writer Betsy Thorpe, covers the city's unique and interesting history. She shares her views of significant moments from communities past and present.

Thorpe posted an article on the Nashville Jewish community - numbering around 8,000 today - by local historian Annette Rankin, with a photo from the Tennessee State Library and Archives.

The photo is of an 1869 confirmation class of the Vine Street Temple, which pictures (from left) Hannah SPITZ, Emma FELDMAN, Hattie SHYER, Rabbi J. WECHSLER, Bella SPITZ, Hattie SHYER (possibly a mistake in the original caption - two girls with the same name) and Sam WEST (or WEIL).

Nashville dates its beginning from 1780, and by the 1840s there were enough Jewish men to meet for services. In 1851, the group established a Hebrew Benevolent Burial Association, and purchased property for a cemetery. This property is part of The Temple Cemetery, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

Rankin covers the history, permutations, and mergings of other congregations:

Ohabai Shalom (1851), the first in Nashville - celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2001 - and Ohava Emes (1860); the merging of Mogen David and Ohava Emes into Ohavai Shalom (1867); in 1876, the Vine Street Temple (The Temple) was one of the first members of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (Reform movement).

The Conservative congregation Adath Israel (West End Synagogue) was chartered in 1876 and its building constructed in 1902. The Hungarian Benevolent Society (early 1870s) met in a house next to Ryman Auditorium, while the Orthodox Sherith Israel's building was constructed in 1920, also next to Ryman. In 1992, the new Reform Congregation Micah was founded; in 2001, Chabad (Beit Tefilah).

As is the case in most growing urban locations, synagogues moved to new sites as their populations moved to different neighborhoods. Rankin notes that Nashville's congregations moved to new locations in the 1940s-1950s.

B'nai B'rith was founded in 1863. The YWHA (1902) celebrated its 100th year. In 1936, the Jewish Community Council was founded and would become the Jewish Federation of Nashville and Middle Tennessee.

Other communal instutions include The Akiva School (1954), Jewish Family Service celebrated 150 years in 2003; the Nashville section of the National Council of Jewish Women observed its 100th year in 2001; while Hadassah was founded in 1926.

Vanderbilt University's Ben Schulman Center for Jewish Life opened in 2002.

If you are looking for ancestors in Nashville or environs, there seems to be many places to find clues in this community, whose Jewish roots go back to the 1840s.

Thank you, Annette Rankin and Betsy Thorpe.

Germany: Connecting with Jewish ancestors

When University of Tennessee history professor Daniel Bing, 70, was 10 years old, his father told him a secret.

"He came to me," the retired University of Tennessee history professor remembers, and said, "Son, I want you to know that you have Jewish ancestors. This is something you should be very proud of." And he was proud. Though he grew up in the Southern Baptist church, Bing was fascinated with his Jewish heritage. "It sounded exotic," he says with a soft laugh.

That secret took him on a journey to Ihringen, Baden, Germany and the family history of the Levi family, which changed its name to Blum, reported the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Following his retirement in 2000, Bing set out on a search that eventually uncovered information on his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Abraham Levi (1694-1764), a scribe in Ihringen, who created Passover seder haggadot, and whose works are in a London museum. He visited the town in September 2008.

Bing's Jewish ancestry stayed with him. Like most secrets, it was powerful and alluring. And though he didn't know it at the time, the truth of his heritage would start him on a lifelong journey to uncover the history of his family, a search that ended in September in a small town in Germany called Ihringen.

His search began, as most children's would, with the encyclopedia. He read everything he could about Judaism. As he grew older, he continued to gather information about his family. In graduate school, he found a New York City business directory with his great-grandfather's name in it. He uncovered his grandfather's address books and made contact with distant cousins. He unearthed a family tree finding "all the Bings I could handle." But the story of his paternal grandmother's family, the Blums, remained a mystery.

When Bing retired in 2000, he poured himself into the search for the Blum family. "I felt so isolated," he says to explain his impulse to uncover his ancestry. "There was no extended family to speak of for me. It was like searching for roots and reconnecting with an older generation." A phone call from his sister jump-started his investigation. She told him Ancestry.com was offering a free trial. It was more than a historian could resist. With some digging, he found a marriage license that mentioned Ihringen, Baden, Germany, and he discovered his family had originally been named Levi.

Blum was a German name his ancestors adopted in 1809 when Napoleon declared that Jews in Baden must adopt secular surnames.

And for the first time, he uncovered the name "Abraham the scribe from Ihringen," a man who created Haggadot, religious guides for the Passover Seder. Using the Internet, Bing searched three words: "Abraham," "Levi" and "Ihringen." To his astonishment, he found a scholarly article written in German. He wrote the author and asked for his notes. There, he found the answers he was searching for. Abraham Levi, who lived from 1694-1764, was the scribe of Ihringen. And he was Bing's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

The story continues and concludes with Bing's reflection on his journey, which included speaking to a youth group in the town following desecration of its Jewish cemetery:

"I feel closer to my Jewish heritage than ever before. This is more exciting than anything I've ever done in my whole life. I never dreamed I'd have an experience like this." He looks at the photographs of the Haggadah drawn by Abraham Levi and says, "This is an incredible artistic and scribal accomplishment." With pride he adds, "And it was done by an ancestor of mine."

Read the complete story at the link above.

Tennessee: Jewish history exhibit

From Tricities.com comes a story of Jewish immigration to Tennessee and a free exhibit focusing on the state's Jewish history. It will open December 9 in Nashville and will tour the state through February 3.

The traveling exhibit, "Bagels & Barbecue: The Jewish Experience in Tennessee," is jointly sponsored by the Tennessee State Museum with the Jewish Federation of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, Jewish Community Federation of Greater Chattanooga, Knoxville Jewish Alliance, Memphis Jewish Federation, and other state Jewish communities.

It begins with the saga of early Jewish settlers emigrating from Europe, where most faced religious persecution. A few came to upper East Tennessee in the 1770s and to Middle Tennessee by the 1820s. By 1870, groups in Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga had purchased land for cemeteries — a first concern of new Jewish communities—and founded congregations for worship.

Chronicling the life of Jewish families during the Civil War and Reconstruction, the exhibit focuses on the historic contributions during this period. Stories of interest include the beginnings of one of America’s most respected newspaper empires, which began when 20-year-old Adolph Ochs, son of Julius and Bertha from Knoxville, bought The Chattanooga Times in 1878. In 1896, he added The New York Times to what is still today a family-controlled enterprise.

The story continues with a wave of immigrants 1880-1924, escaping anti-Semitism and pogroms. More than 1,000 Tennessee Jews served in World War II. The then-secret Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge brought Jewish scientists to work on the atom bomb. At the same time, Holocaust refugees and survivors received housing, jobs and English lessons.

Post-war, the state's Jewish population declined to fewer than 17,000 in 1960, and the Civil Rights-era raised challenges: In 1958, the Nashville Jewish Community Center was dynamited and, in 1977, a Chattanooga synagogue was destroyed.

The exhibit also documents the recent influence of the Jewish community following migration of Jewish health and music industry professionals, university professors, executives, artists and their families.

For more, click here.