Lori Thornton

Many of us look back fondly on our college days. But our current thoughts can end up being focused on alumni associations sending us messages for money. But even if you never went to college a day in your life, the resources of your local colleges and universities can be very helpful to your genealogical research.

 

 

Colleges and university, as bastions of learning have a wide variety of resources available for research. Their resources for general history, social history, and the law are a treasure trove for genealogists.

1. Open to the Public
Many people don’t’ realize that college and university libraries are often open to the public. State schools and colleges are almost always available to anyone who wishes to use them. But even private schools often welcome anyone. Harvard University, for example, is arguably the most elite school in the country. Their main library, Widener, is generally open only to students, faculty, and staff. But that is only one of dozens of the university’s libraries, many of which are open to the public. I have

2. Newspapers
The United States Newspaper Project is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities with technical assistance from the Library of Congress. One library from each of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is designated as the official repository for newspapers in that state to be preserved by the USNP. In many locations, the library is a college or university library. The USNP website has a list of participating libraries.

3. Government Documents
The Government Printing Office maintains the Federal Depository Library Program. The FDLP is mandated by Congress to provide public access to information published by the government. Each state has multiple repositories that serve as depositories, many of them are college and university libraries. By law, access to government documents is free and accessible to any member of the public. You can find an FDLP library near you on their website.

4. Manuscript Collections
One of the greatest resources for genealogists are manuscript collections. Colleges and universities will often have incredible resources for you. Large or long-lived employers, such as factories or hospitals, might donate their records to the school. There may also be important groups or organizations that your ancestor volunteered for or worked with. For example, the Houghton Library at Harvard University has records of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), the first and largest Christian missionary movement in America.

5. Online Databases
College and university libraries will often have subscriptions to large online database collections that are not available as individual subscriptions. They run from well-known collections, such as the American Historical Newspapers Database, to the more esoteric (but still valuable), such as Early English Books Online (1475 – 1700). These databases may help you not only with names and data, but also with reference works that can teach you more about resources and help you to understand them better.

Not everyone can be as lucky as I am to live in the city of Boston, which has one of the largest number of colleges and universities in the country. There are 31 schools in the city itself. When you add in the bordering towns in the metropolitan area there are 58 colleges and universities. Take advantage of your local schools to access their tremendous resources.

This year's Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati sparked some good discussions, including one that came out of Ohio Genealogy News editor Sunny McClellan Morton's Friday morning talk. Like many of us, she's trying to encourage new writers to take up the pen or word processor as the case may be.

I admit to being a bit surprised that there was anything to discuss. There are many kinds of good genealogical writing, and the first person can be effectively wielded in most of them.

. . . Except at the top of the pyramid. In the five most scholarly magazines -- NEHGR, NGSQ, NYGBR, TAG, and The Genealogist -- the first person singular or plural is out of bounds, I think reasonably so. The focus there should be on the methods, the records, and the people being researched -- not on the researcher's false trails and travails. Having journals like this is one of many factors that will make genealogy more respectable as an intellectual endeavor and not just a harmless obsession of geezers. Also, once you get the hang of it, leaving yourself out of the picture actually makes it easier to tell one story, without having to shift back and forth from the story of the past to the story of your attempt to reclaim the past. Scholarly accounts deliberately suppress process details because the logic of proof is often very different from the travelogue of discovery.

But this is not the only way to tell these stories, and it is not always even the best way. For one thing, up-and-coming researchers have a natural hunger for accounts of how it went. A research find can look very different in the heat of battle (or more likely in the courthouse basement) than it does in a polished article. And nothing prevents such accounts from being well-written and well-documented.

So, pretty much everywhere else -- in commercial popular magazines, in trade publications (APG Quarterly), and in quality mid-level publications (such as NGS Magazine, Ohio Genealogy News, and many state publications) -- I would expect good editors to be open to the possibility of using first person to tell a solid genealogical story. (I blogged about a couple here; Sunny has been publishing research travelogues under the heading "Genealogy Journeys" in OGN.)

Many people may find it more natural to write in the first person at first, and I'm in favor of any approach that will get more of us writing (as opposed to dying with file cabinets full of uncommunicated discoveries). But writing WELL in the first person is much harder than it looks, for at least three reasons:

(1) All storytelling and all writing is about selection, and when you write about your own experience you have to do all the selection. You know too much. (In an interview-based article, for instance, both the interviewee and the interviewer filter the direct experience, so that the result of the interview has already been winnowed down considerably from the raw experience, making it easier to craft a readable narrative out of it.) It can be hard to see the forest because you know so much about each individual tree -- but if you tell all, the reader will quit rather than figure it out.

(2) First person can tempt us into careless writing. As beginners we often rely too much on adjectives and adverbs, and on general ones at that. First-person may make it harder to realize that we are emoting vaguely, rather than painting a clear picture.

(3) First person poses a special technical problem in genealogy. We then have at least two separate narratives going: our own research chronology, AND the life we are researching. It takes considerable skill and experience to keep both stories on track, separate, and memorable.

These caveats aside, I think first person opens realms of possibility. Some of the most memorable genealogy or family history books I have ever read use it: Leonard Todd's Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave; Martha Hodes's The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century; and (in a somewhat different and slightly less documented vein) Ian Frazier's Family. I found them impossible to put down, and well worth rereading and learning from. It's true, these are world-class writers. Few if any of us can use the first-person tool as well as they do, but that is no reason to banish it altogether from our toolbox.




Harold Henderson, "'I' and 'we' in genealogy writing," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

There are hardly any hobbies that hold more passion than genealogy.  Once hooked by the bug, most people never retire and one of the things they worry about passing down to their family are their genealogy records – even if the family of today isn’t terribly interested.

So it’s easy to understand the degree of passion and enthusiasm, but sometimes this passion can kind of go astray and it crosses the line from something positive to something not nearly so nice.

Genetic genealogy is the latest tool in the genealogists’ arsenal, but it introduces some new challenges and unfortunately, with the increased number of people testing, we’re seeing some examples of what I consider bullying – for DNA, for identification and for information.

Bullying is unwelcome aggressive behavior that involves repeated threats, physical or electronic contact or a real or perceived imbalance of power.  Generally, the victim feels they can’t make it stop.  This has become especially prevalent in the cyber age.  And bullying is not just about kids.

I’m going to look at 3 types of situations.  It’s easy to see both perspectives, but bullying by any other name is still bullying, even though the bully probably doesn’t see it that way.  Guaranteed, the recipient does.

You’ve Got the DNA I Need

Let’s say that Aunt Gladys is the last person alive in a particular line who can provide DNA to represent that line.  But Aunt Gladys, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to test.  It’s fine to discuss this, to talk about her concerns, and perhaps you can find a solution to address them, like testing anonymously.

But let’s say that Aunt Gladys simply says “no,” end of story.  What then?

Yes, Aunt Gladys carries the information that you need, but it’s HER DNA that needs to be tested, and if she says no, then her decision should be respected, as difficult as it may be and as unreasonable as it may seem.  Maybe Aunt Gladys knows something you don’t – like she is adopted or some other secret that she does not wish to reveal.  Badgering Aunt Gladys from this point forward is going to do nothing other than cause hard feelings and make Aunt Gladys want to avoid you.

You may think you’re “just discussing” but from her perspective, you may be bullying.  Now, it’s OK to beg and cry once, but if you’re slipped into the realm of “if you don’t test, I’ll tell Uncle Harvey that you scratched his car back in 1953,” you’ve stepped over that line.

Won’t Answer E-Mails

I can’t tell you how often I hear this story.  “I match with person XYZ and they won’t share their information.”  Most of the time, they won’t answer e-mails.  And the question follows, of course, as to why they tested in the first place.

These tests have been around for a number of years now.  Many people have died or moved or the purpose of the test was fulfilled and they aren’t interested beyond that.  Think of your Aunt Gladys.  If you did convince her to test, it wouldn’t be for her, but for you and she certainly would not be interested in answering random e-mails.

There could be a number of reasons, depending on the testing company used, that someone might not answer.  In particular, many people test at 23andMe for health reasons.  It doesn’t matter to them if you’re a first cousin or any other relation, they simply aren’t interested or don’t have the answers for you.

It’s alright to send 2 or 3 e-mails to someone.  E-mails do get lost sometimes.  But beyond that, you’ve put yourself into the nuisance category.  But you can be even worse than a nuisance.

I know of one case where someone googled the e-mail of their contact, discovered the person was a doctor, and called them at the office.  That is over the line into cyber-stalking.  If they wanted to answer the e-mail, they would have.  If they don’t want to, their decision needs to be respected.

I Know You Know

This situation can get even uglier.  I’ve heard of two or three situations recently.  One was at Ancestry where someone had a DNA match and their trees matched as well.  At first the contact was cordial, but then it deteriorated into one person insisting that the other person had information they weren’t divulging and from there it deteriorated even further.

This is a hobby.  It’s supposed to be fun.  This is not 7th grade.

Adoptions

However, there are other situations much more volatile and potentially serious. In some cases, often in adoptions, people don’t want contact.  Sometimes it’s the parent and sometimes it’s the adoptee.  But those aren’t the only people involved.  There are sometimes half-siblings that are found or cousins.

For the adoptees and the parents, there are laws in each state that govern the release of their legal paperwork to protect both parties.  Either party can opt out at any time.

But for inadvertently discovered family connections, this isn’t true.  Think of the person who doesn’t know they are adopted, for example, who discovers a half-sibling and through that half sibling their biological mother.  Neither person may welcome or be prepared for this discovery or contact.

Imagine this at the dinner table with the family gathered, “Hey guess what, I got a half-sibling match today on my DNA.  I wonder if that’s some kind of mistake.  How could that be?”

So if you match someone as a half sibling or a cousin, and they don’t want to continue the conversation, be kind and respectful, and leave the door open to them if they change their mind in the future.  Pushing them can only be hurtful and nonproductive.

Dirty Old (and Formerly Young) Men

And then, there’s the case of the family pervert.  Every family seems to have one.  But it’s not always who you think it is.  By the very nature of being a pervert, they hide their actions – and they can be very, very good at it.  Practice makes perfect.

Let’s say that Jane likes genealogy, but she was molested as a child by Cousin Fred.  Some of the family knows about this, and some don’t believe it.  The family was split by this incident, but it was years in the past now.  Jane wants nothing to do with Fred’s side of the family.

(By the way, if you think this doesn’t happen, it does.  About 20% of woman have been raped, 30% of them by family members (incest), many more molested, and children often by relatives or close family friends.  15% of sexual assault victims are under the age of 12.  Many childhood cases are never prosecuted because the children are too young to testify.  Perverts and pedophiles don’t wear t-shirts announcing such or have a “P” tattooed on their forehead.  Often family members find it hard to believe and don’t, regardless of the evidence, casting the victimized child in the position of being a liar and “troublemaker.”  Need convincing?  Think of what Ariel Castro’s family said and how well he hid his dark side and the Boston bombers’ family comments about their innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.)

Jane’s an adult now and DNA tests.  She has a match and discovers that it’s on Fred’s side of the family.  Jane tells the person that she doesn’t want anything to do with that side of the family, has no genealogy information and wants no contact.  The match doesn’t believe Jane and then becomes insistent, then demanding, then accusatory, then threatening.

This is clearly over the line.  Jane said she didn’t want any continued contact.  That should have been the end of the discussion.

But let’s say this one gets worse.  Let’s say that because of this, Cousin Fred wakes up and decides that Jane is interesting again and begins to stalk Jane, and her children……

Does this make you shake in your shoes?  It should.  Criminals not only aren’t always playing with a full deck, but don’t play by any of the same rules as the rest of us.  Cousin Fred might just be very grateful for that information about Jane and view it as a wonderful “opportunity,” provided by his “supportive” family member who has now endangered both Jane and her children.

Who’s Yer Daddy?

In another recent situation, John discovered by DNA testing that he is not the biological child of his father.  He subsequently discovered that his mother was raped by another male, married to another close family member.  When John discovered that information, he promptly lost interest in genealogy altogether.

A year or so later, John matched someone closely who was insistent that he provide them with how he was related to them.  John knew, but he did not feel that it was any of their business and he certainly did not want to explain any of the situation to the perpetrator’s family member, who, by the way, had already mentioned what a good person the perpetrator was.  However, the person continued to harass and badger John until he changed his e-mail address.

I so wanted to ask these people, “What part of “NO” don’t you understand?”

Mama’s Baby, Daddy’s Maybe

In one final example, adoptees often make contact with their birth mother first, and then, if at all, with their birth father.  Sometimes the birth mothers are not cooperative with the (now adult) child about the identity of their father.  Often, this is horribly frustrating to the adoptee.  In at least one case, I know of a birth mother who would never tell, leaving the child an envelope when she died.  The child was just sure the father’s name was in the envelope, but it was not.  I can only imagine that level of disappointment.

Why would someone be so reticent to divulge this information?  The primary reasons seem to be that either the mother doesn’t know due to a variety of circumstances that can range from intoxication to rape, the woman never told the father that she had a baby and placed the child for adoption, the father was abusive and the mother was/is afraid of him/his family, the father was married, or the father was a relative, which means not only might the father still be alive, the mother may still have a relationship of some type with him.  The mother may have lied for years to protect herself, and in doing so, protected the father as well.

Clearly, this situation has a lot of potential to “shift” a lot of lives and not always in positive ways.  One woman didn’t want to make contact with her child other than one time because she had never told her husband of 30 years that she had a child before their marriage.  One woman made contact, but did not want to divulge that the child’s father was her older brother, still alive.  Victims often keep the secrets of their attackers out of misplaced shame and guilt.  Think Oprah here.  Mother may not be simply being stubborn, but acting like the victim she is and trying to preserve whatever shreds of dignity are left to her.  She may also be embarrassed by a lapse in judgment.  One adoptee realized when counting forward from her birth date that she was conceived right at New Years and when she realized that, she figured out that her mother, who drank heavily when she was younger, probably did not know who her father was, and didn’t want to admit that.

As frustrating as this is for the adoptee, the birth mother does have the right not to have her life turned upside down.  Badgering her will only result in losing the potential for a relationship from the current time forward.  Being respectful, understanding and gentle may open the door for future information.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I can hear Aretha now.

If you haven’t walked a mile in their moccasins, so to speak, you can’t possibly know the situation of the person on the other end of your request for DNA or information.  Don’t make the mistake of stepping over the line from excitement into bully behavior.

Think of the potential situations the person on the other end may be dealing with.  Ultimately, if they say no, then no it is and no should be enough without an explanation of why.  Generally bullying doesn’t work anyway, because someone who feels like you are threatening them or being too aggressive will clam right up and it will be that proverbial cold day in Hades before they tell you anything.  It’s important to keep communications from sounding like you’re demanding or entitled.  My mother always said “you’ll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”  I always found that very irritating, probably because I needed to hear it just then – but regardless – it’s true.

Keep in mind, genetic genealogy is about genealogy.  It’s a hobby.   It’s fun.  If it becomes otherwise and puts people at jeopardy, then we need to take a step back and take a deep breath.

Most people don’t mean to cross the line into bullying.  They just get excited and sometimes desperate.  Hopefully this discussion will help us all be more aware of where the polite line is in communicating with our family members and matches.

If you are the victim of information bullying, cyber-stalking or someone puts you in an uncomfortable situation, there are steps you can take to remedy the situation.  Most bullying sites are directed at adolescents, but the advice still applies.

If you know you don’t want contact initially, then make your accounts anonymous or don’t respond to requests.  If you realize that you don’t want contact after the initial contact, for whatever reason, say so.  After that, do not engage in communications with someone who is attempting to bully you.  If they threaten you or threaten to reveal information or your identity if you don’t give them information or do something, that action falls into the blackmail realm, which a crime.  Complying with a threat to protect yourself or your family generally only results in more of the same.  You are not dealing with a nice person.  At this point, you are way beyond genealogy and your own internal ”danger” sign should be flashing bright neon red.

If disengaging does not take care of the problem, save all messages/contacts and contact your attorney who may advise you to contact the police or the FBI if the problem crosses state lines.  Depending on what state you/they live in and exactly what they have done, you may have a variety of options if they won’t stop, especially if they do something that does in fact manage to turn your life upside down and/or a crime is involved, like blackmail.  Of course, this is akin to closing the barn door after the cow leaves.  Hopefully, the person causing the problem is simply an over-zealous genealogist, means you no harm, realizes what they have done or are doing, and will get a grip and compose themselves long before this point.

Bullying of course is not because of DNA or unique to genetic genealogy, but the new products introduce new social situations that we have not previously had tools to discover nor the opportunity to address in quite the same way.

It was a chance encounter with the Silver family.  If you research genealogy you are familiar with how it happens. I was researching an entirely different family, gleaning tidbits from old newspapers.  And then this story leaped out from the … Continue reading →

Cataloochee had a Rip Van Winkle experience between Reconstruction in the 1870s and the turn of the century. The rest of the world was changing and growing as railroads became more accessible. However, life in the valley remained much as … Continue reading →

 

The Huguenots (properly pronounced yu-geh-noh) belonged to the Protestant Reformed Church of France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. France was a diverse territory at that time. Widespread dissatisfaction with corruption in the Catholic Church had led many to leave in favor of Martin Luther and John Calvin.

The total number of Huguenots peaked in the mid-sixteenth century when their numbers were estimated to be about 2 million (as compared to 16 million Catholics in the same period). Tensions were high between Catholics and the Huguenots.

The Edict of January, put forth by Catherine de Medici in 1562, attempted to quell the violence between the two groups, but it failed. The period from 1562 to 1598 is known as the French Wars of Religion. Henry IV, who recanted Protestantism for Catholicism when he ascended the throne in 1589, issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which, while enforcing Catholicism as the state religion, provided legitimacy for the Huguenots and a great degree of freedom.

Unfortunately, the peace did not last long, especially after Louis XIII ascended the throne in 1610. By this time, the majority of remaining Huguenots lived in the provinces of Aunis, Guyenne, Poitu, and Saintonge. As the seventeenth century progressed, the persecution continued. In 1685, Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revoked the Edict of Nantes and declared Protestantism to be illegal.

Huguenots started fleeing persecution in France in the mid-sixteenth century. Many went to nearby Eurpoean countries, such as England, Ireland, Wales, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries. One group tried to settle in South America, at what is today Rio de Janeiro. Another group went to South Africa, where their descendants today are marked with their French surnames.

Many went to what is today the United States. They created the town of New Paltz, where they built what is today the oldest street in the country. They also formed the town of New Rochelle (named after the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle in France).

Many Huguenots were members of the merchant class. They promoted the settlement of New France with the crown in the seventeenth century to increase business opportunities. While the official policy of the crown was to prevent Huguenots from settling in the colony, reality proved quite different.

Merchants travelled to oversee their business interests. And the colony was desperately in need of settlers, especially craftsmen. Although the Jesuits and other clergy were opposed, the civil authorities were quite tolerant of the Huguenots immigrating. In fact, during the seventeenth century, about one-third of all immigrants from France to New France came from the Huguenot strongholds of Aunis, Guyenne, Poitu, and Saintonge.

Unfortunately, they could not officially worship in Protestant churches.  Starting in 1659, the Catholic Church required many of these immigrants to formally abjure their Protestant faith. But even for those who did not, because there were no official Protestant churches, and with their children and grandchildren marrying Catholics, the Huguenots were fully assimilated. Some of ancestors were among this group.

In the late nineteenth century, as the tercentenary of the Edict of Nantes approached, many descendants looked for ways to honor their ancestors. Thus were founded a number of Hugenot societies around the world, whose members are mostly descendants of the Huguenots. In the United States, we have both the Huguenot Society of America was founded in 1883. There are also societies in Australia, Great Britain and Ireland, and South Africa. Cyndi’s List has a list of societies with websites.

FamilySearch terms of use

It used to be, just a few short weeks ago, that the major emphasis at FamilySearch.org was the records it digitizes and makes available to its users.

You would navigate to the website, and the very first thing you’d see would be the search box to take you into the millions and millions of images available to the genealogist there.

No longer.

Now the emphasis is on sharing. There are six rotating images at the landing page for the website and the first three, in order, are for making connections with an online fan chart, sharing memories by uploading and sharing photographs, and connecting generations by creating an online family tree.

Oh, the records are still there — thank heavens! — but the focus has shifted to the user and sharing of information among users.

And that means it’s time for a very careful look at the website’s terms of use. Terms of use, remember, are “the limits somebody who owns something you want to see or copy or use puts on whether or not he’ll let you see or copy or use it.”¹

And when it comes to a site where sharing is involved, terms of use are also those pesky little sometimes-written-in-legal-jargon provisions saying what the website can do with anything you choose to upload.

For the most part, FamilySearch‘s terms of use are typical and ordinary and, for the most part, written in plain English.² But there are a couple of provisions that should make us all stop and think.

The big one affects anything you choose to upload to the site:

In exchange for your use of this site and/or our storage of any data you submit, you hereby grant us an unrestricted, fully paid-up, royalty-free, worldwide, and perpetual license to use any and all information, content, and other materials (collectively, “Contributed Data”) that you submit or otherwise provide to this site (including, without limitation, genealogical data and discussions and data relating to deceased persons) for any and all purposes, in any and all manners, and in any and all forms of media that we, in our sole discretion, deem appropriate for the furtherance of our mission to promote family history and genealogical research. As part of this license, you give us permission to copy, publicly display, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise distribute your Contributed Data throughout the world, by any means we deem appropriate (electronic or otherwise, including the Internet). You also understand and agree that as part of this license, we have the right to create derivative works from your Contributed Data by combining all or a portion of it with that of other contributors or by otherwise modifying your Contributed Data.³

In plain English, by using the website and uploading anything — a photo, a story, any comments you share about an ancestor or about your research — you are giving FamilySearch an unlimited right to use what you’ve uploaded. It’s a license, meaning you do keep your own copyright in your own work, but it’s a license that allows FamilySearch to do just about everything that copyright law says you’re the only one who can do: copy it, display it, create derivative works from it, and modify it.

If you choose to upload something, you must understand that you are agreeing to allow it to be downloaded and used by everyone else who uses the website for their own personal noncommercial research, to be revised and included in the FamilySearch Wiki, to be used in training materials and similar purposes.

Your grant of permission is perpetual — meaning forever — and it’s unrestricted. You can’t come back later and say you didn’t mean it; you can’t object when someone else starts using that particular picture you uploaded of Great Aunt Tizzy; and you’re never going to be paid for anything you wrote and uploaded that ends up being the featured section of the FamilySearch Wiki.

Let’s be clear about this: there’s absolutely nothing wrong or underhanded about what FamilySearch is doing and it’s not hiding a thing. FamilySearch makes no bones about its purpose here — it wants people to collaborate and share:

You acknowledge that a primary purpose of this site is to enable collaboration between users of this site and other sites that wish to expand their genealogical databases and knowledge. You acknowledge that we may utilize Contributed Data that you submit, for the purpose of collaborating with other individuals and organizations (including commercial genealogical organizations), for example, in order to create a global common pedigree for the purposes of increasing participation in family history and preserving records throughout the world. You acknowledge that collaboration between multiple individuals and organizations allows us to obtain additional data that we may provide to users of this site—thus allowing users to extend their own ancestral lines.⁴

If that purpose doesn’t sit well with you — if you have qualms about seeing your words used by others or about other people downloading your family photos — don’t upload to FamilySearch. It’s as simple as that.

And, by the way, because you’re the one granting the license, if you do choose to upload, make sure you only upload things you have the right to share. The terms of use clearly say that you’re the one on the hook if you upload something that violates someone else’s legal rights:

You represent and warrant that you will not submit anything to this site that violates any third party’s rights (including, but not limited to, copyrights, privacy rights, publicity rights, contract rights, or other proprietary rights). Whenever you submit data to this site, you are affirming that you have the legal right to contribute that data to us and to grant us the rights and licenses set out in this Agreement. You accept legal responsibility for our use of your Contributed Data based on your affirmation. You are solely responsible for all Contributed Data that you post or otherwise contribute to this and any other FamilySearch affiliated site.⁵

Beyond the sharing issues, the other stop-and-think provision is right at the top: the site restricts its use to non-commercial purposes:

You may view, download, and print material from this site only for your personal, noncommercial use unless otherwise indicated. … You may not use this site or information found at this site (including the names and addresses of those who have submitted information) to sell or promote products or services, to solicit clients, or for any other commercial purpose.⁶

Uh-oh. What about professional genealogists, bloggers and genealogy speakers? Are we all violating the terms of use when we use images from FamilySearch in client reports, or as illustrations in a lecture or a blog post?

Not to worry. I posed those questions directly to FamilySearch and the answer is that these are permitted uses:

     • “Specifically, yes you may use the materials in client reports.”⁷

     • “Yes, you may use the materials as instructional illustrations (but not for promotional illustrations) in lectures.”⁸

And as to blog posts, I specifically clarified that some bloggers “have affiliate programs (if someone clicks through on a link on the website and buys a book, the blogger will get a small fee); sometimes the blogger sells his or her own works somewhere on the website; some bloggers take clients or do lectures for a fee and have information about those activities somewhere on the website.” Even on a blog like that, using images from FamilySearch to illustrate a point in a blog post is considered “limited illustrative use” and “is acceptable.”⁹

Bottom line: share with care, and if you’re a professional you can use the images for client reports and illustrations in blogs and lectures.

---

 
SOURCES

When we examine historic records, it is vital that we evaluate them in the context of the world that created them. One of the most important aspects of doing this is to understand the laws under which these records were created.

The Law Librarians’ Society of Washington, D. C., provides a list of resources for researching laws. Many of the links in “State Legislatures, State Laws, and State Regulations: Website Links and Telephone Numbers,” of course, refer to modern legislation. Yet there are a number of sites that have digitized either images or transcriptions of historic laws as well.

For example, the Online State Resources for Genealogists ebook contains links to the following sources for historic law books, among numerous others:

• Connecticut State Library, “Law and Legislation“
• “Laws of the State of Delaware,” The Delaware Heritage Collection
• Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau
• “Texas Laws and Resolutions Archive,” The Portal to Texas History

You can also discover many historic state statute books that have been digitized by Google Books. The easiest way to find these is to search for “laws [state name]” or “statutes [state name]” directly in Google Books, not from the Google main page. The results will vary depending on what has been digitized for the specific state. Occasionally, once you have discovered the naming pattern for historic statute books in the state–or even the identity of the state printer–during the time period you are seeking, you can find better results by searching specifically by name.

A search for “statutes of Virginia,” for example, produces results for Hening’s Statutes at Large for 1819, 1820, and 1836, and a 1971 supplement, all on the first page of results. Clicking on the name of William Waller Hening in these results produces several books of legal commentary that he wrote, a few volumes of court decisions, and an additional volume of the Statutes at Large from 1823.

Another site to search for digitized books is Internet Archive. Through partnerships with numerous libraries and universities, the collection of books on this site almost rivals Google’s. Recommendations for searching are the same as listed above, with similar results.

For example, a search for “laws of Minnesota” on this site produces 98 results, including volumes of session laws from 1891 and 1915, and general laws from 1866, 1878, and 1889.

To search for federal laws, the Library of Congress has digitized the published U. S. Statutes at Large, as well as various published Congressional debates and proceedings, from 1775 through 1875. These include full-text search capability, on “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U. S. Congressional Documents and Debates,” part of its American Memory digital collection.

Understanding the laws that regulated our ancestors’ worlds is an integral part of researching our ancestors within these worlds. Once we have located the relevant laws, we might discover that the intestate succession laws describing how property was to be distributed bring new meaning to the probate records we have located. We might discover that the tax laws defined the values in the tax lists, when specific property was not described. We might discover that the language at the end of a deed that we dismissed as boilerplate actually had a very well-defined legal meaning, that is necessary to fully understand the record.

There are really no limits to what we might discover once we understand the laws of the past.

For more evidence of this, I recommend reading Judy G. Russell’s blog, The Legal Genealogist. She frequently discusses this very phenomenon.

If you would like to cite this post:

Michael Hait, CG, “Resources for studying historic laws,”Planting the Seeds: Genealogy as a Profession blog, posted 28 January 2013 (http://michaelhait.wordpress.com : accessed [access date]). [Please also feel free to include a hyperlink to the specific article if you are citing this post in an online forum.]

On 11 August 2010 National Park Service archaeologists at Monocacy National Battlefield announced that, using clues from the historical record, they had discovered the remains of several slave cabins dating from ca. 1794–1827.[1] I remember reading the Washington Post report on the discovery, and thinking I would love to research the families that lived there.

Within two months, I received an interesting telephone call from the owner of African American genealogy website Afrigeneas. They had been contacted by Essence Magazine for a feature piece, and needed someone with experience researching slaves in Maryland. With the deadline looming I was able to identify one of the slaves owned by the Vincendiere family and trace his descendants down to a journalist in Pittsburgh. His obituary named his ex-wife and a daughter, both still living. The piece, “A Legacy of Love and Pride,” by Robin D. Stone, appeared in the February 2011 issue of Essence.[2]

I decided to follow this with an article discussing some of the research I had done—the methodology, not just the results. On 21 February 2011 I published “Researching the descendants of the Vincendiere slaves, part one” in the African American Genealogy column I wrote on Examiner.com.[3] I originally intended this short piece as part of a series describing the research I had conducted on the family. The first part garnered some attention from the right people. Within another few weeks I received an email—and then a phone call—from the Cultural Resources Program Manager of Monocacy Battlefield, Joy Beasley. We met for lunch and discussed a potential project.

To make a long story short, the National Park Service hired me to research the lives and descendants of all of the slaves living in the slave village—all of the slaves owned by the Vincendiere family. When all was said and done, several months later, I delivered a report over 900 pages in total length, including document images. I had discovered the identities of slaves and their descendants not only in Maryland, but also in Louisiana. One of these families was the Ridgely family.

The Ridgely family—including mother Caroline Ridgely, her children, and their descendants—fascinated me. Their stories were remarkable. All of them had been freed by 1860. Caroline’s son Cornelius Ridgely served in the U. S. Navy during the Civil War. A number of the descendants graduated from various universities. Several became doctors or dentists in Baltimore and Washington, D. C. One descendant worked for the National Park Service during the 1930s before serving in World War II, and later became principal of a Washington, D. C., high school not far from where I worked in Washington. The family story seemed perfect for a three- or four-generation family history narrative. The story wrote itself.

Writing a family history narrative uses different skills than does writing a proof argument or a case study. The one piece of advice I would give anyone attempting to write such a piece is to identify a common theme that holds the story together. This technique produces a compelling narrative.

After I had finished it, I spent about a month editing it. Reading it and re-reading it. Making sure the sentences were concise and the paragraphs were topical. Finally, just a few days before the deadline, I mailed copies to the National Genealogical Society, for its annual Family History Writing Contest.

Several months passed. Finally I received a response. I had won First Place. The prize was an all-expenses-paid trip to the NGS Conference and possible publication in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. As I was already speaking at the 2012 Conference just a month or so later, I was given the option of attending the 2013 Conference in Las Vegas.

For publication in the Quarterly, more work still needed to be done. The Contest judges had provided me with comments for improving the article. Taking these into consideration, I went into another round of editing and rewriting. Finally I submitted the product to Thomas W. Jones and Melinde Lutz Byrne, the editors of the Quarterly.

A short while later, the editors came back to me with more edits and a few items that needed follow-up. Another round and I resubmitted the article.

After all was said and done, the editors sent me a final draft. This draft was in the familiar format of the Quarterly—the fonts, the spacing, the header and footer. It was a very exciting day for me. Having an article published in the preeminent genealogical journal in the United States had been a long-term goal of mine. I was finally at the last step.

Of course, the rest of the issue had to be laid out. It had to go to the printer. I had to wait for the issue to be completed.

About two weeks ago, my two-and-a-half-year journey had reached a new milestone. I received my copies of the December 2012 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. My article, ”In the Shadow of Rebellions: Maryland Ridgelys in Slavery and Freedom,” was the first in the issue.[4]

This research has not yet reached its final conclusion. Who knows where it may take me next?

SOURCES:

[1] “Slave Village Discovered in Maryland,” press release, 11 August 2010, National Park Service, Monocacy National Battlefield, Maryland (http://www.nps.gov/mono/slavevillage2010.htm : accessed 16 February 2013).

[2] Robin D. Stone, “A Legacy of Love and Pride,” Essence Magazine, February 2011, 122–127.

[3] Michael Hait, “Researching the descendants of the Vincendiere slaves, part one,” posted 21 February 2011, in “National African American Genealogy” column, Examiner.com (http://www.examiner.com/article/researching-the-descendants-of-the-vincendiere-slaves-part-one : accessed 16 February 2013).

[4] Michael Hait, CG, “In the Shadow of Rebellions: Maryland Ridgelys in Slavery and Freedom,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Volume 100 (Dec 2012): 245–266.

The following recent blog posts are those that I consider important or notable. Unlike other similar blog lists, I cannot guarantee that they will all be from the past week. (Some weeks I simply do not have time to read any blogs.) But I will try to write this on a fairly regular basis.

Ron Coddington, “2012 Images of the Year,” Faces of War blog, posted 24 December 2012 (http://facesofthecivilwar.blogspot.com/ : accessed 20 January 2013). The Civil War was one of the first major events–and the first American war–documented with photographs. These images are striking.

Judy G. Russell, CG, “The returns of the season,” The Legal Genealogist blog, posted 26 December 2012 (http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 20 January 2013). Judy writes about supporting local genealogical societies, a subject I have also addressed on numerous occasions.

Maria Popova, “Richard Dawkins on Evidence in Science, Life and Love: A Letter to His 10-Year-Old Daughter,” Brain Pickings blog, posted 28 December 2012 (http://www.brainpickings.org/ : accessed 20 January 2013). This post quotes from a letter discussing evidence–a very important topic in science as well as genealogy.

Harold Henderson, CG, “Perfectionism: Is the Best the Enemy?,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed 20 January 2013). Harold questions whether every article published in genealogy journals has to be a perfectly-proven case.

Eric Schultz, “When Do We Forget?,” The Historical Society blog, posted 10 January 2013 (http://histsociety.blogspot.com/ : accessed 20 January 2013). Mr. Schultz takes a look at what percentage of today’s U. S. population might remember some of the most important–and memorable–events that occurred in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Harold Henderson, CG, “So You Want to Re-Invent Genealogy? Here’s How,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed 20 January 2013). The standards in genealogy have been developed through decades of experience. Do you think your research experience has inspired better standards?

As a professional genealogist, much of what I do on a daily basis consists of writing. From client research reports to case studies to instructional articles or blog posts or even books, I probably write on average a half-dozen pages a day, every day. (Aside: in today’s digital world, is it still appropriate to discuss writing in terms of pages? It almost seems a bit like giving directions in terms of time, like “go down that road for seven minutes, then turn left.) This, of course, does not include the volumes of emails I compose and send every day, to clients and colleagues.

Recently Ben Yagoda, a professor of English and journalism at the University of Delaware, posted “Ben Yagoda Gets Sick of the Historical Present” on the Lingua Franca blog—an excellent blog for anyone interested in writing and editing. Mr. Yagoda gives several examples of the historical present tense, a history of its use in various genres of writing, and an exploration of why it might be so popular. He concludes that the tense is “essentially a novelty item. It’s tacky. Give it a rest.” The comments to this post are also quite informative, as a debate arises over the use of the historic present in discussing literature.[1]

There are two basic conventions for use of past and present tense in genealogical writing:

1. When discussing people or events of the past, use the past tense, e.g. “On 9 June 1827 Victoire sold L’Hermitage to John Brien.”

2. When discussing specific documents or records, use the present tense, e.g. “Baptismal records describe Caroline’s children as illegitimate” or “No Joseph Ridgely appears as a Maryland household head in 1820 or 1830 [referring to the federal census].”

The use of the historical present tense in these situations stems from the same logic as the use of the tense when discussing literature. Records exist in the present time. What they say (or don’t say) is said in the present time, when a modern reader reads it. So it would be proper to state that Victoire sold land in 1827, and that the deed describes the property in a certain way. When I look at the deed in 2013 (hypothetically) it says the same thing that it said in 1827.

Other genres tend to use the historical present to describe a past event. As historical writers, however, we should be careful to follow the two conventions mentioned above. Not only does this limit the possibility of confusion, following grammatical conventions simply makes our writing more professional.

SOURCES:

[1] Ben Yagoda, “Ben Yagoda Gets Sick of the Historical Present,” Lingua Franca blog, posted 23 April 2013 (http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca : accessed 28 April 2013).

If you've been catching Ann Cleeves' police procedural series "Vera" on Netflix, you're in for a treat. Readers in the U.S. finally have access to the series, although Silent Voices, the first to be released here, is actually the fourth in the series. For those of you determined to read a series in order, you can start with Silent Voices and quickly learn to recognize Inspector Vera Stanhope as the true character she is. And, if you're lucky enough to have seen the TV episodes, it's even easier to pick up the voice of Vera as you read.

Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police  is not the type to work out, but following doctor's orders, she slipped away from work and went to the Willows to swim. After she found a woman's body in the steam room, though, it was easy for her team to guess what she did there. It wasn't as easy to guess what Vera was going to say to people as she plowed ahead in a murder investigation. And, she could work a case at all hours because, unlike her sergeant, Joe Ashworth, she doesn't have a personal life.

As Vera and Joe investigate, it appears that Jenny Lister, the victim, was perfect, a social worker, a woman with a loving daughter, and a woman so principled that she testified against one of her co-workers in a case when a child was killed by his mother. That co-worker, Connie Masters, was the center of a media campaign during the course of the mother's trial. Connie just happened to be living in the same town as Jenny when Lister was killed. Coincidence or more? It's just one track Vera Stanhope takes as she investigates. However, Vera knew that "principles don't always make you popular".

As in the award-winning Shetland Island series, Cleeves does a superb job entangling readers in a complex mystery dependent on characters. As Vera probes the characters of her suspects, she uncovers secrets that lead to the solution. However Vera Stanhope herself is the richest character in the book. She's revealed through her own thoughts, her actions, and Joe Ashworth's observations of his boss. She's a homely woman and lonely, but she enjoys being the center of attention. She has a chip on her shoulder, and never felt comfortable with the intellectual classes. And she pokes fun at Joe for his attention to family and appearances. At the same time, she has a hard time reading the texts on her phone because she's too vain and too disorganized to go for an eye exam. She knows her own weaknesses, and sometimes thinks Joe represents her feminine side because he's much more empathetic than she is. She's brusque and pushy at times. And, with her own troubled childhood, she recognizes that this case is "All about families, the weird ties between kids and their parents."

Vera Stanhope sums herself up when she questions why two people died. "But I want to know why, Vera thought....I do care about motive. I'm a nosy bitch and it's what I'm in the job for."

Fans of British police procedurals, and readers who miss Reginald Hill's Superintendent Andy Dalziel, will welcome Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope. She's a welcome addition to the world of British crime fiction with her pushiness, her attitude, and her determination to find answers. It's all in character studies, for a talented author, and a talented police investigator. It's time Vera Stanhope and Silent Voices made their appearances in the U.S.

Ann Cleeves' website is www.anncleeves.com

Silent Voices by Ann Cleeves. Minotaur. 2013. ISBN 9781250033581 (hardcover), 320p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure - The publisher sent me a copy of the book, hoping I would review it.

In case you missed this, the Anthony Award nominations were recently announced. The awards will be presented at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention named for author and critic Anthony Boucher. This year's convention will be Sept.19-22 in Albany.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

BEST NOVEL
 Dare Me - Megan Abbott [Reagan Arthur]
 The Trinity Game - Sean Chercover [Thomas & Mercer]
 Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn [Crown]
 The Beautiful Mystery - Louise Penny [Minotaur]
 The Other Woman - Hank Phillippi Ryan [Forge]

BEST FIRST NOVEL
 Don't Ever Get Old - Daniel Friedman [Thomas Dunne]
 The Professionals - Owen Laukkanen [Putnam]
 The Expats - Chris Pavone [Crown]
 The 500 - Matthew Quirk [Reagan Arthur]
 Black Fridays - Michael Sears [Putnam]

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL 
Whiplash River - Lou Berney [William Morrow] 
Murder for Choir - Joelle Charbonneau [Berkley Prime Crime]
And She Was - Alison Gaylin [Harper] 
Blessed are the Dead - Malla Nunn [Emily Bestler] 
Big Maria - Johnny Shaw [Thomas & Mercer]

BEST SHORT STORY
 "Mischief in Mesopotamia" - Dana Cameron, EQMM, Nov 2012
 "Kept in the Dark" - Shelia Connolly, Best New England Crime Stories:
Blood Moon [Level Best]
 "The Lord is My Shamus" - Barb Goffman, Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is
Murder, p.97 [Wildside]
 "Peaches" - Todd Robinson, Grift, Spring 2012, p.80
 "The Unremarkable Heart" - Karin Slaughter, Mystery Writers of America
Presents: Vengeance, p.177 [Mulholland]

BEST CRITICAL NONFICTION WORK
Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's
Greatest Mystery Novels - John Connolly and Declan Burke, eds. [Hodder & Stoughton/Emily Bestler]
 Blood Relations: The Selected Letters of Ellery Queen, 1947-1950 - Joseph Goodrich, ed. [Perfect Crime]
 More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered - D.P. Lyle, M.D. [Medallion]
 The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery Agatha Christie - Mathew Prichard, ed. [Harper]
 In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero - Otto Penzler, ed. [Smart Pop]

All throughout my life my daddy acted as my Appalachian tour guide.  He wasn’t a history enthusiast, he knew nothing about genealogy, but never-the-less he took pride in being from Western North Carolina.  Daddy may not have known why places … Continue reading →

Calhoun, Ga. 1934. Mrs. Ralph Haney poses for a photograph in her kimono. The peacock design was made of chenille.

Imagine: you’ve piled the family into the car and are driving south for a Florida vacation. You’re traveling along U.S. Highway 41 in northwest Georgia, when suddenly both sides of the road become flanked by row after row of clotheslines chock full of stunning chenille bedspreads. Congratulations! You’re in the thick of “Peacock Alley.” And most likely you’re in downtown Dalton, GA as well. 1930s travelers often stopped and bought these bedspreads, and of the many designs adorning the spreads, the most popular among tourists was the peacock. Hence the nickname.

Sometimes the bedspread buyers believed their purchases to be examples of authentic American folk crafts, when in fact by that decade a well organized industry had formed around the tufted beauties. Catherine Evans (later Catherine Evans Whitener) revived the handcraft technique of tufting in the 1890s near Dalton. Tufted bedspreads consisted of cotton sheeting to which Evans and (later) others would apply designs with raised “tufts” of thick yarn. These tufted bedspreads were often referred to as chenille products. Chenille, the French word for “caterpillar,” is generally used to describe fabrics that have a thick pile (raised yarn ends) protruding all around at right angles.

By the 1920s merchants had organized a vast “putting out” system to fill the growing demand. They established “spread houses,” usually small warehouses (or homes) where patterns were stamped onto sheets. Men called haulers would deliver the stamped sheets and yarn to thousands of rural homes in north Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. Families then sewed in the patterns. The hauler would make another round of visits to pick up the spreads, pay the tufters (or “turfers,” as they sometimes called themselves), and return the products to the spread houses for finishing. Finishing involved washing the spreads in hot water to shrink them and lock in the yarn tufts. The tufted spreads could also be dyed in a variety of colors.

The participation of farm families in this industry provided badly needed cash incomes and helped these families weather the Great Depression. It also produced fortunes for some. Dalton’s B. J. Bandy (aided by his wife, Dicksie Bradley Bandy) was reputedly the first man to make $1 million in the bedspread business by the late 1930s, but many others followed.

Also in the 1930s such companies as Cabin Crafts began to bring the handwork from the farms into factories. The bedspread manufacturers sought greater productivity and control over the work process and were also encouraged to pursue centralized production by the wage and hour provisions of the National Recovery Administration’s tufted bedspread code. These new firms also began mechanizing the industry by adapting sewing machines to the task of inserting raised yarn tufts.

Today, Dalton remains the tufted bedspread capital of the world.

Source: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/business-economy/chenille-bedspreads

Chenille+bedspreads Dalton Catherine+Evans appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

The post The world capital for chenille bedspreads appeared first on Appalachian History.

There is an interesting meme making the rounds of Facebook this week. It is a map of North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns. Rick Aschmann operates a website, Aaschmann.net, that includes a lot of genealogy information. His interest in dialects has led him to find some very interesting data.  Thus, he created the page with the map, and a whole lot of other useful information as well.

According to Aschmann, there are eight dialects in North America:

• Canada
• Northern New England
• The North
• Greater New York City
• The Midland
• The South
• North Central
• The West

These regions do not necessarily conform to generally accepted locations. For example, Boston is included in the Northern New England dialect, while the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts is geographically located in Southern New England. There is a small map, and then a full-scale version that is much easier to read. It allows you to get in and see subsections of the regions, as well localized versions of dialects.

 

 

The next section is a Dialect Description Chart. This chart explains the dialects. The eight regions are divided into subsections and sub-subsections (such as the St. Louis Corridor, a subsection of the Inland North, which is a subsection of the North). There are some interesting  observations, such as making Downtown New Orleans a subsection of Greater New York City. The chart is cross referenced to the maps, so you can easily move back and forth.

He then provides a Guide to the Sounds of North American English. He explains the phonemic guide employed on his site, and why he used it. He asks the question “How many vowels are there in American English?” Then he moves on to explain the difference between the vowel letters (a,e,i.o, and u) and vowel sounds, of which there are 16. He then goes on to illustrate those sounds. This is followed by a discussion of the 24 consonant sounds.

At the bottom are audio samples of many local dialects. A number of them are YouTube videos of famous peoples: singers, politicians, actors, such as Alison Kraus, Jimmy Carter Jack Kemp, Clint Eastwood, Alicia Silverstone, Merv Griffin, and Bill Elliott.

Just before this section, however, is a part of particular interest to genealogists. Aschmann includes a section where words are spelled phonetically. For example:

“Awl əv thə sowndz wee hav awlredee diskust aar shohn in thə chaarts bəloh. Thee ohnlee speshəl kairəktər yoo stil haf tə mes withh iz “ə” and thats not too haard tə kopee intə yər tekst. Thee ohnlee thhing not in theez chaarts thət iy səjest yoo doo iz tə riyt thə fiynəl ‘s’ sownd az “ss” tə keep peepəl frəm thhingking its a ‘z’ sownd. Thair aar too igzampəlz əv this in thə nekst pairəgraf.”

This is exactly how many of our ancestors wrote. Their spelling was based on what they heard, not from any standard education in English grammar and spelling. Understanding the dialect of a particular area my help you to interpret original records of the time, especially those written by individuals with less education. This site can be a great help to you with this.

Glenn Jones, Putnam County Archivist, recently received a grant from the State of Tennessee to digitize the Patton Papers to make them accessible to anyone anywhere. “The amount of records she collected is amazing,” Jones said. “Maurine Patton worked on these for years and she wanted them preserved.” Those records — totaling thousands of pages — are documentation of numerous families from all over the region in a chart organization.

When the digitization process is complete, the files will be available in a format anyone can view anywhere, thanks to the World Wide Web. They will be put online at www.familysearch.org, a free service provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jones hopes this project will encourage people who have photos and other historic documents pertaining to the schools will send them to the archives for documentation.

You can read more read more in an article by Laura Militana  in the Herald Citizen at http://goo.gl/0uV6q.

The iPad tablet is a great device but, by itself, is poor at saving web pages for later viewing or printing. Michele Berner has created a YouTube video that shows a better way to save those web pages. However, her method only works with the Chrome web browser (available free of charge at the iPad App Store).

Once saved as a PDF file locally or on a cloud-based storage service (Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, or a similar service), you also can print that file, display it later on your screen, save it in Evernote, or send it to someone via email.

You can watch the 21-minute video at http://youtu.be/03IcSKMmdxE.rame>

Do you have a persistent story of Native American heritage in your family?

Mark Green’s wife did.  Her ancestor Nancy Pittman’s mother was supposed to be a Cherokee Indian.  If your family was from the south, chances are you have some similar story.

Mark tracked her story both through DNA and the Cherokee records.  Her DNA showed 1% Native ancestry, but the records pertaining to the Guion-Miller Roll provided additional information.  It’s most interesting, because although the paperwork having to do with her 1907 application is ambiguous, with the application subsequently denied, the DNA, some 100 years and a few generations later, isn’t.

Here’s Mark’s article about the family story, his research and what he found.  Sometimes a little footwork goes a long way – and there are lots of records available having to do with the Cherokee and 5 Civilized Tribes who were removed to Oklahoma.

http://southerngreens.blogspot.com/2013/04/im-still-part-redman-deep-inside.html

Today’s post comes from Stephanie Stegman, Volunteer at the National Archives at Fort Worth

---

The Fort Smith Criminal Case Files, 1866-1900 used to be difficult to search, but not anymore.  These Wild West court cases offer a glimpse of what life was like on the frontier between western Arkansas and the Indian Territory, which today is Oklahoma.  The National Archives at Fort Worth has a new website designed to guide you step by step through these colorful records.

The United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas was unusual because from 1851 until 1896 its jurisdiction extended westward, beyond the state of Arkansas, and into Indian Territory.  Tribal courts heard cases involving crimes committed among their own members until 1885.  However, most of the criminal offenses that occurred in this large area of 74,000 square miles were tried at the federal district court level.  These cases include a large number of liquor violations and larceny, such as stealing horses, as well as instances of murder and mayhem that we commonly associate with classic Western television shows.

Acting Lt. Governor of Texas, Barnett Gibbs’s Proclamation for the Apprehension of John Middleton, 04/21/1885  (National Archives Identifier 5898031)

After a fire at the original court seat in Van Buren, the Western District of Arkansas moved to Fort Smith on the Arkansas River in 1871 and into the recently closed U.S. Army barracks building in 1872.  For the next twenty years, the court heard cases from Indian Territory, where the lawless often went to hide out and ran into other criminals as well as law-abiding citizens.  The Fort Smith court records mention not only the defendants, but also some of the victims, witnesses, U.S. marshals, deputy marshals, and other court employees.

The criminal case files (also called defendant jackets) have been scanned and are available online through Ancestry.com.

Sam and Belle Starr jacket on Ancestry.com screen capture

These records tell sensational (and sometimes graphic) stories from the history of the American West with cases involving infamous outlaws: the “Bandit Queen” Belle Starr, the Dalton Gang, Crawford Goldsby (alias Cherokee Bill), and murderer-turned-silent-movie-star Henry Starr, to name a few.  Famous lawmen and jurists like the legendary black U.S. Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves and “Hanging” Judge Isaac C. Parker also make frequent appearances.

One researcher found 287 separate cases that mention Bass Reeves.  A former slave from Texas, Reeves had a distinguished career as a deputy marshal and served the federal district court for 32 years.  This number isn’t surprising, given his long career and his knack for capturing suspected criminals.  The men (and a few women) who were deputy marshals did the majority of the court’s work.  They served writs, gave testimony, and led posses as well as transporting and capturing or killing outlaws.

Oath of Office for Bass Reeves, 1889 (National Archives Identifier 6851120)

The National Archives at Fort Worth’s new research guide provides a description of these and other resources to explain the “who, what, when, and where” of the criminal case files.  In addition to case files, related court records also may help researchers to create a more complete picture of a particular case.  For a number of years, Fort Worth’s volunteers have worked to flatten documents, index records, and understand how these bits and pieces fit together.  Now all of these efforts are available online.

To learn more, visit the National Archives at Fort Worth’s website:  http://www.archives.gov/fort-worth/finding-aids/fort-smith-case-files/

“Psychologically, the wagon is the thing,” commented librarian Mary Lemist Titcomb of the project she is most remembered for. “One can no easier resist the pack of a peddler from the Orient as a shelf full of books when the doors of the wagon are opened at one’s gateway.”

Titcomb was referring to the bookmobile—the nation’s first— that she had custom outfitted in 1904 to deliver books to the residents of Washington County, MD. The horse-drawn Concord wagon could display 200 volumes and store another 2,360 behind its shelves.

Titcomb (1857-1932) arrived in Hagerstown, MD in 1901 after having worked as a library organizer in Vermont for 12 years. She plunged energetically and efficiently into organizing the Washington County Free Library, which had been chartered in 1898, the first incorporated county-wide library in the country.

Titcomb held firmly to the belief that giving out books was but a small part of a library’s purpose. “There is a great army of men and women,” she observed, “who use our public libraries to read because it gives them pleasure—because through books they are lifted out of all routine of every-day life, their imaginations are quickened and for the brief space that the book holds them in thrall the colors of life assume a brighter tint.”

This view of books’ power wasn’t as apparent to Hagerstown residents of her day as it may be to us; mandatory school attendance was still a decade away, so book learning was not in any way central to the culture yet.

The idea for a book wagon was an outgrowth of ‘deposit stations,’ which Titcomb set up in 1901 in remote area stores and Sunday Schools, each with 30-40 volumes. After 4 years she had 66 stations. She liked the thought that the wagon idea would further ‘cement friendships,’ and by 1903 had convinced the library Board of Trustees to approve & obtain a Carnegie gift of $2,500 in 5 annual installments.

Joshua Thomas, the library janitor, was the first wagon driver. A county native and Civil War vet, after the war he’d driven regularly through the area buying eggs, butter & produce for market, and so knew the roads intimately.

In April 1905 the first book wagon, driven by Thomas, made its maiden trip throughout the countryside of Washington County. During the new bookmobile’s first 6 months he made 31 trips, averaging 30 miles each trip, 3 times a week. Thomas routinely covered 500 square miles of backroad territory, and distributed 1,008 volumes during that time.

As to the books selected, the demand for best sellers was unknown among rural residents of that era, with the result that they chose a higher quality of literature.

Titcomb instructed Thomas that there should be “no hurrying from house to house, but each family must be allowed ample time for selections.”

The wagon’s initial design presented an unforeseen problem: it was painted black and did not have glass doors, and because of that was taken for the ‘dead wagon’ and was often urged to pass on by superstitious residents. A paint job and new doors quickly resolved the issue, however.

Drawn by Dandy and Black Beauty, the bookmobile wagon served the county for over five years with Joshua Thomas dispensing the books at each stop. But in August 1910, a freight train ran into the wagon as it was crossing the Norfolk and Western Railroad at St. James. The horses and driver survived; the wagon did not.

Bookmobile service went down for a year; the first round of Carnegie financing was exhausted, and by the time another $2,500 materialized (offered up by library board treasurer William Kealhofer) the horse drawn vehicle was deemed outmoded. The service resumed, but this time with a motorized vehicle.

Titcomb summed up her bookmobile vision thus: “No better method has ever been devised for reaching the dweller in the country. The book goes to the man, not waiting for the man to come to the book.”

sources: Western Maryland Regional Library

http://webpages.charter.net/magicmoment/mary.htm

http://www.mdoe.org/hagerstown.html

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~mg128/docs/Streets.pdf

http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/educ/exhibits/womenshall/html/titcomb.html

The post First bookmobile in the country appeared first on Appalachian History.

GeneaBlogger Meetup in the hotel lobby

Sandra Clunies

Barbara Matthews and Michael LeClerc ham it up for the Records Access skit

Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo                                

Today was the last day of NERGC, days full of great sessions, lots of meetups with new and old friends, and a wonderful conference program.  I arrived late and missed the first session but while hanging out in the lobby I chanced to meet Elroy Davis, the "Green Mountain Genealogist", who introduced himself, several women from Canada with roots from Nutfield Settlers, and another young couple who overheard our Nutfield conversation and wanted directions to Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry before they drove home to New York.

The first session I went to hear was Elissa Scalise Powell's "Eating an Elephant: Managing Large Projects".  She had some great ideas and tools for breaking down any large project, such as family reunions, genealogy books, society indexing projects, or even a portfolio to present to the Board for Certification of Genealogists. I really enjoyed it, and so did the audience, because there were lots of questions after the talk, and a line of attendees who wanted to talk with Elissa after the session.

I met up with Pam Carter, Diane Boumenot and my husband for lunch.  We were discussing the next GeneaBlogger meetup, and Diane proposed a field trip to NEHGS.  Stay tuned for an announcement of a day trip to the NEHGS library for sometime in June or July.  If this is successful, we might try a few more field trips to different repositories around New England at different times of the year.  If you are interested, leave a comment!

Colleen Fitzpatrick

After lunch I tried a session on "Forensic Genealogy:  SCI meets Roots" with Colleen Fitzpatrick.  This is a subject I would really like to learn more about, and NERGC was the perfect place to try it out.  I was expecting a rather dry lecture, but Colleen was very witty, and made the subject incredibly fun and interesting.  I'm tempted to buy a copy of her book, which is coming out soon in a new edition.

For the last few sessions I decided to try the cemetery track, although I had already missed the first lecture (you just can't do EVERYTHING at NERGC!).  The first was "The Sociology of Cemeteries" by Helen A. Shaw, which explained the different types of cemeteries where you might find your ancestors based on geography, ethnic group, religion, occupation, etc.  I never knew there were sections of cemeteries just for certain occupations (such as circus performers), or for fraternal organizations such as Elks or Masons.  She had some great photographs to illustrate her talk, although it was a slide show.  I can't even remember the last time I saw a slide show!  At least she had no technical problems with getting her computer to talk to her projector, which had happened in at least three of the sessions I saw during NERGC 2013.

Donna Walcovy gets excited about gravestone carving, and you will, too, if you have a chance to hear her lecture!

The last session was one I would highly recommend to anyone who has a chance to see hear Donna Walcovy.  It was called "The Symbolism on New England Gravestones", which to me is a fascinating subject, and I was expecting a rather straightforward lecture.  Instead Donna has a hilarious presentation of examples of wonderful stone carving from the 1600's up to modern gravestones.  She had some wonderful examples of all types of symbolic carving, and gave the history of the changing beliefs about death and religion in New England.  Her syllabus had a lot of great links and a bibliography that will keep me busy reading about gravestones for quite some time in the upcoming year.  I enjoyed it very much, and it was a terrific conclusion to the conference.

It wasn't the last lecture of the day, though, because at the banquet sponsored by NEHGS we heard from New Hampshire's own Milli Knudsen about forensic genealogy in her "Cold Case Unit" talk.  Milli works for the New Hampshire State Police, where she first volunteered as a genealogist to help with unsolved "cold cases".  She gave examples of how police detectives use techniques similar to genealogists in determining time lines, identities of friends, family and aquaintances, examining documents and indexing and organizing clues. She has developed spreadsheets for indexing evidence that the detectives are now using to help solve these cases.

Milli's lecture was extremely interesting, yet slightly unsettling as we heard the details on how many New Hampshire women's murders are still unsolved.  Pam Carter and I walked together to the garage, not wanting to be walking alone late at night after hearing about these scary crimes! I think I sprinted to my car! It was a rather creepy way to end the night. But then I drove home thinking about Donna Walcovy's funny names for some of the gravestone carvings and it made me smile all the way from Manchester to Londonderry.  There were too many great memories from these four days at NERGC to let the cold case stories get me down!

NERGC 2015 will be held April 14 - 19, 2015 in Providence, Rhode Island.  Follow the website and blog for more information:

NERGC website  www.nergc.org

NERGC blog  www.nerc.blogspot.com

----------------------
Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

 Our state symbol is the Old Man of the Mountain.  I see him every day on my car license plate, the state highway signs feature his profile, and the many magnets on my fridge from trips to the White Mountains.  However, it has been ten years ago today since anyone has seen the Old Man of the Mountain where he belonged, up on the side of Cannon Mountain in Franconia Notch.

1955 U.S. stamp

When the fog rose off the notch ten years years ago, it was reported that this rock profile fell off the side of the mountain in a landslide.  Just driving through Franconia Notch, you can see from the miles of rock litter that landslides are common here.  I remembered hearing annual reports of how the "Great Stone Face" was doomed to fall someday, but I never thought it would be in my lifetime or even my daughter's lifetime.  I cried the day I heard the news.  I cried the first time I drove through Franconia Notch after May 3, 2003.  I'm reaching for a tissue now as I write this.

Generations of my family remembered the Old Man.  I remember my Grandfather asking me if we had stopped to view him after a family trip to the White Mountains.  I remember my Dad stopping the old family station wagon at Profile Lake so we could all take a look.  I remember posing my daughter "just so" under his profile so we could get a photo of her "kissing" the Old Man.  If you are from New England I suppose you have similar memories.

As seen on eBay

The New Hampshire legislature just cut from the budget some plans to create a memorial to the Old Man of the Mountain.  There were silly renderings submitted for the memorial including a fiberglass replica to be hauled up to where he used to hang, and a possible museum at the base of Franconia Notch.  Personally, I think all our memories and family photos are the best way to memorialize, and not trivialize, our Old Man.

2000 New Hampshire State Quarter

2005, Where the Old Man used to be

This sign was hung at Profile Lake in 2005 to show how the collapse of the profile rock formation probably happened.

---------------------------
Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Today is the 210^th Anniversary of the largest territorial acquisition in U.S. history: the Louisiana Purchase. A highly controversial move in the United States, Jefferson’s acquisition doubled the size of the nascent country overnight. It set the stage for the nineteenth century theory of Manifest Destiny, that the U.S. would come to control the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The territory of the Louisiana Purchase has a long and storied history. The first European settlement in this area was La Nouvelle-Orlèans, today the city of New Orlans. It was founded in 1718 and named for the Duke of Orlèans, Regent of France. Settlements continued up the river and spread down from what is today Quebec, Michigan, and Illinois. All of this territory was considered part of the colony of New France.

 

 

In 1762, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau. France had lost Canada to the British. This was part of the Seven Years’ War, known as the French and Indian War in North America. The agreement covered the territory of Louisiana, which spread from the Appalachians to the Rockies.

The following year, Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain, officially ended the Seven Years’ War with the Peace of Paris. Also called the Treaty of Paris, the agreement was signed 10 February 1763. As part of the agreement, France ceded Canada, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tobago to Britain, as well as all of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, except for New Orleans. Under the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the western part of Louisiana and New Orleans were ceded to Spain.

This left France with no holdings in mainland North America. They did preserve fishing rights off of Newfoundland, and retained the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River as a place to cure the fish before transporting it. Those two islands remain part of France today.

Under the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain returned the Louisiana Territory to France in 1800. In 1801, Napoleon sent a military force to secure New Orleans. In 1803, Napoleon offered the territory to the U.S. for the sum of $15 million. This is equivalent to more than $306 million in 2013.

The American Revolution had shown the strategic importance of the port of New Orleans. Thomas Jefferson’s representatives quickly agreed to the purchase, realizing its potential significance to the United States. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed 30 April 1803.

Unfortunately, there was great opposition to the purchase at home. Many were worried about alienating Britain, which whom the French were at war. Others thought it was unconstitutional, because the U.S. Constitution did not provide for the U.S. to purchase additional territory. Still others were concerned about granting U.S. citizenship to the French and Spanish “foreigners” who lived in the territory. There were also questions as to whether or not France even had the right to sell the territory to the U.S. under the terms of its agreement with Spain.

In the end, everything worked out. The U.S. acquired the territory, and Jefferson immediately sent out three parties to survey the territory. Among these was the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Today, the land of the Louisiana Purchase is part of fourteen states: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. This area opened up extensive settlement for Americans in the 19^th century, and its availability no doubt changed the course of U.S. history.

By Dawne Slater-Putt

At some point, most family historians discover that genealogy and local history periodicals contain buried treasure. Abstracts of records never published, digitized or made available on microfilm; information from manuscript sources held privately, like letters, diaries and family bibles; and family history compilations whose source may be oral history interviews with relatives long dead – all of these things may be found in the newsletter or quarterly published by a genealogical society in your ancestor’s county of residence. Or, these nuggets may have been published in the journal of a society far from where the family lived – in the home county of the descendant who owns the family bible, for example!



How can genealogists find these treasures? By using the PERiodical Source Index (PERSI), of course! PERSI is a subject index to genealogy and local history periodical literature. The PERSI Project began in 1985 as a joint project of the Genealogy Department of the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) and the ACPL Foundation. At that time, Genealogy Department and ACPL Foundation staff members began indexing – by subject – each periodical received by the department, and simultaneously a retrospective project was started to index back issues of current and ceased journals.

Initially, PERSI was published in hard-bound volumes. Today, PERSI can be found on subscription websites online. The Genealogy Center at ACPL continues to produce PERSI. The Center subscribes to more than 6,000 journals that are in publication currently, and the collection holds a total of more than 10,000 individual periodical titles, current and defunct. Most of these are complete sets of the journals.

The most efficient way to use PERSI is to search by locality to see what kinds of resources have been published for the area where ancestors lived, or to search by surname to see what articles have been published about specific family names. Since PERSI is a subject index, rather than an everyname index, searching for individuals’ names is not fruitful except in the case where an entire article has been devoted to that individual. When the search is complete, locate each journal title in The Genealogy Center online catalog at www.GenealogyCenter.org to get call numbers for your list of things to peruse while you are here for the FGS Conference in August.

The bottom line for genealogists – and especially for those who will be attending the 2013 FGS Conference – is that The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library is the world’s best place to research in genealogy and local history periodicals.

Family Tree DNA has done it again – and this time – for all mothers everywhere and just in time for Mother’s Day.

They have dropped the price of their Mitochondrial DNA test to $49 which matches the price entry point for their Yline testing as well.  Furthermore, it’s not just the HVR1 level, but now the entry level test at Family Tree DNA will be the HVR1+HVR2 inclusive for $49.  That’s amazing.  The full sequence mitochondrial test has also been dropped to $199.

No excuses anymore for not getting those mtDNA tests done.  If you’re not quite sure how this works, your mitochondrial DNA is inherited from your mother, whether you are male or female, but only females pass it on.  So your mitochondrial DNA is a direct record of your mother, her mother, her mother, on up the tree until you run out of known maternal mothers.  Not only will you receive matches, but you will also receive a haplogroup designation from which you can tell a great deal.  Here’s an article I wrote about working with mitochondrial DNA results.

On May 2nd, Max Blankfeld and Bennett Greenspan, owners and founders of Family Tree DNA sent an announcement to all project administrators about recent happenings at the lab and the new pricing on the mtDNA tests.

Dear Group Administrators,

With the end of the DNA Day promotion, we (Bennett and Max), considered how to continue offering the best prices, yet keep control in the lab to avoid delays from high volume. Since demand is directly related to prices, we decided to implement a temporary price rollback whenever lab capacity allows us to do so.

Despite an extremely successful sale, we believe that with our increased lab capacity, we are able to continue offering reduced prices on several tests. While the prices are not as low as they were for the DNA Day promotion, you will notice that these temporary reductions are extremely attractive, and should be a real incentive to anyone that did not take advantage of the sale to order now, while the prices are reduced. With this system in place, prices may go up on different tests at any time based on lab volume.

Additionally, on April 1st when we permanently reduced the price of the Y-DNA12 to $49, we mentioned that our R&D team was working towards a price reduction for the equivalent mtDNA basic test. Good news! Not only did we manage to achieve this goal, but we did it for the mtDNAPlus test that covers both HVR1 and HVR2. Therefore, we’re discontinuing the HVR1-only test. Our basic mtDNA test will now be the mtDNAPlus (HVR1+2) at the $49 price point!

We hope that with the basic Y-DNA and mtDNA tests very reasonably priced, a whole new group of people will be tempted to begin their own DNA experience and increase the size of your projects!

You are welcome to spread the news, and as always, we thank you for your continued support.

Max Blankfeld

Bennett Greenspan

Family Tree DNA

  “He the eldest son of Time, has not changed in form or place since the floods retired.  Yet even he shall crumble away. But when the man of granite rock is dissolved, the men of granite soul shall stand … Continue reading →

Whilst in England I stopped at the British Library to do some research. And of course, not visit would be complete without a stop by the gift shop. Perusing the shelves of books (yes, real-live paper books), I found a very interesting title which I couldn’t resist purchasing.

 

 

David Crystal is that author of a number of works on English. Among these titles are The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, The Stories of English, The Fight for English, Txting: the gr8 db8, and The Story of English in 100 Words. The book I purchased is his latest, Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling.

Crystal is a well-known expert, and this book is no exception. He explains that “The origins of the English writing system lie in the alphabet the Romans used for Latin. The task of adaptation was a priority for the monks in Anglo-Saxon England.” (p. 12). He starts with the twenty-three-letter alphabet in use in these earliest times and continues into the twenty-first century.

The explanations of how different spelling variations have crept into the English language are remarkable. They also make spelling variations much easier to understand. From doubling letters to differentiate between short vowel sounds and long vowel sounds to those that crept in from French and Latin, one comes to a great understanding of the English language today.

Peppered throughout are quotes from famous real-life and fictional individuals, from Winnie-the-Pooh to Ogden Nash. One of my favorites comes from Nash about name spellings:

“. . . I get confused between the Eliot with one L and One T, and the Elliot with two Ls  and one T, and the Eliott with one L and two Ts, and the Elliott with two of each. How many of my friendships have lapsed because of an extra T or a missing L . . .”

Among the more interesting discussions are one revolve around spelling noises (such as argh, ugh, or blech) and one that explains abbreviations. His last chapter discusses the future of spelling, in which he says “The most interesting question is whether the internet will allow us, in effect, to wind the clock back to an earlier and more regular period of English spelling, and introduce a modicum of spelling reform.

The forty-eight chapters and two appendices are short, and jam-packed with information. But they are also written in an easy-to-read style (although, admittedly, some of the concepts are so convoluted one might have to re-read a couple of times to fully grasp the significance of what is being said).

Spell It Out is a valuable addition to any genealogist’s reference library. By understanding how spelling developed and changed over time, it can make it easier to read old documents. It is available from Amazon.com for $15.63 (U.S.) or £8.44 (U.K.).