It’s the end of another year, and as 2018 comes to a close we’ve rounded up the last of the new online records collections for you. Explore a unique collection of Catholic Church records in Peru, dating back to the 17th century. Next you can view Jewish registers online at Ancestry.com, browse unique historical collections for the U.S., and check out German civil registrations new and updated at FamilySearch.
Peru Catholic Church Records
New at FamilySearch is a growing indexed collection of records for Peru, Diocese of Huaraz, Catholic Church Records, 1641-2016. These records include baptisms, confirmations, marriages, pre-marriage investigations, deaths, and indexes. More indexed records will be added as they become available, but right now the collection boasts over 150,000 records.
About Catholic Church records: “Catholic Church parish registers were created by priests authorized to record the church sacraments of baptism, marriage, death, burial, and other ordinances in their parish jurisdiction. Catholic Church parish registers are the primary source for finding genealogical information of birth, death, and marriage in Peru prior to 1852, when the civil registration was implemented.”
Jewish Register Books
A new collection of Jewish register books from Poland is online now at Ancestry.com: Poland, Modliborzyce Ghetto Register Books, 1939-1944 (USHMM) A variety of information can be found in these records, including your ancestor’s name, age, birth date and place, occupations, residences, parents’ names, and more.
From the collection description: “This database contains the names of the Jewish population in the Modliborzyce Ghetto. The registers were compiled by the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Modliborzyce between 1941 and 1942. The original documents are held by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland. This collection was indexed by World Memory Project contributors from the digitized holdings of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.”
New U.S. Records & Databases
New from the University of Arkansas: a fascinating digital collection of the American Old West in the form of diaries. “Whiskey smuggling, murder, scandal and a ‘hanging judge’ — the latest digital exhibit from University Libraries has all this and more. The Deputy Marshal Addison Beck and Judge Isaac Parker’s Court collection is now available worldwide, free of charge. Addison Beck was a deputy marshal for the United States from 1875 to 1883 who patrolled for the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith. Addison Beck’s two surviving diaries chronicle 1880 to early 1881 and from April through August 1881.”
The Washington State Libray is wrapping up the Washington Rural Heritage Collection, which includes nearly 2,000 new items spanning 5 collections. This expansive collaboration provides historic photographs, ephemera and objects, documents, artifacts, oral histories, and more throughout Washington State.
Over at FamilySearch is a new collection for North Carolina, Historical Records Survey, Cemetery Inscription Card Index. This index contains images of Surname index cards listing county, name of cemetery, town, person, date of birth, death date, age, spouse or parents, location of grave, military information.
German Civil Registrations
Finally, check out these new online records for Germany, Saxony-Anhalt, Halberstadt, Civil Registration, 1874-1982, available for free at FamilySearch. In this collection you’ll find an index of the birth, marriage and death records from Halberstadt Kreisarchiv. Included in these records are these localities Aspenstedt, Emersleben, Halberstadt, Klein Quenstedt (Kr. Halberstadt), Langenstein, Mahndorf, Sargstedt, Ströbeck, and Wehrstedt. Original records held at Halberstadt Kreisarchiv, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
In addition, this collection was updated with more records: Germany, Schleswig-Holstein, Kreis Steinburg, Civil Registration, 1874-1983. This collection consists of civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths for the district of Steinburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Original records are located in the Gemeinsames Archiv des Kreises Steinburg und der Stadt Itzehoe (Joint Archive of the District of Steinburg and the City of Itzehoe).
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You can now find more Holocaust records online. Read here about the 1939 German Minority Census and Polish and Czech Holocaust records. Also featured this week: German vital records, new collections from Belgium and Estonia, and an update to the US War of 1812 pension files.
New Holocaust records online at MyHeritage
Among new Holocaust records online is the German Minority Census, 1939 at genealogy giant MyHeritage.com. The collection contains “the names of all individuals listed in the 1939 census of Germany who lived in a household where at least one person in the household had a Jewish grandparent.”
According to MyHeritage, “Many of these people were killed in the Holocaust and this census is the last written trace of them. These approximately 410,000 individuals come from the supplement census cards that recorded each person’s Jewish background. Information listed may include: name, maiden name, birth date, birthplace, residence, death date, death place, place of imprisonment, deportation or emigration, and whether they were a Holocaust victim. Some of this information comes from the original census cards, and some of this information was researched and annotated much later. This collection is provided in partnership with Tracing the Past.”
German vital records
Genealogy giant Ancestry.com has added or updated the following German collections
Two free Holocaust-era databases at Ancestry.com are also worth mentioning, as one is new and one has just been updated. Note: these collections are free to search because the indexing was done by World Memory Project contributors from the digitized holdings of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Collection descriptions below come from the USHMM website:
Poland, Łódź Ghetto Transportation Lists, 1939-1944 (new) “consists predominantly of the records of Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, the Eldest of the Jews in the ghetto in Łódź, Poland, and of his administration. Included are letters, announcements, circulars, charts, publications, reports, essays, name lists, and photographs.”
Prague, Czechoslovakia, Selected Holocaust Records, 1939-1945 (updated) consists of “records generated by German occupational institutions and Czech auxiliary agencies dealing with matters of internal security and racial policy, especially anti-Jewish measures. Includes reports regarding aryanization of Jewish businesses, questionnaires of Jewish properties, lists of Jewish workers, documents regarding situation in Theresienstadt (death statistics), Lety camp, and deportation of Jews to Theresienstadt. Also includes lists of art objects in Sbirow castle (including Jewish art), information regarding Jews, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), and Russians in Gdańsk, Poland, and various propaganda materials.”
More European genealogy records online
Belgium
Google Translate provides this translation of a January 17, 2018 announcement at internetgazet for Neerpelt, Limburg, Belgium: “The municipality has digitized all civil status documents and makes the documents that are more than 100 years old publicly available via dept. Neerpelt.be. That was announced today. Through this website you can view, save and print birth, marriage and death certificates from 1797 to 1917. Thanks to a search function, you can easily look up the birth, marriage and death certificates of residents of Neerpelt and SHLille.”
Estonia
Also new at Ancestry.com is Estonia, Census, Tax and House Lists, 1784-1944. This collection for this northern European country spans over 150 years’ worth of “various lists of residents of Estonian towns and rural municipalities,” according to its description. “These documents serve as population registers and contain personal and family information about inhabitants of each administrative unit, regardless of their social status or religion. The collection covers two historical eras: Estonia under the Russian Empire (the period until 1917, in which records were kept in German and Russian) and during the Estonian Republic (1918-1940, in which records were kept in Estonian language). The structure and format of the records vary between regions and over time. There are also gaps in certain periods and places, as some of the municipal archives have not been preserved.”
Update to free US War of 1812 Pension Files at Fold3
The growing collection of free War of 1812 Pension Files at Fold3 is now 2/3 complete, after a January 17, 2018 update. Because pension eligibility for veterans or their widows was extended decades after the war, you may find valuable family history information dating for many years after the conflict ended. Documents vary but among them, you may find declarations of pension/widow’s pension; Adjutant General statements of service; questionnaires completed by applicants; “Pension Dropped” cards; or marriage, death or discharge certificates. These may have information on the veteran’s age, residence, service details, and death, as well as identifying details about soldiers’ widows who applied.
A note from the site states, “Although digitization of the War of 1812 pension files was previously temporarily paused, Ancestry, the National Archives, and the Federation of Genealogical Societies are working in cooperation to resume digitization. The first of these newly digitized pension files are already available for free on Fold3, with more to be added to the site in installments throughout 2018 and beyond. So if you don’t see your ancestor’s pension file yet, keep checking back!”
Help put more Holocaust records online
Volunteers power millions of new online genealogy records every month–including Holocaust records. For example, you can help curate a growing collection of Holocaust-related newspaper articles from your local newspapers for the History Unfolded project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Do it on your own, or with your local genealogical or historical society! Click here to read more about how you can help.
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Sunny Morton
Sunny Morton is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast. She’s especially known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her latest favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club. Sunny is also a Contributing Editor at Family Tree Magazine and the NGS-award-winning Co-Editor of Ohio Genealogy News.
Looking for an easy way to make a big difference? Help collect Holocaust newspaper articles printed in your local newspapers for the History Unfolded project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Do it on your own, or with your local genealogical or historical society!
What is History Unfolded?History Unfolded is a project that seeks to expand our knowledge of how American newspapers reported on Nazi persecution during the 1930s and ’40s so we can better understand what Americans knew about the Holocaust as it was happening.
To help achieve this, the History Unfolded project asks people like you to search local newspapers from the 1930s and ’40s for Holocaust-related news and opinions and then submit them online to the museum. The newspaper articles you submit will be used to help shape the museum’s 2018 exhibit on Americans and the Holocaust and related educational materials. The articles will also be made available to scholars, historians, and the public.
Who Can Contribute? Everyone! History buffs, students, teachers (with) an interest in the Holocaust and access to a newspaper from the 1930s or ’40s, either online (using Newspapers.com, for example) or through a physical archive, such as a library. Simply create an account with History Unfolded (to get started.)
How Do I Contribute? History Unfolded has created a list of more than 30 Holocaust-related events to focus on. Choose one of these events to research, then search for content related to that topic in an American newspaper of your choice from the 1930s or ’40s. After you find an article related to one of the events, submit it online to the museum through the project’s website.
Newspapers.com and History Unfolded You can contribute to this important project whether or not you use Newspapers.com to do so. But using Newspapers.com makes it even easier to submit the articles you find. Simply use Newspapers.com to create a clipping of an article you’ve found, then submit that clipping through the submission form on the History Unfolded website. The submission form has a special tool created specifically for Newspapers.com users that makes submitting your clipping a snap.
Your help with this project will help shape our understanding of the Holocaust and the lessons it holds for us today. For more information on how to get involved, visit the History Unfolded website.
Get involved! Click here to read about more ways to volunteer in our global genealogy community. Your efforts make a huge difference.
Every Friday, we blog about new genealogy records online. Do any collections below relate to your family history? Please share with genealogy buddies or societies that might be interested! This week:
BRITISH NEWSPAPERS. Over 800,000 new articles have been added to the British newspaper collections at Findmypast. You’ll find coverage from 19 new newspapers, along with over 138,000 new articles in The Berwick Advertiser, over 108,000 in The Sheffield Evening Telegraph and over 60,000 in The Falkirk Herald. Click here to read more about the additions.
CANADA YEARBOOKS. Ancestry just released over 1 million Canadian yearbook entries between 1908 and 2010. These span middle school to college years and can help fill in an ancestor’s younger years while pinpointing a family residence for that year. Note: these records were indexed by OCR and may contain errors. Be sure to browse them as well as search!
ENGLAND SYNAGOGUES. TheGenealogist has released online 99,500 records of London synagogue seat-holders spanning the years from 1920 to 1939. Eighteen synagogues and affiliated guilds, societies and charities are represented. These include “names of gentlemen eligible for office, life member of the council, women who are seatholders in their own right and seatholders who are not eligible to vote….These fully indexed records allow family historians to search by name, keyword, synagogue and address and with one click see an image taken from the pages of Seatholders for Synagogues in London.”
US SOCIAL SECURITY. This is a critical update to our ability to access information in U.S. Social Security applications! This Ancestry index from applications and claims for 1936-2007. “This database picks up where the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) leaves off by providing more details than those included in the SSDI,” says the database description. “It includes information filed with the Social Security Administration through the application or claims process, including valuable details such as birth date, birth place, and parents’ names. While you will not find everybody who is listed in the SSDI in this database, data has been extracted for more than 49 million people.” Some data will not appear for newer records; click the above link to read more about it.
About a year ago, Greek-American family historian and Emmy award-winning writing, producer and author Yvette Manessis Corporon published When the Cypress Whispers: A Novel, a novel based on true stories gathered from her grandmother. Among the anecdotes was a decades-old secret from the Greek island of Erikoussa: that the entire island joined together to save a Jewish tailor and his family from the Nazis.
It’s a heroic and dangerous story of Holocaust survivors. When the Nazis arrived in Corfu, they killed most of the Jewish residents. One family escaped to Erikoussa: a man named Savas and his wife and three daughters.
“Yvette’s grandmother was one of those Islanders,” says Daniel Horowitz, Chief Genealogist at MyHeritage. “She was good friends with one of the girls and so Yvette turned to MyHeritage to ask if we could help find the family. We did, and an emotional (although buy pet medication online uk virtual) reunion took place between Yvette, and Rosa’s sons.” Apparently the story did not get passed down through Savas’ family. They were stunned to learn about their family’s experience on the island, many years after their relatives had left it for Israel and other parts of the world.
Below, watch an Israeli newscast on the story (with English subtitles), or click here to read a news story about it (in English). Click here to learn why we here at Genealogy Gems partner with MyHeritage, a leading international resource for family history trees and records
Are you an avid reader? Check out the Genealogy Gems Book Club, which features great reads (fiction and nonfiction) for those who love history and family themes. (P.S., if you ever purchase a book we recommend, we appreciate you using our links! Your purchases keep the free Genealogy Gems podcast FREE.)
Newspapers.com and History Unfolded You can contribute to this important project whether or not you use Newspapers.com to do so. But using Newspapers.com makes it even easier to submit the articles you find. Simply use Newspapers.com to create a clipping of an article you’ve found, then submit that clipping through the 
