Spotted a new-to-me word at McDonald’s:  Thungry? Meaning, are you both thirsty and hungry, and of course McD’s to the rescue! Got to wondering if our ancestors made up words like we do and my answer to myself was of course they did. Where did the regional pronunciations and definitions come from?? Time was when a Northerner could barely understand a Southerner. Is that still so?

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There was a most interesting article in the Church News  titled “FamilySearch 2015 in Review.”  Some highlights mentioned were:

• There are now 4891 Family History Centers in 129 countries.
• RootsTech 2015 attracted 300,000 attendees in person, online and through local post-Family Discovery Day events.
• On October 23^rd, FamilySearch celebrated the 30^th anniversary of the Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake City.
• There have been more than 120,000 new contributors added to Family Tree, making a total of 2.47 million trees with 1.1 billion
• FamilySearch launched 158 new historical collections bringing the total to 2049 and “hundreds of millions” of new published records.
• Around the world, 319 camera teams go quietly about their work and in 2015 digitally preserved over 122 million records in 45 countries.
• Online volunteers numbering 304,000 indexed 110 million
• At the end of 2015, FamilySearch.org had more than 5.31 billion searchable names in historical records.

There was more but you get the idea; if you are not taking advantage of what FamilySearch.org has to offer, I must ask: are you an ostrich???

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As we entered the RootsTech conference hall (with thousands of our genealogy friends), we were greeted by a surgical mask placed on every chair. Steve Rockwood’s keynote address that morning explained. “You are heart specialists for society and especially for your family. RootsTech is a gathering of thousands and thousands of heart doctors..…we will succeed in delivering medicine in a dose of fun to “fix” their hearts by starting small with stories…we will find ways to weave family history into everybody’s lives, including our families…all the learning of RootsTech is so YOU can become better heart doctors.”

Have you ever thought of yourself as your family’s heart doctor? But we family historians have the power to heal our family’s wounded hearts, don’t we?

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James Tanner’s blog, Genealogy’s Star, is a super good, almost-daily, read. On March 7^th, he wrote about “Record Loss: Alternative Jurisdictions when Records Are Lost.”  Mid-way though the article was the best news:  “It is rare that the loss of the records in one particular courthouse completely prevents a researcher from finding a family.” So often we genealogists moan and groan about “the courthouse burned,” but in reality there are viable options.

Tanner counsels that we need to understand the concept of jurisdiction. The definition he is referring to in this blog post is “applied to a specific geographic or other legally defined area where particular records are kept.” He makes the points that jurisdictions overlap and that jurisdictions can change over time.  As jurisdictions have changed over time, there are four possibilities pertaining to the records you seek:

• The records stayed in the originating jurisdiction.
• The records were moved to the newly created jurisdiction.
• The records were sent to the state archives or other repository.
• The records were lost.

In the Wiki at FamilySearch.org, if you type in “burned counties research,” up will pop a map of the burned counties in the U.S. with record loss………. Way cool.

I do suggest that you click to www.genealogysstar.blogspot.com and read James Tanner’s post for March 7^th…….. and perhaps subscribe while you’re there?

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A good genealogy friend just alerted me to a database of information that I’d not heard of before, the National Jewish Welfare Board. Rather than explain it in my words, here is what Wikipedia  says:

National Jewish Welfare Board

Jewish Welfare Board poster, New York, 1918.

The National Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) was formed on April 9, 1917, three days after the United States declared war on Germany, in order to support Jewish soldiers in the U.S. military during World War I.^[1] The impetus for creating the organization stemmed from Secretary of War, Newton Baker and Secretary of Navy, Josephus Daniels.^[1] The organization was also charged with recruiting and training rabbis for military service, as well as providing support materials to these newly commissioned chaplains. The JWB also maintained oversight of Jewish chapel facilities at military installations.^[2]

Postcard, 1919

In 1921, several organizations merged with the JWB to become a national association of Jewish community centers around the country in order to integrate social activities, education, and active recreation. These merged organizations included the YWCA, YMCA, and the National Council of Young Men’s Hebrew and Kindred Association.^[2][3]

In 1941, in a response to a mandate from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, six private organizations – the YMCA, YWCA, the National Jewish Welfare Board, the Traveler’s Aid Association and the Salvation Army were challenged to handle the on-leave morale and recreational needs for members of the Armed Forces. The six organizations pooled their resources and the United Service Organizations, which quickly became known as the USO, was incorporated in New York on February 4, 1941.^[4]

In times of disaster and war, it is often the churches who supply aid and comfort. The Jewish Welfare Board was surely one of those church-organizations helping their own during and after WWII. The example my friend shared with me was a post that she found somewhere online and was from a Stuart Cohn in Indianapolis. Cohn shared the “wounded” card for his father “because he took two pieces of shrapnel during WWII.”

Do you have Jewish back ground, especially during the WWII era? Did you know about this?

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I shall wrap-up today with a warm-fuzzy quote that I heard at RootsTech:  “My body is the embodiment of my ancestors who came before me. Celebrate your roots across the generations.”