The Gedney family of Illinois, and why writing is still compulsory for genealogists

Suddenly more than one-third of 2017 is history! Two other articles of mine have seen the light of day:

“Yes, Writing Is Compulsory! Here’s How to Make It Work,” Federation of Genealogical Societies Forum 29 (Spring 2017): 18-21.

I hope this will inspire others to turn their research into readable and documented stories, and not leave an indigestible lump of disorganized notes (which is generally what I start with!). It is not enough to leave a database or a stack of papers. Thanks to FGS's Julie Cahill Tarr for making sure I got it done.

“From Fens to Farms: William and Rebecca (Wright) Gedney of Cowbit, Lincolnshire and Lebanon, Illinois,” Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (Spring 2017): 30-34.

Thanks to ISGSQ editor Terry Feinberg for helping nudge this into the right length and shape (William and Rebecca and their children), and for instituting footnotes instead of endnotes in the quarterly!

This is my maternal grandfather's mother's line; the bulk of the family came to the U.S. in 1842 (John Tyler was president), sailing from Liverpool to New Orleans and then traveling up the Mississippi to St. Clair County, Illinois, opposite St. Louis. Some children arrived earlier; it was a chain-like migration. William and Rebecca's twelve children, born 1805-1832, had a total of more than two dozen grandchildren. Seven of the twelve lived to have children, and married into families surnamed Green, Wilson, Flint (twice), Lord (twice), Sims, Frost, Eastwood, Barton, Thornton, and Sowers.

I need to figure out the best way(s) to publish the much longer four-generation story, as many family members spilled into Missouri and Kansas while others stayed rooted in Illinois.

Analyzing too much information with William Flint (1815-1878)

Often we have to eke out one precious fact at a time by analyzing and correlating terse and scattered records. But in the case of the agriculture schedules of the U.S. census (1850-1880), we have to find ways to  make sense of a cornucopia of information.

See how I did it for my great-great grandfather William Flint of St. Clair County, Illinois, in the new Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly (membership required). And if this puts you in mind of an Illinois topic you want to write about, managing editor Julie Cahill Tarr would love to hear from you.



Harold Henderson, "William Flint's Farm: Digging Deeper," Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly 46 (Spring 2014): 5-8.


Image: S.D. Fisher, ed., Transactions of the Department of Agriculture, State of Illinois, with Reports from County Agricultural Boards, for the Year 1879 (Springfield: Weber & Co., 1880), 66.


Harold Henderson, "Analyzing too much information with William Flint (1815-1878)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Recycle your writing!

One way to increase your writing output without adding a large amount of work time is to recast the underlying material into a different form. It occurred to me that -- in addition to news about the community (who got credentialed, which genealogy business has bought another), there are basically three kinds of genealogy writing:

(1) technical -- proving identities, relationships, and lineages. Usually this kind stands alone only when it's an especially difficult problem, or in a client report. But it is the foundation for everything else. Examples are in every issue of NGSQ, NYGBR, NEHGR, TAG, and The Genealogist. Each one may contain fragments of stories (#2 below), but they are only present insofar as they provide evidence to construct the proof.

(2) stories -- telling the life stories of ancestors and lineages. This is the stuff all genealogists and many non-genealogists crave, often even when the stories are terrible and sad. Without #1, the stories may get distorted or attached to the wrong people, but this is the payoff.

(3) instructional -- explaining how to accomplish #1 and #2. This is the meat of most popular genealogy magazines (the ones whose titles always start with a number), professional publications (like the APG Quarterly), many blogs (such as Kimberly Powell's at About.com, or Archives.com's expert series), and much of the traffic on genealogy mailing lists and social media discussions. Technology tips fit here too. (Theoretical articles, of which genealogy has few so far, are at the high end of this range.)

Of course all of these are far more valuable when they cite their sources.

Here's the point. Each family or part of a family provides material for all three kinds of writing. Years ago I found my Gedney ancestors on a New Orleans ship list from the 1840s, where their surname had been written "Kidney." That was a humble kind of technical finding (#1), and of course could play a part in an instructional article or talk (#3). But there are hints of stories there as well (#2): my recently wed great-great grandparents, William Flint and Mary Gedney, were on that cramped boat for two months with their extended family, and it seemed likely that her father bankrolled the emigration. Then again, I could tell those stories better if I did just a little more research . . .





Harold Henderson, “From England to St. Clair Via New Orleans: William and Mary Gedney Flint,” St. Clair County (Illinois) Genealogical Society Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2003):141-44.



Harold Henderson, "Recycle your writing!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Sixteen lookups on the web site

It's a famous midsummer holiday, and what better to celebrate than free? Midwestroots.net now offers free lookups in 16 resources (actual indexes and finding aids in the next post).

 INDIANA
1830s La Porte County court records every-name index
1830-1855, 1886-1906 St. Joseph County marriage index
1910 DePauw University Alumnal Record
1971, 1986, 1987, 1990 La Porte directories
1975 Indiana Place Names
Pre-1979 Genealogy Articles in the Indiana Magazine of History
1986 Manuscript Collections in Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Library

ILLINOIS
1931 Chicago Tilden Tech yearbook
2009 Illinois Place Names

MICHIGAN
1986 Michigan Place Names

NEW YORK
1804-1823 Western New York Land Transactions

THE SOUTH
1949 Gulf Coast pilot's guide, Key West to Rio Grande
1949-1950 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary directories

METHODISTS
1834-1850 Obituary Abstracts from the Western Christian Advocate

FAMILIES
1870-1898 Flint-Thrall letters (southern Illinois)
1976 Thrall genealogy

Please do not abuse this offer. If you use any of these regularly and it is purchasable, support the author and publisher and buy your own.



Harold Henderson, "Sixteen lookups on the web site," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

St. Clair County, Illinois -- where you hope your ancestors lived

One of the most active local societies in Illinois, with a sizeable web presence, is in the southwest, right across the river from St. Louis: St. Clair County. I'm a member, so don't take my word for it -- check out their stuff.

They've just announced a new free newspaper database: "Vital Statistics Extracted from the Belleville (Ill.) Daily Advocate, 1927-1954," the gift of Nancy Giles. For those of us who have ancestors after the 1930 census (!) and who are twentieth-century impaired, this is a wonderful thing. My own Flint and Thrall lines converged in St. Clair, so it's already done my database some good and I look forward to zeroing in on the original articles the next time I'm over that way.