>It is Spring Break this week and my home has been full of children! So I’ve been quite busy. I have surfed a few genealogy blogs this afternoon and read a few articles.
This article, in my feeble attempt at a summary, indicates that they have created 300 new markers, revised dates to 50,000 years ago for haplogroup E, and created two new haplogroups, S and T. “…Haplogroup T, the clade that Thomas Jefferson’s Y chromosome belongs to, has a Middle Eastern affinity, while haplogroup S is found in Indonesia and Oceania…”
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. “Scientists Reshape Y Chromosome Haplogroup Tree Gaining New Insights Into Human Ancestry.” ScienceDaily 3 April 2008. 3 April 2008 /releases/2008/04/080401184955.htm>
- Ancestry.co.uk to release new archives for Slave decendants
Last Modified: 03 Apr 2008
Source: PA News
Descendants of slaves of the British Empire will be able to delve into their history thanks to the launch of a huge online register.
Social history website Ancestry.co.uk will list details of more than 2.7 million slaves and 280,000 slave owners from 17 former colonial dependencies including Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica and Tobago.
The records date from 1812 to 1834 and can be searched by name, birth year and gender of the enslaved or by the name of the slave holder.
There are more than half a million Britons of black Caribbean origin, most being descended from slaves, according to the report.
Famous modern-day Britons who have ancestors descended from the islands include supermodel Naomi Campbell (Jamaican descent), Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton and England and Chelsea footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips (Grenadian descent), and British talk show host Trisha Goddard (Dominican descent).
Ancestry.co.uk spokesman Simon Harper said: “The slave registers are a vital resource and are for many the only record of their ancestor’s existence.
“Now online for the first time, the registers are hugely important to historians, academics and anyone with an interest in tracing slave ancestors or discovering more about this period in history.
“Delving into slave history has never been more accessible with the combination of DNA testing and historical records now online.
“Looking into our past can be moving, exhilarating and sometimes shocking, but in discovering where we come from we inevitably learn more about who we are.”
- Florida Genealogical Society Blog
Get Your Free Annual FGS Membership
Yes, you read the heading correctly. You can get your annual membership to FGS for free. Your board passed a motion at its meeting on 29 March 2008 aimed at increasing our society’s membership. Here is the deal.
As an existing, paid-in-full member of FGS, all you have to do is bring in three new members to the society. The membership form is being changed to allow a new member to indicate the name of the existing member who invited them to join. (In the meantime, until the new form is online here at our web site, that information can be written in on the old form, currently available at http://www.rootsweb.com/~flfgs/FGS_member_appl_June_2007.pdf.) The FGS Board’s Membership Chair and Treasurer will keep track of the new members who join as a result of your invitation. When you have reached the magic number of 3 new members, your membership for the following calendar year will be credited as paid in full. The number is set to zero again and the count begins again. If you bring in an additional three members, another calendar year’s membership will be credited to you.
You already know that FGS has a wonderful group of people, a great calendar of top-notch programs, a terrific annual Fall Seminar with nationally-recognized genealogical experts as speakers, worthwhile and fun projects, and access to one of the finest genealogical library collections in the United States. A new membership directory is coming later this year and the board is working hard on new ideas for our second fifty years!
Talk up FGS with your friends, neighbors, and family members. Get them to join and we ALL benefit!
- Birmingham Genealogical Society blog alerted me to the new website for kids from Family Tree Magazine website. Family Tree Kids They are offering cute and colorful print outs for children in exploring their family trees. The site includes games, puzzles, and word scrambles in pdf.
Louisiana Genealogy 