Freedman’s Village

The Civil War leaders of the Union buried soldiers’ bodies on the property in hopes that Lee would never want to return, and Parks’ ancestor dug the very first grave near the Freedman’s Village burial site.

Recent Obituary from Rome, GA

Please don't hide your true feelings...

Events: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania

Vagrants, Truants & Abandoned Privies: Unusual Record Collections of the Philadelphia City Archives. Workshop with Anita Sheahan Coraluzzi. “Sinners, Scandals & Suicides” tour of South Laurel Hill Cemetery. No Good Deed Goes Unrewarded. All Day German Genealogy Conference. Understanding and Interpreting 19th-Century Philadelphia Naturalizations.

Philadelphia City Archives Reduces its Hours

Philadelphia City Archives, main repository for birth, marriage, and death records from 1860-1915, has reduced days from daily to Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

Georgia archaeologists find Confederate POW camp

Preserved for nearly 150 years, perhaps by its own obscurity, a short-lived Confederate prison camp began yielding treasures from the Civil War almost as soon as archeologists began searching for it in southeastern Georgia.

The Blog of the National Archives

The National Archives has created a new blog called NARAtions, where the public can learn about and comment on activities and work at the National Archives.  The agency recently posted a blog featuring our work in the Mid-Atlantic and my leadership of the program.  Please check it out and feel free to comment and pass along.

New PBS Series, “Faces of America” to air this year

THIRTEEN, Kunhardt McGee Productions and Inkwell Films, in Production on New PBS Series, Faces of America

Presented and written by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ‘Faces of America’ takes the quest begun in ‘African American Lives’ and ‘African American Lives 2’ to a new level to provide an understanding of American identity and history.

June 30, 2009

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–America is a nation of immigrants, and the richly diverse racial, ethnic, cultural and religious heritage that truly defines the American experience is the focus of Faces of America, a new four-part PBS series from the producers of African American Lives (2006), Oprah’s Roots (2007), African American Lives 2 (2008), and most recently Looking for Lincoln (2009).

“We hope to show how immigration of peoples from around the globe so profoundly has reshaped what it means to be ‘an American’ and continues to affect how we talk about identity throughout our society today.”

Since 2006, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr has been helping people find long-buried details of their recent and distant ancestries by restoring the branches of their individual family trees and then analyzing their DNA. Faces of Americaexpands the role of DNA science to take the exploration of identity to an entirely new level. The series will film the sequencing of the full human genome for two of the series’ participants – a scientific and filmic first – to reveal detailed information about their ancestral make up.

Ancestry Magazine Discontinues Publication

15 January 2010

For 25 years, Ancestry magazine has been a valuable, timely resource for family history professionals, hobbyists, and novices alike. For a variety of reasons, the time has come for us to discontinue publication. Over the last few years, we have found that with the expanded accessibility of terrific family history content published online at Ancestry.com we can reach a larger and broader audience than the limited distribution of a print publication.

The March/April 2010 issue will be the final issue of Ancestry magazine. Subscribers to Ancestry magazine with current subscriptions that will not be completed by the mailing of the March/April 2010 magazine will receive prorated refunds. Subscribers will find a letter enclosed with their final issue informing them of these details. We are also no longer selling new magazine subscriptions nor renewing those that have expired. Single copies of past issues, including the upcoming March/April issue, will be available for purchase in our online store.

With Ancestry magazine we have loved the opportunity we’ve had to write about the best of what we found in the world of family history. We thank our readers and contributors for sharing our enthusiasm for all things genealogy.

Sincerely,

The Ancestry Magazine Staff

Historical Philadelphia Gone Interactive

Interactive Historial Map of Philadelphia

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has announced creation of an interactive Web site that connects stories to places across time in Philadelphia neighborhoods.

The Web site will focus first on two areas  Old Southwark and the Greater Northern Liberties  that were always home to immigrants and working class. We have chosen these neighborhoods because both are essential to understanding Philadelphia’s history and its industrial legacy as the “workshop of the world.” Situated north and south of the Center City historic district and home to successive immigrant communities almost three centuries, these areas continue as vibrant multiethnic neighborhoods featuring many sites of interest—historic houses of worship, community art and culture centers, gardens and murals, marketplaces, and ethnic businesses. Characterized by block upon block of low-rise row homes where common laborers, artisans, and skilled industrial workers, usually immigrants or migrants, settled, the boundaries of these neighborhoods were defined by work, home, religion, and ethnicity. What constitutes “the neighborhood” – that basic unit of the Philadelphia experience – is subjective, fluid and dynamic, defined as much by contested turf as by common ground.

Guion Bluford: First African American in Space

The first African American to fly in space and the woman astronaut who helped rescue the Hubble Telescope will join other NASA heroes in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame this June.

Guion “Guy” Bluford became the first Black person in space as a member of the first space shuttle crew to launch and land at night.

Until 2007, Kathy Thornton held the record for the longest spacewalk by a woman. She was paired with astronaut Tom Akers to repair Hubble during two of the mission’s five spacewalks, “including the installation of COSTAR, or the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, which served as contact lenses to refocus light bouncing off Hubble’s primary mirror,” according to Collectspace.com.

Bluford’s four space flights opened the door for other African-American astronauts.

“We had to, as a crew, figure out the techniques that were required to launch the thing at night and as well as land the thing at night,” Bluford told collectSPACE in 2002 on the anniversary of his first mission in 1983. That flight, the STS-8 mission, was dedicated to deploying a multipurpose India-built satellite and conducting medical measurements to understand the effects of space flight on the human body. Bluford’s other missions included the first of the German-directed Spacelab science flights (STS-61A in 1985) and two Department of Defense-dedicated missions (STS-39 in 1991 and STS-53 in 1992).

“I feel very proud of being a trailblazer with reference to space flight, particularly for African-Americans,” he said. “I recognize I was one of several African Americans that came into the program, and I think we have all made significant contributions to the program.”

During her mission to repair Hubble, Thornton also jettisoned one of the telescope’s damaged solar arrays.

“It looks like a bird,” she commented, as the large array began to flap as the result of the shuttle’s thrusters being fired.

In addition to her work on Hubble, Thornton flew on three other shuttle missions, including STS-33, a 1989 defense flight; STS-73, also with Bowersox; and the 1992 maiden flight of orbiter Endeavour, during which she served as the spacewalk coordinator, or IVA officer, for the only three-person EVA in history. She then made a spacewalk of her own, demonstrating “how not to build a space station.”