Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center databases

I received my copy of the Missouri Historical Society’s Genealogy and House History monthly eNewsletter yesterday.

They too mentioned the ongoing digitization of St. Louis area newspapers by Ancestry.com, which was announced back in April. Apparently they also have a subscription to the ProQuest version of Newspapers.com, and visitors can access it at their Library and Research Center.
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I go to the St. Louis County Library headquarters for most of my library-based genealogy research, but I have a nostalgic fondness for the Library and Research Center building. It used to be a synagogue. The reading room is the former sanctuary where I became a Bar Mitzvah in 1982, and where my grandmother was confirmed in 1930.

I decided to see what other subscription databases they might offer

1) America: History and Life
2) Ancestry.com (the library edition)
3) Fold3
4) Frontier Life (includes the journals of Lewis and Clark)
5) JSTOR
6) Newspapers.com (library edition)
7) WorldCat Discovery (with links to full text results from America: History and Life, and JSOR)
8) World’s Fairs: A Global History of Expositions

St. Louis County Library has Ancestry, Fold3, and Newspapers.com, however it doesn’t have America: History and Life, or JSTOR. Access to these is definitely worth making the 7 mile trip to visit my childhood sanctuary on a more regular basis. They don’t have evening hours, but they are open on Saturdays.

Cousin to Boris Johnson - Oy Vey!

American Ancestors – the website of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) – has released a press release on “The American Ancestry of Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Is Revealed by American Scholar”

The American scholar is Gary Boyd Roberts, Senior Research Scholar Emeritus at NEHGS. The press release and Gary Boyd Roberts' research suggests Johnson is descended from Samuel Lathrop and Elizabeth Scudder. I have posted before that I am not related to all Lathrop descendants, but I am related to Samuel Lathrop’s descendants through his wife Elizabeth Scudder. 

The American Ancestors article states:

Lathrop descendants include U.S. First Ladies Edith Kermit (Carow) Roosevelt and Nancy (Davis) Reagan; Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden; the traitor Benedict Arnold; politicians William Jennings Bryan, Thomas E. Dewey, John Foster Dulles, and George and Mitt Romney; poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and Jr.; inventor Eli Whitney; financier J. P. Morgan Jr.; artist Georgia O’Keeffe; composer Charles Ives; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith Jr.; Cecil B. DeMille and Agnes de Mille; aviator Amelia Earhart; and, among actors, Julie Harris, Clint Eastwood, Cissy Spacek, and Ben and Casey Affleck.

I’d have to conduct some research on those listed to see which Lathrops were their ancestors. From past research I’ve read, I believe Longfellow, Romney, and Holmes are all among my list of cousins.