Genealogy Storytelling

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Free WW1 Prisoner Of War Records Online

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WW1 war records online
Established in 1914, the International Prisoners-of-War Agency compiled index cards and lists to help restore contact between internees and their families (Credit: ICRC)

WW1 prisoner of war records now online for free!

Millions of First World War prisoner records held by the International Committee of the Red Cross have been uploaded to the web for the first time

Established in 1914, the International Prisoners-of-War Agency compiled index cards and lists to help restore contact between internees and their families (Credit: ICRC)

Records of millions of soldiers and civilians captured during the First World War have been uploaded to the web by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Available for free through a newweb portal, the vast collection provides details of people who were held in prisoner of war camps across Europe between 1914-1918.

Created by their captors, the records were submitted to the International Prisoners-of-War Agency, which was set up by the ICRC at the start of the conflict to help restore contact between prisoners and their families at home.

Researchers will generally be able to locate an index card for each individual, providing basic details about their imprisonment and reference numbers for any related documents held elsewhere in the database.

See full story on whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com

Image Credit whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com

Unknown No Longer Database Online

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The Unknown No Longer Database has a online version.

This database is the latest step by the Virginia Historical Society to increase access to its varied collections relating to Virginians of African descent. Since its founding in 1831, the VHS has collected unpublished manuscripts, a collection that now numbers more than 8 million processed items.

Within these documents are numerous accounts that collectively help tell the stories of African Americans who have lived in the state over the centuries. Our first effort to improve access to these stories came in 1995 with publication of our Guide to African American Manuscripts. A second edition appeared in 2002, and the online version is continually updated as new sources enter our catalog (http://www.vahistorical.org/aamcvhs/guide_intro.htm).

The next step we envisioned would be to create a database of the names of all the enslaved Virginians that appear in our unpublished documents. Thanks to a generous grant from Dominion Resources and the Dominion Foundation in January 2011, we launched the project that has resulted in this online resource. Named Unknown No Longer, the database seeks to lift from the obscurity of unpublished historical records as much biographical detail as remains of the enslaved Virginians named in those documents. In some cases there may only be a name on a list; in others more details survive, including family relationships, occupations, and life dates.

For more information click here.

Tracing Your Native Ancestry

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Great techniques on tracing your native ancestry.
Atricle by Myra Vanderpool Gormley

BIA School Records

In the 1880s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs established 26 non-reservation boarding schools in 15 states and territories for vocational education. The first federally funded off-reservation school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Created in 1879, it existed until September 1, 1918. More than 10,000 students from 140 different tribes from all over the United States attended Carlisle. One of its most famous alumni was Sac and Fox athlete Jim Thorpe (1888-1953), who won gold medals in the 1912 Olympics.

The National Archives holds many records about these BIA-operated schools and the students who attended them. Most of these non-reservation schools created and maintained a case file for each student. Family history researchers will discover that students were often sent to schools by the Indian Agency, which had jurisdiction over their tribe. Specific BIA-operated schools can be found by the state with information about the years and material available.

First, search the state-by-state Guide to Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs online.

Then to request Indian Student Case Files, contact the National Archives facility that holds the records for the pertinent school. That information will be found at the link above. For example, if your ancestor attended Pipestone Indian School (1894-1959) in Minnesota, the records will be found at the National Archives in Kansas City.

Read more at Indian Country Today Medianetnetwork.

The 40 Acres and a Mule Promise

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Check out this article about the 40 acres and a mule promise. I created a video a few years ago to tell this story…

It is difficult to stress adequately how revolutionary this idea was: As the historian Eric Foner puts it in his book, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, “Here in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, the prospect beckoned of a transformation of Southern society more radical even than the end of slavery.” Try to imagine how profoundly different the history of race relations in the United States would have been had this policy been implemented and enforced; had the former slaves actually had access to the ownership of land, of property; if they had had a chance to be self-sufficient economically, to build, accrue and pass on wealth. After all, one of the principal promises of America was the possibility of average people being able to own land, and all that such ownership entailed. As we know all too well, this promise was not to be realized for the overwhelming majority of the nation’s former slaves, who numbered about 3.9 million.

What Exactly Was Promised?

We have been taught in school that the source of the policy of “40 acres and a mule” was Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, issued on Jan. 16, 1865. (That account is half-right: Sherman prescribed the 40 acres in that Order, but not the mule. The mule would come later.) But what many accounts leave out is that this idea for massive land redistribution actually was the result of a discussion that Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton held four days before Sherman issued the Order, with 20 leaders of the black community in Savannah, Ga., where Sherman was headquartered following his famous March to the Sea. The meeting was unprecedented in American history.

See full story on theroot.com