DID YOU KNOW? From Family History Daily The Forgotten Federal Census of 1885 Can Be Found Online for Free Census and population records have long been a vital component of genealogy research. Those of us researching the U.S. Have come to count on the decennial federal census to provide a generous amount of information about our ancestors, even if it is not always as accurate as we’d like. And (aside from the 1890 census that was destroyed in an unfortunate and somewhat mysterious series of events) these records are easily accessible online and widely used. But there is federal census that most family historians have never even heard of, and it happens to provide information on a key period of time in America’s history. https://tinyurl.com/ycns9vsw ++++++++++++++++++++++ From Dick Eastman’s Daily Online Genealogy Newsletter The Newark Public Library Digital Archive The Newark, New Jersey, Library has greatly expanded the My Newark Story. The collection now includes more than 50 collections and 23,000 digitized items available online related to African American, Latino, and Newark history. These include photographs, city directories, documents, objects, newspapers, documents, maps, and more. For more information: https://cdm17229.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/ ++++++++++++++++++++++ From Atlas Obscura Britain's Secret Theft of Ethiopia's Most Wondrous Manuscripts Plundered in 1868, hey are kept at the British Library -- and an ongoing campaign seeks to b ring them home. By James Jeffrey, April 11, 2018 In the basement of London’s British Library I was led into a small well-lit room, marking the end of a journey that began in the Ethiopian Highlands at the Addis Ababa home of a remarkable British historian. In that home, over strong Ethiopian coffee and English biscuits, Richard Pankhurst, who dedicated his life to documenting Ethiopian history, told me the story of the ancient manuscripts looted at the end of the Battle of Maqdala. In 1868, a British expeditionary force laid siege to the mountain fortress of Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros in what was then Abyssinia. A two-day auction of the spoils of war among the victorious troops resulted in more than a thousand predominantly religious manuscripts making their way to Britain—15 elephants and hundreds of mules carried them along with other cultural treasures to the coast—with 350 manuscripts ending up in the British Library. Pankhurst campaigned for the return of the manuscripts to Ethiopia but hadn’t succeeded before his death in 2017. Now other voices are continuing the cause. For more on this article: https://tinyurl.com/yb4otaun