Isaac Humphrey and his descendants in The Genealogist

More than ten years ago I heard a cliche come to life. On my first genealogical road trip (to Licking County, Ohio) I overheard a library visitor ask a genealogy society volunteer where the book of her family was kept.

A week ago the cliche came to life again, but in a much better way. The new Fall 2014 issue of The Genealogist arrived in our mailbox, and it included the first installment of a full account of the ancestors and relatives of my mother-in-law's great-grandmother Sarah Mehitabel Humphrey Coleman Bliss, researched and chronicled by William T. Ruddock of Michigan.

TG is published twice a year by the honorary scholarly American Society of Genealogists. Among other things it specializes in family accounts that are too long for any other magazine to consider. The descendants of Isaac Humphrey (1748-1829) are numerous and obscure and include multiple generations of men named Isaac. They gave my daughter and me multiple migraines when we struggled with the family back when we had fewer internet resources and less expertise.

Isaac's daughter Sarah married John Russell (4 children) and stayed around Stephentown, Rensselaer County, New York (a crossroads village for several lines of ancestors). Daughter Asenath married William Dixon (6 children) and went west to Lorain County, Ohio. Son Lemuel married Sarah Allen (6 children) and went north to Warren County, New York. Some of Lemuel and Sarah's children went to Wisconsin.

The article covers female lines to the grandchildren and male lines to the great-grandchildren. If the numbers of descendants in this first installment are typical, it may be a year before I get to see the whole "book" of this family, but it will be worth the wait.




William T. Ruddock, "Isaac6 Humphrey of Stephentown, New York, and His Descendants" [part 1], The Genealogist 28 (Fall 2014): 202-222.

Harold Henderson, "Isaac Humphrey and his descendants in The Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

You can have any lecture format as long as it lasts an hour

The NGS conference in Las Vegas was a big success from my viewpoint as speaker and participant, and I anticipate great things from the upcoming FGS conference 21-24 August in Fort Wayne (yes, I am on the publicity committee). But they both could be better, and within the past few months I have heard almost the same sentiment from two genealogy leaders, a veteran and a new one, who to my knowledge are not acquainted: stop relying exclusively on the one-hour lecture format!

Tina Lyons is vice-president of the Indiana Genealogical Society and publicity chair for the aforementioned FGS, where she will also be speaking. She'd like to see some 20-minute sessions, perhaps modeled on the TED talks. She notes that her on-line Coursera classes come in 5- to 15-minute segments. And she may work an interactive game into her one-hour FGS talk.

Last Wednesday at NGS, Melinde Lutz Byrne -- who is, among other things, Fellow and President of the American Society of Genealogists, director of the Genealogical Research Program at Boston University's Center for Professional Studies, and co-editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly -- said that her talk that day (on advocacy and privacy) would be her last one-hour presentation. She gave similar reasons, and urged more panel discussions and workshops, as well as "poster sessions" like one she found worked well at the New England conference and lasted no more than 20 minutes, with everybody standing.

Just as many professional-development programs grew up outside of the umbrella of the Association of Professional Genealogists when it was slow to adapt, the major national and regional conferences might find themselves playing catch-up if they don't consider a more diverse format. Just sayin'.




Harold Henderson, "You can have any lecture format as long as it lasts an hour," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 13 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Some Top-line Genealogy Books

The American Society of Genealogists' Donald Lines Jacobus award is 40 years old this year. It's given to "a model genealogical work published within the previous five years," from nominations made by ASG Fellows who edit publications that publish book reviews.

The other day at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center I hunted up half a dozen of the more recent ones that were straight family histories, hoping to find a common model for how they handled source lists. I didn't -- they were all different -- but I found several that I would like to spend more time with. 

The challenges of a book are much different from a magazine article of any kind. We're often advised to read the best genealogy periodicals, but not so often are books recommended. Maybe that's because books are more quirky, not being so subject to editing. Here are a handful of the Jacobus winners that I hope to be stranded at Allen County long enough some day to dig into:

Peter Haring Judd, The Hatch and Brood of Time: Five Phelps Families in the Atlantic World, 1720-1880 (Boston: Newbury Street Press, 1999) ACPLGC 929.2 P512JU  I couldn't not notice the preface by David Hackett Fischer (Albion's Seed).

Willis H. White, The TillotsonFamily, Long Island Cordwood, and the Decline of East Coast Sail (N.p.: Penobscot Press, 2008) ACPLGC 929.2 T467WHA This happened to be the first one I picked up and I spent the most time with it. I've never seen any family account of any length that blended so perfectly with the historical context -- it was all one. Surely every family could have a theme, but most of them would be farming.

Jane Thompson-Stahr, The Burling Books: Ancestors and Descendants of Edward and Grace Burling, Quakers (1600-2000), 2 vols. (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 2001) ACPLGC 929.2 B9248TH  In terms of my original quest, this was most informative. The author organized the source list and footnotes by abbreviation, a useful technique as sources may otherwise be alphabetized differently from what the reader might expect from the reference notes.

Abbott Lowell Cummings, The Descendants of John Comins (ca.1668-1751) and his wife Mary, of Woburn and Oxford, Massachusetts andWindham County, Connecticut (Boston: Newbury Street Press, 2001) ACPLGC 929.2 C9114BY  Anyone up to wrangle more than 7700 footnotes in one sequence? I'd like to get into the following proof issue too. The author writes, "The long-sought documentation of my Willington hypothesis has never materialized. Instead, the curious reader will find no less than seven pieces of circumstantial evidence set forth which have led me to the unshakable conclusion that William was an unrecorded son of John Comins of Willington, despite the fact that not a single piece of 'hard' proof has yet been found."

Check out the full list at the first link above.


Harold Henderson, "Some Top-line Genealogy Books," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]