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An initiative to promote world-leading genealogy education, events, and research has been launched at the University of Strathclyde.

The Strathclyde Institute for Genealogical Studies (SIGS) has been established with the aim of delivering academic excellence through the creation of new courses and research opportunities to run alongside the University’s long-standing world-leading postgraduate programme.

The Institute, based in Strathclyde’s Centre for Lifelong Learning (CLL), will also build on the success of the University’s genetic genealogy research projects and work with experts, organisations, and other faculties at Strathclyde to grow a thriving research community for anyone with an interest in family history.

The University is already home to a well-established variety of learning opportunities in the subject, ranging from beginner level short courses and free online courses to a world-leading, online Masters degree and a PhD pathway in History with Genealogical Studies.

The creation of the Institute will facilitate the development of collaborations, driven by a growing international appetite to discover ancestors, build family trees and better understand results from genetic genealogy tests. Coupled with research expertise and in-house knowledge, this will ensure course content is continually refreshed with the latest documentary and genetic research findings.

Tahitia McCabe has been appointed as Head of SIGS. She held the…

DNA analysis of blood on a knife sheath helped lead to the arrest of accused murderer Bryan Kohberger in the homicide of four University of Idaho students. The leading role forensic genetics, familial DNA searching, and forensic genetic genealogy is playing in solving crimes is examined in a comprehensive article in the peer-reviewed journal Forensic Genomics.  Click here to read the article now.

In the article titled “The Idaho Student Homicides and the Future of Forensic Genetic Genealogy,” Forensic Genomics Editor-in-Chief Nicole M.M. Novroski, PhD, from the University of Toronto, describes the gold standard in forensic genetics, which involves DNA typing of short tandem repeats (STRs), which are human genetic markers that exist throughout the genome and can be used for human identification. She also…

Beginning Monday, the society, in partnership with the Johnson County Library, will begin taking reservations for “Memory Lab,” a free service that will provide equipment for people who want to digitize their old pictures, home movies and slides.

You must make a reservation

The machines, which include various sizes of photo scanners and equipment, will be able to digitize photos, slides, photo negatives, 8- and Super 8-mm movies.

The Memory Lab equipment will be at the Central Resource Library in Overland Park and will be available through online reservations only, for two-and-a-half hour sessions.

There are currently no restrictions on the number of times a person can reserve the Memory Lab.

The reservations are required so a volunteer can be present to help operate the machinery and get the material onto a thumb drive, said Marsha Bennett, vice president in charge of education and outreach for the genealogical society.

Lab will be available each weekday

The lab will not have a dedicated room at the library, so that the space can be chosen and equipment brought in to meet an individual’s need, she said.

Lab hours have been set for Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings beginning at 9:30 a.m., and Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1 pm. to 3:30 p.m.

Anyone who can’t make those hours can contact the society or the library’s genealogy desk, according to information in a short video about the project.

There’s growing demand for digitization services

Users are advised…

A SET of historic agreements made between publicans across Ireland and the producers of Jameson whiskey have been made available publicly for the first time.

The documents, which belong to the Irish Distillers whiskey producer, have been released in a joint project with Ancestry, a global leader in family history research.

More than fifty years of historical Jameson publicans’ agreements have been released into the public domain, where they are available to search for free on Ancestry.ie until April 30.

The Publican Agreements, which comprise of 37 digitised volumes, each containing approximately 1,500 individual contracts, are legal agreements between John Jameson & Son and publicans who bought whiskey in bulk in Ireland in the first half of the 20th century.

Traditionally, Jameson had two routes to market – one was to bottle in-house and sell directly to the consumer, while the second was to sell by the barrel to publicans.

With the latter, labels were supplied to the individual publicans by the Bow Steet Distillery and publicans would bottle the whiskey in-house and add their name to the label.

To ensure that the whiskey was not tampered with in any way, publicans were required to sign an annual legal agreement which had to be witnessed, and often signed, by a customer on the premises.

The records contain the name and address of every publican who purchased Jameson in bulk at that time in addition to the name and occupation of witnesses, thus providing a unique…

Like many in the Bay area, Yvette Lewis was surprised to discover that the final resting place of some local African Americans have been lost or erased.

BY FRANK DROUZAS, Staff Writer

TAMPA — The African American Burial Ground & Remembering Project is an ongoing USF research study that addresses the erasure of historic Black cemeteries in the Tampa Bay area. Awarded a USF Blackness and Anti-Black Racism grant in 2020, it consists of faculty, staff, and students from multiple disciplines across USF St. Pete and Tampa campuses.

The project focuses on activities to identify, interpret, preserve, record, and memorialize previously unmarked, erased, abandoned, and underfunded African-American burial grounds in Florida, with a focus on Tampa’s Zion Cemetery (located beneath Robles Park Village) and St. Petersburg’s Oaklawn, Evergreen and Moffett cemeteries (located beneath a Tropicana Field parking lot and I-275).

Like many in the Bay area, Yvette Lewis was surprised to discover that the final resting place of some local African Americans have been lost or erased.

Lewis, head of the Hillsborough County NAACP, met with a reporter from the Tampa Bay Times who was investigating the disappearing burial places. A few such cemeteries have been discovered throughout the area — where remains were unceremoniously…

The technique can be expensive and time-consuming and authorities say they will require more resources to expand its use. Meanwhile, privacy advocates have called for more oversight and regulation of law enforcement’s use of databases used by people to trace their roots.

But legal and criminal justice analysts predict investigative genetic genealogy — the technique of identifying criminals and victims by searching genealogy databases for people who share their DNA — will ultimately become a mainstream law enforcement tool.

“It’s changing the way we investigate and solve crimes,” Ryan said in an interview. “It is the wave of the future.”

Massachusetts State Police Colonel John E. Mawn Jr. has asked scientists from the Forensic Services Division to “examine the steps, resources, and policy considerations necessary” to perform this type of testing in-house, according to an agency spokesman.

In Aldrich’s case, prosecutors say, authorities paid Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs to upload the rape suspect’s DNA profile to a commercial genealogy website, which showed people who shared various amounts of his DNA — indicating whether they were near or distant relatives. Those people had voluntarily submitted their DNA for testing while tracing their ancestry and agreed to share the results with law enforcement. Then, investigators compiled family trees and scrubbed public records and social media, ultimately leading to Aldrich as a potential suspect.

Last fall,…

My recent genealogy work with the Greening Nursery Co. and Family Archives prompted some further research into the life of Amelia Reinhardt Rammler Plots.  

She was born on Sept. 30, 1884, to Mary Anna Greening and Michael G. Reinhardt. Her first husband, George Rammler, died on June 2, 1915. Shortly thereafter, she took a job as bookkeeper at the Plot’s and Ott’s Market, owned by Rudolph Plots and his first wife, Louise Kausler Plots. Rudolph and Louise Plots were married on Nov. 9, 1898, at Trinity Lutheran Church in Monroe. Louise Kausler Plots died on July 24, 1943, and Amelia Reinhardt Rammler married Rudolph Plots on Oct. 10, 1944. Rudolph Plots died in 1957, and Amelia Reinhardt Rammler Plots died on June 13, 1968, at age 83.