June APGQ -- another magazine on the "must-read" shelf

For those who are members of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the June 2015 issue of the APG Quarterly just went on line. Yes, it's late, but it's looking like a quarterly full of articles I want to read and need to read -- and a real incentive for serious genealogists who are not yet members to join APG.

No, I'm not impartial. My own article, "A Field Guide to Indirect Evidence," is in the mix -- that was supposed to be the reason for this blog post! And I do chair the quarterly's advisory committee (but aside from my article, we had no involvement in the process).

Nor have I had a chance to read through it. But who couldn't find several things to love in the regular reviews and interviews, and the rest of the table of contents?

* Lisa Alzo interviewing four professionals on staying professional on social media.
* Sara Scribner on JSTOR and LibGuides. (Yes, I did say, "What's a LibGuide?")
* Barbara Ball on georeferencing.
* Marian Pierre-Louis on making sure you put your best online foot forward.
* George Morgan on organization for presenters.
* Michael Hait on the difference between a report and a case study. (Anyone going for certification without knowing this? Time to find out!)
* Blaine Bettinger on Genetic Genealogy Standards.

The Virtual Institute -- a new and hopefully vigorous hybrid

The excuses for not continuing genealogy education are steadily dwindling.

Another excuse winked out last week, when three friends and colleagues announced the Virtual Institute of Genealogical Research. The Virtual Institute will offer a series of short courses on-line in webinar format: four lectures of 90 minutes each, plus copies of the video and some exercises, all for about $70 per course. The format is two lectures on each of two consecutive Saturdays. Cofounders Michael Hait, Melanie Holtz, and Catherine Desmarais are all board-certified genealogists.

Compared to a standard webinar, a Virtual Institute course takes much longer and can go much deeper, and it will be limited to 100 students each. Compared to a standard institute course of 30 that lasts five days, a Virtual Institute course is much larger and much shorter -- and also much less expensive in money (no travel, no lodging) and in time (no week-long absence).

What The Virtual Institute cannot offer is the camaraderie and personal contact of a regular institute. But it has a corresponding asset the regular institutes can't match: much greater flexibility in offering specialized courses at all levels. (Traditional institutes were notoriously slow in recognizing the need for courses in DNA.) The first five planned courses illustrate the point: proof arguments (Michael Hait, CG), agricultural records (Mark Lowe, CG), family photographs (Maureen Taylor), Irish research strategies (Donna Moughty), and autosomal DNA (Blaine Bettinger).

For those of us who want to learn and can't get out, The Virtual Institute will be the place to "go." It will add significantly to the many ways that genealogists can learn from the best.


*Note 22 September 2014: VIGR has been rechristened "The Virtual Institute" and this post has been revised to reflect that change.*

Harold Henderson, "The Virtual Institute -- a new and hopefully vigorous hybrid," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]
























Harold Henderson, "VIGR -- a new and hopefully vigorous hybrid," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday: Genealogy in bulk? Twelve suggestions

When I have a choice, I prefer to work on one genealogy problem at a time. But there are other times -- such as when the task becomes identifying and documenting all descendants and spouses in three of four generations.

And in order to meet standards, we have to find the people first. Most of the following items work better when working on people who lived on both sides of the Dark Age in the US (that is, before and after 1850). Deep in the Dark Age or well up into the 20th century would be another post, actually several different posts depending on the location.

* When possible, do the work in a good library or archive where it's easy to switch from on line to on paper. Some on-line materials are hard to navigate, and some on-line providers omit crucial material like prefaces and introductions where authors and compilers tell something (intentionally or otherwise) about how they did their work. For me that place is in  Fort Wayne. More info here.  One practical reason to make it the HQ-away-from-home for this work is that it has the world's best collection of genealogical periodicals, indexed on PERSI. Get the basic info from Find My Past and then get the relevant call numbers from the online catalog.

* If this is a perennial project, check the old folders, binders, emails, and notes created long ago and scattered on various web sites or cloud locations for clues that may mean more now than they did at the time.

* Use property and probate records if they are within reasonable driving distance, or if they have been digitized. (Not using property records could land you in trouble. Using probate records will not be the death of you.)

* Don't start by searching broadly. Approximate a birth/marriage/death date and place and look for candidate parents/spouses/children then and there. Check metasites for digital newspaper availability.

* If you have a region or state, search broadly within those confines, for instance New England. Peruse Michael Hait's inevitably incomplete Online State Resources for Genealogy 3.0.

* Ancestry and FamilySearch have some of the same data, but their indexes are not interchangeable. Search both. If you have candidate parents, search Family Search's main site using only their names in the parent boxes.

* Google Books and Internet Archive often harbor old periodicals as well as old genealogy books. A lot of microfilms have been digitized and uploaded to Internet Archive as well.

* Less famous venues can be useful when searching broadly, such as the GLO site for federal-land states. While we're waiting for the master newspaper site to emerge, give a try to the larger collections of on-line city directories on Fold3 and Ancestry as well as local providers. For tips see this metadirectory. (But as you close in on the person, the ability to survey every year of a given city's directory becomes crucial.)

* Find A Grave is the best, but it is not the only cemetery site. Also, it contains random unsourced assertions about unpictured grave markers. Which brings me to . . .

* Don't be a source snob. Put on your hazmat suit and acid-resistant gloves, or whatever you think you need, and dive into genealogical dumpsters. Source-free clues appearing there may be verifiable elsewhere -- or at least may lead back to a contemporary document of some kind.

* Use ArchiveGrid within reason, especially if your target people had literate and gossipy neighbors, or belonged to record-creating institutions or societies.

* Don't forget to write it up! Local, state, or national, genealogy editors everywhere are waiting for you.

Enjoy the bulk-genealogy chase. In my experience, it is likely to provide both surprises and -- a bouquet of interesting problems, each of which will require up-close and personal work to solve.




Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/6208669725 per Creative Commons


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday: Genealogy in bulk? Twelve suggestions," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 9 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good news for Ohio researchers: two lifetimes of newspapers!

These may not be news to you, but they're new to me and in a quick look I didn't find them in Michael Hait's compendium Online State Resources for Genealogy 3.0, nor on James Marks's The Ancestor Hunt:

Newspapers for Johnstown, Licking County, Ohio, have been digitized and are searchable 1884-1987. If you're close enough to wonder, Johnstown is in the northwest quarter of the county, near the Franklin and Delaware County line.

Likewise the Grove City Record in southwestern Franklin County, 1927-2011 with eight outliers in 1908.




Harold Henderson, "Good news for Ohio researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 May 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday with Elder Henry Hait (NYGBR)

Methodology is not always rocket science. It can involve dealing with many difficulties, each one small in itself but cumulatively daunting. In the case of the Elder Henry Hait -- the ancestor of Michael Hait, CG, and the subject of his article, the first installment of which is in the January New York Genealogical and Biographical Record -- it involves being aware of at least five potential research pitfalls:

* spelling variations. The title of a classic book on the family tells it: "Hoyt, Haight, Hight," not to mention Hoit or even Hyatt.

* common names in the area, in this case "Henry Hait"!

* borderline matters. For much of his life, Elder Henry lived along the Connecticut-New York border and created records (or failed to do so) in both states.

* family discontinuities, limiting available records and creating considerable uncertainty as to how he fit into the extended Hait family.

* a religious denomination that created useful records, but not the ones genealogists typically reach for first (infant baptisms and marriages).

These add up to a distinct lack of records that provide direct evidence. And even when a record is found naming the father of a Henry Hait, we still have to make sure it's the same person as Elder Henry. This is a US "Dark Age" problem, as Henry lived from 1779 to 1864.

NYGBR co-editors Laura Murphy DeGrazia and Karen Mauer Green make an important point introducing the issue. "Background research" does more than just provide general historical context or color. In this case, historical records of the Primitive Baptists actually provided first-hand information that helped cement the identification of Henry.

Like knowing the law, knowing the relevant denominational history (and its publications!) is like standing on a mountaintop and mapping the ridges and valleys below. It sure beats chopping our way through the brush and wondering where we are or which way we're going.




Michael Hait, "The Ancestry of Elder Henry Hait, Primitive Baptist Preacher of Connecticut and New York," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 145 (2014): 25-38.

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with Elder Henry Hait," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Pretty good news for Kane County Illinois land researchers

Quietly, the Kane County, Illinois, Recorder's office has placed all of its deeds (and several other kinds of documents) on line. Basically this is good news but there are a few qualifiers as described in the following quickie tutorial:

(1) Few genealogists will be using the tab that says "Search Land Records" --the straightforward grantee and grantor search only works for deeds since 1980. The interface for older deeds is somewhat klunky, but structurally it's the same that we go through in person: first find promising entries in the grantee and grantor indexes, then find the deeds themselves in the deed books.

(2) The grantee and grantor indexes are reached by going to the tab "View Miscellaneous Documents," then "All Miscellaneous Documents," and then choosing "Grantee Index" (actually a whole bunch of volumes of grantee indexes) or "Grantor Index" from the resulting menu. Under "Grantee Index" there's a list of books identified by volume number and year. Pick your book and then pay attention to the, um, unique patented method that a previous recorder chose to use for indexing. (It's called "Dennick's Universal Chart System of Indexing, patented in 1893, and explained below ** as it will take a while.)

(3) Once you've found a book and page number to consult in the deed books themselves, go back to the beginning and hit the tab "Books," under that "Document Books," under that "Folders" (actually original deed books), pick the desired volume number, and then within that volume the page.

(4) Once you're there, the images are variable in quality, with many portions of pages overexposed. (In some cases you may want to transcribe from the image rather than print it out.) Many pages are missing at least one line at the bottom. I have usually found FamilySearch's deed images from other states to be of better quality.

All this said, this degree of online access is better to have than not to have. Kane County is a suburban county west of Chicago, and I'm in a suburban county southeast of Chicago. Even living that close it's cheaper to work the deeds this way than in person. And the more people who can use this option, the better the old deeds are saved from extra handling.

** The grantee and grantor indexes are each arranged under one of many supposed 19th-century improvements on the alphabetical-by-first-letter-of-surname-and-then-chronological default system. First, surnames are organized in the following 47 initial-letter-equivalent groups, each beginning with a certain number, as follows:

A 1, Ba 14, Be 27, Br 40, B 53, Ca 66, Co 79, C 92, D 105, E 118, F 131, Gr 144, G 157, Ha 170, Ho 183, H 196, I 209, J 210, K 223, L 236, Ma 249, Mo 262, M 275, Mc 288, N 301, O 314, P 327, Q 340, Ro 341, R 354, Sc 367, Sh 380, Sm 393, St 406, S 419, T 432, U 445, Va 446, Ve 447, V 448, Wa 449, Wh 462, Wi 475, W 488, Young 501, Y 502, Z 503.


Within each surname initial-letter-equivalent, given names are organized according to 13 different initial letter equivalent groups: AB, C, DE, FG, HI, Ja, Jo, J, KL, MN, OPQR, STUV, and WXYZ.

Note that in this system surnames are not in alphabetical order: Grommet will appear ahead of Garofalo because their initial-letter-equivalent groups are in that order. And within each surname letter-equivalent-group, the names are organized by given names.

I looked for Levi Goodrich in the earliest grantee index, beginning in 1837.  Since his surname starts with G (page 157), given names beginning with "L" will be found at the ninth given-name initial letter equivalent group, so 165. (One big advantage of Kane County's system is that its image numbers correspond to the original page numbers, at least where I looked.) On 165 I found an L. D. Goodrich buying property, referring to a deed at volume 35, page 511. Before going to the deed, I carefully scrolled to the bottom of the page and found that this listing was continued on page 130, where I checked for any more.

OK, he turned out to be Lewis D. Goodrich, not Levi, but those are the breaks. Good luck and good hunting!

Note: As I have learned from Michael Hait's on-line state resources book, DeKalb County has what appears to be a similar setup (in beta test and requiring login) which I have not examined in detail.


Harold Henderson, "Pretty good news for Kane County, Illinois, land researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

On Line State Resources for Genealogy 3.0

There's an old saying, "When you're tired of London, you're tired of life." Well, when you get tired of browsing this book, you're tired of genealogy.

Earlier this month my friend and colleague Michael Hait released the third edition of his On Line State Resources for Genealogy. It's up to 1140 pages and more than 9000 resources -- hosted at a bewildering variety of web sites, with a much deeper and different reach than the popular free and subscription mega-sites.

Contrary to the title, the book includes on-line resources at the national level including the National Archives. Some sites require sign-in. "Resources" include images of original records; derivative records (such as transcriptions and abstracts); authored works; and finding aids and indexes. As stated in the introductory material, use the finding aids and indexes and derivative sources to lead to the original records when possible.

The table of contents is arranged by state and then by repository in apparently random order within each state. A click on any entry in the table of contents takes you directly to the repository's listings, and a click on the specific repository's link takes you there.

Midwestern researchers will be interested to know that Indiana listings occupy 92 pages, Illinois 61, Ohio 46, and Michigan and Wisconsin each 14.

This undertaking is nothing less than gargantuan. And it includes resources I did not know about but should have. Still it doesn't have everything: absent are La Crosse, Wisconsin, city directories; the Monroe County, Wisconsin, Local History Room; and several name indexes available at the Chicago branch of NARA.

But as the numbers mount up this enterprise faces a deeper problem -- how to organize the resources. Not only are they proliferating daily (the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center just announced eleven new ones). Often the originating agency may be different, or in a different place, than the record itself (such as county records created and listed under the name of a state agency). Equally bothersome, it is also often difficult to discern where one repository ends and another begins, since the same collection may be reached through more than one portal. It certainly helps that this book is searchable and not in print form, but part of its value is that the resources also be rationally browseable.

This compilation is itself an essential part of a "reasonably exhaustive search" as prescribed by BCG's Genealogy Standards, but other searches need to be made both within and outside of it.

Another form of browsing is to follow the compiler's new blog featuring a resource every few days.






Michael Hait, comp., On Line State Resources for Genealogy, third edition (PDF/ebook, privately printed, 2013).


Harold Henderson, "On Line State Resources for Genealogy 3.0," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]







Harold Henderson, "On Line State Records for Genealogy 3.0," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

US Genealogy Writer's Market -- a quick questionnaire for editors

19 August 2013

Dear Genealogy Periodical Editors:

How do genealogical authors find your publication?

Genealogy periodicals—from popular magazines to state and national journals to the newsletters of local genealogical societies—are vital to the genealogy community.

Among other vital roles, periodicals

• educate genealogists about records and research methodology;
• enable genealogists with similar research interests to communicate with each other;
• share local, national, and international news of concern to genealogists; and
• allow researchers to publish the fruits of their research efforts.

Despite this central position in the genealogy community, there exists no central resource bringing together all of the genealogy periodicals published in the United States.

To do this we plan to publish the first U. S. Genealogy Writer's Market in early 2014. This book will list basic details about genealogy periodicals, so that genealogical researchers and prospective writers can quickly and easily locate their ideal publishing markets.

In order to do this we need your help—just fill out the short online questionnaire at this address:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GWM-Editors

Please feel free to alert other editors to this project. If you have any questions or comments, please contact either of us at our respective emails.

Harold Henderson, CG

librarytraveler@gmail.com

Michael Hait, CG

michael.hait@hotmail.com 

Harold Henderson and Michael Hait, "US Genealogy Writer's Market -- a quick questionnaire for editors," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 August 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [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.]

December 2012 NGS Quarterly

Well, 2012 isn't quite done yet. I just received my physical copy of the December 2012 National Genealogical Society Quarterly in the physical mail a couple of weeks ago.

Midwesterners play bit parts in this issue: a Bible record certified by the county clerk of Pope County, Illinois, and a slavecatcher getting his comeuppance in Hillsdale County, Michigan in 1839 (at least that's how the Liberator retold it; apparently that issue of the local newspaper no longer exists).

Michael Hait, co-winner of the 2011 NGS Family History Writing Contest, chronicles four generations and a century of the Maryland Ridgely family from slavery to freedom and success as professionals. In a recent post on his blog, Planting the Seeds, Michael tells the backstory of how this article came to be.

George Findlen examines duplicate records in French Canada for a baptism, a marriage, and a birth to teach a double lesson: don't rely on published abstracts, and know the customs and canon law.

Allen R. Peterson follows the border-crossing Hyde family in Cheshire and Derbyshire, England, from the 1650s to the 1820s.

James W.  Petty discusses a variety of legally required records that document enslaved and emancipated black people in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in the north.

Genealogy doesn't get better than this. The quarterly can be found in good genealogical libraries everywhere, and in your mailbox if you're a member of the National Genealogical Society.



Michael Hait, "In the Shadow of Rebellions: Maryland Ridgelys in Slavery and Freedom," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 100 (December 2012):245-66.

George L. Findlen, "Resolving Duplicate Roman Catholic Parish Register Entries: French Canadian Examples," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 100 (December 2012):267-78.

Allen R. Peterson, "Living on the Edge: A Hyde Family of Cheshire and Derbyshire, England," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 100 (December 2012):279-92.

James W. Petty, "Black Slavery Emancipation Research in the Northern States," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 100 (December 2012):293-304.

Harold Henderson, "December 2012 NGS Quarterly," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 February 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Ask Not What Your Professional Organization Can Do For You...

Last week Barbara Mathews made a detailed post to the Association of Professional Genealogists' members-only list explaining the many issues with Ancestry's rendition of Massachusetts town records and how to deal with it and get around at least some of the problems.

For me that post alone was almost worth the $65 annual dues. While few posts there are as thorough and authoritative, there's lots of help requested and received on the list.

 (Full disclosure: I'm on the list a lot, and I'm a member of the APG board. Even fuller disclosure: these are my own unofficial opinions and the 2500 or so other APGers may disagree!)

But while we all have to decide what to do with our limited supply of money, APG is not just a consumer product. We decide whether to subscribe to Ancestry.com or Scotland's People based on whether the benefits to us (including intangibles) will exceed the costs. Same as buying a bag of gummi worms. And that's as it should be.

Deciding to join APG involves more than that calculation. It's also a decision to identify with and support a profession. And a profession, if it's worth anything, is not just a group of people who sell a product or service -- it's also a group of people who uphold the profession's standards.

To take an obvious example: A merchant may sell those books with fancy covers and vaporous language inside that purport to be a "history of your surname." No professional genealogist worthy of the name would have anything to do with that. Of course professionals often seek to earn money, but there are also things they won't do for money.

As Michael Hait wisely pointed out in a recent blog post, APG and the profession (as well as other genealogy societies) are in part what we put into them. So I wouldn't want anyone to join simply because of great posts like Barbara's. We need members; we need volunteers; we need folks who take genealogy seriously and will help build up the profession in innovative ways. But if you're all about getting the most for the cheapest, please look elsewhere.




Harold Henderson, "Ask Not What Your Professional Organization Can Do for You...," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Janus Day: Looking Forward, Looking Back

Looking back: in 2012, I got certified, spoke at a national conference, and finished publishing my first "big-time" article (on my wife's 5G grandfather William Berry and his children and grandchildren).

What's up for 2013? I'd like to do less and do it better, but the specifics remain elusive.

My top professional priorities are researching, writing, and editing -- preferably for pay! Other priorities include education (in the most general sense), giving back to the profession, and speaking.

I won't say never, but in the coming year(s) four kinds of activities are going to receive what the courts call "strict scrutiny": those that require flying, those that require me to get other people to do things, those involving mostly "busy work," and those based on the dubious notion that I'm the only person who can do X.

(Hat tip to Michael Hait, whose more specific blog post inspired this one.)

I can't predict publications, but I do aim to produce a couple of booklets in the next year. It's easier to tell when and where I'll be speaking:

February 12 on citations at an Illinois State Genealogical Society webinar.

March 10 on the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center at the La Porte County (Indiana) Genealogical Society.

April 6 on indirect evidence and William Berry research in Lafayette, Indiana. Indianapolis genealogist and blogger Ron Darrah will have the other half of the program.

April 26 on Indiana research at the Ohio Genealogical Society in Cincinnati.

April 27 on property and probate records at the Indiana Genealogical Society in Bloomington. (Those who don't use these records -- which included me up to four or five years ago -- will find that they weren't really doing genealogy before.)

May 8 on advocacy for preservation and open records at the Association of Professional Genealogists luncheon at the National Genealogical Society in Las Vegas.

May 10 on "Are We There Yet?," a case study on proof, in the BCG track at NGS Las Vegas.

June 15 on "Welcome to the Other Midwestern Archives" at the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society in Crown Point.

June 18 on "Organize Your Stuff As You Dig for Your Roots," at the La Porte County (Indiana) Public Library.

August 22 on Indiana research at the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Fort Wayne.

August 23 on "Welcome to the Other Midwestern Archives" at FGS in Fort Wayne.

August 24 on speaking ideas at FGS in Fort Wayne (sponsored by the Genealogical Speakers Guild).

See you around!




Harold Henderson, “William Berry (1753-1839) and His Children and Grandchildren in Massachusetts and New York,” in 2 parts, American Ancestors Journal, third and fourth annual supplements to The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 165 (October 2011): 368-78 and 166 (October 2012): 365-74.

Harold Henderson, "Janus Day: Looking Forward, Looking Back," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

The "True Source"

There are a few activities where it's socially acceptable to think hard in American society -- playoff contingencies, chess, and genealogy among them. Genealogy can be a window on what I like to call "folk epistemology" AKA how we think most of the time.

Elizabeth Shown Mills includes a list of "problematic concepts" in the indispensable first chapter of Evidence Explained, including "definitive sources, "direct sources," "final conclusions." In his blog Planting the Seeds Michael Hait recently provided us with an amusing tour of several classic fallacies and how they appear in genealogy.

On LinkedIn there has been a usually cordial discussion that never quite dies called "The only TRUE source . . . ", under "Genealogical and Historical Research." In addition to the usual confusions created by the obsolete and imprecise terms "primary and secondary sources," many commenters there seem irresistibly drawn to the notion of a "true source." The term is not defined but it's probably close to ESM's "definitive source." My guess is that -- no matter how often someone tells us the obvious, that any source can be mistaken -- we really really want there to be a source somewhere, like a will or an original marriage record or an official anything, that would supposedly allow us to lay down our burden of proof and stagger off the field.

IMO that runs deeper than actually making a fallacious argument. It's more like an assumption embedded in language itself -- and equally hard to uproot. Happy New Year anyway!



Harold Henderson, "The 'True Source'," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

2013 Ohio Writing Contest!

 The largest state genealogy organization in the country will sponsor its sixth annual writing contest in 2013, open for entries beginning January 1 and closing February 28. Details, rules, and categories are in the Winter 2012 issue of Ohio Genealogy News and on the OGS web site. The print version also includes a lot more detail about how and what to write for the organization's quarterly and the News.

My quick take: Yes, your entry or entries do need to have an Ohio tie-in; top prize is a year's free membership in OGS; and anything more than ten single-spaced pages is too long (some categories must be shorter). Those of us who have been wrestling with Ohio families for years need to get off the dime and write up at least some of them.

I have heard that there are some people who have been tragically deprived of Ohio ancestry. In that case, check out Kimberly Powell's list of 22 genealogy competitions and scholarships at About.com. (If you're wondering whether to let me know that I am in part repeating my post of October 4, yes, I am.) Also, Michael Hait is promising a new list soon.

This issue of OGN also includes the program and information for OGS's April conference in Cincinnati, where I will give one talk at 8 am Friday morning on Indiana research.


 
Sunny Morton and Susan Lee, "How to Write Your Family History...And Publish It With OGS," Ohio Genealogy News, Winter 2012 (43:4): 12-14.


Harold Henderson, "2013 Ohio Writing Contest!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

A Holiday Treat for All Genealogists

Michael Hait has just posted a free 23-page PDF, "US Census Pathfinder," that brings together and organizes links to on-line US census records and information about them.

What genealogist doesn't use censuses? This resource will allow us to quickly answer basic and advanced questions. And don't miss the link to Elizabeth Shown Mills's 1998 article, still as pertinent as ever, on what we need to do in order to be able to say, "I looked for the X family in the census and didn't find them."

Please note that this census pathfinder is copyrighted. Linking is fine, but if you want to print and distribute copies, contact the copyright holder for permission.



Michael Hait, United States Federal Census Pathfinder (http://haitfamilyresearch.com/pdf_files/Census_Pathfinder.pdf : accessed 21 December 2012).


Harold Henderson, "A Holiday Treat for All Genealogists," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 22 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

FGS Day One (Wednesday August 29)

A many-faceted day in which I attended Jay Fonkert's stellar talk on local society newsletters and journals. One radical lesson: don't publish because "we've always done it." Figure out if your publications fit your society's goals.

I learned that there is no air-conditioning in the exhibit hall during setup, but somehow managed to help set up the BCG booth anyway.

Michael Hait and I practiced our two-man talk (or is it a comedy routine?) on how NOT to get certified.

I learned that downtown Birmingham isn't terribly friendly to pedestrians, but nevertheless took two walks there for lunch and dinner. You'd never know from the weather here that New Orleans is drowning.



Harold Henderson, "FGS Day One (Wednesday August 29)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Hait's Online Resources

The second and greatly expanded edition of Online State Resources for Genealogy is now available (more than twice the repositories and more than triple the links), compiled by my friend and colleague Michael Hait, CG.

Like many good ideas, it seems a wonder nobody thought of it sooner: to collect all the (relatively) small free state and local on-line sources of information and original records that do not show up on Ancestry or FamilySearch. This edition runs from the Alabama Department of Archives and History's "Alabama Loose Records Index" to the Campbell County, Wyoming, Public Library System's "Local History Index." In between, I find Illinois with 21 repositories in 43 pages, Indiana with 17 repositories in 44 pages, Michigan with 9 repositories in 9 pages, Ohio with 23 repositories in 27 pages, and Wisconsin with 9 repositories in 14 pages.

When your work takes you to an unfamiliar state, this will be a comforting companion -- and a jumping-off place, because no compilation of this kind is ever complete.


Michael Hait, compiler, Online State Resources for Genealogy, version 2.0, PDF e-book (N.p.: Michael Hait Family History Research Services, 2012).

Harold Henderson, "Hait's Online Resources," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 26 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Two roads to CG

For those who choose to submit a portfolio to the Board for the Certification of Genealogists, there has always been the question of when to do the work.

At one extreme (Option #1), the applicant can choose to have all or almost all seven portfolio requirements ready, and then submit a preliminary application, putting the applicant "on the clock" with a deadline of one year to finish. (That deadline can be extended, for a fee, if needed.)

At the other extreme (Option #2), the applicant can go on the clock and then start working on the portfolio. Obviously these two polar options can be compromised.

I chose Option #1 both times, and it has advantages if you can keep the work going and resist daily distractions without an external deadline. One advantage is that if a chosen case study or kinship determination project doesn't work out, you can just pick another one and keep going without worrying about any particular deadline.

But judging from the advice given at the BCG certification seminar at IGHR (Samford) last week, something closer to Option #2 seems to be growing in favor.

For one thing, Option #2 does provide an external deadline, which can be extended (for a fee) if necessary.

Secondly, it provides greater access to the BCG ACTION list, which is open only to those on the clock and a group of BCG advisors. The list is a place to ask questions and get reliable answers -- as long as the questions do not pertain to the particulars of anybody's portfolio!

But either way, sooner or later, procedural niceties don't matter. You just have to finish those seven portfolio components. They're the interesting part. And if you're wondering whether you're ready to take the plunge at all, check out the BCG site's quiz and Michael Hait's post on the subject at Planting the Seeds last year.



Harold Henderson, "Two roads to CG," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day Four (Saturday the 12th) -- the end . . . or is it?

Leaving the Saturday midafternoon lecture, we walked past the windows that overlook the exhibit hall. The vendors and organizations were taking down their booths.

The little world of the conference was being dismantled before our eyes. "Our revels now are ended." I don't suppose any non-genealogist would be able to take what we genealogists do as serious reveling, but we enjoy it.

My talk on indirect evidence was well-attended and well-received. Other events I saw:

David Lambert, the "online genealogist" of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, gave a quick outline of emigration from New England and wound up with an eloquent appeal for the listeners not to lose any more stories, and write them up before it's too late.

Michael Hait alerted his audience to the many state and local sources for genealogy records available OUTSIDE OF Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. They may not be immediately obvious to search engines, and the sites themselves may not be logically organized, but being able to access the records from home is worth some extra effort. In Chester County, Pennsylvania, the recorder of deeds has deeds online from 1960 forward. Elsewhere, in the county archives portion of the site, are indexes to deeds 1688-1830.

Having shown the good stuff out there, he also reminded us not to let internet availability determine our research plans! Most records aren't on line and won't be soon.

Word in the hallways is that during the conference APG, BCG, Indiana, Kentucky, Germany did well in attracting new members. (I did not do a comprehensive survey.)

I had hatched nefarious plans to take Thomas Jones, Elizabeth Shown Mills, and Barbara Vines Little home with me -- or rather, to purchase CDs of their talks to listen to in the car on the five-hour drive home. Unfortunately, the demand was such that the good folks at Jamb had run out of all the ones I wanted. I will get them later on by mail. So our revels really aren't quite ended, now or ever.


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Four (Saturday the 12th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 13 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day Two (Thursday the 10th)

Games conferencegoers play: Many vendors and groups have little ribbons that can be stuck on in layers so that they trail down from your NGS nametags. Some folks compete to get the longest string of ribbons. My friend Michael Hait doesn't go for that, but he does have two ribbons that you don't see the same person wearing very often: one identifis him as a speaker (two talks Saturday), the other identifies him as attending his first national conference!

Other things that came my way today:

Jana Sloan Broglin explained Ohio's fantastically complex systems of distributing land in the state. I believe sixteen different systems were tried out. She gave accompanying glimpses of the relevant American history and idiosyncratic Ohio pronunciations (Newark = Nurk, Putnam = Putman). In some counties you need to know both the metes-and-bounds land system AND the rectangular survey system (or an experimental variant) in order to research land records. In her home county of Fulton (as well as Williams and Lucas), early deeds in the northern part of the county have to be sought in Michigan, a result of the Ohio-Michigan War ("a cow died"). If you love land records -- and genealogists pretty much have to -- you'll love Ohio!

Stefani Evans carefully described an ongoing project under the title "Red Herrings and a Stroke of the Dead Palsy," which included a monumental red herring in which a Revolutionary War regiment's record somehow migrated 500 miles! I took away this quote: "If we don't look at each detail in each document, we're going to reach wrong conclusions." Stefani's reflective style itself was a reminder that, as researchers, we need to remain calm in the midst of conflicting and ambiguous records.

The Association of Professional Genealogists' "Gathering of the Chapters" had representatives from all over the US. Many chapters cover a wide area, and the new availability of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar should make it easier to meet and greet without enduring long car trips. We even had a five-week-old "member" in attendance.

The "night at the library" -- the renowned Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County -- was in full swing when I left early, having located one of my coveted obscure articles. The genealogists outnumbered the staff, who were good-natured about the crowd, and in my case went the extra mile to find a periodical that the regular retrievers couldn't.

Tomorrow's my turn to do some talking instead of listening, with a talk in the 9:30 am slot (Indianapolis Orphan Asylum), so it's early to bed...


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Two (Thursday the 8th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]