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With concerns of a new flu pandemic, a look back at an old one
WASHINGTON, April 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following is a document alert — part of a program sponsored by the National Archives to notify the media of documents and images in the National Archives holdings that are relevant to national holidays, anniversaries or current events. This program, which is based on original records from the National Archives, its 12 Presidential libraries and 13 regional archives, is designed to offer the media an historical perspective on events that occur periodically and to highlight historical antecedents to current political or diplomatic initiatives.
The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people than died in World War I.
Hard as it is to believe, the answer is true.
World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world’s population was attacked by this deadly virus. Within months, it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.
The plague emerged in two phases. In late spring of 1918, the first phase, known as the “three-day fever,” appeared without warning. Few deaths were reported. Victims recovered after a few days. When the disease resurfaced that fall, it was far more severe. Scientists, doctors, and health officials could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, eluding treatment and defying control. Some victims died within hours of their first symptoms. Others succumbed after a few days; their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death.
The plague did not discriminate. It was rampant in urban and rural areas, from the densely populated East coast to the remotest parts of Alaska. Young adults, usually unaffected by these types of infectious diseases, were among the hardest hit groups along with the elderly and young children. The flu afflicted over 25 percent of the U.S. population. In one year, the average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years.
It is an oddity of history that the influenza epidemic of 1918 has been overlooked in the teaching of American history. Documentation of the disease is ample, as shown in the records selected from the holdings of the National Archives regional archives.
Millions of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro Civil Registration Records Now Digitally Searchable on the Web
SALT LAKE CITY—FamilySearch added the Brazil, Rio de Janeiro Civil Registration to its online collection—about 4.5 million new digital images. The free collection contains searchable digital images of the original birth, marriage, and death records from all of the municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro from 1889 to 2006. The new digital images can be searched for free at FamilySearch.org (click Search Records, and then click Record Search pilot).
The published records cover births up to 1930, marriages to 1950, and deaths up to 2006. There are an estimated 18 million names in the free online digital collection. FamilySearch continues to film civil registration records in Rio de Janeiro and will update the collection as applicable.
Prior to now, the Rio de Janeiro Civil Registration records were only available in archive offices in Brazil or on microfilm through one of FamilySearch’s family history centers worldwide. FamilySearch digitized the collection—over 2,500 microfilms, spanning 117 years of vital records—and published them online for free public access.
“Now instead of ordering some of the films and traveling to a local family history center to use it, researchers worldwide can search any of the 2,500 films digitally and freely online from the comfort of their home,” said Paul Nauta, FamilySearch public affairs manager. “Family history enthusiasts with Rio de Janeiro ancestors have just been handed a big-time free gift,” added Nauta.
FamilySearch’s online digital image viewer makes it easy to search the historical documents. Patrons can quickly navigate from a Rio de Janeiro municipality down to individual towns. Simply click on a town, and the images are typically divided up by birth, marriage, death, and a year range—making it very convenient to comb through the original records for that town during a specific period in search of a Brazilian ancestor from Rio de Janeiro. Digital images can also be printed or saved electronically.
“Civil registrations (Registros Civis) are the vital records made by the Brazilian government and are an excellent source of accurate information on names, dates, and vital events,” said Lynn Turner, FamilySearch collection manager records specialist for Latin America. “The new digital image collection online is extremely important for those doing genealogical research in Rio de Janeiro because they document critical events in a person’s life and cover such a large percentage of the population—and they are freely accessible to anyone with Internet access,” concluded Turner.
Civil records were kept for all the population, including the Catholics and the non-Catholics. There was a large infusion of non-Catholics in Brazil after the 1880s. The civil registration records are an important public record of this section of the population as well.
FamilySearch has the largest collection of Brazilian vital records outside of Brazil. Currently these records are available to the public on microfilm through FamilySearch’s 4,500 family history centers worldwide or affiliate public libraries. FamilySearch plans to continue expanding online access to its Brazil collections. Pernambuco and Paranã will be the next state civil registrations added to the collection.
Cyndi’s List last November added some very useful categories.
For example, an entire page is now devoted to genealogy wikis, including a definition of the term, at Wiki.
Mexico IGI Batch Numbers
Free WIKI style website that is organizing all the IGI’s batch numbers for the entire country of Mexico by state, town and year. Bilingual site also explains how to use batch numbers more effectively in searches.
Incredible Effort Speeds Up Access to Online Genealogical Information
SALT LAKE CITY—FamilySearch volunteers reached a monumental milestone this week, transcribing their 250 millionth historical record. The incredible online initiative started in January 2006 with a few thousand volunteers and has now grown to be the largest Web-based initiative of its kind with over 100,000 volunteers worldwide. The 250 millionth record was part of the current Nicaragua Civil Registration indexing project online at index.familyearch.org—one of 45 projects being indexed by online volunteers. It was extracted by three different online indexers from Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras.
FamilySearch manages the largest collection of genealogical collections in the world—2.5 million rolls of microfilm and millions of additional digital images from over 100 countries worldwide.
For decades, FamilySearch has allowed the public to use its collection for free through 4,500 family history centers throughout the world. In 2005, it began to improve access to its collection by converting microfilm to digital images that could be searched online. The next step was to create an online tool that volunteers around the world could use to look at the digital images and extract relevant data that could then be published online in searchable indexes linked to the digital images. FamilySearch Indexing is that tool.
“What makes the 250 million record milestone even more impressive is the fact that each record was actually indexed at least twice to ensure accuracy,” reported Paul Nauta, FamilySearch public affairs manager. “The result is an amazing searchable online index for people around the world,” Nauta added.
The unique quality control process means each document is transcribed by two different indexers. In the case of the 250 millionth record, the two indexers were from Nicaragua and Guatemala. Any discrepancies in their two transcriptions were then forwarded to a third volunteer—an arbitrator—who would have made any needed corrections between the two transcriptions. In this case, that arbitrator was from Honduras. “Three volunteers, three countries, one common goal—to provide access to the world’s genealogical records quicker and more economically,” said Nauta.
In 2006, FamilySearch volunteers indexed a total of 11 million records. “Today, thanks to the growth in our volunteer numbers, FamilySearch volunteers are now transcribing about a million names per day. At that rate, we expect to hit the 500 million milestone much quicker than the 250 million marker,” added Nauta.
Today, tens of thousands of volunteers, young and old, log on to indexing.familysearch.org 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from all over the world to help with the ongoing goal to transcribe the world’s genealogical records. Some donate a few minutes a month, others hours a day. Some do it as a sort of “pay it forward” activity because they have personally benefited in their family history research by using FamilySearch’s collections over the years. Others help because they like the idea that just a little bit of donated time can help preserve historic information and make it more available for public access.
Completed indexes are ultimately made available online for public access through FamilySearch.org or through one of FamilySearch’s family history centers.
FamilySearch, at any given time, has over 35 online indexing projects underway—many of them international projects. “Volunteers usually have a preference for one type of indexing project over another,” said Paul Starkey, FamilySearch Indexing project manager. “For example, if you have ancestors from Spain, you might be very motivated to help index the Spain Catholic Church records because it could facilitate your personal research once the completed indexes are published online.”
Anyone interested in volunteering or seeing what projects are being indexed can do so at www.indexing.familysearch.org.
SALT LAKE CITY—FamilySearch expanded its Knowles Collection—a free popular database of Jewish records hailing from the British Isles. The collection builds upon work commenced by the late Isobel Mordy—a well-known historian of the Jews of the British Isles.
Mordy was a retired mathematician and used a complex code to link Jewish United Kingdom families in her research. Her work yielded 8,000 names and has been very popular for Jewish family history researchers with British ancestry.
“The complexity of the code Mordy used to index her research is daunting even to the most experienced researcher,” said Todd Knowles, author and manager of the Knowles Collection and a British Reference consultant for the famous Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. It took Knowles a few years, but he ultimately managed to transcribe the records from Mordy’s work into a more easily searchable genealogy database.
The great advantage of the Knowles Collection is that it links together electronically tens of thousands of individual Jews into family groups. Knowles has since expanded Mordy’s collection of 8,000 names to a collection of over 40,000.
“The records come from over 100 individual sources,” noted Knowles. “That saves the researcher a lot of time and travel.”
Some of the record sources were actively maintained until the mid 1980s, so many people living today will be able to find their relatives from recent memory in the collection. The newly added names come from many types of records—censuses; probate records; synagogue birth, marriage, and death records; biographies; and more.
Perhaps the most interesting records added recently include over 200 Jewish Welsh marriages from a community in the city of Cardiff, original synagogue records, and patron-submitted records. Some of the families tie into the work of Malcolm Stern’s The First American Jewish Families, which includes families who had English ancestry.
The collection can be accessed at FamilySearch.org on the Jewish Family History Resources page. It is available to download for free as either a GEDCOM or PAF file. Individuals can add their own records to the collection by contacting the collection’s author, Todd Knowles, directly at knowleswt@familysearch.org.
FamilySearch manages the largest collection of genealogical records worldwide. A significant portion of its collections come from the United Kingdom.
I’m now multimedia on the web, getting my toes wet in the audio-visual surf.
I got a small, inexpensive Web camera on Amazon, a Microsoft Lifecam VX-1000. We had a headset microphone from my days as a hardware and software reviewer. It took all of 15 minutes to install the camera and plug in the mike, download Skype and sign up. I don’t know why I thought this would be a long, difficult process complete with gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, but I did and so put it off for way too long. I won’t say the result is Emmy-level, but it’ll do.
I’ve done this at the urging of my friend DearMYRTLE, author of DearMYRTLE’s Joy of Genealogy, and she was one of my first Skype callers! She and I have plans to help spread the knowledge and fun of family history research with these tools; stay tuned to our blogs for details!
Further, I am researching the subject, thanks to my editor at McGraw Hill, Roger Stewart. On his recommendation, I am reading How to Do Everything with Online Video by Andrew Shalat and How to Do Everything with Podcasting by Shel Holtz with Neville Hobson. These two books, in the first chapters, have already taught me a lot about how I can use these simple, cheap tools to help me reach out to the wonderful world of genealogists out there! They are well written, organized and illustrated, and so far I’m finding them most helpful.
Ways I intend to use these technologies:
Communicate with the progeny. My daughter has had Skype for quite a while now; I hope my son will when he starts his graduate education at Duke
Communicate with cousins and other relatives
Communicate with genealogy peers, associates and friends
Perhaps, once I finish reading the two books above, create my own video blogs for your use and enjoyment!
However, I do realize that the days of working in my jammies until time to go to the gym may be over, because you never know when a colleague might ring in on video! Still, I’m like a kid with a new toy right now, and excited about what this can mean for online genealogy.
Returning to We Trees’ suggestions, I’m backtracking to repeat #6. Let readers in to your kitchen. Discuss your family’s favorite foods. What was a typical Sunday dinner in your childhood house? What did grandma make that had you coming back for more? Were there any dishes that the dog wouldn’t even eat?
This time, I’m going to present recipes from aunts and uncles.
My mother’s brother Donald was known as a character. He loved practical jokes, story jokes, any jokes. He served in WWII and from all accounts when he came back, he rarely missed a chance to laugh and make others laugh, as sort of a talisman against the horrors he saw. He also loved to eat, which is a family characteristic!
Uncle Donald’s Salmon Dip
1 can GOOD salmon (like Alaskan smoked salmon)
1 medium onion grated, Vidalia in season
1 lemon, juiced
1 cup mayonnaise, home made
salt and pepper to taste
Combine onion, mayo and lemon juice
Drain and de-bone fish and flake onto a platter
Top with sauce, serve with crackers.
My mother’s sister Isabel is 90 now, and her recipes are all through my recipe box. My favorite is known in the family as Aunt Isabel Sauce.
Aunt Isabel’s Sauce
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp prepared mustard
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp celery salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
two dashes paprika
Mix well, refrigerate. Good on asparagus, slaw, fruit salad.
My Aunt Mary Sue is my godmother, and married to my mother’s brother Marion. One spring break, we went down to Jackson and she served this pie. I wouldn’t leave until I had the recipe.
Aunt Mary Sue’s Cherry Pie
1 baked pie crust with 1/4 cup chopped pecans pushed into the pastry before baking
3 ounces cream cheese
1 package Dream Whip ( or use frozen)
1.5 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 can cherry pie filling
Cream the sugar and cheese together. Add extract. prepare Dream Whip. Combine whipped topping with sugar and cheese mixture, folding in gently. Pour into pie shell and top with pie filling. Chill at least 2 hours.
WUWF is the NPR station closest to my home, and the executive director, Pat Crawford is biking the Underground Railroad as an historical journey and a fund raiser. You can follow his progress with daily audio updates, tracking maps and more on the radio station’s web site.
