Joel Thrall is back . . .

. . . in the fall issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for the second and concluding installment, now visible to NEHGS members on line at American Ancestors and to patrons of good genealogy libraries.

His unlikely trajectory -- from pioneer/fugitive from justice to farmer to teacher to doctor to an early death in 1827 -- is not quite complete yet. His great-grandchildren scattered across the continent, but they had to be cut from the journal for space reasons. They will appear, most likely on line, in good time -- as will Joel's dozens of nieces and nephews. He was the oldest of ten children, all of whom have multiple descendants.


" 'Faultless Could I Love Him Less?' Joel S. Thrall and His Descendants in Vermont, Quebec, Ohio, and Texas," parts 1 and 2, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 172, Summer 2018:248-56, Fall 2018:341-52.

A quack? in Davenport and a leading orphanage in Terre Haute

Two recent articles open up records and publications with a lot to say about the practice of medicine and the treatment of orphans in the late1800s and early 1900s in the Midwest.

Writer and editor Greta Nettleton was bequeathed four trunks full of long-stored family memorabilia, which among other things revealed the career of "Mrs. Dr. Rebecca J. Keck" (1838-1904) of Davenport, Iowa. "She may have been one of the most prominent self-made female entrepreneurs in the Midwest," writes Nettleton in the current issue of American Ancestors: New England, New York, and Beyond from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Keck was the object of legal and personal attack by orthodox medical practitioners in both Illinois and Iowa (but bear in mind that mainstream 19th-century medicine was itself little better than witchcraft). Evidently a book is in the works. I hope it will get into more detail about her business and medical views as well as the official doctors' views, and her therapies as viewed today.

Megan Birk, Purdue graduate and historian at the University of Texas-Pan American, has an article in the current issue of the Indiana Magazine of History. She gives a fascinating account of a forgotten champion of institutional care of orphans and neglected children, Lyman P. Alden of the Michigan State Public School in Coldwater and later the Rose Orphan Home in Terre Haute, Indiana. Alden's contention that good institutional care is better than placement in just any home, a view that has long gone out of fashion -- indeed, many of the histories of orphans and orphanages were written by advocates of home placement. Again, a book on "the rural placement in the Midwest" is in the works.

The article refers to work on other Indiana orphanages, but not the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum, for which records are readily available at the Indiana Historical Society, as well as a master's thesis from the 1940s and my article in The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections in 2011.

The asylum does not seem to fit the expected pattern, as the women in charge fostered and supervised placement in homes even though the institution's revenue largely came from per capita payments from public authorities. I haven't seen the Rose records at the state archives (names indexed on line by the Indiana Genealogical Society) but the IOA records contain information at the individual level that could be used to determine the institutions' actual policies about placement, as contrasted to they said they were doing.




Greta S. Nettleton, "Researching Mrs. Dr. Keck and Her Daughter Cora," American Ancestors vol. 14, no. 2 (Spring 2013):30-34, 41.

Megan Birk, "Lyman P. Alden: Setting an Institutional Example," Indiana Magazine of History vol. 109, no. 2 (June 2013):89-113.

Harold Henderson, "Early Midwestern Orphanage: The Indianapolis Orphans Asylum, 1851-1941, A Way Station on the Winding Road of Life," The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections vol. 51, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2011): 6-17.



Harold Henderson, "A quack? in Davenport and a leading orphanage in Terre Haute," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Weekend Wonderings: What Genealogy Periodicals Do You Actually Read?

I do suspect that the famous top five genealogy journals are more revered than read, but would be happy to hear otherwise. FYI they are National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ), New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (NYGBR), New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEHGR), The American Genealogist (TAG), and The Genealogist.

For more popular fare, I tend to prefer NGS Magazine and NEHGS's American Ancestors to the commercial publications. With state and local publications, I tend to be inconsistent because (from my point of view) most of them are. This is not a slam on them, it's a slam on us because we don't write enough.

What do you look forward to reading and why? (Especially things I haven't even mentioned!)


Harold Henderson, "Weekend Wonderings: What Genealogy Periodicals Do You Actually Read?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Newspapers tie Midwesterners back to New England, and a double dose of Henry

Newspapers tie Midwesterners back to New England in two articles in the spring edition of the New England Historic Genealogical Society's popular magazine, American Ancestors.

Patricia Dingwall Thompson unearths a hostage-taking episode near Detroit in the War of 1812. "Living in Montana, I connected with a man in Missouri who owns a handwritten family account of events that occurred in Michigan. I then found historical corroboration from a man in Florida, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, and a database supplied by NEHGS in Boston."

Patricia Bravender describes how she used family reunion notices in newspapers to untangle some of her Hines ancestors, many of whom ended up in Lorain County, Ohio.

Readers also get a double dose of New England Historical and Genealogical Register editor Henry B. Hoff:

* a nice appreciation of the New York State censuses of 1855 and 1865, and

* a methodological smorgasbord (mostly from the Register's table) of "When Do You Think It's Proved?" (In my perfect world that show would replace WDYTYA.)

Hoff sees some gray areas in the landscape of proof: "Since every genealogist is different and every genealogical situation is different, there are still many instances when genealogists disagree on whether to categorize an identification or a connection as definite -- or with a modifying word such as probably, likely, perhaps, or possibly."


All in American Ancestors, vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 2012):
Patricia Dingwall Thompson, "From Family Myth to Historical Account: The McMillan Incident in 1814 Detroit," pp. 25-27.
Patricia Bravender, "Establishing Kinship with Family Reunion Announcements," pp. 38-41.
Henry B. Hoff, "Weighing the Evidence," pp. 33-34, 41. 
Henry B. Hoff, "Appreciating the New York State Census," pp. 54-55.



Harold Henderson, "Newspapers tie Midwesterners back to New England, and a double dose of Henry," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Spring 2011 American Ancestors: SDBs, methods, and more

The current (spring 2011) issue of the New England Historic Genealogical Society's popular publication, American Ancestors: New England, New York, and Beyond, heralds the addition of back issues of the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine to the NEHGS web site. Inside are numerous articles. I was struck by two with Midwestern angles, and one of methodological interest:

Shellee A. Morehead provides "A Genealogist's Guide to Seventh Day Baptists," a branch of the Baptists from Rhode Island founded in 1671. Many members settled in or near Milton, Rock County, Wisconsin as they moved west from New York and New Jersey; today their historical center is in Janesville. Although never large, this sect was exceptionally cohesive and generated good records. Those who stuck to their conviction that worship should be held on Saturday also found it convenient to live in clusters. So there was a good deal of intermarriage as well as an early well-developed system of national newspaper communication. You could have SDBs in your tree without knowing it, and Morehead provides a table of surnames and locations (although at least one later location in North Loup, Nebraska, is absent).

Sherill Baldwin outlines the hard-to discover life of Rev. E. W. Dunbar (1823-1893), an effective preacher and popular hymn author, who also did time in Minnesota for bigamy.

Even those without Huguenot ancestry will find methodological interest in Oliver Popenoe's research chronology explaining how he managed to break a brick wall and add generations of prosperous French ancestors to his tree. Two intertwined strategies are noteworthy: he spent a lot of time researching the papers of an unrelated patron of his known ancestor; and early on in his research push he established a web site to document it. Together the classic broaden-the-search strategy and the 21st-century approach got the job done.