Turning Michigan-Canadian Research Upside Down

Through a series of examples, in her article, "Turning Michigan-Canadian Research Upside Down," Judy Rosella Edwards illustrates her thesis that "Immigrants did not always follow a straight and obvious route. Michigan-Canada migrations create an intriguing panorama of people on the move. Browsing through biographies from the 1800s it becomes obvious that arrivals from the Old World traipsed back and forth between the United States and Canada." The article also shows how an understanding of the early geography can direct or redirect research.

New African American database traces slave ship routes

As noted in a recent article on Digital Journal, "African Americans Receive Major Boost in Genealogy Tracking," a new database reported by Alexandra Marks by the Christian Science Monitor on December 30, 2008, will allow African Americans to trace the slave ship routes as far back as the 16th century, and their genealogy, in the same way that Europeans have been able to track their migration. This is a result of research by hundreds of scholars over 40 years, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The researchers compiled maps, images and relevant materials from 35,000 slave-trade routes that took place from Africa to parts of North American, Brazil, Europe and the Carribbean. This is a first, and an important one for a large group of people who had before been cut off from knowing about ancestral roots in the same way others have been able to do