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.]

Finding parents and grandparents despite multiple missing records

The landscape of eighteenth-century Maryland is littered with tax, property, probate, and vital records that aren't there. Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean. My friend and colleague Michael Hait has taken these genealogical lemons and made them into an astonishing amount of lemonade in a sixteen-page tour de force in the current National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

He starts with three records for Thomas Burgan, born in the 1740s. From there he distinguishes two men from two different localities, and goes on to identify both parents and all four grandparents for the man associated with "Dear Bit" and "Black River Hundred," even though direct evidence is sparse and the indirect evidence is constantly interrupted by the static of missing deeds, missing probates, missing tax records, and mislabeled records.

The basic principles are not complicated -- most notably, follow the land even when inadequately described -- but in this records environment the application of them is intricate. Separate arrays of indirect evidence support this Thomas's descent from Philip the father, Rebecca Green the mother, and them as a couple.

William Litchman recommends reading studies of this kind four times for best understanding. Anyone who claims to understand this article after only one or two readings is either a liar or a prodigy.




Michael Hait, "Parents for Thomas Burgan of Baltimore County, Maryland," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 101 (March 2013): 19-33.


Harold Henderson, "Finding parents and grandparents despite multiple missing records," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Michael Hait's new blog

Michael Hait's home base is Delaware and Maryland, so our actual research paths don't cross too often. His new blog, "Planting the Seeds," focuses on professional genealogy -- meaning that it has solid information for anyone who takes their genealogy seriously, even if they never do it for money and never attend an institute or a state or national conference. His posts are longer and more substantive than most genealogy blogs, including this one. My recent favorites include a careful dissection of FamilySearch's inadequate citation practices for their many new on-line offerings, and "Do You Have a Genealogical Project?":

By fully exploring the family and other relationships within a single community, we are able to gain insight into that community, and our ancestor’s relative place within it. But more importantly, it is through broad community projects of this nature that we are able to break down even the toughest brick walls.

Check it out.

Methodology Monday with Basil Williams

"Perhaps more frequently and firmly than many genealogical sources, land records enable kinship determination." That's Nicki Peak Birch, CG, writing in her article, "Tracking Basil Williams of Maryland and Pennsylvania Through Changing Residences and Multiple Marriages," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 96:23-37, March 2008. Some members of the Great Lakes Chapter of APG discussed it a couple of weeks ago.

One of the article's basic questions is whether the Basil Williams of Frederick County and Anne Arundel counties in Maryland and Washington County in Pennsylvania are the same man. The answer is, yes and no. "Debt books" recording land in Maryland help show that there was only one Basil Williams there, but Revolutionary War pension files show that there were two Basils later. The argument is not simple, and it may get another workout in a discussion session at the spring Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Toledo.

In any case, Birch's message could use some repetition. I find county land offices (by whatever name) some of the easiest places to work -- they're used to people coming in and going about their business -- but rarely are my elbows jostled by fellow genealogists.