Forward: How I stumbled upon thousands of Holocaust-era letters and traced the stories behind them

Forward: How I stumbled upon thousands of Holocaust-era letters and traced the stories behind them. “The letter was dated July 17, 1939, and signed by a man named Joseph Gross. He was writing from New York to thank the Forward for helping to find his relatives. Alongside it in the digital archive was a letter written in Yiddish, dated the following week, sent from Brussels and signed by Avrom Gross, Joseph’s cousin. ‘I read the letter with such great astonishment,” Avrom wrote. “I have no way of thanking you.’ I stumbled across these letters online, in the digitized archives of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Jerusalem, while searching for references to a column called Seeking Relatives that ran for decades in the Forward.”

German Transcription Project: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Digital Archive (H-Announce)

H-Announce: German Transcription Project: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Digital Archive. “Join our exciting project and transcribe the letters of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, an important 20th century German philosopher and key player in the post-Nietzschean religious revival in the Weimar Republic. This archival collection includes correspondence with influential figures like Franz Rosenzweig, Karl Barth, Martin Buber, and others. We also have included personal letters. German speakers [and Sütterlin readers] are needed to make this historical treasure accessible for researchers worldwide.”

University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Chesnutt Archive adding author’s correspondence

University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Chesnutt Archive adding author’s correspondence. “The Charles W. Chesnutt Archive at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities is now adding correspondence through a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. About 170 letters between Chesnutt and important historical figures such as Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and others have been added thus far.”

CNN: Codebreakers find and decode lost letters of Mary, Queen of Scots

CNN: Codebreakers find and decode lost letters of Mary, Queen of Scots. “A trio of codebreakers has found and deciphered a treasure trove of lost letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots. The 57 secret letters, from Mary Stuart to the French ambassador to England between 1578 and 1584, were written in an elaborate code. The findings come 436 years after Mary’s death by execution on February 8, 1587.”

The Guardian: What was Dracula really like? 550-year-old clue to life of Vlad the Impaler emerges

The Guardian: What was Dracula really like? 550-year-old clue to life of Vlad the Impaler emerges. “On a dark and stormy night in May this year, exactly 125 years to the day that Bram Stoker published the definitive vampire novel, two people pored over a document more than 500 years old in a room in Transylvania – signed by Dracula himself. Gleb and Svetlana Zilberstein’s mission? To extract genetic material from the letters written by Vlad Dracula – the historical inspiration for Stoker’s vampiric count – left there by his sweat, fingerprints and saliva.”

News 12 Long Island: Civil War letters written by Islip soldier delivered to Long Island historical society

News 12 Long Island: Civil War letters written by Islip soldier delivered to Long Island historical society. “Over 100 letters providing a firsthand account of life during the Civil War were recently delivered to a historical society on Long Island. The correspondence was written by 41-year-old Frederick Wright Sr., a private in the Union Army, to his family home on Monell Avenue in Islip…. The letters are available for viewing on the Historical Society of Islip Hamlet’s Online Museum website.”

Australian War Memorial: First World War diaries and letters get new life online

Australian War Memorial: First World War diaries and letters get new life online. “Eyewitness accounts of the end of the First World War, as recorded in diaries and letters, are now available online as part of a major digitisation project led by the Australian War Memorial. These diaries and letters give an intimate insight to this globally significant day, as Australians gather to mark Remembrance Day and commemorate the Armistice of the First World War, which was signed at 11 am on 11 November 1918.”

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: What I learned about antisemitism from a remarkable new archive about Jewish Civil War soldiers

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: What I learned about antisemitism from a remarkable new archive about Jewish Civil War soldiers . “[Max] Glass was not the only Jewish soldier to be cruelly mistreated when serving in the Union Army. But as the new Shapell Roster of Jewish Service in the Civil War demonstrates, his experience was far from typical. I explored the Shapell Roster while working on my new book, on the experience of Jewish soldiers in the Union army. What I learned from the vast collection of documents and data was that indifference, benign curiosity and comradeship appear to have been much more common than conflict for the majority of Jewish soldiers in the Union army.”

Yorkshire Post: Wentworth Woodhouse’s ‘lost’ archives that were thought to have been destroyed in a fire reveal fascinating facts about Yorkshire estate

Yorkshire Post: Wentworth Woodhouse’s ‘lost’ archives that were thought to have been destroyed in a fire reveal fascinating facts about Yorkshire estate. “The story goes that a huge bonfire at Wentworth Woodhouse in the 1970s destroyed a vast collection of private letters and documents belonging to the aristocratic Fitzwilliam family. Yet this urban legend that sprang up in the estate villages as the family’s fortunes crumbled and the Grade I-listed house near Rotherham’s sale approached was never accurate – and a new research project has digitised the Fitzwilliams’ ‘lost’ archives and revealed previously unknown facts about their lives.”

News@Northeastern: Letters Of Ignatius Sancho Offer Window To Life Of Black Man In 18th-century London

News@Northeastern: Letters Of Ignatius Sancho Offer Window To Life Of Black Man In 18th-century London. “Led by Northeastern professors Nicole Aljoe and Olly Ayers along with four undergraduate research assistants, the Ignatius Sancho’s London project pulls data from digital and physical archives of Sancho’s letters and maps them, creating an interactive resource to help the public understand Black life in 18th-century England.”

Fine Books & Collections: Oxford English Dictionary Correspondence Heads Online

Thanks to Tish W for always keeping an eye out and sending me cool stuff. From Fine Books & Collections: Oxford English Dictionary Correspondence Heads Online. “The Murray Scriptorium has been established by Professor of English at the University of Oxford Charlotte Brewer and research fellow Dr. Stephen Turton from the University of Cambridge, both specialists in the history of dictionaries. It aims to document the letters and papers of Sir James Augustus Henry Murray (1837–1915) who was the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and sent and received so many letters compiling it that a pillar box was set up outside his house in Oxford.”

Tulane News: Tulane database brings historic activism to the forefront

New-to-Me, from Tulane News: Tulane database brings historic activism to the forefront. “The African Letters Project is a free database that consists of over 5,600 letters written between 1945 to 1994, during the decolonization era in many African countries. [Professor Elisabeth] McMahon’s initial idea for the database was to highlight more African American activists who supported independence movements throughout Africa during that period of history.”