GeneaBlogie

2008-08-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

We've Moved! Come visit us at http://blog.geneablogie.net

But if you'd like, you're welcome to stay here and rummage around to see some of the best posts from the past as they originally appeared.

The Missouri Insurance Company

2008-08-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

In the first half of the twentieth century, it was a common practice of many immigrant families and African-American families to purchase life insurance policies on their infant children. Indeed, as late as the 1990's, an otherwise respected baby food company was sponsoring such insurance policies.

Why would someone purchase a life insurance policy on an infant? Isn't the textbook purpose of life insurance to provide for the survivors' needs in the event of the insured's premature death? Well, that's one of the purposes. The families who bought these policies [and my family was one] were told that the policies were a way to "build wealth" or to provide a "nest egg" for the young person's adulthood. Sometimes the less-educated or illiterate were simply told that it was a way to "protect" their child.

The policies that were sold in this manner were a species of "whole life" insurance (now sometimes called "permanent insurance"), which simply put, require premiums to be paid for the insured's whole life or for some other specified period until the policy's "cash value" is fully paid up. The insurance component remains in effect as long as the premiums are paid (i.e. for one's whole life--in practice usually to age 95, although I understand now in some cases, it can last to age 121!). The cash value is accumulated from a portion of the premium paid. The policy can be surrendered at certain points for the then-accumulated cash value. (This is a simplified description of what today is a somewhat more sophisticated product).

In the case of these policies on infants, the premiums were payable at least until age 18 or 21 to receive the maximum death benefit; and could be paid longer for a greater cash accumulation.

Whole life and its more recent companion product, universal life insurance, can be good investment vehicles in a well-planned and well-managed portfolio. But the folks buying these products in the first half of the twentieth century rarely had access to financial or estate planning information. And truth be told, they would have been better off in most cases putting their money in the bank.

Today, these policies don't turn up often because of the greater access to other investment and saving vehicles. More people can buy stocks and bonds today than ever could be before. These instruments are no longer just for the wealthy.

One company that sold the infant policies was the Missouri Life Insurance Company, formed in the 1830's as the first insurance company in St Louis (see Missouri History Recalled During Past Week, The Sikeston Herald, March 13, 1936, p.3, available from Newspaper Archive.com). In 1907, the company was issued a corporate charter by the Missouri Legislature. The company existed as a major business force in St Louis and Missouri for more than eighty years.

In 1956, the company changed its name to Life Insurance Company of Missouri (Business Notes, The Sunday News & Tribune [Jefferson City, Mo.], April 15, 1956, p. 9). But in 1957, it was taken over by Cincinnati-based Western & Southern Life Insurance Company, which remains in business today.

These infant policies will eventually become known as a bit of socioeconomic and anthropological ephemera.

Below is a copy of a policy sold by the Missouri Insurance Company in 1953. In addition to the death benefit, there are "Accidental Death Benefits" and "Dismemberment Benefits." The premium on this policy was $0.76 weekly for maximum death benefit of $1000 if premiums were paid for 18 years.

Feed Info for New Location

2008-08-04T18:51:00.000-07:00

The feed for our new location can be found at:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/geneablogie/Xtpu

Living in Two Places

2008-08-03T19:11:00.000-07:00

GeneaBlogie is between homes right now. No, we're not homeless; some of you have noticed that we have two homes! We are at both:

http://geneablogie.blogspot.com AND http://blog.geneablogie.net.

We will be moving permanently to the latter site. This has been in the works for quite awhile; we had several hiccups along the way. But with the recent spam-flagging of several legitimate blogs on Google's Blogger system, I really accelerated the process. I'm not in need of a nanny; I can be master of my own domains, so to speak.

If you visit us in our new home, you'll see it's not totally ready, but our guests will be comfortable. In a few days, our old place will be boarded up. So update your address books now to:

http://blog.geneablogie.net

Carnival Carousel: Harvesting & Sharing the Bounty

2008-08-01T23:16:00.000-07:00

Through a series of unfortunate circumstances, I've been blessed with a bounteous trove of genealogical riches, nearly more than one person can handle. We've been slowly and carefully going through boxes of documents and photographs (and at the rate we're going, we're likely to spend the next 15 years at this!

For this Carnival, I thought I would give you a glimpse of some of the stuff. You'll see the challenges and the joys ahead. You can enlarge any image by clicking on it.

First, there is this curious picture below, which I call "Children in Wagon." I think that there are actually two, maybe even three adults in the picture. I have no idea when or where the photo was taken. I do suspect that it was taken in either Illinois or Missouri. On the back of the original is the handwritten notation "For Francis." That could refer to a number of family members, none of whom seem to be in the picture. Or it may refer to someone other than a family member. The problem is that the people most likely to know have all passed away.

"Children (?) In Wagon" (Photographer unknown; original in possession of Craig Manson, Carmichael, California)

The photograph on the right I labelled "Young Woman." Again, we have no idea of the woman's identity or when the photo was taken. We do have several clues, however. On part of the original which I have covered with the frame here, there is the embossed name and address "Maxwell, 2607 Lawton Ave, St Louis, Mo". This apparently refers to photographer William C. Maxwell, who had a studio in St Louis from at least 1910 until at least 1915. See Early St. Louis Photographers. I haven't found any evidence that the business still exists.

The other potential clues about "Young Woman" are that this was actually a post card. I've come across several post cards with identifiable family members in them, leading me to believe that this was a popular way in which to send pictures in the early part of the twentieth century. Below is the "Young Woman" post card. You can see what kind of shape the photograph is in by looking at the post card back.

There is an address on the post card. To me, it appears to be:

"Miss B. Mc. Quin
2828 Morgan
St Louis
Mo"

And I'm not sure that it isn't "McQuin." There were families named Quin and McQuin in St Louis in the period that Maxwell could have made the portrait. But beyond that, nothing else is known to me about the photo.

The next photograph I call "Surly Woman, Distracted Man." I have no idea who these people are or when or where the photograph was made. I presume that their clothes are a clue. Notice how the man has his right hand tucked inside his coat. And what does the sign behind the man's head say? Another challenge for you photo-sleuths!

Finally, I've come to realize that a lot of the material may be valuable to researchers looking at other families. So from time to time, I'll share some things that may be of broad interest. Today, somewhat apropos of a Carnival, here's a list of couples who were feted on their 50th (or greater!) wedding anniversary in the Archdiocese of St Louis in 2001. See if one of your surnames is there! [Click on pages to enlarge].

Dealing With Thousands of Photographs, etc.--Step 1

2008-07-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

We decided as a first step to "sample" one of the boxes. There we found hundreds of photos, a number of documents, vital records (including some for living family members!), and a lot of ephemera. Here's a partial inventory of stuff in that first box:

Photographs, amounting to several hundred.
Two family tree (descendancy) charts, filled out to the sixth generation (how cool is that?!).
Several funeral programs.
School records.
About a hundred newspaper articles dating from the 1930's to the 1970's.
Three Greyhound bus tickets from 1954.
Military records for several individuals.
Three life insurance policies taken out on infants in the 1940's and 1950's.
Two family address directories produced for family reunions in the 1970's.
Several high school diplomas from the 1930's.

As I said, that's only some of the stuff. Photos clearly are the dominant matter there. But here's the deal with the photos in this box: they include portraits from the late 1800's through about the 1940's; Kodak snapshots from the 1940's through the 1970's; and Polaroids from the 1970's and '80's. The portrait type pictures are great--like some we've posted here before. Most, however, are in need of serious rehabilitation. The Kodak snapshots have held up surprisingly well. They are all black & white, and generally show a sense of composition on the part of the photographers. The Polaroids are in better physical shape than one might expect, but frankly, they are just not as nice in most respects as the others. Many of them are contained in small plastic albums from which they are difficult to remove. Some of the pockets contain as many as five pictures. They may not be keepers.

A major problem with the photographs is identification of subject, date, and place. As for the older unidentified pictures, there are few living people who can credibly identify the individuals in them. Isn't amazing how we fail to label our photos?!

One of the things that struck me was a photocopy (and a bad one, too) of two portraits probably taken in the early 1900's. Somebody, I hope, has the originals, but who?

I think the next thing to do is go through all the boxes and segregate the photos, the documents, and the ephemera into separate temporary storage. This will take some discipline to do efficiently, because of the "Hey-look-at-this!" factor.

I've also begun a list of family members likely able to identify the photographs. We did identify a few today, though that was not our main purpose. By the way, I think it useful when labelling these to include a line that says: "ID'd by (name), (relationship), on (date)."

From Catholic Records to Illinois Slave Records

2008-07-27T19:28:00.000-07:00

Le vingt deux fevrier mil huit cent treize a ete baptiste George ne de Julie esclave de fem Mv LaChange ont ete parrein Ignace et marrein Marguerite tous deux esclaves de Mde Ve D'Amour

So it says in the records of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, referring to one George Micheau. What does this mean? Keeping in mind that 19th century French is different from 21st century French, I used my self-taught genealogical French as well as my law and altar-boy Latin. Here's my original translation:

On the twenty-second of February, 1813, was baptized George, born of Julie, slave of Mr. LaChance; his Godparents were Ignatius and Margaret, both slaves of Mrs D'Amour.

But a couple of folks, including a reader in France, pointed out that I had missed or misunderstood somethings that turn out to be genealogically significant. For example, Julie's master is described as deceased (see the comments to the first post on this topic). And our Paris correspondent says:

Mde Ve = Mademoiselle veuve, in the Ancient Regime, Mademoiselle was used for the ladies, married or not. Today it is used only for unmarried woman, young or old.

"Veuve" means "widow" in French. So Ignatius and Margaret were owned by

Assuming that the translation is good (and thanks to my helpers, I'm confident that it is), we now perhaps have learned more about George Micheau (the elder) as we seek the origins of the Micheau/Mischeaux family in French Illinois. That we may be dealing with slaves could be a daunting realization for some; enough to throw in the towel for others. How are we going to begin to research slave genealogy?

Fortunately, Illinois has a Database of Servitude and Emancipation Records which covers the period 1722-1863. (Why 1722? That was approximately the year that Pierre Renault, agent for the King of France, arrived in Illinois with slaves purchased in the Caribbean to search for silver and gold). The Servitude and Emancipation Database includes approximately 3,400 names found in governmental records involving the servitude and emancipation of Africans and, occasionally, Indians. The Illinois State Archives extracted the names of servants, slaves, or free persons and masters, witnesses, or related parties from selected governmental records to produce this database. The online version is searchable by names, by counties, or types of documents.

We have several names to work with here: George, Julie, Ignatius, Margaret, LaChance, D'Amour. and we know that the relevant events occurred in Randolph County, Illinois. A search of the database with those variables yields abstracts of a number of interesting documents.

First, there is an estate document dated 27 January 1739 which says in part:

"TO CATHERINE IS GIVEN A NEGRO BOY NAMED IGNACE, ALSO A SON OF
CYBAS AND OF ANGELIQUE, ALSO A DAUGHTER OF LOUISON."

The abstract identifies "Catherine" as Catherine Vinsennes, a fact that we'll keep in mind for later use. We have perhaps identified "Ignace" (Latin/French form of Ignatius), the godfather (if not in fact the grandfather) of George.

Another document is a bill of sale from Louis Marein to Pierre Mulin for a slave named "Margueritte." It's dated 12 June 1740. The abstract notes that:

FEMALE INDIAN SLAVE SOLD FOR 800 LIVRES IN "NOTES OR FLOUR."
MAREIN "ACQUIRED SLAVE FROM MONCHARVAU."

Perhaps we have identified "Margaret," the godmother (if not in fact the grandmother). Note the double-T spelling of "Margueritte." The name "Margarett" with two "t's" occurs quite frequently in the Micheau/Mischeaux family, down to a currently living descendant, who's frequently asked about the spelling. She says that she's always heard it's a longstanding family name.

There are six documents that relate to slaves named "George" in Randolph County. But only one matches the relevant dates for our George. It's an indenture dated 12 August 1813 for a boy named George, described as one year old in one part of the document, but says "Born in Randolph County in April" in another place. His race is stated as "mulatto" which comports with later descriptions of George Micheau and his progeny. This document then may well refer to our George.

What about the discrepancies with respect to age? We know that George Micheau was born earlier than April 1813. It may well be that he was born in February 1813 and that the master did not know that; he being only aware that the child was several months old. There are some other issues raised by this abstract. For one thing, an indenture is usually a two-party agreement. Who was the party representing the interests of George. We no doubt will have to see the document. It's available for $10 from the Illinois State Archives.

Now we need to check the Servitude and Emancipation database for information on the bondholders.

What about the late M. LaChance? The database has a bill of sale dated 2 Jun 1774 from a Marie Franciose Ayet to one Nicolas LaChance. The memo on the abstract notes:

"SHE SELLS 4 NEGROES AND PERSONAL PROPERTY TO NICOLAS LACHANCE . . . FOR 3,705 LIVRES."

A second document in the database abstracts the 1820 census of Illinois--the first census in which Illinois appears as a State of the USA. On that census, there is a "Madame LaChance" in Prairie du Rocher, Randolph County, Illinois. The fact that a woman was enumerated as head of household in 1820 suggests that she was a widow.

We have to go to the 1820 census itself to understand the abstract. The household appears to consist of two white males under the age of ten; and two white males between 10 and 15 years old; a white female between 10 and 15 years old; and Madame LaChance herself, apparently between 26 and 44 years old. Then there appear to be two male slaves under age 14; one male slave between14 and 25 years old; two female slaves under age 14; and one female slave between 14 and 26 years old. There is one male "free colored person" between 26 and 44 years old.

All of this data on the LaChance documents needs analysis; we'll get to that later. For now, let's see what we can find about the widow D'Amour.

Just as in the LaChance case, the Servitude and Emancipation Database has for a Madam "Damore" an abstract from the 1820 census. She was enumerated in Prairie du Rocher, Randolph County, with two female slaves: one under 14 years old, and the other over age 45. Madam Damore herself was listed as being over 45 years old.

The D'Amour evidence also requires analysis before we draw any conclusions.

Remember, we're in search of the origins of the Micheau/Mischeaux family in French Illinois. So stay with us as we next analyze the evidence.

How Do I Deal With Thousands of Photos?

2008-07-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

My inclination is to dive right in like a kid at Christmas! But this isn't practical for several reasons:

I'm not sure how or where these were previously stored, and thus I don't know the age or condition of most of them.
I probably cannot identify many of then without family help.
I still must eat and sleep.

Given those issues, I have to figure out some temporary storage and cataloging system.

More Pictures . . .

2008-07-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

of boxes of pictures (and documents)!

ScanFest: Tell Me About It!

2008-07-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

July's ScanFest is tomorrow, but I can't make it--ironically because I've got too many photos! I mentioned a little while ago that I was anticipating receiving a number of photos from a relative in the Midwest. By Friday, 25 July, a total of nine medium-sized moving boxes of photos and documents had arrived by mail! Today, a 5'x7'x8' crate was off-loaded from a flatbed truck--the crate contains, along with antique furniture, more than 200 cubic feet of photographs and documents, some dating well back into the 19th century.

I'm not joking.

We have received probably more than 5,000 photographs, not to mention documents and vital records.

I could spend the next ten years dealing with this stuff . . . .

Above and below: Some of the smaller boxes that arrived by mail last week.

Below: One of the hundreds of albums that came by mail last week.

Below: Some of the antique furniture that arrived by freight today.

Below: The crew begins unloading.

Thanks to Faith Archuleta and her crew from Faith Full Movers, Citrus Heights, California, for their help today!

Doing Some Hard Genealogy With Catholic Records

2008-07-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

So I broke away from all the other toys to actually do some hard genealogy. I've written many times about Record Search at FamilySearch Labs. I noted awhile ago that I had found there the records of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois, which includes an area of my research interest, the village of Prairie du Rocher in Randolph County, Illinois. That's location from whence come the Micheau/Mischeaux family that I've been studying.

A few months ago, I translated and transcribed a number of the records relating to St Joseph's Chirch in Prairie du Rocher as well as Our Lady of Lourdes Church in nearby Sparta. It took a combination of skills that I've honed doing indexing for FamilySearch and my certainly imperfect recall of church and law Latin and the bits of genealogical French that I've picked up in the last few years. But I think I've got it right.

Having translated and transcribed some of the relevant records, I have now put them to some use.

I'm interested in the origins of the Micheau/Mischeaux line in French Illinois. Early in my research, I traced a line of present day family members back to George Micheau (1852-1942). That wasn't very hard because still-living family members recall him vividly. He was born in Potosi, Washington County, Missouri, lived in Prairie du Rocher, and died in St Louis. According to family members, he was married twice: first to Emma Roy, and then to someone the living family members recall simply as "Grandma Rosie." I also knew from the 1870 census that George Micheau appears that decade in the household of a senior George Micheau (their names were spelled "Misho" in that census). The 1870 census did not explicitly show relationships, but presumably, George was the son of George. I cannot find the family at all on the 1880 census.

So what did the church records add to my knowledge of this family? First, I found a death notice for Emma Roy. I had known that she was born in 1855, but not much more beyond that.

[Click to enlarge]
Death Registration, Mary Emma Roy, page 120, Liber Defunctorum, Ecclesia St Joseph, Prairie du Rocher, 1864-1956, Records of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois (retrieved from Record Search Pilot, http://labs.familysearch.org)

The Latin reads:

Die 12a Julii 1900 obit Maria Emma Micheau uxor Georgii Micheau, annos circa 46 nata, ejusque corpus sequenti tumulatum est.

And I translated it:

Maria Emma Micheau, wife of George Micheau, died on July 12, 1900. She was about 46 years old. She was buried in the general burial ground.

We learn her full name and her date of death. There is also a death notice for "Grandma Rosie," but it is in English:

[Click to enlarge]
Death Registration, Rosine Micheau, page 199, Liber Defunctorum, Ecclesia St Joseph, Prairie du Rocher, 1864-1956, Records of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois (retrieved from Record Search Pilot, http://labs.familysearch.org)

Now we know a bit more about Grandma Rosie, including her maiden name. Then, a curiosity: recall that Rosine was George's second wife who he married after the death of Emma Roy. But when he died in 1942, here's what the priest wrote:

[Click to enlarge]
Death Registration, George Micheau, page 221, Liber Defunctorum, Ecclesia St Joseph, Prairie du Rocher, 1864-1956, Records of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois (retrieved from Record Search Pilot, http://labs.familysearch.org)

Does this tell us something about the family or about the pastor or both?

Moving on to the elder George Micheau we find notice of his death too, on page 136 of the same set of records, also in English. The page follows another which is headed "1906."

Died May 13th George Micheau, the oldest colored member of the parish in his 94th year, as verified by the following extract of the baptismal record of 1813, viz.:

[Click to enlarge]
Baptismal Registration, George Micheau, unnumbered page included with Records of St Anne du Fort de Chartres, 1721-1765 Records of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois (retrieved from Record Search Pilot, http://labs.familysearch.org)

This baptismal registration was found with the records of St Anne's Church at Fort de Chartres, Illinois, which existed before the church at Prairie du Rocher was constructed in 1765. It is in French:

Le vingt deux fevrier mil huit cent treize a ete baptiste George ne de Julie esclave de fem Mv LaChange ont ete parrein Ignace et marrein Marguerite tous deux esclaves de Mde Ve D'Amour.

What does this mean? I have an idea, but help us out, you French scholars! More to come!

Genealogy:The Next Generation

2008-07-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

We've talked often about getting younger folks involved with family history and sometimes we've lamented about the seeming lack of interest on the part of young people. We've been disabused of that latter notion by great folks like Jessica of Jessica's Genejournal.

And today I want to introduce my readers to Jeanna (pronounced like "Gina"), whose new blog is called RootsReading. She describes herself as a "a twenty-something African-American woman who, in the process of tracing her lineage, hopes to gain a better understanding of herself. "

Jeanna is just getting started with her research and is going through all the exciting and frustrating issues we all confronted early on. As for blogging, in her latest post, Jeanna wonders about balancing family privacy with the desire to discuss her discoveries publicly. We've all been there, too!

Please stop by RootsReading, meet Jeanna, and share with her your experiences!

San Francisco Mortuary Records to be Indexed

2008-07-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've written a lot about FamilySearch Indexing. And another reason I've felt a little behind with GeneaBlogie as well as reading the blogs I usually read is that I've done a lot of indexing! But I was particularly excited by the announcement the other day that San Francisco's mortuary records will be indexed in a venture involving the California Genealogical Society and Library, the San Francisco Public Library, SFgenealogy.com, the Genealogical Society of Utah, and, of course, FamilySearch Indexing.

I'm gooing to help out on this. This porject, like all FamilySearch Indexing projects is a worhty way to give something to the community.

For more details and an early progress report, see Kathryn Doyle's writeup on the CGSL blog.

How About "Irena Does the Macarena"?

2008-07-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

A New Zealand judge has taken extraordinary steps in a custody case involving a child wiith an unusual name.

Family Court judge Rob Murfitt [found] a girl had been named Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

He ordered the girl, the subject of a custody battle, to be placed in court guardianship so her name could be changed.

A lawyer had reported the nine-year-old was so embarrassed about her name that she had not revealed it to her friends and was otherwise known as "K".
. . .
"It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap," the judge said.

Keeping Up: Facebook

2008-07-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

I've had a bit of difficulty keeping up lately. One cause among many: Facebook! (see Tim Agazio's remarks here. I concur with a lot of what you say, Tim!) I do enjoy the networking among folks with similar interests, but it can get out of hand

I actually did find people that I actually know on Facebook. That fact and George Geder's recent posts about his school days led me to post this photo:

That's me and a high school friend I hadn't seen or heard from in over 35 years until I noticed she's on Facebook. It was fun to re-connect and get caught up.

Like Tim, I got into Facebook primarily because I want to participate in the Unclaimed Persons group. But I haven't had time, what with all the Friend requests, Karma sending, updating status, etc.! I'm going to have to be more efficient at this.

From a research point of view, I see a number of advantages, though, to Facebook. The collaboration that goes on in the Unclaimed Persons group is a good example. I wrote once about an ad hoc group that convened by email to solve a problem in one of the family lines we were all researching. Facebook would have enhanced that experience.

I searched on Facebook to find possible cousins, but I didn't find this all that helpful. I did the same thing on LinkedIn and that seemed much easier.

The thing we have to keep in mind is that social networking is a tool, and not an end in itself. Otherwise, one could spend an entire lifetime with only virtual contact with human beings. On to Second Life!

And finally, in the category of keeping up with the Geders, take a look at this:

A Great Weekend

2008-07-21T19:36:00.000-07:00

I'm just now back from a great weekend at Lake Tahoe, where I performed the civil wedding ceremony of two great young people, Christopher and Melissa, both in their early thirties. The ceremony was outdoors on the very shore of the Lake, with the Sierra as the backdrop.

About thirty minutes before the ceremony, a nervous Melissa fretted that the weather didn't look very good. And it did not. About twenty minutes before the ceremony, it began to rain, and Melissa calmed herself by accepting that she wouldn't have the outdoor wedding of her dreams. Then, just moments before we were to start, the rain stopped and a patch of blue sky appeared overhead! Melissa had her dream wedding after all.

The couple has an eclectic group of friends and family, ranging from a social worker from Bristol, England (the maid of honor) to a Cal Tech Ph.D chemist born in Yugoslavia, and all sorts of other interesting people. One woman, a school psychologist from Southern California, told me her father's story as a Polish resistance fighter in World War II and his subsequent flight from Poland under the Communists. I talked to Melissa's mother and aunt about their father, grandson of German immigrants, who married their Mexican mother just before World War II. Christopher is a descendant of the French Negroes of Illinois. All things considered, the wedding was a great example of the variety of this American family to which we all belong.

Happy 55th Anniversary, Mom & Dad!

2008-07-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

My parents celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary this weekend. Here's a recent photo of them, but for a glimpse at their wedding in Houston, Texas, in 1953, see the Carnival post on weddings here.

[Updated 7/18/08, 10:15 PDT to add photo. Blogger was having an upload problem earlier. Previous post deleted]

Happy Anniversary to The World's Smartest Sister and Husband!

2008-07-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

The World's Smartest Sister and her husband mark five years of marriage this weekend. By the time they catch up with our parents (see post above), they'll be over 100 years old!

Hookin' Up

2008-07-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

I have in my computer a number of databases, some for my family, some for families of friends, some for families of folks who've asked me to research a particular issue.

This weekend, I get to participate in linking two of the databases together as I officiate at the wedding of two thirtysomethings at Lake Tahoe. (As a former California Superior Court judge, I have that privilege. Of course, truth be told, in California just about anybody can perform a marriage ceremony if they pay a $40 fee and take an orientation course. Having been a judge just gets me out of the fee and the course!).

The weather is looking like it will cooperate and Christopher and Melissa should have a great day, assuming everybody (including the ol' judge) recalls their lines!

Carnival of Genealogy: 106 Years in America--And More!

2008-07-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

One ancestor I'm really trying to learn more about is my great-great-grandfather William ("Billie") Sanford. He was born in 1809 in Virginia and died in 1916 in Texas at the age of 106! A book I read says that he is the oldest person buried in the "colored" section of the Old City Cemetery in Rockdale, Milam County, Texas. (170 Years of Cemetery Records in Milam County, Texas, by N.H. Holman).

William Sanford was born a slave in a part of Virginia that is now West Virginia. He either was born as, or later became, the property of the James Sanford family. The Sanfords moved to Williamson County, Tennessee some time before 1820. James Sanford died in 1849; his son, Reuben, had died in 1846. Reuben's widow, Mary Wood Sanford, relocated her children and her slaves to Milam County, Texas in 1854. Those slaves included Billie Sanford. At some point in Texas, he married Emily Scott from North Carolina and they had four daughters, one of whom was my great-grandmother, Betty Sanford.

On Billie's death certificate (below), the term "old age" is mentioned not less than three times!

William Sanford's death certificate
(click to enlarge)

There's some longevity on my mother's side of the family as well.

William Henry Long, my mother's uncle, was born on March 21, 1889 and died on August 26, 1990, at age 101, in Kansas City, Missouri. The 1930 census says he was a truck driver.

Christina Alta Long Neal, sister of William Henry Long, was born on April 2, 1898, and died on September 14, 2000, at age 102, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Tina and Will's sister, Rosetta Bell Long, was nearly a centenarian. She was born on May 28, 1900 and died on March 17, 1994, at age 93, in Kansas City, Missouri. "Rosie" never married but had a companion of over 50 years. I don't know much about him, except that his name was "RJ." After working in a laundry all of her life, Aunt Rosie retired at age 65. She taught herself to play the piano, and at age 68, she was ordained a minister by the Metropolitan Spiritual Church of Christ. She was pastor of Good Shepherd Spiritual Church in Kansas City for more than 20 years.

To her, age really was just a state of mind.

A Surprise Using FamilySearch's Record Search

2008-07-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

I have been enamored of FamilySearch Labs' Record Search since it first came online. I like the interface and the presentation of information. I just wish there were more records available. To help toward that goal, I've spent a fair amount of time on transcribing records on FamilySearch Indexing.

Recently, I was running names through the Texas Death Certificate database. One of the names was "Elias Bowie." That name may refer to either my great-uncle or his father, my great-grandfather. One of the neat things about Record Search is that it finds names that are in records whether or not the name is the direct subject of the record. So for example, you may find John Doe's death certificate, but you'll also find Jane Doe's death certificate if John is listed there as her father.

So when I ran "Elias Bowie" against the Texas death database, one of the things that turned up was a death certificate for a J.C. Bowie with Elias listed as "father." I pulled up the image (see below) and discovered it is for an infant who died at the age of six months. The baby's mother is listed as Hattie Bryant, my great-grandmother. All which means that my grandmother, Jessie Beatrice Bowie and great-uncle, Elias Bowie (Jr.), had a brother. I had never come across this information before in any record or through family oral lore.

J.C. Bowie was born in November, 1911 and died in June, 1912. Of course, this was between censuses, so he would not appear on a census record. And it may well be that this information was somehow kept from my grandmother and great-uncle who were two years old and one year old at the time of their brother's birth.

The death certificate tells us some other interesting things. J.C. was born in San Antonio. It is well established by record evidence and family oral rendition that both Jessie and Elias (Jr.) were born in San Antonio in 1909 and 1910 respectively. J.C. died in Rockport, Texas, but his residence is listed as San Antonio. We know conclusively that Hattie Bryant's parents lived in Rockport and that she grew up there. Like a lot of young people on the Gulf Coast at the time, Hattie headed for San Antonio at about age 19 or 20. The entries on J.C.'s death certificate suggest that he may have died during a visit home by Hattie. The death certificate says that the deceased infant was in Rockport for three months prior to his death.

Other questions are raised by this. Why did Hattie go home for such a long time? Did she take Jessie and Elias (Jr.) with her? We know that Hattie and Elias (Sr.) broke up sometime after 1910. Did he follow her to Rockport or was this the breakup?

Death Certificate for J.C. Bowie from FamilySearch Labs'
Record Search
(Click to enlarge)

A Memorable Visit

2008-07-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

In my Jamboree posts the week before last, I alluded to a special mission I had attended to as part of my trip to Southern California. I took part of the time I was there to meet my father's step-mother.

I never knew that my father had a step-mother, as such, until the last few years, or so it seems to me. My parents tell me that I had met her (let's call her Miss Mary) at my brother's wedding 25 years ago in Los Angeles, but I have no recollection of that at all. In any event, I would have been 29 years old at the time, and that would have been the first I'd heard of Miss Mary.

In the last few years, I've become aware that my father has kept in regular contact with Miss Mary, calling her about every other week and writing her from time to time. A few weeks ago, he couldn't seem to reach her. She's 94 years old and lives alone. Dad called me, quite concerned, and asked if there was anything I could do. I first checked with various sources to ascertain if she had died; these were inconclusive at best. I dialed her number on the chance that Dad had dialed the wrong number. The number just rang and rang without being answered.
When I tried later, it was busy. A final try got a ring, but no answer.

After consulting several geriatric and law enforcement professionals, I called the Los Angeles Police Department's division station for Miss Mary's area. I explained who I was and that I wanted them to go to Miss Mary's address for a "welfare check." The officer on the telephone said they would do that.

Within an hour, I received a call back from the LAPD. They were at Miss Mary's place and they had found her "little dehydrated, a bit disoriented, but otherwise fine." They gave her water and juice. I conveyed the message to my father immediately after I received it.

On the Jamboree trip, I had planned to visit the grave of my paternal grandmother, Jessie Beatrice Bowie (buried under the name Jessie Manson Tidwell), which is in Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California, a thirty minute drive from Burbank. But I realized that her grave will always be there (or at least for a very long time) and Miss Mary may not always be here. So I decided to go see Miss Mary.

Miss Mary lives in a usually quiet area of southwest Los Angeles near the 110 freeway. (That morning it was not quiet, however, as LAPD helicopters roared overhead tracking a fugitive and LA news media choppers swarmed around the law enforcement airplanes).

I rang her doorbell and waited. I could hear a television on inside and voices, also. When nobody came to the door after a decent interval, I took out mt cell phone and dialed Miss Mary's number. I heard the telephone ring and a voice said, "Somebody's calling me." Nobody answered the telephone, so I left a message saying who I was and why I was there. Then a woman's voice said, "Somebody's at my door. Let him in."

A woman of about 30 years old opened the door and smiling, said,"Come in." I stepped into a small but uncluttered living room. At the back of the living room, I saw Miss Mary.

"Miss Mary," I said, "I'm . . . . " She cut me off quickly.

"I know who you is," she said curtly. "You your daddy's son." She was coming toward me in a walker, but at a pretty good speed and with a decent gait. Her voice was clear and strong.

"Sit down," she commanded. And to the younger woman, "Get him a cup of coffee."

"Uh, I don't drink coffee, Miss Mary."

"You don't? Well, the you're no friend of mine!" I actually couldn't tell if she was joking or not. I sat down on her sofa as she sat in a chair across from me. She was wearing a pair of blue slacks and a pressed pink shirt. She seemed to be sizing me up.

"What on earth possessed you to call the police to come to my house the other day?" Miss Mary demanded, her Texas drawl unseasoned by more than six decades in southern California.

Again, I wasn't sure if she was angry or not.

"I-I, uh, well, Dad was . . . we were concerned about--" I stammered.

Miss Mary cut me off again. "No, that wasn't it," she said forcefully. I started to protest, when Miss Mary held up her hand and said, "It was the spirit of the Lord made you call the police." Her facial expression softened into a smile.

"Yessir, it was the spirit of the Lord!" she exclaimed again. "How else would you know to call Los Angeles from Sacramento to save my life? It was the Lord's doing!"

Miss Mary had a bit more dramatic take on the situation than the LAPD had. She said she had fallen asleep the night before and had not turned on her air conditioner because the evening was cool. She slept on the sofa until the mid-morning hours. By that time, the heat wave had commenced in LA and Miss Mary was sweating and drained of energy. She said she couldn't get up to get water or to turn the air conditioner. After awhile, she could barely move at all. She knew she would die if she couldn't get up. She was preparing her self mentally for just that occurrence when the police showed up. The sofa being close to the door, she was able muster enough energy to let them in.

"They were like angels," Miss Mary said of the officers. "I'm going to witness about this in my church!"

After these preliminaries were over, we started discussing family matters. Miss Mary had been born in Cameron, Texas, 12 or 15 miles from my grandfather's birthplace in Rockdale, Texas. Contrary to family legend which said that they had never met until both ended up in Los Angeles, Miss Mary said that she and my grandfather had known each other in Texas. She said that she and a girlfriend left Texas in about 1941 to find better jobs in California.

When they got to LA (they went by train), they almost immediately found wartime jobs in a shipyard. A few years later, on the way to work on a bus, she ran into my grandfather, by then divorced from my grandmother. They renewed their acquaintance and later got married.

Miss Mary confirmed several details of family history that I was not sure about. Having grown up in the same county as my grandfather, she knew his family. For example, I asked her if she knew my grandfather's father, Otis Manson. She said, "He was a white man; he took good care of his family."

And who was his father? I asked. Miss Mary replied, "I don't know. You know, people didn't talk a lot about things like that in those days."

The census records describe Otis Manson as variously mulatto or black. But Miss Mary's declaration added credence to my father's story of having seen a white man on a horse in Midland County, Texas, in 1948 and being told, "That's your grandfather." What she said is also consistent with my theory that Otis Manson was the son of George Preston Birdsong, scion of a landed Upson County, Georgia, family, and Matilda Manson, a free woman of color who lived near George Birdsong. [By the time Miss Mary was born in 1914, George Preston Birdsong had returned to Georgia and died in 1905].

Miss Mary pointed out that at age 94, she cooks and cleans for herself and goes to church. [The younger woman with her that day is sent out by an agency at certain intervals to check up on her].

Miss Mary told me the basic genealogy of her family, the details of which I had already researched before starting my trip. But you know, there's just something special about hearing a living person describe their family when the vital facts square with your research!

It was a wonderful hour and a half spent with the most interesting and energetic 94 year old I've ever met.

Before I left, we took some photos. And that's the saddest part of the story. It was a new camera and I wasn't completely familiar with its operation. I either deleted the photos or never actually got them on the memory card. Which means I'll have to go back!

Back From . . . .

2008-07-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I return and find . . . . my mailbox is full of Facebook "Friend" requests! That's kinda nice! Thanks, y'all!

And I also found in the snail mail two boxes of photos from a relative in the Midwest--six more are coming! I can't wait. There's a lot to tell this weekend on GeneaBlogie . . . so stay tuned!

No Posts Here 'Til Next Week! Have A Great Fourth!

2008-07-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Initiative

2008-07-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

Perhaps three or four years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General launched a "Family History Initiative." I first came across it a few weeks ago. The Surgeon General's Website says this:

Health care professionals have known for a long time that common diseases - heart disease, cancer, and diabetes - and even rare diseases - like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia - can run in families. If one generation of a family has high blood pressure, it is not unusual for the next generation to have similarly high blood pressure. Tracing the illnesses suffered by your parents, grandparents, and other blood relatives can help your doctor predict the disorders to which you may be at risk and take action to keep you and your family healthy.

To help focus attention on the importance of family history, the U.S. Surgeon General in cooperation with other agencies with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a national public health campaign, called the U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Initiative, to encourage all American families to learn more about their family health history.

It goes on to say:

Americans know that family history is important to health. A recent survey found that 96 percent of Americans believe that knowing their family history is important. Yet, the same survey found that only one-third of Americans have ever tried to gather and write down their family's health history.

So, of course, to capitalize on the rising popularity of family history research and "[b]ecause family health history is such a powerful screening tool," the government came up with its own
family [health] history software, "to help make it fun and easy for anyone to create a sophisticated portrait of their family's health."

The software, which is also available in a web-based version, is called My Family Health Portrait. As genealogical software, it ain't great. It appears to allow you print two reports, the ones displayed here:

Above: Text-only Report
Below: Graphic Report
(Click on images to enlarge)

(Note: the family depicted above is entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental and unintentional.)

Is this as the government claims, a useful tool? Probably. And you could probably get the same info by customizing a report from your usual genealogical software. But for those not into genealogy, this tool may have two uses: first, it will help them trace family health issues and second, it may interest them further in genealogy.

Link:
The Surgeon General's Family History Initiative

Genetic Testing In California

2008-06-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

Blaine Bettinger has got an excellent piece on the California genetic testing controversy over at The Genetic Genealogist. I'm glad he's weighed in on this matter.

Last week, I issued a challenge to the industry and the state to come together in a neutral forum to discuss the issues. Next week, I plan to make a formal, concrete proposal to the parties. In the meantime, I'm doing some legal work to prepare for a potential resolution of the issue through the California administrative rulemaking process. I'll be describing that sometime after next week. As I said last week, I'm not entirely sure that the way the state reads the law actually would exclude testing for only "genealogical purposes," whatever that means. See the post about Dick Eastman's speech at the Southern California Jamboree and the upcoming post about genealogists collecting family medical data.

Jamboree: Was It Worth It?

2008-06-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

This is a fair question. I look at it from a cost/benefits point of view. The cost of the program itself for me was about $215, to which I have to add hotel costs for two nights (I was actually there for three nights, but I assign one night's cost to another mission), food, and airfare. So for me, living out of the area, the cost was fairly significant. On the benefits side, I must say that in terms of raw knowledge, I probably didn't learn anything I didn't already know to some degree or another. But what I did get were important insights into many issues. And as well, I met people, good people, smart people, people who were both good and smart! I think the opportunity to meet in one place all the folks I did meet is a significant benefit. In my calculus, I think the benefits outweighed the costs. It was worth it!

Dick Eastman is Highlight Speaker at Jamboree

2008-06-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

Dick Eastman was the featured speaker at the SCGS Jamboree's Saturday Evening Social and Dinner in Burbank last week. Dick described the difference between a "name-gatherer" and a family historian and urged the crowd to be the latter, not the former.

In a speech entitled, "Putting the Genes in Genealogy," Eastman pointed out the great strides made in genetics and its applications to genealogy--a theme underscored by the number and popularity of the DNA sessions at the conference. But Eastman said that in the not-so-far-off future, the use of DNA for medical predictions and preventive health management will transform genealogists into people who can help save the lives of family members. He sees this as a positive development for the health care system as well as for genealogy.

If you haven't heard Dick Eastman speak, try to catch him if he's anywhere near your area. He travels quite a bit. He's a man of many interests and is a speaker of great talent. It occurred to me during his speech that he is not just an historian, but a futurist as well. I mentioned that to him when I saw him in the hotel lobby on Sunday morning. In his sometimes self-deprecating style, Eastman said, "I sometimes think that's just a fancy word for someone who dreams a lot." He thought for a minute, then said, "Maybe there's no difference."

Saturday at the Jamboree

2008-06-29T20:49:00.000-07:00

After the Bloggers Summit, everybody headed for lunch. And here is one of the nits I have to pick about the conference. The lunch lines were unreasonably long and there were far too few tables at which to sit. That led a number of people to head "off-campus" for lunch. Those without transportation (moi) went to the hotel restaurant which apparently was also crowded or to their rooms for room service (of course, that was as overwhelmed as the restaurant). I had some meds I had to take with food. So I waited to eat. As a result, I missed the 1:30 session I wanted to attend.

I did go to Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's presentation on "Tracing Your Roots With DNA" which was a useful adjunct to the other DNA presentations. It helped me understand more about the various DNA testing companies, what they do, and how to choose one. By the way, it was a standing-room-only crowd!

Then I went to a session called "Genealogy Across the Color Line." I wasn't sure what this was going to be. Unfortunately, there was a substitute presenter, who did an admirable job at filling in, but left me with the feeling that there was more left out. Basically, it came down to a sociological discussion of black people who consciously pass for white and why they do it. I've written a bit about this phenomenon before.

The most intriguing of what I couldn't get to on Saturday:

Collen Fitzpatrick, "Forensic Genealogy Connections"
John T. Humphrey, "Developing the Skills to Become a Genealogist"
Bill Dollarhide, "The Best Genealogy Portals on the Internet"
Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, "Beyond Y-DNA: Your Genetic Genealogy Options" (this followed the session that I did get to, but I'm really sorry I missed this one!).

I have a CD copy of the syllabus, as all advance registrants got. There's been a movement to encourage conferences to save trees and luggage space by making these available in electronic formats. But in many sessions, the presenters referred to page numbers or other matter in the paper versions that those of us with the CDs could not easily look at. Having said that, however, I appreciate having the CD instead of the paper. As I understand it, the CD may be for sale by the Southern California Genealogical Society. Check their website (which has had some maintenance problems in the last week or so).

More Jamboree news to come including:

Dick Eastman Charts the Future as Saturday Dinner Speaker
Was It Worth it?

SCGS Jamboree: Why Live Blogging Didn't Work for Me

2008-06-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

And the Implications of That!

I had said that I would "liveblog" the Jamboree. As it sadly happened, I could not, but others did. Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons, each with certain implications and lessons.

FIRST: I had assumed without checking that the Marriott's Convention Center would have wireless Internet access for all participants. Apparently, there was a network available, but the key was accessible only to the speakers. So I paid $9.95 a day for wired access in my room. That, of course, made liveblogging impossible. I should have checked the situation beforehand. I hope that at other and future conferences, wireless access can be made available to all (even if we have to pay a reasonable fee for it). Additionally, as Randy Seaver has noted, the conference rooms were small and crowded with little space for computer use by participants other than the presenters. This fact made lugging my laptop around a major inconvenience. Now, looking at the majority of participants, I would guess (yes, I realize that I'm stereotyping here by age), many may not have been that interested in almost cutting edge tech issues and may not have had the hardware or the desire to carry it around for the conference. But there are many, regardless of age, who do have such interests and we need to accommodate them. That's where the world is heading.

SECOND: I did not have the state of the art hardware. I'm a tech dinosaur, I suppose, stuck back in the ancient days of 2006 or even 2005. I marveled at the fact that Elizabeth O'Neal not only liveblogged, she "moblogged." How did she post a picture of the Bloggers Summit on her blog while the summit was still going on? She used her cell phone! The cell phone took the picture; the cell phone printed the text; and the cell phone transmitted all of that to Blogger! This is facilitated by Blogger Mobile. Any cell phone with the capability to send email via MMS can work with Blogger Mobile. (And I suppose only a 2005-vintage dinosaur would describe Elizabeth's mobile device as simply a "cell phone"!). My cell phone is text-enabled and can send email via MMS, but I've never bother to do this. I can connect to the Internet with it, but I've never bother to do that, either. It can't take photos, however.

It's a fact of life that time and technology yield for no one. I need to catch up or be left behind. Reading Family Matters is a good way to to catch up for those who want to come along!

AN OBSERVATION: During the Bloggers Summit Q&A, I sensed that a number of people who may want to be more "tech-savvy" are a bit wary, even afraid, of the technology. This afternoon as I prepared to leave the hotel I talked with a woman who said she still didn't get the "how-to" part of starting a blog. Perhaps local societies should have a tech "How-to/Hands on Day" to demystify some of this for folks not used to it. We're at a point in history where technology is more accessible to more people than ever before. It would be too bad to let some smart people succumb to tech-phobia.

Jamboree Quickee

2008-06-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

BURBANK, Calif.--I'm about to head off to the Saturday Social and Dinner, so no more updates today. I did attend an interesting session on DNA (again!) by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, and a session called "Crossing the Color Line." I'll have thoughts on both of those tomorrow. Tomorrow is my travel day and though it's just an hour's flight to Sacramento, you know how flying is these days. The posts may not be up until the evening.

I'll have some thoughts about the entire experience here as well as some thoughts that occurred to me during the Bloggers Summit. Additionally, I'll have some posts about technology here. Finally, I'll tell you about a visit with a very special person and my sighting of a television celebrity!

Jamboree Fashions

2008-06-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a view of the T-shirt I'm wearing at the SCGS Jamboree!

From VistaPrint.com

Pix from Burbank

2008-06-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

Above: George G. Morgan, flanked by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, and Stephen Danko, responds to a question during the first-ever Genea-Bloggers Summit on June 28, 2008, during the 39th Annual Southern California Genealogical Jamboree.

The all-star panel finds themselves looking at themselves looking at themselves thanks to Elizabeth O'Neal's Little Bytes of Life.

Genea-bloggers gather: front row from left--Kathryn Doyle; Dick Eastman; George G. Morgan; Stephen Danko. back row from left--Leland Meitzler; Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Randy Seaver, Craig Manson, Elizabeth O'Neal.

SCGS Jamboree: Elizabeth Scoops Bloggers at Summit

2008-06-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

BURBANK, Calif.--As some of the geneablogosphere's brightest stars sat on a panel discussing what they do and how they do it, the story was being scooped by genea-blogger Elizabeth O'Neal from her vantage point in the third row. At 10:28 AM PDT, less than half an hour after the session began, she posted the following:

(click to enlarge)

Kathryn Doyle mentioned it to Dick Eastman, who pulled it up onto the screen in the room. The panel soon found themselves looking at themselves looking at themselves looking at themselves . . . .

Way to go, Elizabeth! Go to her site, Little Bytes of Life, to find how to follow her Twitter updates.

More Jamboree

2008-06-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

BURBANK, Calif.--The highlight of Friday at the SCGS Jamboree was the banquet with keynote speaker Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak. Megan, who's know to everybody in the genealogy world, spoke on "Right Annie, Wrong Annie--Annie Moore of Ellis Island," an absolutely riveting and poignant story of correcting the historical record about the first immigrant to arrive at Ellis Island in 1892.

The background: When Ellis Island opened in 1892, there was a ceremony to welcome the first immigrant off the S.S. Nevada. That ceremonial immigrant was an Irish girl named Annie Moore from County Cork. She arrived with her two brothers, Philip and Cornelius, to join their parents who were already in America. Upon arriving she was given a $10 gold piece to commemorate the occasion. Then she and her brothers disappeared into the teeming streets and tenements of New York.

As Ellis Island was being renovated in the late 1980's, interest in Annie Moore was renewed and efforts made to find out what became of her. One elderly lady whose mother had been named Annie Moore came forward with "the rest of the story." Annie, it seems, had married and moved to Texas. And that was the story the media and two countries accepted. Except Megan.

Working on a PBS documentary at the time, Megan researched the matter and concluded that the "Annie" everybody else was celebrating was the "wrong" Annie. For one thing, she had been born in Illinois, not Ireland! Megan did not know what happened to the "right" Annie, but she was confident that she probably had not moved to Texas!

After several years of grousing about the matter, Megan eventually decided to take action. She offered a prize of $1000 for anyone finding the "real" Annie Moore. What followed was an amazing effort by genealogists and others to solve this historical mystery. Marshaling this evidence, Megan found the descendants of the "right" Annie, some of whom knew, some of whom had no idea, about their ancestor.

Megan's presentation was enhanced by a multimedia show that was outstanding. This was one not to have missed. Some elements of it are at this link on Roots Television, including the incredible film produced by a class of 11 year-olds in Ireland, called From Cork to New York: The Annie Moore Story.

Megan's story of the search for Annie Moore may be the single most interesting discussion of solving an historical mystery that one may ever hear.

Light Moment: As such things go, there were some problems with the microphone. Megan tried to solve the issues by moving the lapel mike from one spot to another on her blouse. That seemed to work until she suddenly stopped and announced, "My mike just slid into my pants! . . . Actually, kind of an interesting sensation!"

Learn more about Annie Moore at the Annie Moore Memorial Project.

Genea-Jamboree: Day 1

2008-06-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

BURBANK, Calif.--The 39th Annual Southern California Genealogical Jamboree got underway this morning at the Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel. The Jamboree began with a class on "Beginning Genealogy," which for reasons I noted last night I did not attend. More about what I did instead later. I went downstairs about 12:15 PM and spotted Randy Seaver at the check-in desk. We chatted for a few minutes, and then went off in different directions. We would meet up again later.

The hotel is under reconstruction and it's not the easiest place to get around in right now. I thought I'd go have lunch in the hotel restaurant, but as I got there, I heard an employee tell another attendee that there were sandwiches in the Convention Center. So I walked back over there and signed in for the Jamboree and had a hot dog. I had a couple of great conversations with other attendees from various places; I enjoyed that a lot.

By the time I finished lunch, it was time for the afternoon sessions to begin. I went first to Leland Meitzler's presentation on "The X Files--Dealing with Black Sheep in the Family Tree." Leland is a great storyteller and he illustrated his presentation with a number of anecdotes about his family. He also described a number of websites and other sources for discovering the, ahem, unsavory branches of one's family tree. Some I was familiar with, others were new to me. This presentation was well attend; so much so that extra chairs had to be brought into the room.

There was a thirty minute break after that presentation, so I went to a table outside the conference rooms to use the computer. I sat down at a table where there were two other people, one of whom was genealogy blogger rock star Schelly Talalay Dardashti! What a great surprise! We had a great conversation. Schelly is a great wit and a very interesting person. When the break was over, Schelly and I headed off to see Steve Morse's presentation, "From DNA to Genetic Genealogy: Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask."

Steve Morse is a computer scientist, not a geneticist or biologist. But his description of DNA and its relevance to genealogy was the best such presentation for lay persons I've ever heard. It occurred to me that it was much clearer and much more educational than a similar presentation I'd heard as a judge designed to get us up to speed on DNA and genetic evidence. It was cogent and funny in the appropriate places. If you haven't seen Steve's "One-Step" pages, go there now! (Well, wait til you finish this!)

Following Steve Morse's presentation, I wandered into the hallway and ran into Stephen Danko. He had flown down from Northern California today. We had a great chat, too. It is a bit weird, though, meeting all these folks that I've just known on the Internet!

At 4:30, Schelly gave a presentation on gen-blogging. I attended, as did Randy Seaver, Elizabeth O'Neal and Kathryn Doyle. It was, of course, excellent, and a number of potential new bloggers attended. Tomorrow is the "Bloggers Summit" featuring many of the top genea-bloggers.

Some of the other presentations that I couldn't get to due to scheduling were:

Arlene Eakle, "American Church Records"
Dick Eastman, "Grandpa in Your Pocket" [on new hardware solutions]
George Morgan, "How to Get the Most out of Attending a Genealogy Conference"
D. Benton Simons, "Researching Witchcraft in New England"

There were also presentations on Legacy Family Tree 7 and RootsMagic 4. This is not a complete list of all the topics, but several that I thought were interesting.

Well, now it's time for the Friday Banquet, featuring keynote speaker Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak of Roots TV. I'll report on that early tomorrow morning. Also tomorrow, we'll talk about the Bloggers Summit and the Exhibition Hall.

SoCal Genea-Jamboree: Prologue

2008-06-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

BURBANK, Calif.--I'm excited to be here in "beautiful downtown Burbank" (people of a certain age get the pop cultural allusion) for the 2008 Southern California Genealogy Jamboree which gets underway tomorrow. It's the largest genealogical gathering on the West Coast. I haven't seen any celebrities (like Dick Eastman, Drew Smith, George Morgan or Randy Seaver) yet, but there will be pictures when I spot them. In fact, all I've seen since arriving about an hour ago is the inside of the Marriott Hotel at Burbank Airport (which is actually known as the Bob Hope Airport). The hotel is literally right around the corner from the airport. And today I noticed something I hadn't noticed on previous visits here: there's an Amtrak station at the airport! That's great!

The hotel is under going reconstruction and it's a bit of challenge to get around. Other than that, it's a fine and comfortable place.

Tomorrow morning starts with a beginning genealogy course from about 9:00 to noon. I'm taking a pass on that (not that I'm so smart after several years at this that I couldn't learn something!). Instead, I'm off on one of those special missions I alluded to yesterday. I'm going to southwest Los Angeles to visit my father's 94 year old stepmother. I had planned to spend the morning in Whittier visiting my grandmother's gravesite. She died 35 years ago this month, and for various reasons, I could not attend her funeral and I've never been to see the grave.

But I realized that the grave will be there for a long time to come; I can't say how long 94 year old Mary Frances Heard will be with us. She's the last family member of the generation before my parents who's still alive. I just couldn't be this close (it's about 20 miles from the hotel to her apartment) and miss the chance to talk to her! I'll have my camera and recorders ready.

Up to date reports on the Jamboree coming tomorrow!

Your Albanian Aunt, er, uh, Uncle?

2008-06-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

Found this fascinating piece in The New York Times this morning.

Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

Apparently, in traditional rural Albania, a woman could "become a man" by swearing an oath of lifetime virginity. This had some practical value beyond merely confusing future genealogists and census takers. The practice actually served to keep families together. Read the rest here.

Coming Up: The 2008 Southern California Genealogy Jamboree!

2008-06-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

This time next week, I'll be at the 2008 Southern California Genealogy Jamboree, sponsored by the Southern California Genealogy Society. It's at the Marriott Burbank Airport in Burbank, California. The Jamboree is the largest genealogical event on the West Coast. I'm looking forward to every bit of it, including the "Bloggers Summit" featuring Megan, Shelly, Randy, and others. I will attempt to live blog as much as I can. And of course, there will photos--lots of them, I hope.

I also have one or two special missions to undertake while in the Southland; I'll write about those as they come about.

Please stop by here Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for a peek at this great event. Also, Miriam Midkiff is hosting Scanfest this Sunday. Stop there, too.

Is There Any Genealogy Software That Can Do This?

2008-06-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

Randy Seaver has had an excellent series of posts with a similar title. Today, I appropriate this concept because I want to Is There Any Genealogy Software That Can Do This: create a chart showing just one parental line; for example, if I wanted to make a chart showing only my paternal line. Anybody know?

UPDATE: California's Crackdown on Consumer Genomics

2008-06-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

Some Good News (Maybe) and Prof. Manson Issues Challenges to Regulators and Industry

Diane at Genealogy Insider reports:

Lea Brooks of the California Department of Public Health told me that "Genetic testing used for ancestor tracking or forensic purposes is not covered by California clinical laboratory law standards."

That is in fact consistent with my initial reading of the regulations. However, seems to me that we'll have to see if that's the way the state and the state courts eventually interpret the regulations. And if the Department of Public Health takes this position, is the Department prepared to adopt an interpretive regulation to that effect?

On the other hand is the "personal genomics" industry prepared to adopt some "best practices" that may ease some of the regulators' concerns? And would the Department of Public Health and the industry work with the Capital Center for Government Law & Policy and our health law and policy institute students and my administrative law students come August to come to a reasonable agreement about the issues? I'll let you know.

New Midwest Genealogy Center Opens

2008-06-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Star reports that the ribbon-cutting and dedication of the new Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri, was held today. As regular readers know, that's right in the heart of my maternal homelands. I'm quite eager to visit on my next trip back! But, until I can see it in person and blog about it, here's the next best thing:

California Crackdown on Genetic Genealogy?

2008-06-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

This story has been reported elsewhere in the geneablogosphere, notably by Lee Drew (where I first saw it) and by Dick Eastman. But it is of continuing interest.

Apparently, the California Department of Public health has decided to call a halt to the marketing of genetic tests directly to consumers. Companies such as Navigenics, Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, and deCODEme, and others have received "cease-and-desist" letters from CDPH, asserting that the companies are operating in violation of California law. Navigenics and 23andMe are Silicon Valley-based firms.

Now what's really curious about this is that it's received very little coverage here in California. Aside from one brief article in the San Jose Mercury News, there's been virtually no local reporting on the matter in California. And in fact, the CDPH doesn't even have the issue listed on its website either under "News" or "Hot Topics."

The basis for the cease-and-desist letters is to be found in California's clinical laboratory technology statutes. The law prohibits the offering of a clinical laboratory test directly to a consumer without a physician's order. The law also requires a state issued clinical laboratory license or registration for all persons receiving biological specimens originating in California for the purpose of performing a clinical laboratory test or examination.

One should note that not all these companies do the same things. Some are involved in "personal genomics" much more extensively than others which are constrained around the mainly genealogical aspects.

The other point is that there is not necessarily a violation of state law simply because a mid-level bureaucrat says there is. There are questions about how the statute was intended to be interpreted and even some constitutional questions here. On the other hand, the actions that California has taken in recent days may have a chilling effect on those companies doing business, or intending to do business in the Golden State, which is the nation's largest domestic market.

Given the stakes involved here, GeneaBlogie will stay abreast of this story as it develops and we may have a special GeneaBlogie Legal and Policy analysis on the matter.

Juneteenth

2008-06-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

At the time of this order, my BRYANT family lived in Nueces and Refugio Counties, Texas, and my SANFORD families were both slaves and slaveholders in Milam County, Texas.

Firefox 3 Download Day

2008-06-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

I added 3 to the zillioins of Firefox 3 downloads today. First one came about 1:00 pm PDT and went very well. Second and third ones were at 7:30 PDT (probably peak California download time, I'm guessing, with folks getting home from work, kids finishing dinner, etc.) and took a bit longer. But I'm happy with Firefox 3!

Linn County, Iowa, Courthouse Closed Indefinitely

2008-06-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

The Iowa state Judiciary announced today that the Linn County Courthouse in Cedar Rapids will be closed indefinitely. The courthouse, along with city hall, is located on Mays Island in the Cedar River. Reports say that these buildings as well as the federal courthouse were severely damaged in the recent flooding. Emergency procedures are now in effect for the Linn County District Court, which include relocating its clerk's office to the Jones County Courthouse in Anamosa, Iowa. Other court-related facilities information can be found at this link.

National Czech and Slovak Museum & Library

2008-06-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

As the days go by, we'll learn of a number of historical, cultural, and genealogical resources which have sustained losses or damage due to the Midwest floods. One such resource is the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There is no telephone service to the facility as of now. Here's what it looked like yesterday:

Here's a statement from Gail Naughton, President and CEO of NCSML which appeared on their website:

A statement from Gail Naughton, President/CEO

National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

News coverage of this week’s events has demonstrated to the world the indomitable

spirit of eastern Iowans. Our local community of Czechs, many of whom live in neighborhoods surrounding Czech Village or whose families settled in southwest Cedar Rapids generations ago, have endured countless losses. Our hearts go out to them and to everyone in the Cedar Rapids community who is coping with outcomes of the disaster.

The staff of the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library does not yet know the extent of the damage to the Museum and we will not know for some time. We were able to remove many items from the collection to safety before flood waters came. The board and staff are holding emergency meetings to begin coordination of our plans for disaster recovery.

We have received messages of support and concern from Czechs, Slovaks, and museum members around the country and the world. It is gratifying to know their hearts are touched by what is happening here in our community. Thanks to 21^st century communications, Czechs in Prague and Slovaks in Bratislava are quite aware of what is happening in Cedar Rapids and to their Museum.

The Czech and Slovak peoples have endured many devastating events in their history and have survived to become stronger. Iowa is filled with the strength of those who settled here and built the Cedar Rapids community. The museum will rise again from above the flood waters to continue as the touchstone for Czech and Slovak cultural heritage in the United States.

Callers will not be able to reach the Museum through our listed telephone number. For the latest information on the Museum go to the Museum’s website WWW.NCSML.org which will be periodically updated.

Iowa Floods Exact High Toll

2008-06-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we ran a piece about how the Iowa floods had shut down NewspaperArchive.com, a site that many family historians visit frequently. Today, Jeffrey Kiley, general manager, left a comment on that post. It's so compelling that I thought it should be up front. Here it is:

Thank you very much for your concern. We are slowly bringing our systems back online, and we should be back to providing a consistent and stable user experience by the end of the day.

I appreciate your understanding. These have been trying times for all of us in Eastern Iowa.

On a personal note:

I was born and raised in Cedar Rapids. This city is the home to my High School, where I met my wife, where I’m raising my children. Where I had the best moments of my life. Where I have been a part of building the world’s greatest digital newspaper archive. And I am shocked and devastated by the destruction in and around this city I love.

As most of you probably know, the Cedar River, which snakes through the heart of Cedar Rapids, rose almost twenty feet above flood level, causing a disaster on a never-before-seen scale. The water is just beginning to recede, and the damage is unbelievable.

A team of dedicated employees and myself made our way into the heart of the disaster on Friday to move our hardware to a better location. The pictures on the news don’t begin to tell the story. As we crossed skybridges linking office complexes in downtown, and watched the raging river below sweep through what once were streets, I realized that a lot of things I love are gone. The Chrome Horse, a local saloon where I took my employees in celebration of a great month just a few weeks ago. Blend, which has the best Prosciutto appetizer in Cedar Rapids. The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, the science station. All gone. One of our closest clients, the Cedar Rapids Public Library, was mostly under water on Friday. I’m not too proud to say that a few tears were shed.

But I wanted you all to know that even though cleanup will take months, the Midwest Spirit is amazing and Cedar Rapids will emerge even better than before.

I’m very proud of my community right now, the way we have helped each other rather than waiting for help. The deep – and I’m sure exhausting – coverage of the event by our publishing partner The Cedar Rapids Gazette and their TV affiliate KCRG has been at the core of disseminating news quickly and completely, and can be credited with saving lives. The paper was delivered daily, even after their printing press was flooded. Their websites were updated by the minute as the situation progressed.

And I’m proud of my employees. They worked long and difficult hours to rescue our servers, carry them through a mile-long “ant trail” and relocate them 60 miles away at a dry and secure location. My IT staff has been especially heroic, spending the entire weekend rewiring all of our hardware and preparing the website.

Thank you for your patience through all of this, and for your thoughts and prayers as we rebuild our great city.

I will be posting this (or something similar) on our site later today....just to say thank you and update those who have been affected.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey C. Kiley
General Manager
Heritage Microfilm
NewspaperARCHIVE.com

As a native Midwestern, I know what Jeffrey says about the Midwestern spirit is true. The folks in Iowa have prayers.

Top Cat

2008-06-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

Top Cat! The most effectual
Top Cat! Who's intellectual
Close friends get to call him T.C.
Providing it's with dignity.

Yes he's a chief, he's a king,
But above everything,
He's the most tip top, Top Cat.

In September 1961, Hanna-Barbera premiered another of their primetime cartoons on ABC. Like The Flintstones, Top Cat was a hit that the whole family could watch and enjoy. Once our homework was done on Wednesday nights, we could turn on Albuquerque's Channel 7 and laugh at this gang of alley cats and their crafty leader as they tried to outwit Police Officer Dibble, but just as often ended up outwitting themselves. The show only ran for the 1961-62 television season, but it was a cultural phenomenon in its own way.

Fast forward to October 1966. My brother and I are coming out of our Scout meeting and see Dad leaning against his Renault with the engine he and I would later re-build, waiting to take us home. But as we approach, it appears that Dad has something in his hands. It is a kitten, probably not more than four weeks old and it's crying loudly. Dad says, "I found him under the car." The Scout meeting place is far from any residential areas at Sandia Base where we lived. So it's a bit of mystery as to how the kitten got out there and where his mother and the rest of the litter are.

Dad puts the kitten in my arms for the drive home and I know he's thinking what I'm thinking, "What's Mom gonna say?"

The cat is a jet black Persian-Siamese. Even at a young age, his hair is long, his eyes what we came to call "Green Bay Packer" yellow and green.

When we do get home, Mom sees me carrying the animal, and says to my father, "You are not bringing that thing in my house!" At first glance, she believes that my father has actually lost his mind and bought the monkey he often had joked about buying. The kitten is clinging to my sweater and I can see how he looks a bit like a tiny monkey. But even when she realizes it's a kitten, Mom is none too happy. My sister and brothers, however, are thrilled.

Dad explains again how he found the kitten under the car. Mom warns us against getting too attached to him, because, she says, he obviously belongs to somebody else. We'll have to put up signs and advertise to see if anyone lost a kitten. In the meantime, Mom says, he'll have to stay in the garage, not in the house. My Mom, darling of the Kansas City NAACP as a teenager, says, "When it comes to people and animals, I'm a strict segregationist!"

Predictably, the kitten cries all night for several nights and predictably, nobody comes to claim him. So Mom eventually relents and agrees that we can keep him. "What are going to call him?" Dad asks a few days later. My sister immediately says, "Top Cat!" And so begins a cat's adventures.

We had had "ornamental" pets up until then, a fish, a parakeet. Now we had a pet who took over the family. And as he grew, Top Cat transformed the neighborhood, quickly establishing himself as the Alpha animal on the block. Everybody knew "TC." In the summers, when the desrt heat reached into the triple-digits, Top Cat found a large stand of weeds across the street from the houses in the vacant mesa in which he would sleep for hours. The patch was known throughout the neighborhood as "Top Cat's Jungle." It had been formed by excess watering and perhaps a broken pipe.

In the Jungle, TC would find lizards also trying to escape the heat, and he would bring them, usually tailless or headless, home to show us.

In 1967, Top Cat suddenly disappeared from his jungle. We were certain that he would return and every day, I waited for him to show up. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months and seasons, and I came slowly to accept that Top Cat was gone. It was my job to keep my siblings sagging spirits up. The other neighborhood families were similarly depressed, especially the family across the street who owned Pumpkin, an orange cat who has TC's favorite playmate.

We never talked about getting another cat because somehow that would feel disloyal to Top Cat.

Eighteen months after Top Cat disappeared, my father, then an Army major, was called for duty as a member of a court-martial panel. Several soldiers, Military Policemen in fact, were on trial for theft. What were they stealing? Pets. Yes, pets! Most of the pets they stole they sold to other families. One of the pets they had stolen was Top Cat! After the trial, Top Cat was recovered in good condition from the backyard of one of my sister's classmates--whose house we walked by every day on our way to school!

After a year and half away from home, TC returned with his same swagger and ruled the neighborhood once more. Then came a real test. My dad was ordered to temporary duty in California and we would be going along to see relatives. What about Top Cat? Well, of course, said my "strict segregationist" Mother, he'd have to come along too! And he did. The back cargo bay of the Rambler station wagon was his, complete with litter box. That mean that we couldn't use the foldup seat in the back of the Rambler, so all four children had to squeeze into the passenger seat.

Top Cat came with us on two vacation trips to California and one to Kansas City. Then when we moved permanently from New Mexico to California, he came along again. In our first house in Monterey, he loved chasing the gophers that seemed to be everywhere. After I had gone off to college, my parents moved twice more and Top Cat moved with them. Top Cat was with them when my parents took in my dying grandmother's German Shepard mix and later when they took in my brother's dog while he spent three years in Germany.

Top Cat was the cleverest pet I've known. He was fun and funny and crafty like his namesake. When he was finished playing, he would assume a regal posture on his favorite chair to let everyone know he was still in charge. By then, my mother was his biggest fan.

In December, 1983, I was a captain in the Air Force stationed in England. I came home one already dismal winter evening to find the telephone ringing. It was my mother calling from California. "We thought you'd want to know sooner rather than later . . . Top Cat passed away today . . . " And for the first and so far only time, my mother and I cried together . . . .

Dad and Top Cat in the den, c. 1980

Flooding Shuts Down NewspaperArchive.com

2008-06-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

I received the following message early Sunday morning, June 15, 2008 (Central Time):

Dear Valued Member,

The situation in Cedar Rapids has reached levels never before thought possible. The flood waters surged past the 500-year flood line yesterday and continued to rise to catastrophic levels. A large portion of the downtown area is underwater and will continue to be so until the waters recede.

As we mentioned in yesterday's email, the infrastructure of our digital archives is kept downtown. While the servers are several stories above ground and are safe from the waters, power is and will be indefinitely out. Trucks with fuel for generators cannot get downtown, leaving us without even backup power in that building.

We want to assure all of our members that everything that makes our website and microfilm business possible is completely safe. Besides our servers being on high and dry ground, our physical newspaper microfilm and papers are all kept in our Heritage Microfilm building, several miles from the river.

We ask that your thoughts be with the thousands of displaced residents, including many of our employees, as we work through these trying times.

We will send occasional updates to keep you informed of the situation.

Thank you for your understanding,

The NewspaperArchive.com Team

NOTE:

To read more about the historic flood in Eastern Iowa, please visit the website of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, our local paper and one of our publishing partners:

http://www.gazetteonline.com/

Today is the 232d Birthday of the United States Army

2008-06-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

And to mark the occasion, Geneablogie has asked Jill Daniels, "England's No. 1 WWII/1940s Entertainer," to favor (or as she says, "favour") us with a celebratory reminiscence of a great Irving Berlin tune.

Draftees from New York City report to Camp Upton, Yaphank, Long Island in 1917.

Among the soldiers trained at Camp Upton was a Russian emigre born Israel Isidore Beilin.

He wrote the camp musical, called Yip, Yip, Yaphank, casting 350 of his fellow soldiers. One of the songs he wrote for the revue he decided not to use and it was not published for many years.
It was titled God Bless America. In 1943, the now-famous songwriter saw his Army camp revue
turned into a popular movie, taking its title from one of his Yaphank ditties, This is the Army.

Photo from the book Camp Upton, by Roger Batchelder (Small, Maynard & Co., Camp Upton, NY, 1918)

To book Jill Daniels, or just to hear more of her singing, see her website, jilldaniels.com

Flag Day 2008

2008-06-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

The Flag at Raton, New Mexico

Courtesy of YouTube poster "gully42". Free for non-commercial use.

Sticks And Stones, There's N---'s Living with the Bones!

2008-06-13T18:49:00.000-07:00

The role of the historian is to report things as they were found, not as the historian or the rest of modernity wish they had been. In the last post, we discussed using racial descriptions as names to search for African-Americans. We were successful using "slave," "colored," and "Negro" to find records that if combined with othe records could resolve long-standing problems and perhaps crumble some pre-1870 brickwalls.

It occurred to me that if the recordkeepers were using "colored" and "Negro," whatever would keep them from using "nigger"? [I know that it is fashionable these days not to say that word aloud, but too refer to it euphemistically as "the N-word." However, in context, it is fair and even imperative to use the word itself. In the heading of this post, I thought it would be too shocking, having not laid the premise yet. Those who are offended may go read something else].

Indeed, recordkeepers and census takers did use this slur of slurs as a first name and as a last name for black people (and, inexplicably, for a few whites as well). Thus, for example, in the 1860 census in Clermont County, Ohio, we find "Nigger Dave," age 90, and "Nigger Jim," age 80, residing with the Bone family of Williamsburg. The researcher cannot let his or her umbrage get in the way--this is valuable information that's likely not to be had any other way. We also learn that "Red Nigger Mills" died in Rusk County, Texas, in 1932; and that "Lucy Nigger," a black woman, resided in Loudon County, Virginia, in 1850.

But the use of such disparagements was not limited to African-Americans. The 1860 census, for example, identifies nearly every male Chinese immigrant in California and Oregon simply as "Chinaman" or "John Chinaman." (There's a "Sam" or two thrown in as well).

Now that we live in a more enlightened age, shouldn't we go through and "correct" these errant and offensive records? My answer is no.

What do you think?

Research Tip: Slaves and Slavs in the U.S. Census (and how to tell the difference!)

2008-06-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

"No census taken between 1790 and 1860 contains even one slave's name."

Harriet C. Frazier, Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them, 1763-1865, (McFarland & Company: 2004), p. 12.

Most genealogists will not find this statement particularly surprising. We all know that, except for a very few free blacks, African-Americans were not enumerated by name in the federal census until 1870. The only problem with this bit of conventional wisdom is that it isn't true!

In fact, a number of slaves are listed by name in several states in several census years. To find them, put the word "slave" in either the first name or the surname search box in your Favorite Commercial On-line Research Website (you know who I mean!).

Searching "slave" as a first name, and leaving the surname box empty, yields several census results. Of course, there are the 1850 and 1860 Slave schedules, but these don't list the slaves by name. Then there are the Mortality Schedules for 1850-1880, but again these don't list the slave's names . There are names on these schedules, but they are the names of slaveholders (although there are several instances where the names of slaves appear--see for example, the 1860 slave schedule for Oglethorpe County, Georgia, Ancestry.com. 1860 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2004. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1860. M653, 1,438 rolls). Where are there names of slaves? Patience, Grasshopper, patience.

In the 1840 census of Nansemond, Virignia, there is a person described as "Demsey of Stallings (slave)". However, there appear to be at least two "free colored persons" living in this household, so it is not entirely clear that "Demsey of Stallings" really is a slave. I should note that on this census there are several individuals listed thusly "(first name) of _______." They are all "free colored persons."

In the 1820 census of St Mary's County, Maryland, there is a person described as "Slave Backey of Boutte." Examining the document, it appears that there are three or perhaps four individuals in the household and they all appear to be slaves. Even so, I would understand if someone felt that this example seems a bit ambiguous.

So try this: put the word "slave" in the surname box and leave the first name box empty. Now on the 1840 census, there are a number of persons, mainly in Mobile, Alabama, with the apparent surname "Slave." But notice how they all have the same middle initial: "A"! So it's not "Nancy A. Slave;" it's "Nancy, a slave." You can tell this by noticing that there are no marks or numerals in the corresponding columns for "free white people" or "free colored people." The household seems to be enumerated just in the "slaves" columns. Thus there are at least 13 slaves named in the 1840 census of Mobile, Montgomery County, Alabama. And there are several others around the country: "Delilia, a slave," and "James, a slave" are found in Knox County, Tennessee, while "Shedrick, slave" resides in Loudon County, Virginia. "Franky, a slave, owner unknown," was counted in Wake County, North Carolina. [Can a person be a slave if their owner is "unknown"?].

The 1860 census has several bondpersons listed in Wilmington, North Carolina, including "A Mute Slave."

Searching "slave" as a first name and separately as a surname yields a treasure trove of results other than federal census records. There are state census records. And moreover, there are birth, death, and even marriage records for slaves in a number of states. Many of these records name slaves. And they reveal much about the social brutality of slavery. Search for the word "slave" as a surname in the Ancestry.com database "Rockingham County, Virginia Births, 1853-1857," and you'll see what I mean.

Searching for the word "slave" as a name also results in quite a few immigration and passenger records for African-Americans prior to 1860. For example, on 12 June 1820, Michel Allain arrived at the Port of New Orleans from Cuba with "his slave, a black man named Louis," according to Ancestry.com's New Orleans Passenger Lists, 1820-1945.

Tina Turner's Great-Grandfather was a Slave, But What's Slav Got to Do With It?

One thing to be careful about is that "Slave" may in fact be a legitimate surname or at least a transcription of a legitimate surname. It appears that a number of people from the Baltics and other eastern European states were either named or referred to as "Slave." So you can be sure that Slave Dimitriss who arrived in New York on 21 April 1910 from Southampton was not a former African bondman. But records can be tricky. How can you with great confidence tell a slave from a Slav?

First, look at the geographical area to which the record refers. Slaves tend to be found in the South; Slavs, not so much. Slavs generally are found in northern cities; Slaves, not so much. Then look to the time period. Slaves are generally so referred to prior to 1865; Slavs generally later than that. Look at first names as a clue. If there is a place of birth or race listed in your record, that's a clear giveaway.

Of course, for every rule, there is the ambiguous case. So for example, what's up with 18 year-old Ellen L. Slave of Waterbury, Connecticut, enumerated on the 1860 census of New Haven County, Connecticut? Answer: we could take a guess, but we really don't know without more. Or how about the "Slaves" of Edmonson County, Kentucky on the 1860 census? Well, this is probably just a transcription error.

"Slave" also turns up as a surname from the United Kingdom, especially Ireland and Scotland.

Other Searches

Other non-standard searches to find African-Americans include searching the word "Negro" as a first name or surname or the word "colored" as a first name or surname. These searches yield information that when combined with other information may help identify pre-1870 African-American ancestors. For example, a search on the word "colored" results in over 100 records in Ancestry.com's St Louis City Death Records.

The Last Word

We've seen that it is not true that slaves did not appear by name in the census until 1870. We've also learned that a number of records can be accessed by racial description in a name search. That, of course, is because of the way records were kept in a different era. And speaking of racial descriptions in a different era, some of you may be wondering the same thing I was wondering. I'll get to that in the next post.

William George Micheau, 1880-1949

2008-06-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

Born 31 Dec 1880, Prairie du Rocher, Illinois
Died 15 Nov 1949, St Louis, Missouri
Occupation: Barber*
Parents: George Micheau, Sr. & Mary Emma Roy
Spouse: Clara Robinson (or Roberson), 1885-1938

*"It will doubtless be observed by the reader, that a majority of our colored aristocracy belong to the tonsorial profession; a mulatto takes to razor and soap as naturally as a young duck to a pool of water, or a strapped Frenchman to dancing; they certainly make the best barbers in the world, and were doubtless intended by nature for the art. In its exercise, they take white men by the nose without giving offense, and without causing an effusion of blood."

Cyprian Clamorgan, The Colored Aristocracy of St Louis (1858)

A St Louis Belle

2008-06-10T19:50:00.001-07:00

19 year old Edna Mary Micheau
on her wedding day
1940

No-fee Passports Available to Visit Veterans Graves Overseas

2008-06-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

In one of our Memorial Day posts, we mentioned that there are thousands of American veterans buried overseas. I've recently learned that “No-fee” passports are available to immediate family members (spouse, children, parents, brothers and sisters) for the purpose of visiting their loved one’s grave or memorialization site at the American military cemeteries on foreign soil. For additional information, write to the American Battle Monuments Commission, Courthouse Plaza II, Suite 500, 2300 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201, or telephone 703-696-6897, or visit the Web site at http://www.abmc.gov/home.php.

Given the onward march of time, I hope this benefit soon is extended to grandchildren as well.

Problem Solved (Mostly)

2008-06-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

Our tech problems are solved for the most part, so we're back at our usual address, blog.geneablogie.net. I say "solved for the most part" because I really mean "solved so you can't tell what's going on in the background."

One Moment, Please

2008-06-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

We're redesigning the site and having a little trouble with one of our tech partners, so we're back at geneablogie.blogspot.com for the time being. I hope this interruption is brief!

Great Service from Seattle!

2008-06-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

All I can say is WOW!

A few days ago, actually on June 4, 2008, at about 10 p.m., to be precise about it, I ordered a death certificate from the Washington State Department of Health in Seattle. It was the death certificate of one Velma B. Dervin, who died in Seattle in 1993. I wanted to confirm that this person was my cousin Velma Mitchell born in Rockport, Texas (see our series from July 2006 starting here). Today at 2 p.m. Pacific Time, the U.S. Postal Service delivered the death certificate. That's less than 90 hours elapsed from the time I ordered it online. That's a better service than I get from the California Department of Health here in Sacramento, and they're just 12 miles away!

So hats off to the Washington State Department of Health in Seattle! Thanks a lot folks! (By the way, the certified copy confirms that this is my cousin Velma Mitchell).

Carnival of Genealogy: Gulf Coast Summer 1962

2008-05-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

Right: Craig and The World's Smartest Sister at the beach in Rockport, Texas, August 1962.

As far as I recall, my first time at a beach was in the summer of 1962. Later that year, at age 8, I did my first major writing project. It's presented here just as it was written 46 years ago, including photographs (the notes are new).

From the book My First Vacation Trip, copyright 1962, by Craig Manson

The Book Cover

My brothers, sister, and I live in New Mexico. On July 28, 1962, my Nana¹ came for a visit. She wanted to take my sister and I on a trip to Texas. Arrangements were made. So my Father, Aunt², and I went to buy my sister and I some "swimming clothes." When we came back, Nana sat down at the sewing machine and made us some beach jackets. Father readied my fishing line.

At last the day came. On Sunday, August 5, 1962, we left for Houston, Texas. The ride was comfortable³,. . . . .Next morning, I was up at 4:00 with Nana and later my sister got up at 5:00. I changed clothes in the men's room. Sister combed her hair, and Nana got ready too. At 11:00 we arrived in Houston. The train backed into the station. On the platform we met Uncle Herman⁴,. I relaized that in Texas, it's quite hot! Uncle Herman drove us to his house. At the house, we met Aunt Ida⁵.

Left: Sister with Uncle Herman Walker

[After several days in Houston, it's time for our travelers to move on!]

. . . Mrs A. Dolphin⁶ took us to the Greyhound bus depot where we would leave on a bus bound for Rockport, Texas. There we would meet my other Aunt Ida⁷ and Uncle Johnny⁸. It took us 5 hours to get there. . . . When we met Aunt Ida and Uncle Johnny, it was quite joyous because we had not seen each other since 1958. After we had unpacked, Uncle Johnny took us down to the beach where we went swimming as we did every day.

Above Right: We play in the Gulf

When we went fishing, I caught mostly catfish, but sometimes I caught perch and trout. Sometimes we went to visit cousin Ethel⁹ and Rabbit¹⁰.
One day Rabbit took us to Taft where we met Aunt Pearl¹¹. Aunt Pearl owns a motel and cafe in Taft. So we stayed at her motel. When we got back [to Rockport], Aunt Maria¹² and her husband¹³ came to take us to Corpus Christi.

In Corpus Christi, I long talked with Uncle Leroy¹⁴ who I had not seen once before in my life. After staying in Corpus Christi one day, we started back to Houston.

Right: On the shrimping dock

Below: Modeling the "beach jackets" Nana made

NOTES

¹My paternal grandmother, Jessie Bowie Manson (1909-1973), then known as Jessie Manson Givan.

²My mother's sister, Delorise Annrie Gines, then 22 years old, and spending her summer break from college with us.

³In pre-Amtrak times, "the ride" was the Atchison,Topeka & Santa Fe RR's Super Chief.

⁴Herman Walker (1906-2002), Nana's brother.

⁵Ida Mouton (1910?-1992), Uncle Herman's wife.

⁶Alice Dolphin, who was a major figure in my fathr's early life story.

⁷Ida Bryant (1895-1991), widow of Nana's uncle, Sam Bryant (1881-1951).

⁸I have no present clue as to this person's identity or actual relationship to me.

⁹Ethel Bryant (1903-1996), daughter of Isaac Bryant (1879-1936), Nana's uncle.

¹⁰I have no present clue as to this person's identity or actual relationship to me.

¹¹Pearl Bryant Richardson (1897-?), Nana's mother's sister.

¹²Should be "cousin Maria." Maria Bryant (1905-?) was Ethel's sister (see note 9).

¹³I do not know his name.

¹⁴Leroy Goins, aka Leo R. Bryant (1924-1983), Nana's brother.

The Joys of Indexing

2008-05-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

FamilySearch Indexing's homepage
(click to enlarge)

It's been more than a year since I first wrote about FamilySearch Indexing. That's the volunteer project that's' indexing millions of new records that will be offered free on the new FamilySearch. Some of those records you can access now at FamilySearch Labs' Record Search (which to my mind is almost the greatest thing since genealogically sliced bread! More about that later).

Anybody can volunteer for FamilySearch Indexing. All you need is a computer and a bit of free time. Once you sign up (free), you go through a very helpful tutorial on the Internet which takes about 30 minutes to an hour. It has useful practical exercises for transcribing records. After you successfully pass the tutorial, you're ready to start indexing!

FamilySearch will download an application that allows you to see and transcribe the records. You can then download batches of records to work on. Depending on the record, a batch usually is about 20 records. You can download up to five batches at a time. FamilySearch asks that you take no more than seven days for your downloaded batches. If you've bitten off more than you can chew, you can easily return the unfinished batches. However, you should never download more than you can reasonably do in seven days.

The "My Work Page." I've downloaded four batches of Louisiana Death Records. Notice the Due Date. You can also see the goals I set for myself. In context, this is not an overly ambitious goal. (click to enlarge image)

You can download batches according to a priority set by FamilySearch or you can look and find a set that interests you for some particular reason. Depending on the condition of the records, a batch may take 30-45 minutes to complete. Once done, you run FamilySearch Indexing's quality control agent to pick up any errors you think you may have made, then send the batch back to Salt Lake City.

Another person will have, or eventually will, transcribe the same records that you've worked on. The two sets of work are compared and an arbitrator will resolve any differences. You won't get involved in this as an indexer usually, although I've heard that indexers sometimes are called to explain their thinking on a particular record.

This is what the records workspace looks like. Note the "Field Help" box on the right. This gives instructions about how to transcribe each field of a record. And it is very helpful, indeed! It moves from field to field as the transcriber does. That's also where the Quality Checker appears when the indexer is done. (click to enlarge image)

Last year, I spent a number of hours transcribing census records. It was extremely educational for me. I came to understand some of the difficulties faced by transcribers of ancient handwritten records. I also strove to do my best, because I know that feeling when one comes across a poorly transcribed record of one's family, or worse, can't find a record that was mis-indexed because of a transcription error.

I didn't go back to FamilySearch Indexing for a long while after my first experience, mainly because my time was being sucked up elsewhere. I did, however, check out the databases on Record Search and was thrilled with what I found. I spent a lot of time with the unindexed records of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois. I eventually transcribed and translated for my own use some of the records of St Joseph's Church in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, and some of the records of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Sparta, Illinois. I put to use my experience with FamilySearch Indexing.

Recently, as school drew to a close for the summer, I went back to FamilySearch Indexing. I took the tutorial, which seems improved to me. The application interface also seems different and better.

My first venture was transcribing part of the 1870 census of Massachusetts. The portion of the records that I had enumerated sailors of various nationalities. This was quite interesting and led to a couple of insights about transcribing that I'll mention in just a bit.

I had been assigned the 1870 Massachusetts census off the priority list by clicking on the "Download" button on the "My Work" page. However, if you click on the button that says "Download From," you can browse a set of records and choose one of your liking. See the second image above. So when I finished the 1870 batch, I downloaded a batch of Louisiana death records since Louisiana is one of the states in which I research. This, too, was quite interesting and I found myself doing many other batches out of this set.

I found an infinite feedback loop. The experience I had gained in my first indexing venture last year had informed my solo work on the Catholic records which now helped me on the Louisiana records and each batch taught me something about transcription and indexing.

One thing I learned is that there is a bit of "informed intuition" that necessarily goes into transcribing. The better your information, then the better you can intuit, and the better you can transcribe. For example, you come across a surname that appears to be BRSSD, as best you can make out from the handwriting. Now if you're familiar with French-derived surnames, you can intuit that's probably BROUSSARD or BRAUSSARD. Good so far, but which is it? Well, if you also know that there's a village nearby called Broussardville, you probably have the answer.

How would you improve your informed intuition? Well, I found it useful have open another browser tab which displayed the Wikipedia article for the Louisiana parish I was transcribing. This helped not only with intuition, but with things I simply did not know, such as the proper spelling of towns like "Tangipahoa" and "Ponchatoula" which were often misspelled by the informants on the death records.

Transcribing for FamilySearch is rewarding because it's educational and vital to everyone's research efforts. It's a great way to invest in the future of on-line genealogical research.

"Until They Are Home . . ."

2008-05-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

As we honor our war dead this Memorial Day, we must not forget that some families have no cemetery to visit, no grave to decorate; indeed, no knowledge of what became of their loved ones who went off to war. They may take some comfort in knowing that America is engaged in an intensive effort to find and bring their family members home.

The effort is coordinated by the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) at the Pentagon. There are more than 88,000 U.S. military personnel unaccounted for from conflicts from World War II through the Gulf War. The DPMO sets policy and priorities for recovering persons, conducts archival research to aid in recovery, and tends to the budget matters.

The operational work is done by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii. JPAC conducts investigations and analyzes evidence to locate and recover missing U.S. military personnel using state of the art forensic techniques. Key to their mission is the work done by JPAC's Central Identification Laboratory (CIL), the world's largest forensic anthropology laboratory. The lab is currently identifying about two individuals a week--more than 100 a year.

CIL can often identify individuals if they have a reference sample of DNA from surviving family members. CIL uses mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, inherited only from the mother. They use this type of DNA because, as Blaine Bettinger has taught us, it is long-lasting, abundant, and doesn’t change much from generation to generation.

Genealogists can help by selecting a casualty (perhaps from your home town, home state or a man that served in the same unit as you), and researching their family history to determine if there are living relatives who might be FRS donors. Click here for a list of Family Reference Samples (FRS) required by JPAC.

At this link, you'll find press releases announcing recent identifications.

Until They Are Home . . . .

Decoration Day Roll Call

2008-05-26T06:32:00.000-07:00

Today, we honor our war dead. If I could, I would be placing decorations on the following family veterans gravesites:

Charles Troy Bowie (1915-1945), U.S. Army, Epinal American Cemetery, Epinal, France.

Rene C. Mischeaux (1948-1969), U.S. Army, Golden Gate National Cemetery, San Bruno, California

They both gave "the last full measure of devotion" in service to our nation.

While we're here at our virtual national cemetery, we note the service of these other relatives, who, while not war casualties, nonetheless served valiantly:

Zeke Johnson (1847-1933), 18th U.S. Colored Infantry, Blue Ridge Cemetery, Kansas City, Missouri.

Frank William Gines (1935-1999), U.S. Army, Fort Logan National Cemetery, Denver, Colorado.
Henry Edward Gines (1935-1993), U.S. Army, Fort Logan National Cemetery, Denver, Colorado.

Perry Wesley Gines (1928-1986), U.S. Coast Guard, Leavenworth National Cemetery, Leavenworth, Kansas.

Richard Edward Gines (1926-1996), U.S. Army Air Forces, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

Bobby G. LeJay (1938-2007), U.S. Army, Carver Memorial Cemetery, Shreveport, Louisiana.

Herman L. Brayboy (1935-1996), U.S. Army, Zion Rest Cemetery, Shreveport, Louisiana.

William G. Wells (1929-2005), U.S. Navy, Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, St Louis, Missouri

There are 363 Bowies, 246 Mansons, and 168 Birdsongs buried in America's National Cemeteries.

Epinal American Cemetery, Epinal, France
Final Resting Place of Charles Troy Bowie of Longview, Texas

The National Cemeteries

2008-05-25T18:45:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow being Memorial Day in the United States, there will be ceremonies and events at national cemeteries across the country to remember those who have fallen having served their country in the Armed Forces. Memorial Day, as we call it now, came about in the aftermath of America's worst conflict, the Civil War. The first commemoration is unknown. One story has it that freed slaves in Charleston, South Carolina, began the tradition by re-burying a number of Federal soldiers who had been interred in a mass grave. Supposedly on May 30 of a subsequent year, the freedmen returned and decorated the graves with flowers.

In any event, the first mass attention given to "Decoration Day" came as the result of an "Order" given by Gen. John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. The GAR was a powerful organization of Civil War veterans. [Logan had been an Illinois congressman who resigned his seat to become a colonel of Illinois volunteers in the Civil War. He rose quickly and ended the war as a major general commanding XV Corps in the Carolinas. Logan later returned to Congress, serving in the House and then in the Senate]. His stirring words gave wide exposure to the idea and the traditions of "Decoration Day."

In 1864, Congress had passed a bill that authorized the President to acquire lands for national cemeteries. The Government established fourteen national cemeteries in the first year of authorization. In 2007, the Department of Veterans Affairs opened the 141st national cemetery, the South Florida National Cemetery at Lake Worth, Florida.

The 141 national cemeteries have more than 3 million graves, with the potential to grow to 5 million. This is important because today there are more than 24 million veterans eligible for burial in national cemeteries. VA says that historically about 12% of veterans choose a national cemetery.
Left: The nation's busiest National Cemetery at Calverton, New York

The term "national cemetery" refers to lands under the jurisdiction of three different departments. Most (125) of the national cemeteries are run by the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Cemetery Administration. Fourteen are operated by the Department of the Interior's National Park Service. These are cemeteries that are associated with national historic battlefield sites like Gettysburg, with one exception being the national cemetery at the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Tennessee. Except for the Andrew Johnson cemetery and the national cemetery at Andersonville, Georgia, all of the National Park Service-run cemeteries are closed to new burials.

Two of the national cemeteries are controlled by the Department of Defense through the Army. These are Arlington National Cemetery, perhaps the most well-known and most visited of the national cemeteries, and the cemetery at the Armed Forces Retirement Home (formerly the Soldiers and Sailors Home) in Washington, D.C.

A view of the National Cemetery maintained by the National Park Service at Andersonville, Georgia

In honoring our fallen troops, we should not forget that some are interred overseas. The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 24 cemeteries in foreign countries which contain the graves of 125,000 Americans.

Genealogy Research Tip: The VA National Cemetery Administration has a nationwide grave locator to find graves of veterans. This contains the names of almost all the veterans buried in VA and National Park Service national cemeteries. In addition, it also has the names of veterans buried in non-government cemeteries for graves marked with a VA-provided marker. One thing not to overlook is that spouses, minor children, and unmarried disabled adult children of eligible veterans can also be interred in national cemeteries, even before the death of the veteran. (I reference, for example, the heart-breaking case of my cousin-by-marriage who has had the misfortune of having outlived two wives, both of whom lie waiting for him in repose at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St Louis). The Park Service is planning to put Civil War veterans grave locations in its excellent Civil War Soldiers and Sailors database. The American Battle Monuments Commission also has a searchable database.

If there is a national cemetery in your area, please pay a visit tomorrow, or any other day, to give your respects to those who have given service to the nation.

Right: The American Battle Monuments Commission's American Cemetery and Memorial at Ardennes, Belgium, contains graves of 5,329 U.S. military dead.

Photo Credits: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration; U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service; American Battle Monuments Commission (an agency of the U.S. Government).

Back in the Saddle Again

2008-05-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

This Memorial Day weekend has started out a bit gloomy here in Carmichael--weather-wise, that is. On the other hand, the few horrible weeks we've been through here seem to be resolved. So, it's time to get caught up on a number of things!

This weekend, I'll share with you one or two research adventures; some practical advice gleaned from the recent experience of handling my late sister-in-law's matters; and some things specific to Memorial Day. So don't go away (unless it's to a holiday weekend getaway!) . . . there's good stuff coming up!

Armed Forces Day

2008-05-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Today is Armed Forces Day.

Curiously, Armed Forces Day seems over the years to have diminished in importance. There may be several reasons for that. It's on a Saturday, not a Monday, so people aren't as aware of it as they used to be. Then as security has gotten tighter, many military installations which formerly opened their doors to the public on Armed Forces Day either no longer do so, or do so with conditions and restrictions. Another factor is that with the increased use of the National Guard and the Reserves, communities are more engaged with the military than they were in the 1960's. And on the other hand, increased Reserve and Guard deployments mean that personnel who were once available for the displays and events of the day are no longer available.

As a kid, I lived at a semi-secret atomic weapons base on the southeast edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nearby was Kirtland Air Force Base, which hosted the region's Armed Forces Day celebrations. The gates of Kirtland were opened to the community and numerous static displays of aircraft were available to inspect. There usually was an air show, featuring the U.S. Air Force Demonstration Squadron, the Thunderbirds. In those days, the Thunderbirds flew the F-100D SuperSabre, which I thought was the coolest airplane I'd ever seen.

The air shows and static displays had their intended effect on me: I was motivated to join the Air Force and I did.

If you missed Armed Forces Day this year, check it out next year. Go and mingle with military folks and find out what they're all about, especially if there are none in your neighborhood.

Life as A Country Song

2008-05-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

These things actually happened in the last three weeks:

My sister-in-law died.
The car's engine seized; new car required.
The air conditioner stopped working on the day it hit 101 degrees.
And other stuff . . .

But I'm not whining. Life is like this sometimes.

How'd My Mother[-in-law] Get So Smart?

2008-05-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

My mother and my mother-in-law are both bright women, each in their own ways. But in keeping with my theme of praising mothers-in-law, we'll leave my mother-in-fact for another day.

My mother-in-law is a descendant of the French Negroes of Illinois. Her father, Joseph Perry Micheau, was born in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, in 1888 and married Edna Julia Lewis in 1913.
Joe Micheau probably went to the school for black children in Prairie du Rocher which was run by the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, an order of Catholic nuns. Later, when the Adorers left Prairie du Rocher, Joe's wife Edna became the teacher for the black children.

Joe Micheau was an extraordinarily literate man. After leaving school, he continued to educate himself. He had intended to become a priest, until he met his future wife.

My mother-in-law and her three siblings benefited from their parents' interest in education and particularly in reading. My mother-in-law, born in St Louis, Missouri, about fifty miles west of Prairie du Rocher, attended the public Sumner High School for a year, then transferred to St. Rita's High School, a Catholic girls school, from whence she graduated.

Her innate curiosity, however, is what makes her so smart. At age 50, despite not knowing how to drive or even owning a car, she took an automotive repair course, just because she "wanted to know." The same impulse led her to learn how to make soap and glass.

She reads everything she can get her hands on. Sometimes she reads labels in the grocery store just to learn about a product even without wanting to buy it.

She's quiet and she listens. Those traits make her seem shy, but they're the key to what makes her smart.

Give Another Mother A Hug

2008-05-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers in my families and yours!

I want to deal today with that most complex of subjects--the mother-in-law. Simply put, they don't get no respect. Even Rodney Dangerfield dissed them ("I wanted to do something nice, so I bought my mother-in-law a chair. Now they won't let me plug it in . . . ."). That one-hit wonder, Ernie K-Doe, scored a Billboard No. 1 hit in May 1961 with his song "Mother-in-law" that proclaimed his mother-in-law "the worst person I know. . . .Her name ought to be Satan." The song was still popular when Huey Lewis and the News covered it decades later. The greeting card industry's "Mother-in-Law's Day" didn't start until 2002 and is relegated to the spooky fourth Sunday in October (although this source says it was first celebrated on March 5, 1934 in Amarillo, Texas). By the way, check out this Mother-in-law's Day Gift Guide.

The New York Times on December 10, 1923, on page 19 ran this headline: HOMEWRECKING ACE IS MOTHER-IN-LAW. The story's lede was:

The mother-in-law, joke or no joke, is still the most potent force in breaking up marriages in America. Officials of the Legal Aid Society pronounced this judgment yesterday, with forty-seven years of providing law help to the poor as the background of experience for their statement.

You can read the rest of the story (for $3.95 from Times Select) here.

But consider that every Satan of a mother-in-law is someone else's saint of a mother. Mothers-in-law are mothers. They deserve to be honored today not only by their children-in-fact, but by their children-in-law as well. After all, for better or worse, who would your sweetie be if not for his/her mother? So, for today, set aside the jokes and grievances (real or imagined) and give your mother-in-law (or someone else's, if you haven't one) a hug.

Lynne "Angel" Harvey, 1916-2008, Good Day!

2008-05-07T19:46:00.000-07:00

As both my regular readers know, I'm an old radio guy--that is, an old guy who used to be on the radio (more than thirty years ago!). So I was especially saddened to read the following press release from Washington University in St Louis.

Following in bold type is Washington University Press Release

May 6, 2008 -- Legendary news producer Lynne "Angel" Cooper Harvey, wife of broadcaster Paul Harvey, died Saturday, May 2, at the couple's home in River Forest, Ill., following a long battle with leukemia. She was 92.

"Angel Harvey was a distinguished Phi Beta Kappa alumna of Washington University in St. Louis and also the recipient of an honorary doctor of humanities degree," said Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. "She was a role model and inspiration for our students and graduates, and her stellar achievements in the field of journalism and broadcasting are equaled only by her love for education and by a deep concern for the arts and for those in need.

"She was a woman with a gracious, generous heart and she will be missed by this community," Wrighton added. "Washington University extends its deepest condolences to her husband, Paul Harvey, and their son, Paul Harvey Jr."

Born and raised in St. Louis, Angel — as she was universally known — earned both a bachelor's and a master's degree in English from Washington University. Hired to develop a program on education for St. Louis radio station KXOK-AM, she soon met Paul, then a young reporter at the station. On their first date he proposed and the couple married in 1940.

During World War II Paul joined the Army Air Corps and Angel moved to his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she took a job with the local CBS affiliate. There she became one of the first women in the nation to run an entire radio broadcast, spinning records and reading the news from 4 p.m. to midnight.

In 1944 the Harveys moved to Chicago and soon launched "Paul Harvey News" on ABC affiliate WENR-AM. With Angel as producer, the program quickly became the most listened-to newscast in Chicago and helped pioneer the 10 p.m. newscast, which soon became a national standard.

In 1951 the ABC Radio Networks began broadcasting "Paul Harvey News and Comment" on stations coast-to-coast and in 1976 expanded "The Rest of the Story" — a long-running feature on "News and Comment" — into its own broadcast. Both shows would reach an estimated 25 million listeners on more than 1,200 radio stations as well as 400 Armed Forces Network stations around the world.

In 1968 Paul and Angel launched "Paul Harvey Comments," a nationally syndicated television series that ran for 20 years. It was soon joined by "Dilemma," a prototype for the television talk-show genre. In 1997 Angel became the first producer inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame and in 2001 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from American Women in Radio and Television.

A dedicated alumna of Washington University, Harvey was a Life Member of the William Greenleaf Eliot Society's Danforth Circle and a member of the Phoenix and Chicago Regional Cabinets. In 1997 she received a Founders Day Distinguished Alumni Award and in 2001 received the Robert S. Brookings Award for her support and advocacy on behalf of the university.

In 1999 Harvey established the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Chair in English, held by Wayne Fields, professor of English and director of the American Culture Studies Program, both in Arts & Sciences. In 2000 she created the Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellowships, which support graduate students in American Culture Studies, and in 2003 created the Lynne Cooper Harvey American Culture Studies Scholars program, which supports undergraduate students.

The annual Lynne Cooper Harvey Writing Prize, awarded for outstanding writing about American Culture Studies, is named in her honor. In 2004 Harvey dedicated the June S. Courson Courtyard, part of the university's new Earth & Planetary Sciences Building, in memory of her sister.

-30-

What a remarkable woman! I was raised on Paul Harvey News and Comment on the ABC Radio Networks. Every day when we came home for lunch, Dad would already be there for his lunch and Paul Harvey was always on. We heard him on KDEF, 1150 AM in Albuquerque. [Note the images from a bygone era--Dad home from work, kids home from school, all for lunch; no TV on, just the radio]. And we had no idea that a woman played such a key role in that program. Even later as a radio guy myself, I did not comprehend the full extent of her talents. As Paul might say on another of their programs, "Now you know the rest of the story."

Condolences to Paul Harvey and son, Paul, Jr. (himself a radio producer). And may the "Angel" of the airwaves rest in peace.

A Loving Legacy

2008-05-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

Mildred Delores Jeter, born in 1939 or 1940, grew up in Central Point, near Bowling Green, Caroline County, Virginia. It was a small town where of course everybody knew everybody else. By the time Mildred was eleven or twelve years old, she was smitten with the handsome, blond, older boy with the curious name, Richard Loving. A friend of Mildred's family, Richard must have liked her, too, because they became sweethearts.

When Mildred turned 18, Richard asked her to marry him. There was just one problem: Mildred was not blonde like her sweetheart. Mildred was the daughter of two parents who were part black and part Indian. The Commonwealth of Virginia prohibited mixed race marriages under its 1924 "Racial Integrity Act." So Richard and Mildred drove about 90 miles north to Washington, D/C. They picked the name of a minister from the D.C. phone book, and got married. Then they drove back home.

Five or six weeks later, the Caroline County sheriff rousted Mr. and Mrs. Loving from their bed at 2:00 a.m. "Whose this woman you're sleeping with?" he demanded of Richard.

"I'm his wife," Mildred replied. The sheriff handcuffed them both and took them to jail. They were charged with illegally "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth" in violation of the Racial Integrity Act, a felony.

At their trial, the Lovings pled guilty. Judge Leon Bazile said, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix."

The judge sentenced them to one year in jail, but suspended the term for 25 years on condition that the Lovings leave Virginia and not return. Upon their release, they moved to Washington, D.C. On appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the convictions, but pointedly reminded the trial judge that they should have been sentenced to prison, not jail.

The Lovings might have, at that point, lived the rest of their lives in blissful obscurity. But Mildred missed her mother and Richard didn't think it right that he could not raise his family in the place where he grew up and called home.

Mildred wrote to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union. With ACLU lawyers, the Lovings began fighting their convictions and banishment in both state and federal court.

On April 10, 1967, the case came before the United States Supreme Court. You can hear the argument yourself right here. The issue was whether Virginia's ban on interracial marriage (and similar laws in 17 other states) violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court announced its decision two months later, on June 12, 1967. Chief Justice Earl Warren, speaking for a unanimous Court, said the Virginia law was simply "invidious racial discrimination" which was "odious to a free people." The law was unconstitutional. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).

Justice had prevailed for the Lovings and many others.

Richard and Mildred moved back home and quietly raised their three children.

Richard Perry Loving died the victim of a drunk driver in 1975.

Mildred Jeter Loving passed away last Friday, May 2, 2008.

June 12 is celebrated by mixed race couples and their friends and families as "Loving Day."

Audio of oral argument and text of case provided by The Oyez Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Catholics, Mormons at Odds Over Genealogical Records?

2008-05-05T21:39:00.001-07:00

Well, a day has come that I hoped would not. Kimberly Powell reports that the Vatican has ordered Catholic dioceses not to allow access to their records for microfilming or digitizing. Here are my sudden and unorganized thoughts:

As both of my regular readers know, I am a Catholic, and there are a number of Catholics in the GeneaBlogosphere, including Kimberly Powell, Jasia, and Donna Pointkouski, to mention just a few.
I don't think any Catholic blogger or genealogist has ever denigrated the LDS faith. Indeed, most of us are quite grateful for the tremendous service the Mormons have provided us and everyone.
The LDS Church has been more than generous in sharing their extremely costly research endeavors with the world at little or no cost. I would hope that my church, had it been in their shoes, would be as magnanimous. In fact, what the Mormons have done is downright Christian.
Catholics and our faith are actually strengthened in a way by knowing and understanding our past and appreciating our ancestors. Curiously, we have the Mormons to thank for that.
Of course, there are fundamental doctrinal differences between the two churches that might never be bridged. But we can still practice charity toward each other.
In the comments to Kimberly's report, I detect some strong animosities towards both Catholics and Mormons. Let's not go there. We each as groups and individuals have had enough persecution for our beliefs.
I rarely have been as excited as I was a few weeks ago when I discovered that the LDS-affiliated FamilySearch Labs had digitized and placed on-line the records of the Catholic Diocese of Bellevile, Illinois. I found a treasure trove of information about the Micheau family that I'm researching. I, for one Catholic, am very grateful for the LDS efforts.
I can appreciate my LDS friends without endorsing or condemning their faith. Please no comments about the theology of that statement.
If the Mormons want to claim some of my family as theirs, I'm not offended.
All being said, this is a most unfortunate turn of events for all. When it comes to genealogy, we all need each other.

UPDATE: Register of U.S. Army Enlistments

2008-05-05T20:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I am both gratified and chastened! In the comments to the original post below, Chad Milliner points out what should been obvious to me. That is, essentially, that the Register of U.S. Army Enlistments includes only original federal enlistments. Chad reminds us that in the 18th and 19th
centuries, American wars were fought largely by troops raised by the States. The Regular Army was very small. So the database is complete as to the years it covers for the enlistments in the U.S. Army.

And you'd think an old National Guardsman like me would have remembered that! (Don't tell anybody how badly I blew this one--they'll revoke my retirement and order me back into uniform for remedial training!).

Thanks, Chad, for keeping us straight!

Carnival is Back!

2008-05-04T14:52:00.000-07:00

The 47th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is posted at Jasia's Creative Gene. The theme this time was "A Place Called Home," and thirty-two writers have described places that their ancestors called home. The submissions are very diverse, ranging from the now-extinct Markham Township, Ontario, to Weaver's Creek Bottom, Mississippi, to towns in Croatia, Lithuania, and Poland.

I didn't play this time because of time constraints. But I have been planning for awhile to do a series on places.

All of the Carnival articles this time are very informative and well-written. I would urge each writer to consider taking the basic facts of their piece and creating or adding to a Wikipedia article.

Having just done it a few weeks ago, I know that Wikipedia writing may not appeal to everyone, but for those who find it doable, it would be a great service to other researchers.

Call for Submissions! The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is: Mom, how'd you get so smart? We'll examine our mothers' education. What schools did your mom attend? Did she graduate high school or attend the school of hard knocks? Did she attend a one room school house or was she home-schooled? Was she the first in the family to attend college? Maybe your mom took self-study courses or was an avid reader. Tell us all about how a mother figure (mother, grandmother, mother in law, godmother, etc.) in your life became so brilliant! The deadline for submissions is May 15th.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page.

Genealogist, Heal Thyself

2008-05-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

Family historians and genealogists spend their time looking for folks who have long since passed away. Often, the lack of records or knowledge about where to find them creates frustration (or excitement for those who love the thrill of the chase!). But have we each asked ourselves whether future generations will be able to find us? More importantly, have we made the right plans so that those in the present can handle our passing without unnecessary complications?

Take some time today to ask yourself these questions:

Do I have a will?
Where is my will?
When was my will last updated?
Is there someone I trust who knows where my will is?
Is there someone I trust who has access to my will?
Have I preplanned (and prepaid) my final disposition?
Do my loved ones know what my wishes are for my final disposition? [IMPORTANT: Don't put these instructions in your will and do not keep them in a safe deposit box!].
Have I made adequate financial plans for my survivors?

These are simple questions that can save your surviving loved ones from many complications at your death. Seek legal advice or financial planning advice if necessary. It will be well worth it.

Research Note: Don't Overlook the Simple Way

2008-05-03T06:57:00.000-07:00

Chris Dunham at The Genealogue has made genealogical "challenges" a somewhat regular feature of his blog. These are quite interesting, fun, and test one's rapid research skills. I enjoy them a lot, because I always learn something, either about the particular subject or about some research resource I may have not known about before. I always have to work fast if I want to post an answer because the East Coast folks have a time zone advantage!

Sometimes, a Challenge is so complex or obscure that it takes days and many folks working to figure it out. Sometimes they are disarmingly simple.

A few days ago, Chris's Challenge #126 was set up about "Stephen and Emilie Preen, who lived in Newark, New Jersey, in 1900." There was this link to a discussion thread about Preen family history. The Challenge was to discover Who was their very famous step-grandchild?
The link gave some important clues. [Don't look at the comments to Chris's Challenge #126 yet if you want to learn what I learned!]

The Challenge went unanswered for an unusually long time. I really didn't have time to do it, but I took a shot anyway. I first used some of the clues in the discussion thread along with census records to determine the names of the Preens' children. Then using census records and birth and marriage databases, I tried to determine their grandchildren. I had to check each of the children. A couple were quickly eliminated, and I soon focused on Sydney David Preen as the likely step-father. The somewhat unusual spelling of his first name likely came from the fact (found in the discussion thread and confirmed in census and passenger records) that Stephen and Emilie Preen had lived in Australia in New South Wales for several years. Indeed, their two oldest children, though not Sydney, had been born in Australia.

I then tracked Sydney to California and this made sense because perhaps the step-child was in the entertainment industry. Well, I wrestled with Sydney's records for quite awhile before giving up, partly because, as I said, I really didn't have time, and in part because I was now convinced that the answer could be found only by using some obscure database or research technique.

But the next day, I noticed in the comments that someone had come up with the right answer. Unfortunately, she didn't describe how she got there. [Don't look yet!]. But I discovered that knowing what was in the discussion thread or even just the question itself, a good thinker could come up with the answer in just a matter of minutes.

Try it yourself. Take the information in the question itself and find the name of their famous step-grandchild in fifteen minutes. Go ahead, we'll wait here.

--Fifteen Minute Interval--

Now, how long did it really take you to come up with John Wayne?

Here's how to do it: Look up the names of the Preen children in the 1900 census. "Google" each one in turn. For Charles Preen, you'll get about 98 hits, which you can click through quickly with no mention of anyone famous. For Albert Preen you get nine hits; again, not seeming to lead to anyone "famous." Now for Sydney Preen, you'll get five hits; again nobody of special notoriety. But then, the thinking researcher would decide that "Sydney" is not the only way, nor the typical American way, to spell that name for a male. So now you search Google for "Sidney" Preen, and guess what? The first two of five mentions refer to John Wayne's autobiography. Time elapsed: less than fifteen minutes.

Lesson: don't overlook the simple ways!

Attention Sanford Researchers: Tennessee State Marriages Now on Ancestry.com

2008-05-02T17:07:00.000-07:00

Another of the new databases on Ancestry.com is the Tennessee State Marriages database. This is great for researching my Sanford family research. It's got a lot of images; sometimes there are several different records for a single marriage. This is a good addition.

Research Resource: Register of Enlistments In U.S. Army

2008-05-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

I got an e-mail from Ancestry.com recently that touted some new databases that had been added. Among these was "Registration of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798 --1914. So of course I was interested. I put in the search box a number of my family names, particularly the more unique ones, and turned up nothing. So then I tried the common family names like Johnson and Martin. Still nothing. This made me a little suspicious. I couldn't believe that from 1798 to 1914, for example, only 161 men from Missouri named Johnson had enlisted in the United States Army.

I decided to find out just how many names were actually in the database. I did this by simply leaving the name boxes blank and indicating "United States" in the country box and "any state" and searching. The program reported back that there are something over the 845,000 names in the database. Then I repeated the process placing in the country box the names of countries I thought most likely to have supplied members of the U.S. Army during the time. 1798 -- 1914. Here are the interesting results:

UNITED STATES	845,041
IRELAND	155,122
GERMANY	92,440*
ENGLAND	37,732
CANADA	20,740**
PHILLIPINES	17,005
SCOTLAND	12,083
FRANCE	6,492
RUSSIA	6,195
AUSTRIA	6,107
ITALY	2,396
NETHERLANDS	1,646
POLAND	1,518
TOTAL	1,049,395

*includes 8,329 from Prussia
**includes 10 listed as being from "North America" since Canada was referred to as "British North America"

Are you surprised by these data? I am. More than 10% of the enlistees were born in Ireland. I never would have thought that.

But my purpose was to discover how many records were in the database in order to determine how complete it is. So consider the total number. Except for the Civil War, the Army was fairly small between 1798 and 1914; it could well be 1,050,000 names represents a fairly complete database. But then, it's estimated that during the Civil War, 2,200,000 men served in the Union Army. If that's the case, I reasoned, perhaps most of the records in this database came from the Civil War era. To check this theory, I put in the year box "1863" selected "any country," left all other fields blank, and searched. That yielded a total of 13,568 enlistments. Hmm! Clearly it would take more of an 13,000 enlistments a year to sustain an army of over 2 million. (The total for 1861, the first year of the war, was 29,265).

So perhaps it is that this database contains mostly non-Civil War enlistments. In any event, it's clear that this is not a comprehensive database of U.S. Army enlistments during the period 1798-1914.

Ancestry.com says the original data was found in National Archives Microfilm Publication M233, 81 rolls; Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s-1917, Record Group 94.

What Makes It All Worthwhile

2008-05-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

If you want understand part of the drive to do what we do here in the Geneablogosphere, or if you just need a true-life story of family, read this post at the footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed today. And check it tomorrow when I'm the guest blogger at Shades!

Edna Mary Penny Wells 1941-2008

2008-04-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

Edna Mary Penny Wells died last week in St Louis, Missouri, just a few days shy of her 67th birthday. She was the daughter of Edna Mary Micheau of St Louis and the late Ralph Penny; and the granddaughter of the late Joseph Perry Micheau and Edna Lewis.

She was the third generation daughter named Edna and hence she was nicknamed "Li'l Ed." She hated that nickname, yet it stuck until her death.

Edna Mary Penny was born on April 27, 1941 in St Louis, the eldest of four children. She was quite a talented child, learning the piano as very young child. She could play at a professional level by age seven, and as a teenager, the sounds of Gershwin as well as the classics wafted from her room as she played. But for reasons known only to her, she did not pursue music much past her teens.

The great influence in her life was her husband, Bill Wells. They were married for over thirty years until his death in 2006. A gregarious and likable police officer, Bill nurtured her dreams. Her family believes that a broken heart may have been a major factor in her death.

Edna Mary was interested in many things, among them, genealogy. She was among the early group to use the Internet for genealogical research and she was exploring DNA as early as 1997--unusual for someone without a science background. She was the person who first discovered the story of her great-grandfather's family's escape from slavery, recounted here in part. She joined us on our research trip last summer when we went to Prairie du Rocher, Illinois.

Intelligent and beautiful, Edna Mary was not an easy person to get to know. And near the end, she seemed push her family and friends away, as if she was saying, "Don't stand in the way of my journey." But taking charge of Edna Mary's apartment this week, her sister said she found ample evidence that many people loved and cared about Edna Mary, and they don't understand why she had to die alone.

Edna Mary Penny Wells is survived by her mother, Edna Micheau Penny; a brother, Claude Penny of Dallas, and a sister, Margarett Penny Manson, of Carmichael, California. Other survivors include her two aunts, numerous cousins, and nieces and nephews.

New Profile Photo for May

2008-04-30T12:38:00.001-07:00

Last Month: January 2005

May: October 1955

Exam Week

2008-04-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

It's the first week of final exams here, so I'm quite busy with that. And we had some family things out in Missouri to attend to, which I'll write about soon. And finally, as the footMaven's loyal readers know, I'm the guest blogger this Friday at Shades of the Departed.

My final grades have to be turned in by Monday a.m., then school's out for the summer--except of course for faculty, school's never really out!

The U.S. States of Polypotamia and Pelisipia?

2008-04-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Being a lover of Geography, I also am infatuated with its sibling, Cartography. Two sites I've visited recently will thrill genealogists, geographers, historians, and curiosity-seekers.

The first is The Map Room: A Weblog about Maps. [Caution: there is another site called maproom.com--which is a tavern in Chicago--not the same!]. This is a great blog. Recent posts have described errors in online maps; 250 years of Pittsburgh maps; and how Google Earth is fomenting discord in the Middle East (according to Iran). The posts are strong and substantive, enlightening and entertaining. There are very good book reviews as well.

But don't miss the blog Strange Maps. This is terrific. Again, the posts give up nothing on the side of good science while being most interesting and entertaining. How about Hitler's map to re-organize South America? Or a place in Germany completely surrounded by Switzerland? And one of the strangest maps is Thomas Jefferson's 1784 proposal for ten new states carved out of the Northwest Territories.

1870 Post Office Directory

2008-04-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

I love geography. I briefly considered being a geography major in college, before settling on political science and international affairs. Genealogy, however, has taught me a lot about geography and its important place alongside history, sociology, and geopolitics in defining who we are and where we come from.

Recently, I've come across a few things that have served my geographical curiosity and my curiosity about curiosities. The first thing is the 1870 edition of the U.S. Post Office Directory. It's subtitled "List of Post Offices in the United States Arranged Alphabetically and Giving the Salaries of the Postmasters. Also an Appendix Containing the Names of Post Offices Arranged by States and Counties, with Money-Order Offices, and Other Postal Information." I found this on Google Books as I was looking for something else. For genealogists, geographers, historians and trivia freaks, this is a must-have. Did you know that in 1870, the postmaster of Boston, Massachusetts had a salary of $4,000 a year, while the postmaster of Boston, Kentucky, made a whopping $30 a year?!

The volume also has some information about the organization of the Post Office Department (which then was part of the President's Cabinet) along with some names of Post Office officials. The directory is 415 PDF pages.

Another curiosity about the directory is a mark on the cover indicating that the digitized copy was given to the Boston Public Library in 1919 by a Mrs. C.W. Ernst. Below that are the words, "The Ernst Postal Library." Who were the Ernsts?

Carl Wilhelm Ernst was born in Germany in 1845 and came to Boston in the latter part of the 1800's. He seems to have lived the life of a public intellectual, being described once as one of Boston's leading philologists (New York Times, May 16, 1899). He apparently was keenly interested in Massachusetts history. And he served for awhile as Boston's postmaster. In this latter capacity, Ernst apparently crossed paths and perhaps wits, with Lysander Spooner. Spooner was one of the stranger characters of the 19th century, who tried to open a company to compete with the Post Office. This gives an idea of what Ernst thought of Spooner.

Carnival Time: Where'd You Get Those Eyes? Nose? Hair?

2008-04-18T18:13:00.000-07:00

The Carnival of Genealogy is back at Creative Gene. The posts discuss inherited traits. It's a good one! I didn't play in the Carnival this time for various schedule related reasons, but I commend it to you.

Call for Submissions! The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is: A Place Called Home. It's time for a geography lesson. Pick out a city/town/village where one of your ancestors once lived and tell us all about it. When was it founded? What is it known for? Has is prospered or declined over the years? Have you ever visited it or lived there? To a certain extent, we are all influenced by the environment we live in. How was your ancestor influenced by the area where they lived? Take us on a trip to the place your ancestor called home. The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2008.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

An Indirect Lead to The Elusive Sarah Gilbert?

2008-04-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I mention Ancestry.com's excellent collection entitled, "Missouri Marriages 1805-2002." As I tried it out, I may have come across an indirect lead to my elusive ancestor, Sarah Gilbert.

The only matters of record that I have ever found concerning Sarah Gilbert are her 1867 marriage to Ezekiel Johnson in Clay County, Missouri, and her residence with her husband and children in Kansas City on the 1880 census. Other than those things, Sarah Gilbert is a phantom. There is no one alive today who knew her or saw her. There are not even any hearsay stories about her, except the persistent and unsupported rumor that she was an Indian. That's it; that's all.

Based on the fact that she seems to have disappeared after the 1880 census, I have surmised that she may have died sometime after 1880. No children appear to have been born to her after 1880.
Today, as I checked out the new Missouri marriages collection on Ancestry.com, I came across an 1885 marriage in Jackson County (Kansas City) between Ezekiel Johnson and one Rena Neal. If this is the same Ezekiel Johnson who married Sarah Gilbert, this may lend some credence to the notion that Sarah Gilbert died sometime after 1880. More investigation need on this, but it could be an indirect lead to Sarah Gilbert.

Missouri Marriages 1805-2002 at Ancestry.com

2008-04-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Ancestry.com has recently added a collection called "Missouri Marriages 1805-2002." Frequently, Ancestry's state collections have seemed to promise more than they deliver--being limited to just a few counties or even a few years though the title implies many more counties or years.

But this collection seems to be the real deal. Easily searchable, it has many, many, actual images. And it seems to include the excellent collection of marriage records from Jackson County. Indeed, I found one record on this site that's not in the Jackson County collection. So, kudos to Ancestry for this outstanding addition!

Texas Death Collection at FamilySearch Labs

2008-04-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

Record Search at FamilySearch Labs has recently added a collection of Texas death records covering 1890-1976. I've tried this and it's quite a good collection in terms of content and useability. Like all the indexed collections at Record Search, name variations are automatically retrieved in search results. I like the fact that there is a "Copy to Clipboard" link on the record details page, which in one click copies the details--and only the details--to the clipboard. On Ancestry.com, by comparison, you have to go to "View Printer-friendly" and then select and copy the details.

There is a link to a PDF version of the actual death certificate; however, that link seems not yet functional.

All things considered, this addition to Record Search is a solid "A" in my gradebook.

How 'bout Giving a Little WikiLove?

2008-04-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone who uses the Internet has heard of Wikipedia. I love it and use it quite a bit. I find that the "collaborative anarchy" keeps it up to date and accurate for the most part. But Wikipedia will exist only as long as people do find it useful and accurate.

I came across a Wikipedia article about a place I once lived. The article was extremely brief and had at least one error in it. So I'm revising it.

Writing for Wikipedia is different from other writing. It is, after all, an encyclopedia. And Wikipedia has a unique culture that one should become familiar with before leaping into writing or revisnig an article. That said, if you use Wikipedia, support it with your knowledge and skills!

My FOIA Request Update

2008-04-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I used the State Department's online "FOIA Request Generator" to request the passport files of my grandmother, Jessie Beatrice Bowie (1909-1973). I received an email acknowledgment fairly promptly. Last week, I got the first actual response. Reasonably enough, the Government wants me to show that she either is dead or authorizes me to see her file. It's not quite as simple as sending them her death certificate, however. She was married three times and the name under which she applied for a passport was the name she used during her second marriage, Jessie M. Givan. When she died, she was known as Jessie Tidwell. So in addition to proof of death of Jessie Tidwell, I will send her SS-5 (Application for Social Secuiryt account number) which lists her as both Jessie Beatrice Bowie and Jessie Bowie Manson; an extract from the 1940 marriage records of Aransas County, Texas, which shows "Mrs. Jessie Manson" marrying one Exa Givan; and a page from the California State marriage Index for 1964 indicating that Jessie M. Givan married George Tidwell. That should do it, don't you think?

April 4, 1968

2008-04-04T07:37:00.001-07:00

Monthly Profile Photo Rotation

2008-03-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

<---------------Last month: Circa 1977.

This month: January 2005----------------------->

The Family Cars, 1955-1969: Part II--The Rambler

2008-03-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

My dad had bought his first car, a 1953 Ford, in 1955 during his first assignment in the Army. The Ford had taken to Kansas City from Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri several times; from Kansas City to Houston and back to KCMO; and from KC to Brooklyn. It came with us to Germany in 1958. In Germany, we'd taken the Ford on a couple trips to France.

In 1961, Dad was ordered to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He decided it was time for a new car, so before leaving Germany, he sold the Ford which he'd had for six years to another GI. In late August, 1961, we departed Germany aboard a commercial airliner and, after a refueling stop at Shannon, Ireland, landed at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey. The next day, we were on a train headed for Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the American Motors Company factory there.

Dad had ordered a 1961 Rambler station wagon from the factory before we left Germany. The plan was to pick it up at the factory and drive on to Kansas City for a family visit, then on to our new home in Albuquerque.

Rambler Station Wagon built by American Motors Co. Pictured is a 1962 model, virtually identical to our 1961 model.

Kenosha turned out to be remarkably picturesque for an industrial town. It is on the western shore of Lake Michigan--which I had never seen until then. In Kenosha, we were given a tour of one of the town's two American Motors assembly plants--quite a thrill for me and my next younger brother. I don't think my four year old sister and youngest (3 years old) brother were quite as impressed. In fact, my sister said recently that she had no recollection of the factory trip at all!

The car wasn't ready until the next day. Nobody in the family had ever had a brand new car. This one was custom-built to my dad's preferences. The Rambler was blue with a white top. There was a luggage rack of sorts on top. The cargo area in back converted into another seat which faced to the rear--another thrill for me and my brother! There were no seat belts. The car had a "push-button" three-speed automatic transmission and whitewall tires.

As soon as the car was ready, Dad picked it up and brought back to the motel for loading. We headed south out of America's Dairyland (as it said on our Wisconsin license plates). Our route would take us through Chicago, then southwest on U.S. Route 66 to Springfield, Illinois. This was the first of many times the Rambler would travel Route 66, either east to Missouri or west to California. We'd then depart Route 66 and head west to Kansas City.
Rainfall track of Hurricane Carla,
September 1961. Click to enlarge.

We hadn't gotten very far past Chicago when a terrific rain began. Between Chicago and Springfield, the rain continued to get heavier. Before we got to Springfield, the Illinois State Police had stopped all traffic on the highway. It was too dangerous to go on. We were caught in the north-bound remnants of Hurricane Carla, one of two Category 5 storms during 1961, and at the time, the strongest storm on record in the Atlantic basin. We found a motel (no problem this time) to wait out the storm.

A day later, it was still raining, but the highway authorities had deemed the roads safe. The Rambler faced its first test and got us to Kansas City safely. After a few days with my mother's family, we headed on to Albuquerque, eventually back on to Route 66.

We kept that Rambler for eight years. During that time we took it on two trips to California and two trips to Kansas City. On the California trips along Route 66, gasoline would jump to 40 cents a gallon soon after we crossed into Arizona. "Highway robbery!" Dad would exclaim. "There ought to be a law!"

On the California trips in 1966 and 1967, we also took a new passenger: our Siamese-Persian feline, Topcat. He had the cargo area almost to himself, since his litter box was in one corner and his food and water in the other corner. That meant four kids in the back seat and lots of luggage on the roof.

I don't recall any major trouble with the Rambler until one afternoon in the summer of 1969 while Dad was in Vietnam. Mom had all four of us in the car and was backing out of the driveway when suddenly the right side of the car collapsed. Mom ordered us all out and I examined the car. The right front wheel was laying on its side about three feet away from the car. I couldn't really tell what had happened. We were on our way to someplace we really had to be, so Mom enlisted the neighbors to take us. I also don't recall what she did to get the car fixed. It turned out that the front axle had cracked (how? I don't know!) in two places.

When Dad returned from Vietnam a few months later, it was the end of the line for the 1961 Rambler. It was replaced by a brand new 1969 Ford Torino Squire station wagon. I was actually sad to see the Rambler go. We'd had a lot of good times and memories in that car.

The demise of the Rambler coincided with the end of our time in the Land of Enchantment. As soon as the Ford station wagon was delivered, we packed and headed for life's new adventures in California.

The Rambler's replacement: Ford's Torino Squire station wagon.
Pictured is a 1968 model, essentially similar to our light-blue, wood-paneled 1969 model.

Photos in this post from Wikimedia Commons.

Catholic Genealogy: Latin Lesson

2008-03-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

I mentiopned the other day that I had found the records of St Joseph's Church of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, Family Search Labs' Record Search site. Many of these records are in Latin. I never studied Latin formally; however, I became an altar boy at a very young age in the days when the Catholic Mass was in Latin. I also studied Spanish as a youngster. I've always been interested in linguistics and fortunately have been blessed with somewhat of an aptitude for languages.

So I've been applying those skills to translating some of the Prairie du Rocher church records that mention the Micheau family. A typical entry is this one:

Die 12a Julii 1900 obit Maria Emma Micheau uxor Georgii Micheau, annos circa 46 nata, ejusque corpus sequenti tumulatum est.

Actually, I think most genealogists could intuit this one. I translated it thusly:

Maria Emma Micheau, wife of George Micheau, died on July 12, 1900. She was about 46 years old. She was buried in the general burial ground.

Here's a list of Latin terms likely to be found in Catholic records:

adnotationes: notations or comments
aetas: age or lifetime
Anno Domino: Year of Our Lord
annos: years
Baptismorum: Baptism
Confirmatorum: the sacrament of Confirmation
corpus: body
dies: day, date
defunctorum: death, deaths
Diocesis: diocese
Ecclesia: church
Eucharistae sacramentum: The Eucharist (Communion)
ex: literally, "out of;" used to denote parental relationship or sometimes hometown; for example, "Joseph Micheau ex G. Micheau," would mean that Joseph is the son of G. Micheau. "Emilie Micheau ex Prairie du Rocher," of course would indicate that Emilie is a native of Prairie du Rocher.
fil, fili: son
liber, libro: book
Matrimonium: The sacrament of Holy Matrimony; marriage
mensis: month
natum, nate, nata: birth, born
nigrini coloris: "of the color black;" sometimes abbreviated "n. col.," designates African-Americans
nomen, nomina: name, names
obit, obitus: to die
patrini: literally, "patrons;" used to designate godparents in Baptism or sponsor in Confirmation
nativitatis locus: birth place
sacerdos: priest
sepultum: to interr or bury
sponsi: literally, "the promised one," designates groom on marriage records
sponsae: designates bride on marriage records
testes: witnesses
tumulatum: to bury in a mound
uxor: wife

The Family Cars, 1955-1969: Part I--The Ford

2008-03-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

In 1955, my father bought his first car: a 1953 Ford sedan. And, of course, there's a story to that.

I've mentioned before that in the mid-1950's, we lived at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where my dad had his first assignment in the Army. He decided that he needed a car. A friend suggested that he should go to St Louis to find a good deal on a car, there not being much commerce around Fort Lost-in-the-Woods at that time. The friend said he'd accompany Dad and help out with the dealing. The friend's presence was important for another reason: Dad had never actually driven an automobile! The plan was that they'd buy the car, and on the trip back to the Army post, the buddy would educate my father in the finer points of operating an auto.

On the appointed day, Dad took the train to St Louis. His friend had gone on ahead, and they would meet at the train station. When Dad arrived, however, his pal was nowhere to be found. Dad waited quite awhile. But he had limited time and had never been in St Louis before. So after some time as his friend had not appeared, ~~Dad got on his cell phone and~~ (oops, this was 1955!) Dad noticed a Ford dealer across the street from the train station.

The sales manager heard Dad's story: he was 23 years old, in the Army, with a wife and two young sons. The sales manager said, "I've got the just the car for you. My wife's been driving it and it's over at the house. I'll take you there." They went to the man's home where he showed Dad a 1953 Ford sedan. The wife served lunch and Dad and the sales manager made a deal for the car: $1100, [which seems to me a bit pricey for a two year old car in 1955] financed by the Boatmen's National Bank of St Louis, and insured by the United Services Automobile Association. The car was a Ford Mainline sedan; maroon with a white top.

Dad then commenced his own drivers education on the trip back to Fort Leonard Wood.

We would have that car for the next six years. It took us many times between Fort Leonard Wood and my mother's hometown of Kansas City. In April, 1958, we travelled to visit Dad's family in Houston.

In September, 1958, Dad got orders to Germany. We would take the Ford. We had to drive to New York to meet our ship and drop off the car. We went first to see Mom's family in Kansas City, then began the 11oo mile trip to Brooklyn. Dad, as usual, had carefully plotted out the route and scheduled stops. We'd travel across Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. We'd stop just east of Cincinnati and get a good night's rest. The next day, we'd take the Pennsylvania Turnpike through Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and then enter the New York metropolitan area, and end up at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn.

The first part of the trip went well. My brother and I had fun spotting different cars and license plates. My mother had my almost year old sister [and in utero brother] with her in the front seat. (This was in the days before seat belts and baby carseats). As we approached our stopping point in southeastern Ohio, the sun set and an autumn rain began to fall across the mid-Atlantic states.

By the time we got to the motel, the rain was heavy and steady. Dad got out and went to register. He was back quite quickly. He started the car and pulled back onto the highway, as my mother looked at him quizzically. Hours later through the rain, we stopped at a motel in Pittsburgh. Years later, I learned what had happened at the Ohio motel: We don't take your kind. Better keep on driving, boy. I don't care if your wife's pregnant; didn't you hear me? We don't let you people . . . .[The first and only time this happened in our extensive travels; my careful parents didn't expect it in Ohio!].

The next day we made it to Brooklyn without further incident. We stayed at the now-defunct Fort Hamilton while Dad drove the Ford to the port. Two days later, we were on a ship bound for Germany.

We went to Frankfurt, Germany, where Dad was assigned to the NATO courier service, carrying secret documents between European capitals. The Ford arrived a few weeks after we did and Dad took the train to Bremerhaven to pick it up.

My youngest brother was born in Frankfurt. After eighteen months there, Dad was transferred to Karlsruhe, Germany. We drove to the new duty station in the Ford. On the way, it began to snow and soon we were driving through a major blizzard.

Dad and the Ford got us safely to Karlsruhe. The city is near the French border and we took the car on several weekend adventures in France while we were there. My dad was in charge of special services (now called Morale, Welfare and Recreation or "MWR") in the U.S. military community around Karlsruhe. On weekends, he sometimes took us in the Ford to visit some of the facilities in the area for which he was responsible. We also visited other towns and cities in southwestern Germany.

In 1961, Dad was ordered to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He decided it was time for a new car, so before leaving Germany, he sold the Ford to another GI. In late August, 1961, we departed Germany aboard a commercial airliner and, after a refueling stop at Shannon, Ireland, landed at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey. The next day, we were on a train headed for Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the American Motors Company factory there.

This photograph is [probably] not the automobile my dad brought, but it looks exactly like it (including the colors)! This car is purportedly a 1954 model, while our car was a 1953. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Next: The Rambler

A Great Find! Thanks, Kimberly!

2008-03-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Kimberly Powell's blog at About.com is part of my daily reading. Recently she spotlighted FamilySearch's Record Search. I had registered for and used Record Search some months ago. I liked it then, but for some reason, I hadn't signed on in a while. So I was interested in Kimberly's perspective. Her post included a list of new collections at Record Search. One of these--records from the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, Illinois--particularly caught my eye.

Last summer, we took a research trip to Missouri, which included a side trip to southern Illinois. There, we explored the town of Prairie du Rocher and St Joseph's church there, looking for information on our Micheau family. We met the priest, who gave us a lot of history on the town. He also said that awhile ago, he had begun transcribing old church records, but lost them in a computer meltdown. He thereafter abandoned the project.

Well, it turns out that Prairie du Rocher is within the Diocese of Belleville and many of the St Joseph parish records are in the Record Search collection! The records are not indexed and seem to be in French (a few) and Latin (most of them). But within a very brief period last evening, I was able to locate, transcribe, and translate (the Latin mainly; the French, not so much!), a number of Micheau family records. This is a major research breakthrough!

Thanks, Kimberly, for pointing the way to a great find!

Blogger Kudos

2008-03-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

The site ScanMyPhotos.com has presented "The 2008 Artistry of Genealogy Awards." The winners were selected by customers of ScanMyPhotos.com. The "Best Personal Genealogy Blog" appears to be shared by Miriam Robbins Midkiff"s Ancestories: The Stories of My Ancestors and Renee's Genealogy Blog by Renee Zamora. The Best Ongoing Family History Story was Jasia's Creative Gene.

I highly recommend all three! Check out the ScanMyPhotos blog for more great sites of use to genealogists.

And speaking of Jasia, her great work in originating and sponsoring the Carnival of Genealogy is recognized in the current issue of Internet Genealogy. Well-deserved!

Finally, in the blogosphere, Shades of the Departed has debuted. Under the artistic guidance of The Collector (photonym of the footnoteMaven), we view parts of an extensive collection of photographs and learn about analysis, dating, and other things. Highly recommended.

"Open" State Vital Records: The Bad and the Ugly

2008-03-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

One of Several Posts about Open Government Laws and Genealogy

Previously, we spotlighted several states that are particularly "genealogy-friendly" concerning access to state vital records. Now we wade into the swamp of vital records-access horribles.

At the edge of the swamp are states that have unreasonably long (100 years or more for birth records; more than fifty years for death records; or any period for ordinary marriages and divorces) confidentiality periods. These states include:

Alabama: 125 years for birth records!

Alaska: 100 years for birth records; fifty years for marriage records

Arkansas: 100 years for birth records

Delaware: 100 years for birth records

Hawaii: 75 years for death and marriage records

Idaho: 100 years for birth records; 50 years for marriage and divorce records

Iowa: 75 years for death, marriage and divorce records; even then, records are simply open for inspection and copying; no copies issued by the state except to persons of a certain relationship.

Louisiana: 100 years for birth records

Michigan: 100 years for birth records (on the other hand, anyone can have access to Michigan death records).

New Jersey: 50 years for marriage records

New Mexico: 100 years for birth records, but not prior to individual's death (but see below).

New York: 50 years for marriage records AND both husband and wife are known to be deceased.

Oregon: 100 years for birth records

Rhode Island: 100 years for birth records

Wyoming: 50 years for marriages and divorces

Vital Records Access Hell

Georgia: Birth certificates appear to be available only to (1) the person whose record of birth is registered; (2) either parent, guardian, or temporary guardian of the person whose record of birth or death is registered; (3) the living legal spouse or next of kin or the legal representative of the person whose record of birth or death is registered; (4) a court of competent jurisdiction upon its order or subpoena; or (5) any governmental agency, state or federal, provided that such certificate shall be needed for official purposes. This is my reading of Georgia Code section 31-10-26(a) & (e). The law appears to prohibit the issuance of informational or uncertified copies of birth certificates and even abstracts or indices of birth records. If I'm reading this incorrectly, will some Georgia genealogist or lawyer please set me straight.

Indiana: Birth and death records are closed to the public and may be disclosed only (1) to an applicant having a direct interest in the matter recorded; (2) when the information is necessary for the determination of personal or property rights or for compliance with state or federal law; or (3) in any extraordinary case that the state registrar determines is a direct tangible and legitimate public interest. That's my interpretation of Indiana Code section 16-37-1-10. If I'm reading this incorrectly, will some Indiana genealogist or lawyer please set me straight.

Kansas: One of the worst! "Currently, the Office of Vital Statistics does allow requests for genealogical research. Pre-1940 records may be requested by an individual related as at least a cousin. Post 1940 records must be requested by an immediate family member." Kansas Department of Health and Environment vital statistics website (viewed 3/27/2008)

Mississippi: "Vital Records are not considered public access documents. Certified copies of records in the custody of the Department of Health may be obtained by persons having a legitimate and tangible interest in such records." Mississippi State Department of Health Vital Records Rules and Regulations (viewed 3/27/2008). The statute says:

Records in the possession of the Mississippi Department of Health, bureau of vital statistics, which would be of no legitimate and tangible interest to a person making a request for access to such records, shall be exempt from the provisions of the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983; provided, however, nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit any person with a legitimate and tangible interest in such records from having access thereto. Miss.Code 1972, 41-57-2 (1983).

New Mexico: "New Mexico Vital Records are restricted access records and are only issued to immediate family members or individuals who demonstrate tangible legal interest," so says the New Mexico Department of Health's website. But, that seems to contradict the statute, which says that records may be disclosed 100 years after birth (but not before person's death) and 50 years after death. See N.M.Stat. 24-14-27. So the Land of Enchantment makes the hell list not only for being unreasonable, but for confusing people as well.

Pennsylvania: Vital records are not open to the public. Eligible requestors are (1) person named on a birth record; (2) legal representative of decedent's estate; (3) immediate family members; (4) extended family members who indicate a direct relationship to the decedent. Pennsylvania Department of Health vital records website (viewed 3/27/2008).

South Carolina: Entitled recipients: (1) the person named on a birth certificate (if eighteen (18) years of age); (2) the parent(s) named on the birth certificate; or the guardian, or a legal representative of one of these persons. On the other hand, any applicant may be provided a statement that a death occurred, including the date and county of death. South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control vital records website (viewed 3/27/2008).

There are several states (some listed here, some not) that say that records are open to persons with "a direct and tangible interest," or a "legitimate interest," or words to that effect. Without some mitigating factors, this should be enough to consign a state to Vital Records Access Hell. These phrases frequently have no definition, leaving a requestor to the whims of a vital records clerk. It certainly seems to me that genealogical research is a "legitimate," "direct," or "tangible" interest!

Special Place in Hell for Online Records Sites

This series has not been focused on online records. A state can earn kudos without having online acess to its records. But if a jurisdiction is going to have on-line access, it should be convenient and affordable. Alas, such is not the case with the Caddo Parish (La.) Clerk of Court's office, so they are awarded this year's SPIHFORS. The Caddo clerk's online marriage records search function frequently doesn't work properly. And then there's the matter of fees for the other databases: a $100 "setup" fee and $30.00 a month to view images! Outrageous! Just about fifty miles west of Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish, in Gregg County, Texas (much smaller in population than Caddo Parish), the County Clerk provides free online access to some of the same types of documents for which Caddo wants exorbitant fees.

Open State Vital Records: Some of the Best States

2008-03-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

One of Several Posts about Open Government Laws and Genealogy

I've made a brief survey of state vital records laws and here present some of the "best" states in terms of "openness." These determinations are based on several factors: whether law provides that vital records are "open" or "public"; whether reasonable "confidential periods" are imposed; whether reasonable fees are required; whether procedures for obtaining records are uncomplicated, and whether in my sole judgment, the state is more user-friendly than not when allowing access to vital records.

A note about some terms used by states to describe their records policies: some states say that they are "open" or "public" records states, while others say they are "closed" records states. Do not put too much emphasis on these self-descriptions. The fact is that states use these terms without much consideration. As a result, some so-called "open" records states may have, in practice, more restrictive access than so-called "closed" records states.

In my view, a confidentiality period longer than fifty years for death records or seventy-five years for birth records is unreasonable. And any confidentiality period for ordinary marriage records is unreasonable.

Now, some of the best states for access to vital records:

Arizona: supposedly a "closed" records state. Allows public access to non-certified copies of birth records after 75 years, death recotds after 50 years. What else makes Arizona great: the Arizona Dpeartment of Health Services has placed birth and death records online.

Illinois: Uncertified birth records after 1916 available after 75 years; uncertified death records after 20 years. What else make Illinois great: very good website; no images but easy to search.

Missouri: Birth records seem to be highly restricted, but the Show-Me state makes this list because death records are available after fifty years and the Missouri State Archives has a great website of death certificates with PDF versions of the certificates. Jackson County [Kansas City area] has an excellent website with images of marriage licenses.

Texas: Birth records available to public after 75 years; death records after 25 years. What else makes Texas great: an easy-to-use online order system for vital records.

Wisconsin: Uncertified copies of birth and death records are available to anyone who applies. Caveat: No birth record is public concerning (1) a child born to unmarried parents when paternity has not been established, or (2) a child born to unmarried parents when paternity was established by court order.