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.]

More Ohio Records and Pioneer Families

Ohio Records & Pioneer Families -- "locating and telling the stories of the men and women who were the first settlers of the state of Ohio" -- is supposed to be about pre-1860 Ohioans, but the second issue of 2008 offers some latitude. If you've been holding back on writing up your well-documented antebellum Ohioans, this would be a good time to get 'em done and send 'em off. I'm very fond of the auxiliary table of contents in the form of a county map of the state with counties shaded according to how much material they have in the given issue. Here's the gist:

"Betty's Diary: The Journal of Elizabeth Jennings Nixon 1853-1867," contributed by Brent Morgan -- she was from Marietta

"A Short Biography of Robert Atkin," by Garland Hurst Pilliar -- Ashtabula County farmer

"Barton Sweet, Ohio Pioneer and Country Doctor," by Deobrah Gilbert & Mary Kay Townsend -- of Richland County, with children moving on to Michigan and Bureau County, Illinois. "No information on his parentage could be confirmed. Instead, the names of several inter-related families have been provided in hopes that these may offer clues..."

"Description of the Black Swamp," by B. R. Minton (1843), contributed by Terri Gorney -- there's a nice map, but basically think of a two-county-wide path from Toledo to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

"Columbiana County, Ohio, 1858 Deaths," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters

"Columbiana County Taxes to Be Collected, 1806," contributed by Sunda Anderson Peters -- from copies of Mss. 1134 Columbiana County Records 1803-1854 abstracted by Carol Bell and held at the Western Reserve Historical Society

"First Families of Ohio: The Early Years" (cont.), abstracted by Kay Ballantyne Hudson

"Revolutionary War Pension Application Abstracts" (cont.), abstracted by Lois Wheeler

"Official Register of Physicians by County, 1896, Wayne County"

"Merchants, Manufacturers & Traders of Ohio, 1885" (cont.)

"Record of the Douglass and Miller Families: Early Landowners in the Firelands," by Thomas Stephen Neel -- Huron and Erie counties

"Oh, the Stories Pictures Do Tell, submitted by Linda J. Hasting, on identifying some Greene County pictures of Wilberforce University students in the 1920s

"Dutch Families in Southwestern Ohio," by Harriet Foley -- including Conover, Barkalow, Lefferson, Monfort, Schenck, Stoutenborough, Vanderveer, Vandervort, Van Doren/Doorn, Van Dyke, Van Harlingen, and Van Horne

Down by the old mill stream . . .

. . . in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, is where you'll find the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, literally within earshot of the 24/7 waterfall created by the old dam.

Among local research places I've visited, SCHRC is distinguished by efficiency (even when confronted with the daunting surname of Smith), friendliness, thorough cemetery transcriptions, and a collection of local deed abstracts (a bargain at $5 per search, $1 a page -- not many local centers go this deep). Check out the full list of holdings.

And September 25-27 SCHRC will host a conference on "The Dutch-American Experience in Wisconsin: 1840-Present."