Jethro Potter's secret in NGSQ

When a grown man gives his mother three different names over more than half a century, you know you've got trouble. That evidence was the beginning of my article just published in the new June 2013 National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

When Jethro Potter died at the age of 94 in Ohio in 1963, he reportedly had more than two dozen grandchildren. But his parentage was cloaked in mystery and possibly deception. The article identifies his parents by tracing a plausible mother's life forward, a lengthy process that eventually led to five key documents, all of them created decades after Jethro's birth, and only one directly naming the parents. In the course of the research eight Alberson half-siblings and two McCroskey half-siblings were identified.

This all-Midwestern story has many colorful subplots and stories, most of which were not relevant to establishing the genealogical framework. The scene shifted among multiple counties in four states: Ohio (Darke, Portage), Indiana (Randolph, Wells, Jay, Marshall, Starke), Illinois (La Salle, Livingston), and Michigan (Muskegon).

As for records, I did not find or use anything exotic. In the end the 66 footnotes contained standard genealogical fare: census, vital, Social Security, military, court, newspaper, probate, property, cemetery, and funeral home. Many records contained mistakes and omissions requiring the records to be analyzed and correlated and corrected.

This article grew out of two client reports that first grew into a case study for BCG certification. (It is much more condensed and focused than the case study.) Those who are working on credentialing of any sort should keep NGSQ and similar publications in mind if you want your work to last, and especially if you want it to get a really thorough going-over!




Harold Henderson, "Jethro Potter's Secret: Confusion to Conclusion in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 101 (June 2013):103-112.


Harold Henderson, "Jethro Potter's secret in NGSQ," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Midwesterners in the latest Genealogist

The Genealogist, published twice yearly, is one of the less well known of the top five US genealogy publications. The Spring 2013 issue includes two articles chronicling Midwesterners -- and Marjean Holmes Workman's article makes a significant revision in the Burris family: "Robert James Burris" and his wife "Susan Rebecca Miller" were not two people but four -- brothers who married sisters. In this first of two segments, this family of Burrises inhabited at least nine Ohio counties (Franklin, Madison, Ross, Hardin, Fayette, Van Wert, Marion, Paulding, and "Piqua" [Pickaway!]), eight Indiana counties (Jay, Adams, Jefferson, Grant, Allen, Montgomery, Hamilton, and Henry), and one county in Iowa (Guthrie). It pays to keep up with the latest research!

In the first installment of Gale Ion Harris's account, the James and Lydia Waters family were mainly in Kentucky but also in Clermont (now Brown) County, Ohio, and Bureau County, Illinois.




Marjean Holmes Workman, "The Family of Joseph Burris[s] of Maryland and Madison County, Ohio: Discovering an Unrecorded Marriage," The Genealogist 27, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 51-74.

Gale Ion Harris, "Descendants of James1 and Lydia (Guyton) Waters of Harford County, Maryland: Ohio River Valley Families," The Genealogist 27, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 75-98.



Harold Henderson, "Midwesterners in the latest Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 June 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

To finish the job, go off-line

Experienced genealogists frequently admonish novices, "Not everything is on line." We're usually thinking of manuscripts, or the wall-high shelves of books in county offices, many not even microfilmed yet. But we can't even complete as simple a task as locating old newspapers entirely on line.

Recently I needed to locate newspapers published in November 1915 in three adjacent Indiana counties: Blackford, Delaware, and Jay. None of these are on line anywhere that I have looked.

Always my first place to check is the Indiana State Library's "Indiana Newspapers Holdings Guide," and I found a total of FOUR titles, just waiting for me the next time I get to visit the biggest collection of Indiana newspapers on earth.

Piece of cake, right? Not if I had stopped there.

Next I went "across the street" (as if I were in Indy!) and found a FIFTH title at the Indiana Historical Society.

Then I went to my own listing of newspaper microfilms held at the Mishawaka Penn Harris Public Library Heritage Center and found a SIXTH (significantly closer to home than Indianapolis for me).

Nothing more at the Library of Congress.

Done yet? Not so much. Then I went off-line.

I remembered that in her new book on Indiana research (part of the NGS series on Genealogy in the States) Dawne Slater-Putt mentioned a book, Indiana Newspaper Bibliography. This book is not on line; I had to check it out of my local public library. Sure enough, the compilers had located a SEVENTH title, held only at the Blackford County Historical Society (whose web site is not specific about what dates they hold) -- and an EIGHTH, held only at the Jay County Recorder's office.

Of course, Indiana Newspaper Bibliography was published in 1982, and the papers may have migrated since. But as far as I know, no on-line resource for Indiana newspapers matches this 30-year-old book.

Genealogy doesn't get a lot simpler than looking up where old newspapers are. But in order to do the job right -- in order to find 100% of what I was looking for instead of just 75% -- I couldn't rest content with the information available on line.



John W. Miller, Indiana Newspaper Bibliography (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1982).


Harold Henderson, "To finish the job, go off-line," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]