Previous Grants Awarded 2008
January 2008
Lynn Maffessoli of Jersey City, NJ is making a documentary about the discovery of information surrounding her great-grandmother's unsolved murder. After researching her family's history for five years, she was startled to learn that her great-grandmother was murdered in March of 1930. In her documentary, Lynn will recount her ancestor's actions on the day she was murdered. The grant will be used in support of this documentary — and I confess that one of the reasons I selected this application is because it resonated with me since one of my own great-grandmothers was murdered in 1932.
February 2008
100th Honoring Our Ancestors Grant Awarded!
March 2008
The Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance has been locating, registering and preserving Alabama's lost cemeteries since 2003. They have located many cemeteries that were hidden in the woods or about to be destroyed by new developments, and had legislation passed to protect the rights to visit those cemeteries. Their website is utilized by every county in Alabama as well as accessed by other visitors. The grant award will assist them with finding a new server for their website.
April 2008
The Italian Genealogical Group in New York is an organization dedicated to furthering Italian family history and genealogy, but one which benefits just about anyone who's ever had an ancestor reside in the metropolitan New York area. To date, they have computerized over 12,000,000 vital and naturalization records as part of an ongoing project. They will use their grant award for postage, envelopes and ink to keep the project moving forward.
May 2008
The Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society is a very active society that has over 50 publications, has walked and read all cemeteries in both Lake and Porter County, and has added numerous indexes to their website to assist researchers. They have recently come into possession of books that document marriages performed by the Justices of the Peace in Crown Point, IN. Because of the delicate shape they are in, it would do damage to them to scan these records or even copy by hand. The grant award will fund the purchase of a digital camera that will be used to copy the records.
June 2008
Through her website, Arkansas Ties, Pris Weathers has been photographing and archiving Arkansas history since 2000. She has over 200 cemeteries indexed online and over 1,800 pages of Arkansas History. The grant will cover website fees, allowing her to double the size of her site and provide even more Arkansas information and pictures.
July 2008
This grant was made in the form of a donation to pay for Social Security application requests stemming from the Unclaimed Persons group (now over 300 volunteers) on Facebook, created to help coroners locate relatives of identified persons for which no next of kin has been found. The group was a spontaneous outgrowth of the Unclaimed Persons series recently launched on RootsTelevision.com.
August 2008
Brian Bouchard of Brunswick, ME created a website for Maine genealogists, providing photos of more than 400 cemetery gravestones from Maine cemeteries and allowing visitors to upload their own photos. The website also has scanned images of antique letters and books, as well as a blog that keeps visitors up to date on things happening around the state related to Maine history and genealogy. With this grant award, Brian will be acquiring new letters for his Online Letters Collection, which is a set of scanned images of letters that are available for free to download/view with the goal of returning the originals to the related families.
September 2008
The Chester Historical Society began digitizing their archives in 1999. In 2003, they began a website for the Society, and then in 2006 joined the Hudson River Valley Heritage project making original source documents (obits, maps, indentures, estate accounts, etc.) available to the public. The grant award will go toward the purchase of a professional scanner and printer that can accommodate oversized original documents for the digital archive they are sharing online.
October 2008
Pam Smith of Evanston, IL was so motivated by Alex Haley's "Roots," she started what would become thirty years of research into her family history. Pam discovered that she shared heritage with the Tikar tribe of Cameroon, Africa and will be taking a group with her for her second trip to the country in July 2009. Traveling with the group will be a Cameroonian video crew who will archive the experience. The grant award will support the creation of DVDs for each traveler with highlights from the trip.
November 2008
The Germans from Russia Heritage Society in North Dakota is currently purchasing archival records from the former Soviet Union in an effort to gather information pertaining to the Germans that settled in the Black Sea region during the 1800s before migrating to North America. The grant award will go toward the purchase of a digital camera and computer system to handle records obtained from the Simperopol Archive.
December 2008
Yvonne Henriksson of SWEDENROOTS in Vegby, Sweden helps people in the U.S. find their Swedish ancestors. The grant award will be used to further her work in connecting people with information about the Swedish ancestors.
