It is with great sadness that I read of the passing of Trevia Wooster Beverly, professional genealogist, frequent author, and owner of Tejas Publictions & Research.

Born in Baytown, Texas, she passed away in Humble, Texas, on February 2, 2022, at the age of 90, leaving to mourn family and friends. Family and friends can send flowers and condolences in memory of the loved one. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of Trevia Wooster Beverly at https://beresfordfunerals.com/index.php/obituary/trevia-wooster-beverly#guestbook to pay them a last tribute.

She was loved and cherished by many people including : her parents, Ray Brown and Annie Mae Wooster (Barrilleaux).

A burial will be held on Monday, February 14th 2022 at 12:00 PM at the Steep Hollow Cemetery (7231-7477 Steep Hollow Rd, Bryan, TX 77808).

A very brief obituary has been published at https://beresfordfunerals.com/index.php/obituary/trevia-wooster-beverly.

Have you missed one or more of our “California Research” presentations? The first four lectures are now available for viewing online at our YouTube channel. Check out these talks, which give an overview of various California archives, invaluable for researchers! The associated handouts are also provided. A great preparation for NGS 2022, or for any California research trip.

Now available online:

The Center for Sacramento History with archivist Kim Hayden

Government Publications at the California Library with librarian Emily Blodget

Historical Resources at the California Library with Emily Blodget

The Sutro Library with Dvorah Lewis

Two more lectures are scheduled for March:

March 15: “The California Archives” by Chris Garmire

March 22: “Special Collections at the Sacramento Public Library” by David Munger and James Scott

These presentations will also be posted to YouTube following each event.

You can read more at: https://www.californiaancestors.org/california-research-series-lectures-are-online/

A $290 million (New Zealand dollars, roughly $191 US dollars) national facility will be built for Archives New Zealand in Wellington to house the country’s rapidly-growing archival collections.

Details of the state-of-the-art building will be announced by Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti​ and Taranaki Whānui Te Āti Awa representatives at the building site, opposite the National Library on Aitken St.

The location formerly held Defence House, which was demolished after the 7.8-magnitude Kaikōura earthquake of 2016.

You can read more at: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/127617135/new-290m-national-archives-facility-to-be-built-in-wellington

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

Note: This is an update to an article I published several years ago. The technology of cloud computing has grown rapidly and changed significantly since the article was first published. I decided to update the article to make it more relevant to today’s cloud computing environment.

One of the current buzzwords in the online world is "cloud computing." You can probably find dozens of definitions of this new technology, but I think the simplest is that cloud computing refers to a computer application running on a distant computer or, more often, in a cluster of distant computers. Those multiple computers often are installed in different data centers around the world, and yet they work in harmony as if they were one very big and very powerful computer.

In fact, if your present computer is showing its age and is slowing down a bit, switching to cloud computing applications is an excellent method of obtaining several more years of productive use from the aging hardware.

Your local desktop or laptop works as a "remote terminal," with your video screen showing what is happening on the distant computer(s) and your local keyboard and mouse being used as input devices for the same distant computer(s). In short, while the program runs on distant computers, you use it as if the program was running in your local system. As a result, your local computer requires very little processing power and, in most cases, a minimal amount of disk storage space. Instead, you are using the power and storage space of the powerful, distant computers.

All the computing power and disk storage is being provided by the powerful computers or banks of powerful servers in distant data centers. Your local desktop or laptop simply provides your "view" of that distant application. You can use the application program running in the distant computer(s) in the same manner that you run applications in your own computer. However, you benefit from the computing power and the storage capabilities of those distant computers.

Note: For simplicity's sake, I will often state “a distant computer.” However, it might not be a single computer, and it might not be in one single location. Many cloud computing applications operate on banks of distant computers (servers) that may be located in different data centers around the world. At any given moment, your cloud-based application might be using five or more servers; one in California, one in New Jersey, one in Frankfurt, Germany, one in Singapore, and one in Rio de Janeiro. Then again, there could be fewer or more servers being used simultaneously, in fewer or even more locations.

Those details will be invisible to you and will remain unimportant for this discussion.

The word “cloud” refers to the Internet. I am sure you have seen various drawings over the years depicting home computers connecting to distant web servers via the Internet. The Internet is almost always drawn as a cloud to indicate there is a massive collection of routers, switches, and cables connecting the computers. However, all the complexity of the Internet is hidden from the user. Therefore, it is a cloud. The phrase “cloud computing” really means “running programs on multiple distant servers via the Internet.”

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/12575616

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

Powerful new photo album reveals Warsaw after the war. “The National Digital Archive has published an album of photographs by Uprising photographer Stefan Rassalski depicting Warsaw destroyed after the Uprising as well as its reconstruction. The album of around 200 photographs called The Capital of Rassalski has been released in print in Polish and English and will soon be available online.”

Details may be found at: https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/powerful-new-photo-album-reveals-warsaw-after-the-war-27675

The menu choices changed about a week ago and feedback from newsletter readers indicated that some people have difficulty finding the COMPLETE Plus Edition newsletters (the version for Plus Edition readers only). So I just changed the menus again to (hopefully) make it easier to find them.

As of this morning, to access the COMPLETE Plus Edition newsletters:

Go to https://eogn.com

Log in with your Plus Edition user name and password

Click on Plus Edition. News Articles

Click on the new note (that I just added today) that says:

"NOTE: Complete Newsletters (including all Plus Edition and Free Edition articles published within a week) may be found if you click here."

The following is an announcement from FamilySearch.org:

FamilySearch added 28 million new records this week to the United States Enlisted and Officer Muster Rolls (1916-1939), and 10 million new Catholic Church records for the Philippines. Check out even more records added for the US Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, New Jersey Death Index, Virginia County Marriages, and country collections for Brazil, Ecuador, England, Malta, Mexico, Peru and Spain. Search them now for free by clicking on the links below.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? Millions of new genealogy records are added each week to to help increase your discovery success. Check back each week and, in the meantime, search existing records on FamilySearch to see what you might have missed.

For other exciting genealogy content, peruse over 1,000 free, on-demand sessions from RootsTech Connect 2021.

The list of all the newly-added records is very long, too long to list here. You can view the entire list at https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/new-records-22-jan-2022

Are you really who you think you are?

DNA is a wonderful thing and tens of thousands of DNA heritage kits have been sold. Most confirmed and helped the purchaser(s) identify and confirm their family origins. But a small percentage have produced surprises. I have read dozens of stories about DNA surprises.

A current story at https://bit.ly/347gotT tells of one such incident where a 29-year-old woman discovered she was not related to the man she assumed was her father and also that she had no Italian heritage, unlike what she had been told all her life. She believes there was a mix-up at the hospital where she was born.

That certainly is possible. Other stories I have heard often revolve around stories of the person's DNA matching that of the fertility doctor who assisted a formerly childless couple and, of course, many stories of marital infidelity, often involving "one night stands."

How does this affect the person who had their DNA tested? The results vary widely but it rarely is "welcome news." These stories often remind me of the old sayings about skeletons hiding in a family closet.

Is your heritage REALLY what you think it is? A DNA test will tell you the truth. You might want to order a DNA test kit today.

Then again, maybe you don't really want to know.

The University of New South Wales and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research have developed a new computer file format to speed up nanopore sequencing analysis and improve specialised treatments for patients with cancer and other diseases.

Published in Nature Biotechnology, the research said the newly developed SLOW5 format can process complex DNA nanopore sequencing "more than 30 times faster" than the previous file format called -- ironically -- FAST5.

You can read more in an article by Aimee Chanthadavong published in the ZDNet web site at https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-file-format-helping-researchers-reduce-dna-analysis-time/.

The following is a press release issued by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration:

WASHINGTON, February 2, 2022 — In 1950, as enumerators fanned out across the United States to tally the population for the first time in a decade, the federal government had specific questions for residents of certain Native American reservations: Were they reading, writing, or speaking English? Were they participating in Native ceremonies? 

A blank example of the Form P8 Indian Reservation Schedule. In April 2022, nearly 33,000 of these schedules from nearly 100 reservations across the lower 48 states will be released along with the general population schedules from the 1950 Census.

Cody White, archivist and subject matter expert for Native American–related records at the National Archives and Records Administration, set out to explore the history and context of the Form P8, Indian Reservation Schedule, in the 1950 Census to better understand why the Census Bureau created an entirely separate form to be used in some communities.  

As White explains, “While every Native American was enumerated on the standard Form P1, 1950 Census of Population and Housing, that was used across the entire United States, the Form P8, Indian Reservation Schedule, was not conducted on every reservation.”

The P8 forms, among other population schedules, will be released to the public on April 1, 2022, in accordance with the 72-year rule.

Researchers interested in genealogy may also find questions about clan affiliation and additional names used by residents helpful in their research.

Although the census population schedules from 1950 will not be viewable by the public until April 1, documents pertaining to the administrative aspects of the census are not subject to the same lengthy waiting period.

Consequently, White was able to find records relating to the creation and funding of the Indian Reservation Schedule. He notes a memorandum from the Census Bureau to the Bureau of Budget in February 1950:

In the first paragraph, the Census Bureau wrote that the BIA needed the information that would be collected by the P8 schedule “in connection with their present program in aiding Indian citizens to become economically self-sustaining and in order to lessen or remove governmental supervision.”

Read the full piece, “The Story of the 1950 Census P8 Indian Reservation Schedule,” and see additional documents referenced by White—including partial lists of which reservations were tallied—on the Text Message blog.

The National Archives is scheduled to release the records of the 1950 Census on April 1, 2022. Bookmark www.archives.gov/1950Census to stay updated on the latest information. Join the conversation about the 1950 Census and broader genealogy questions on NARA’s History Hub.