genealogy

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/9/19
  

  The genealogy boom has hit a roadblock. The Trump administration plans huge fee hikes for immigration records.

  The move has outraged professional and amateur genealogists, who argue that the increase would effectively put valuable immigration information out of reach for many.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/2/2019
  

  Ancestry Digitizes Millions of Holocaust Records

  Some say it’s a play for customers; others say that’s irrelevant because anyone can search the documents at no cost.

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian.com
  6/18/19
  

  This Long-Ignored Document, Written by George Washington, Lays Bare the Legal Power of Genealogy

  by Karin Wulf

  In Washington’s Virginia, family was a crucial determinant of social and economic status, and freedom.

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  5/10/19
  

  The Problem With Ancestory.com

  by Adam H. Domby

  The search engine functions to hide both slave ownership and enslaved people from the eyes of contemporary genealogists.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  4-12-18
  

  Historian discovers he’s related to the people he’s written a book about

  by John Sedgwick

  And it changes his perspective on the value of genealogy.

• 
• SOURCE: NYT
  3-1-18
  

  When Did Americans Stop Marrying Their Cousins? Ask the World’s Largest Family Tree.

  Researchers assembled 5 million family trees using data from the website Geni.com to test several genetic and historical hypotheses.

• 
• SOURCE: National Geographic
  11-16-14
  

  How DNA Is Reshaping How We See Ourselves—and Our History

  by Simon Worrall

  Many of our traits and decisions are shaped by our ancestors, author says.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  10-14-14
  

  The Mormon Church Is Building a Family Tree of the Entire Human Race

  They already have 32 times the amount of information contained in the Library of Congress

• SOURCE: TheRoot
  2-13-13
  

  How Do I Decode Slave Records?

  For many African Americans the paper trail back to your ancestral origins hits a wall once you reach the slavery era. During the hunt for information about my great-great grandmother, Jane Gates, who was born into slavery in 1819, we were able to find her in the 1870 census, the oldest census to list all African Americans by name. Before then, few counties listed slaves by name, so we shifted gears and searched the "slave schedules" for the 1860 and 1850 census information for slave owners named Gates. However, we weren't able to find anyone under that name who owned a slave that was around her age. This means that she was owned by someone with a surname other than Gates, and the only way to find her by using records would be to undertake a systematic search of the estate papers, wills and tax records, and other documents of every slave holder in Allegany County, Md....

• SOURCE: WSJ
  1-17-13
  

  “Grandma Did What?” Digging Up the Roots of Family Lore

  Researching one’s family tree has become a popular pastime, partly because parents want to pass on family stories to their kids, to give them a deeper sense of identity and history.Many old family legends, however, are at least partly false.Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist and author of “Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing,” says the stories passed down by families are often rooted in one of several common misperceptions. She summarizes them this way:“Three brothers came to America; one went north, one went south and one went west.” Many people assume they have family ties to large numbers of widely dispersed people with the same surname, but DNA testing and other genealogical tools often disprove it....