Indirect evidence tour de force in the new NYGBR

Back in February I blogged about Susan Farrell Bankhead's article on the Chaplin family of Cortland County, New York, in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. Now the second and concluding part is out in the April issue. Many of these folks ended up in Jones County, Iowa, just southwest of Dubuque, but some ended up in California.

What I liked best in this second part is the way the author used real history and not mug books to explain why Cortland County was an unpromising place for a poor man in the 1830s. It's one thing for genealogists to use mug books as sources to be tested (rather like on-line trees); it's quite another for us to quote them on the assumption that their version of history is true. In addition, Bankhead used yet another little-appreciated part of the US census -- the statistical reports! -- to place the Chaplin family in economic context.

NYGBR is a state journal as well as a top-line professional journal, so it is just as interested in straightening out lineages as in methodology. Both are well exhibited in this issue's lead article, Carolyn Nash's "Steffen Eckers and Styntje Jans Snedeker, Progenitors of the Westchester County Ecker/Acker Family, and a Relationship to Jochem Wouters van Weert." (Try reading that out loud if you are not Dutch.) Using indirect evidence, she gets from Steffen Eckers' death by 1674, "leaving two unidentified children by an unnamed daughter of Jan Snedecker," to being able to name all three. His wife is proved by elimination, and knowledge of Dutch law and custom is critical. Virginia's got nothing on early New York for lost records!



Carolyn Nash, "Steffen Eckers and Styntje Jans Snedeker, Progenitors of the Westchester County Ecker/Acker Family, and a Relationship to Jochem Wouters van Weert" [first installment], New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 143, no. 2 (April 2012):85-94.


Susan Farrell Bankhead, "Joseph and Daniel Chaplin of the Town of Virgil, Cortland County, New York" [concluded], New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 143, no. 2 (April 2012):122-132.


Harold Henderson, "Indirect evidence tour de force in the new NYGBR" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]