• The University of Edinburgh's Italo-Scottish Research Cluster online archive gathers material from the 1880s, the era of the first Italian mass migration to Scotland, to the present. Right now, you can see old photos of Italo-Scots, but check back for more additions. There's also a page where you can get links to learn more about this little-studied migration.    

• The new Legacies of British Slave Ownership database holds the names of 46,000 slave owners in British colonies who received compensation for the loss of "property" when Britain abolished slavery in 1833 (it outlawed the trade in 1807). The database doesn't name slaves, but it could aid those who are tracing African ancestors by researching the slave-owning families. Search the database here. 

• The Civil War Trust's annual Park Day takes place Saturday, April 16 at more than 100 participating battlefields in 24 states. Volunteers help clean and maintain these important Civil War sites by raking leaves, picking up trash, painting signs, clearing trails and more. To learn how you can help, visit the trust's Park Day page and click on the name of the participating Civil War site you're interested in (note that some sites are holding their volunteer events on alternate dates).

• Find Your African-American Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide
• Best African-American Genealogy Sources article download
• Best African American Genealogy Websites half-hour video class
• Reconstruction 101 for African-Americans half-hour video class 

• In our February 2011 Family Tree Magazine Podcast, host Lisa Louise Cooke interviews African-American genealogy experts

• How to get started finding your freed ancestors in the 1870 census—the first step toward solving the mystery of their years in bondage

• How to use the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules to trace your slave ancestors

• How to research ancestors who served in the US Colored Troops during the Civil War

• Learn about the Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy website, which has information on 100,000 slaves brought to Louisiana in the 18th and 19th centuries

• Our African-American Genealogy Toolkit has more websites, books and organizations to help you research your family history

• our Family Tree University course Finding African-American Ancestors in Newspapers: Research Strategies for Success (it's discounted to $49.99 for the session starting Feb. 25!)

• our Jump-Start Your African-American Genealogy Value Pack
  

• PBS has gathered its African-American history content into one place to help you celebrate Black History Month. Watch programs including Freedom Riders and Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr., take a quiz about miletones in African-American history, get ideas for celebrating the month with kids and more.

• Know a young genealogist who could use $500 toward genealogy education, plus a free registration to attend the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree? Applications are being accepted for the 2013 Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Grant, created to honor the mother of The Family Curator blogger Denise Levenick. It's open to any genealogist who is between the ages of 18 and 25 and has attended school in the last 12 months. The recipient must attend the 2013 Jamboree in Burbank, Calif., to receive the award. Application deadline is March 18, 2013, at midnight PST. Learn more here.

• MyHeritage offering deep discounts on genetic genealogy tests, provided in partnership with Family Tree DNA. The Family Finder autosomal test, for example, is $169 (instead of $289) for a limited period on MyHeritage.com and its websites World Vital Records and Geni.com. Subscribers can get an additional discount. See all the details and available tests on the MyHeritage blog. (And learn more about how autosomal DNA testing can advance your research in the December 2011 Family Tree Magazine) 

• Findmypast.com is giving its registered users the opportunity to watch the BBC show Find My Past, which reveals how ordinary individuals are related to people from significant historical events.  With a free findmypast.com registration, you can watch episodes that first aired during the past 30 days. Thereafter, episodes will be available to the sites subscribing members. Learn more on findmypast.com.

Also new in findmypast.com's World subscription is a collection of 200 British newspapers from England, Scotland and Wales from 1700 to 1950.

• The National Archives is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln issued on Jan. 1, 1863 to free slaves in states that had seceded. You can go online to watch a video about what the proclamation meant and how the document is being preserved, see images of it, and find out about upcoming programs. Also learn about the Emancipation Proclamation’s history at the National Archives; Featured Documents website.

• An interactive online map—a companion to the PBS "American Experience" documentary The Abolitionistslets you explore the story of the abolitionist movement in America. Powered by History Pin, the Abolitionist Map of America has images, documents and videos from dozens of libraries, museums and other institutions.
  
  Cincinnati, located on the boundary of free and slave states, was a major Underground Railroad stop. Our Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Genealogy Local History Department selected images and recordings on subjects such as the site of local antislavery newspaper the Philanthropist, the focus of two anti-abolitionist riots in 1836; and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, where the Uncle Tom’s Cabin author lived with her family for various periods of time from 1833 to 1836. 

• Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com has added collections to its African-American history records including Danish West Indies Slave Records 1672-1917 (these are also part of Fold3's Black History Collection, which is free in February) and U.S., Buffalo Soldiers, Returns from Regular Army Cavalry Regiments, 1866–1916. Explore Ancestry.com's African-American history records here.

• The Cincinnati library's Genealogy and Local History Department also is one of many libraries offering African-American history and genealogy workshops this month, including a seminar (Feb. 9) and a class on Searching for Descendants of African American Civil War Soldiers (Feb. 23).Learn more here.

• The African-American Genealogical Society of Northern California in Oakland has a Black Family History Day on Feb. 10, with classes, one-on-one consultations and more. Learn more here.

• The African American Genealogical and Historical Society of Tennessee in Nashville is holding a research workshop Feb. 16. Learn more here.

• Court Slave Records for Washington, DC
• South Carolina Estate Inventories and Bills of Sale, 1732–1872
• US Colored Troops Civil War service records
• Southern Claims Commission records
• The Atlanta Constitution newspaper
• WWII "Old Man's Draft" Registration Cards

• A Genealogists Guide to Discovering Your African-American Ancestors by Franklin Carter Smith and Emily Anne Croom
• Finding African-American Ancestors in Newspapers Family Tree University Independent Study course
• African-American Genealogy Value Pack (combines several of our ancestors research helps for black ancestors)

All three of the show's guests—Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown University; Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and now on the faculty at Stanford University; and actor Samuel L. Jackson—grew up under segregation. Simmons' parents were sharecroppers; as a child she picked cotton alongside her brothers and couldn't attend school regularly until the family moved to Houston.

Condoleeza Rice was the only one of the three I knew much about, and I admire her for achieving such success despite living in a system designed to prevent her from believing that kind of achievement was possible.

All three also have family stories about white ancestors in their family tree, and identifying them was the focus of the episode.

The show showed some research in genealogical records, but concentrated on using genetic genealogy testing in confirming relationships. For each guest, a potential white cousin was tested.

In the case of Simmons, the test confirmed a relationship, and she and her brothers met the descendants of the man who owned the father of their great-grandmother Flossie.

Each guest—along with high school students participating in the Continuum Project—also took an admixture test, which evaluates percentages of African-American, European and Asian/American Indian heritage along either the Y-DNA line (for a man) or the mitochondrial DNA line (for a woman).

Some tests also can compare an African-American's DNA to that of members of African tribes that were the source of the slave trade, estimating what tribe the person's ancestors in that Y-DNA or mtDNA line came from.

You can watch the show online to see all the test results. Also check the Your Genetic Genealogist blog for a post with more details about the DNA testing in this episode.

My sense is that it's not so much which African tribe a person might be from, but just being able to say that they're from a particular tribe. I feel a certain pride and sense of belonging when I can tell people my ancestors came from Germany, Syria, England and Ireland, and that's missing for people descended from slaves.

• How exactly can genetic genealogy testing help in your genealogy research? Discover the truth behind six common genetic genealogy misconceptions with our guide, a $4 digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com.

Remember to watch "Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." this Sunday evening at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. It'll feature the family histories of tv journalist Barbara Walters and Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Bonus: You'll also see  New England Historic Genealogical Society senior researcher Rhonda McClure in action solving Canada's ancestral mysteries.

Here's a preview video in which Canada visits the farm where his enslaved ancestor Thomas lived.

Watch Both Sides of Slavery on PBS. See more from

Last night’s "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.," traced several ancestors of Harry Connick, Jr., and Branford Marsalis. (Watch it here if you missed it or look for a rebroadcast this week on PBS.)

The show spent quite a bit of time on the two men's childhoods and friendship in New Orleans. I was especially excited to see them at the Musician’s Village, a Habitat for Humanity community the two sponsor and where I got to help build houses several years ago. The show also has Connick and Marsalis playing at Preservation Hall, which I visited on the same trip.

Back to the genealogy: Gates presented Harry and Branford each with a “Book of Life,” basically, a scrapbook of the records the show’s researchers found.

Researchers discovered that Marsalis’ surname came from a white Dutch slave owner in Mississippi. A son of that man's slave married Marsalis’ great-great-grandmother Lizzie—but her son Simion, Marsalis great-grandfather, was three years old when that marriage took place. Simion’s father was likely Lizzie's previous husband, a man named Isaac Black.

I was glad we saw an archivist looking... and looking ... and looking for records of one of Marsalis' ancestors at the New Orleans Public Library and in cemeteries before he finally found something. That's reality.

Connick was relieved to learn his Irish ancestor, a famine immigrant named James Connick, didn’t own slaves—but was disappointed that he fought for the Confederacy for three years.

Gates explains that it wasn't necessarily because James supported slavery. His work would've dried up during the war, and there may have been no other way to make a living. The researchers found a military pension record for James, though it doesn't seem to indicate what kind of injury he might've suffered.

Connick's fifth-great-grandfather, David McCullough from Pennsylvania, was an infamous privateer on the ship Rattlesnake. He captured ships in the West Indies and would send the bounties back to the United States. The British crown had a 5,000-guinea reward on McCullough's head.

To demonstrate how varied our heritage is, Gates had black friends from his local barbershop guess their percentages of African, White and Indian heritage, then had them take DNA tests (the show didn’t explain margins of error). Most weren't too far on their white and black percentages, but had overestimated their American Indian blood. 

Immediately after the Harry Connick Jr./Branford Marsalis episode was another featuring Newark, NJ, mayor Cory Booker and US Rep. John Lewis. I had to get to bed at that point. You can watch this one online, too.

"Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." is airing Sunday nights at 8 ET on PBS.

In this episode, former Pittsburgh Steelers player Jerome Bettis visits Kentucky to learn about his mom’s roots. He didn’t trace as many generations as in some other episodes, but I liked the attention spent on each person.

Bettis, an African-American, turned to newspapers for details not documented in official records. He found references to court cases for his great-grandfather being struck by his boss, and in a separate incident, his great-great-grandfather being hit by a train.

The deck was stacked against each man in his case, but Bettis discovered in court records that his great-great-grandfather Abe Bogard won his complaint against the Illinois Central Railroad. Bettis actually got to talk to someone who remembered hearing about the case from men employed by the railroad at the time.

One of my favorite aspects of this episode was the way a Western Kentucky University history professor showed Bettis how to trace his family into slavery. Presuming that the name Bogard was taken from a former owner, Bettis found a white Bogard family in the area and checked will records and slave dower lists (reports of slaves women had inherited).

They found a Jerry and Eliza, with a son Abe. I can’t imagine the feeling that would hit you when you see a record showing that your family members were owned by other people, and monetary values placed on their heads.

The owner, Joseph Bogard, willed Bettis’ ancestors to his wife. After she died, Abe and his parents were sold off to separate owners. The good news is that the 1870 census, the first US census to name former slaves, showed the family was reunited.

Here’s a Western Kentucky University article about the professor’s work with Bettis. 

Here’s a FamilyTreeMagazine.com article about making the jump from freed slaves in the 1870 census to enslaved ancestors in the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules. 

I'll be watching as part of our Virtual Conference viewing party (even though Bettis played for the Cincinnati Bengals rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers).

In this video, Bettis visits the land where his enslaved third-great-grandfather lived and worked.

Archives.com has published a free database called Patriots of Color.

These records contain information about men and women of color who fought for American independence as soldiers, skilled craftsmen and servants.

More than two years of research, facilitated by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, was dedicated to verifying the service and complexions of patriots from each of the 13 colonies using records such as pension and bounty land application files, muster and pay rolls, lists of troops, court records, legislative records, census records and more.

You can learn the person's name and alternate names used, complexion, state and type of service, and pension and bounty land warrant numbers (if applicable). Here's an example of a database record:

If you find someone of interest, click the Resources Used button at the bottom for more about the resources you can check to get additional information.

Click here to access the Patriots of Color database on Archives.com.

This was my favorite episode so far. More of it took place in libraries and archives than the previous episodes, with lots of looking at records and historians guiding us through their meaning. Second, the profound impact this research had on Underwood really came across.

After taking an Ancestry.com DNA test to help trace his paternal side (which his brother Frank has researched in genealogical records—I wonder if Frank has read Family Tree Magazine?), Underwood crisscrossed Virginia from Richmond to Lynchburg and back (and forth again) to trace two branches on his mom’s side.

Among his discoveries in censuses and registers of free “negroes” was a free African-American ancestor, Samuel Scott. Scott owned two slaves, who we learn were probably his own parents.

Due to an 1806 law regarding freed slaves, the parents would’ve had to leave the state or risk being sold back into slavery if Samuel had not purchased them. This shows how important historical context can be when you’re interpreting historical records about your family.

(PS: This website has more information and some transcribed indexes of free African-Americans in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.)

In another branch was an ancestor, Sawney Early, who was institutionalized in the 1900 census. From newspaper articles, we learn about Sawney’s disputes with white neighbors who’d arrived after the war. Sawney was described as wearing odd clothing and believing himself to be the “second Jesus.” He shot a man’s cow that had wandered into his corn, and was himself shot several times. A historian explains Early was likely a “conjuror”—a spiritual leader and healer in slave communities.

At the end, the DNA test results come in and Underwood’s Y-DNA is a match to a man in Cameroon, so he and his father visit their African cousins. The cousin said he took a DNA test in 2005 for a project to connect people in Cameroon to families in America (I wonder if this was the National Geographic Genographic Project). 

A couple of things I want to point out: The DNA testing was very appealing and made it look easy, but I wonder what the chances are of finding such a clear match.

And the show seemed to give up when Sawney Early couldn’t be found in the 1860 census, when he was probably a slave. There are strategies to trace slaves using the 1850 and 1860 censuses, even though they’re not named, and you also can use resources such as wills and estate records and African-American genealogy websites such as these. (Perhaps the researchers tried these methods and came up empty-handed.)

The episode showed that African-Americans can have success tracing their roots in records and through DNA, and it showed how meaningful the journey can be.

Related resources from ShopFamilyTree.com:

• Who Do You Think You Are? The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History by Megan Smolenyak
  
  
• Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing by Megan Smolenyak 
  
  
• African-American Genealogy Value Pack (on sale through the end of February)
  

In this preview clip, a genealogist guides Underwood through finding family in the 1860 census on Ancestry.com—and Underwood realizes his African-American ancestor Delaware Scott was free in 1860, and owned real estate.

And check out this article, in which Underwood talks about filming the show and meeting relatives in Cameroon.

The episode airs at 8 p.m. Eastern/ 7 p.m. Central on NBC.

If you're researching African-American roots like Underwood, you'll find expert research advice in our African-American Genealogy Value Pack, on sale in ShopFamilyTree.com during Black History Month.

Thanks to a sponsorship from GenealogyBank, registration in the four-week session starting Feb. 20 is just $39.99 (down from the regular $99.99). So if you've been thinking about taking this course, now's the time.

You can learn more about the class and see the syllabus here. Past students have been surprised at the number of newspapers that have been published in the United States covering African-American communities.

Also check out Tim's Newspapers forum at Afrigeneas, one of our favorite genealogy websites for those tracing African-American roots.

Among the records in this collection are:

• Danish West Indies Slave Records
• the 1860 US Census
• US Colored Troops Compiled Service Records and pension files
• Southern Claims Commission files (petitions by Southerners—including many African-Americans—who lost property to Union troops during the Civil War)
• Military Intelligence Division—Negro Subversion (1914–1941)
• Vietnam War Marine Corps Photos

You'll be prompted to register for a free Fold3 account when you click to view a record.

• All 397 US national parks will offer free admission Jan. 14-16 to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You can visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Georgia, the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, or the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC—just a few of the many national parks that have ties to Dr. King or the Civil Rights movement. 

Use the directory at NPS.gov to find a park.

• Library and Archives Canada has added digitized images of Upper Canada land petitions (357,831 new images in all) to its website. First search the index here (use the search link at the left; the one on the bottom didn't work for me) to find the microfilm number you need, then use the “microform digitization” research tool to you can browse the image page by page.

• FamilySearch has added 119 million new, free records to the record search at FamilySearch.org (that includes about 64 million indexed names and 55 million browsable images). They come from more than 30 countries including Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and the United States. See the full list of new and updated databases here.

The issues span 1899 to 2005 (those from 1917 to 1925, and January to April 1932, are missing).

You can keyword search the full text or browse by year. An advanced search lets you designate words as exact, exclude words, and run a proximity search to find two words appearing within a certain distance of each other on a newspaper page. (In the advanced search, multiple library collections are selected by default. To search just the Indianapolis Recorder, scroll down, check the box to deselect all the collections, then check the box next to Indianapolis Recorder.)

You can share links to articles via social media or email, or bookmark them in your browser. You can save articles by right-clicking or control-clicking and selecting Save Image As (an alternative would be to take a screenshot).

Click here to start searching the Indianapolis Recorder archives.

Learn more about finding ancestors in African-American newspapers in the Family Tree University course Finding African-American Ancestors in Newspapers: Research Strategies for Success, taught by Tim Pinnick.

This will be the fourth annual National Day of Listening. Americans are encouraged to observe it by spending an hour on the day after Thanksgiving interviewing a friend, loved one or community member about their lives.

Lowcountry Africana will participate by recording interviews with residents in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. These areas are home to many descendants of enslaved Africans of the Gullah-Geechee culture. The slaves' rice-growing skills were vital to the massive rice plantations of the Colonial and Antebellum Lowcountry.

Visit Lowcountry Africana's National Day of Listening web pages, with suggestions for how to participate and instructional videos.

StoryCorps, an organization that provides people of all backgrounds with opportunities to preserve thier life stories, has a free online Do-It-Yourself interview guide.

You'll also find guidance for participating in the National Day of Listening in these free FamilyTreeMagazine.com articles:

• How to find people to interview (and make that cold call).
• 13 tips for oral history interviewing
• 20 questions for interviewing relatives

More resources from ShopFamilyTree.com:

• Writing Your Family Memoir FTU Independent Study Course download
• March 2008 Family Tree Magazine digital issue with our guide to get reticent interview subjects talking
• Digital download article on kin and acquaintances to add to your family history interview list.

You can watch the show on VH1’s website. If you watch, there are some bleeps in a rap at the beginning, but the rest of the show is clean. And good.

In the show, 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson), who grew up in New York City, travels to Edgefield, SC, where his mom’s family came from. At a reunion, the family talks about what the segregated town was like in the 1950s.

50 visits Edgefield’s genealogical society. The librarian (who had to have been briefed ahead of time, but did such a good job of being nonchalant that I wondered) pulls the WWI draft card of 50's grandfather Will Jenkins from a "Jenkins File" (the society keeps surname files on local families). She also helps 50 use the census on microfilm to find Will’s father Peter, and Peter’s mother Jane.

In the 1870 census, Jane was living with a local prominent citizen, probably her former slaveowner. 

50 also visited the Old Edgefield Pottery museum, with vessels created by “Dave the Slave,” who incorporated sayings and dates into his work. The proprietor refers to Dave as the first rapper.

The show didn’t shy from a bit of confrontation: At Oakley Park Museum,  50 and a woman identified in a caption as being from the Daughters of the Confederacy discuss the symbolism of the Confederate flag.

She also tells him about the Red Shirts, a precursor to the Klu Klux Klan, and advises him to study history to learn about “Mongolian slaves” in South Carolina. Interesting. There’s some uncomfortable giggling when 50 gently challenges her about these slaves and how slaves were treated.

Later, at the Edgefield County Archives, the archivist shows 50 the slave inventory for Jane’s owner, R.G.M. Dunovant, son-in-law of prominent citizen Whitfield Brooks. The archivist finds a reference to Jane, daughter of Adrene, in Whitfield’s will. If that’s 50’s Jane, Adrene is his fourth-great-grandmother. 

The archivist introduces 50 to a woman who’s researching what she calls the brutal side of slavery. In contrast to the woman he met earlier, she acknowledges the treatment of local slaves and gives an example from a coroner's report detailing the death of a slave.

50 next meets a Dunovant descendant, who asks 50 about his career, compliments his song “In Da Club” (the one that says “Go shorty/It’s your birthday”) and gives him a piece of Edgefield pottery. 50 says it’s a turnaround from the days his family talked about, when black people always used the back door at whites’ homes.

You don't have to be a fan of rap or a member of VH1's typical demographic to like this show. 50 Cent has a tough image as a rapper, but you don't see that here. To me, the show feels a little younger and a little less refined than 'Who Do You Think You Are?" which makes it very approachable. You learn about both one person's genealogy and how it ties into what was happening locally and across the country.

For some behind-the-scenes insight, here’s a Vanity Fair article by David Kamp, the writer who did the genealogy research. 

Did you watch “50 Cent: The Origin of Me”? Let me know what you thought.

• A new website called Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names will launch in September. The site will contain free, searchable information about enslaved Virginians named in manuscripts at the Virginia Historical Society. Read more about the project here. 

• FindMyPast.co.uk has completed its two-year project to make the English and Welsh birth, marriage and death records on its site easier to use. This final installment of the project makes more than 85 million death records searchable at once, with as little as a surname. The site’s death records include England & Wales deaths, 1837-2006; British nationals who died overseas, 1818-2005; British nationals armed forces deaths, 1796-2005; and British nationals who died at sea, 1854-1890.

• The Holisso Center, a research facility for Chickasaw Nation history, will open May 28 at the Chickasaw Nation Cultural Center in Sulphur, Okla. The Holisso Center also has technology to repair and preserve damaged historical materials.
  

• The latest celebrities found to be relatives: Lady Gaga and Madonna, who share roots in Quebec (if you have French-Canadian roots, you’re probably also related to both women),  and Johnny Depp and Queen Elizabeth. Also, genealogists from Irish historical research company Eneclann have identified President Obama’s closest living Irish relatives in Ballygurteen, Co. Tipperary. 

• South Carolina Probate Records, Files and Loose Papers, 1732-1964 have been added to the FamilySearch record site (this collection hasn’t been indexed, so you’ll need to browse the record images).

• South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977, also have been added (also browse-only).
  

• A South Carolina section is now in the FamilySearch Research Wiki.

Probate records can be helpful in researching African-American ancestors, because probate files of slave owners often contain inventories of their slaves.

The Civil War, which of course started 150 years ago at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, is the talk of this year’s NGS conference. Click here to see FamilySearch’s related announcement about its Civil War records. 

The show follows 50 Cent to South Carolina, where his family lived before migrating to New York City in the 1950s. He visits relatives, investigates his roots at the Edgefield County Archives and meets the descendants of slave owners.

From the press release: “50 also learns that in the years following the Civil War, his ancestors faced the infamous ‘Redshirts,’ the precursors to the KKK, giving him a new perspective on the violence he encountered as a young man in Queens.”

VH1 promises to show a different side of the hard-edged rapper, whose albums include Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003) and Before I Self-Destruct (2009).

Born Curtis James Jackson III in the South Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City, he was 12 when his mother was murdered, he served prison time for drug-related charges and he survived being shot nine times at close range.

Read more about the show and 50 Cent on VH1’s blog.

• In honor of Black History Month, Ancestry.com launched five new historical collections containing details about the lives of African-Americans who fought in the Civil War, the transportation of slaves to and from the prominent slave ports of New Orleans and Savannah, GA, and first-person accounts from former slaves. Click here to access these collections.

• The former Oregon state mental hospital, where the Jack Nicholson flick One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was filmed, is trying to match cremated the remains of 3,500 former patients and inmates with surviving relatives. The remains were discovered in 2004 in corroding copper canisters, and officials have been able to identify all but four of the canisters. The names, birthdays and dates of death for the former patients and prison inmates have been published online.

• The Library of Congress will display, starting in early spring, one of the few existing copies of the first map printed in North America. The map depicts the boundaries of the new American nation -- read about it here.

• Archives.com has created a synthesized report of online history trends illustrated in a fun infographic. The findings:
  • Ancestry.com by far has the most website visitors, clocking in at more than 7 million per year. Archives.com and MyHeritage.com come in a distant second and third.
  • Google has digitized nearly 15 million books since 2004.
  • FamilySearch.org indexed 160 million records in 2010.
  • Sixty-two percent of Archives.com members are over 45; by comparison, 41 percent of internet users are over 45.

  Read over the entire report on the Archives.com blog.

• Top digital destinations for researching black roots
• Heritage guide to tracing slave roots
• African American genealogy toolkit
• Eight tips for finding ancestors in the 1850 and 1860 slave enumerations
• Slave bills of sale
• 101 Best Websites 2010: African-American roots
• Rescued slave ships database

• Civil War history buffs, rejoice! This episode is chock full of Civil War and Reconstruction history, including the effect of slavery and Jim Crow laws on Williams' ancestors.
• Williams made history as the first African American crowned Miss America, but she isn't the only noteworthy person in her family tree. She delves into the astonishing history of one of her former slave ancestors.
• On a trip to Washington, D.C., National Archives researcher Vonnie Zullo stumbles upon a rare genealogical find while researching Williams' great-great grandfather David Carll. The item is so unheard of, Zullo says it's the only one she's come across in her 20-plus years at the depository.
• If the first episode is any indication of what's to come on "WDYTYA?", expect more air time devoted to original documents and what goes into tracing your roots.

I came across an article about a book you might be interested in, especially if your ancestors were African slaves or involved in the slave trade.

Between 1492 and about 1820, four enslaved Africans left the Old World for every European migrant. According to Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis and David Richardson, we know more about this forced migration than about European migration during the time. That’s because the slave trade generated profits, which usually meant record-keeping.

The book is based in part on the data in the online Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, which Eltis co-edited, containing information on 35,000 slave voyages from Africa to the Americas. (Read our post about the database's online debut in 2008.)

Detailed maps in the book show how almost every port in the Atlantic world at the time organized and sent out a slave voyage. Almost half of those voyages came from ports in the Americas.

The data let the authors determine trading patterns, for example, the United States drew more slaves from the area of Senegambia south to Liberia (on Africa’s west coast) than did any other part of the Americas. The authors also found the slave trade was going strong at the time it was finally suppressed.

The book also gives you a more personal look at the trade with information about people and conditions on board the ships, as well as writings from and images of a few passengers. You can read more about it in the article here, and find it listed on Amazon.com here. 

For help researching African-American roots, see the articles in our online toolkit. Find eight steps to get started tracing slave ancestors here.

Mainstream newspapers carried a wide range of stories covering the African-American. A considerable number of white newspapers in both the North and South carried columns or special sections of news specifically for black readership. Stories ranged from items about local residents to those on a state or national scale. The Joliet Evening Herald News in April of 1926, for example, ran an article on the awarding of a charter to the first black Boy Scout troop in the city.

Obituaries or stories reporting the deaths of black community members can be found with regularity. Researchers report great success in finding items such as these on their ancestors. In most cases these ancestors have not lived a life of great acclaim, but have merely established themselves as amicable neighbors.

In general, it's not unusual to find obituaries in mainstream newspapers to be more extensive than those in African-American newspapers. I would guess that this is particularly true in cases when the white paper is published in town, while the black newspaper is national in scope and published elsewhere.

A case in point would be the death of African-American Nancy Greenly of Kankakee, Ill., in 1920. Her death notice in the Chicago Defender on January 17 consisted of one paragraph on page 7, compared to front-page coverage of the event in eight rich paragraphs in the Kankakee Daily Republican.

• Finding African-American Ancestors in Newspapers, a Family Tree University course taught by African-American genealogy expert Tim Pinnick
  

• Tracing Slave Ancestors Resource Toolkit (free article on FamilyTreeMagazine.com)
  
  
• How to trace slave ancestors, available as a Family Tree Magazine Plus article (click here for information on Family Tree Plus) and in the July 2009 Family Tree Magazine
  
  
• African-American Research Guide, a digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com

• The second week of NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” increased its viewership by 13 percent in adults age 18 to 49, and 4 percent in total viewers. The show finished in the ratings within a tenth of a point of first place for the 8/7 central time slot in adults age 18 to 49, and is tied for No. 1 among the major networks in adults age 18 to 34.

Tune in to tonight’s episode as Lisa Kudrow searches for her roots in Belarus.

• The UK’s General Register Office (GRO) has announced a restructuring of its charges for ordering birth, marriage and death records. Starting April 6, you’ll select from two instead of eight options, so it’s simpler, but the fees for standard service are going up from  £7.00 to £9.25 (about $10.60 to $14). See the GRO website for more information. 

• Luckie Daniels at the blog Our Georgia Roots is hosting the first edition of the Carnival of African-American Genealogy, themed “Restore My Name: Slave Records & Genealogy Research.” Click here to read Daniels’ entry and follow her links to participating bloggers' carnival posts.
  

• Ancestry.com is offering a free webinar about using Family Tree Maker 2010. It’s May 19, 8 pm EDT (thanks to the person who commented below to let me know about the new date!). Watch as the experts demonstrate advanced features available in Family Tree Maker 2010. Read more and register on Ancestry.com’s website.
  

Seasoned researchers know that discovering the slavery roots in a family tree can be time consuming and difficult -- perhaps even seemingly impossible. But, as Emmitt Smith's story shows on this week's episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?," African-Americans can discover their heritage. The genealogy team who worked on Emmitt's tree shares a behind-the-scenes look at how they made the jump from post-1870 records to pre-Civil War records as they documented Emmitt's enslaved ancestors.
 
Post-1870 Research
Vital records, census records and other primary sources allowed the research team to document Emmitt's family tree back to great-great-grandparents -- William Watson and Victoria Puryear. A 1900 census record from Monroe County, Ala., indicated William and Victoria were both born in Alabama during the Civil War. These facts suggested that William and Victoria could have been born slaves, and perhaps their parents as well.
 
Since Victoria and William were born in the early 1860s, it was likely that records created post-1870 could shed some light on their parents. Vital records were especially helpful here; Victoria's death certificate included the names of her parents, Prince Puryear and Annie McMillian.
 
The 1870 census added clues: Prince Puryear and his family (including young Victoria) were listed in Monroe County, Alabama. Additional Puryear households were also found on the same census page. The ages for the heads of the Puryear households made them potential brothers of Prince. These heads of households also had the same racial designation as Prince -- mulatto. Finally, one of the households listed a 55-year-old mulatto woman born in Virginia named Mariah Puryear. "Our first thought was 'Could Mariah be Prince's mother?'" says genealogist Joseph Shumway of ProGenealogists. If the answer was yes, if Mariah was Prince"s mother, then Mariah would be Emmitt's fourth great-grandmother.

Pre-Civil War Documentation
The research team needed to establish whether Mariah Puryear from the 1870 census was Prince Puryear's mother. Slave research involves looking at records pertaining to the slave-holding families. Vital records were not kept for slaves, but slaves may be mentioned in records created when the slave owner dies and in records pertaining to deeded transactions. So the research team first had to determine the identity of the slave-holding family. Once found, the family's records could reveal further information about Prince Puryear's family and his potential connection to the woman named Mariah.
 
Emancipated slaves, in general, didn't stray too far from their most recent owner's property. In addition, many former slaves retained the surname of the former slave holders. So the researchers turned back to the 1870 census, looking for white families in the same vicinity as Emmitt's Puryear ancestors. Interestingly enough, there was a white Puryear family living in Monroe County, Ala. This family, potentially, could have been the slave-holding family.
 
The Puryears, like many slave owners, had extensive real estate, so the team looked for the family's land records, deeds, and probate records. In the Monroe County probate records (on microfilm at the Family History Library), the researchers found probate records pertaining to the 1850-51 estate of Mary Puryear. The inventory of Mary's property was a key document. In it she listed Mariah and her children, by name: "Mariah and children Henry, Mary, McTom, Victoria and Prince Albert." Henry and Thomas were the names of two potential Puryear brothers who appeared on the same 1870 census page with Prince and Mariah. The inventory "matched the information we"d found in the census," says Joseph. "With the combination of names and location, there was no doubt."

Further records showed that Mary Puryear was the widow of slave owner Alexander Puryear and helped to solidify the connection between Prince, Mariah and the Puryear slave-holding family. "There are records out there," Joseph concludes. "Just be persistent."

• Posts to this blog about African-American genealogy resources

• African-American Research Toolkit (containing both free and Plus articles)

• African-American Research Guide digital download (available from ShopFamilyTree.com)

• The Smithsonian Institution has an online African-American cultural heritage tour, plus resources for educators and calendars of commemorative events.

• Library and Archives Canada created an introduction to Black History Month with online resources relating to black history in Canada, and information on educational events organized by Black History Ottawa.

• The National Register of Historic Places website features places in the United States important to African-American history, including the Dunklin, Mo., home of former slaves Charles and Bettie Birthright, and Jazz pioneer John Coltrane’s house in Philadelphia.

• Yahoo! has an online timeline starting with the first slaves arriving at Jamestown, Va. and continuing all the way up to today.

• The Root editor, historian Henry Louis Gates, put together a timeline of African-American history highlights since 1960.

• Links to several YouTube videos about black history and notable African-Americans, such as Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks.

• Free FamilyTreeMagazine.com articles on websites for African-American genealogy, steps for tracking ancestors in the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules, and tips for finding free African-Americans.

• You can download our PDF guide to researching your African-American ancestors for $4 from ShopFamilyTree.com.

• Footnote hinted on its Facebook page about a new Civil Rights-era records collection to launch in February in partnership with Gannett. Get a glimpse here.

• The free FamilySearch Record Search pilot site has added 25 million new records for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, England, Germany, Guatemala, South Africa, Switzerland and the United States. They include 1920 US census indexes for Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Wisconsin, South Dakota and Maine; 1935 and 1945 Florida state censuses; Indiana marriages and more.

• Subscription site GenealogyBank is adding 280 new African-American newspapers. The first 50 were released this month; see the titles, where they were published and the years of coverage on the GenealogyBank blog.

• The Victoria County (Texas) Genealogical Society’s website won the 2009 Website of the Year award from the Texas GenWeb Project. The Victoria County site offers local records, historical information, links to resources and more.

• Ancestry.com released the free Tree to Go iPhone app that lets you view your family tree, edit information, add relatives and upload photos on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’ll first need a tree on Ancestry.com to use the app. Read more on the Ancestry.com blog.

• Ancestry.com also announced it’s getting rid of its Member Connections feature (note this is different from Member Connect, which was launched last year). It would let you let you enter an ancestor’s name and get a list of Ancestry.com members also researching that person, but now you can do pretty much the same thing by searching Public Member Trees.
  

• The National Archives in Washington, DC, is holding a public meeting next Friday, Jan. 29, at 10:45 am to discuss how the archives meets the needs of the research community. Get details on the NGS UpFront blog.
  

• Go to YouTube for a 3.33-minute video slideshow with photos from the inaugural Black Genealogy Summit, Oct. 29 to 31 at the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. About 500 researchers attended the conference to learn about tracing African-American ancestors.

• Ancestry.com has a 5-minute video of some of the company’s leaders and other employees describing what happens behind the scenes to get records from archives to your computer. It’s a commercial, but interesting all the same.