Two New 2018 Publications

Not everyone gets to be named Alissomon. She was the sister of my wife's 3-great grandfather Henry Mozley; their families emigrated together from Nottinghamshire, England, to Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1833. The Mozleys eventually spread out from Erie in many directions; Alissomon married shoemaker Joseph Harrison and their offspring stayed closer to the Great Lakes. 

My article follows them downstream in the current OGS quarterly. Ohio will have its annual conference later this week in Columbus -- it's not too late!

Working downstream in time has its benefits. Because I was also researching the more populous Mozley side, I discovered a letter from a Mozley relative briefly describing her visit to three Harrison cousins in Cleveland around 1910.

New York and Ohio members can read the new issues of their respective quarterlies on line, and not have to wait for the mail.

(Soon to come: revealing the life of a practiced deceiver.)

“Alissomon Mozley Harrison and Her Descendants in Erie and Cleveland,” Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly 58(1), 2018:49-61.

Review of  American Settlements and Migrations: A Primer for Genealogists and Family Historians by Lloyd Bockstruck, New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 14(2), April 2018: 156-57.

A week to remember

Genealogy institutes are a hybrid between national conferences (lasting a few days with something new every hour or two and attendance in the thousands) and regular college courses (lasting a semester or so). At institutes (attendance in the dozens or hundreds), several courses are offered but genealogists spend five days in just one of their choice. Compared to conferences, there's more time to focus, and more opportunities to find like-minded friends, but not as many topics covered. I've been a fan ever since I first discovered them in 2009 in Salt Lake City and Birmingham.

At the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) last week, Kimberly Powell and I taught the third iteration of the course "From Confusion to Conclusion" on writing proof arguments -- with great help from William Litchman, Karen Stanbary, and Melissa Johnson, plus a cameo appearance by retiring New York Genealogical and Biographical Record editor Karen Jones.

 Our students were outstandingly inquisitive. Two of them -- Pam Anderson and Shannon Green -- will soon have articles published in the June National Genealogical Society Quarterly, and so were obliged to host the traditional GRIP Thursday night party. (This is Pittsburgh -- we don't do banquets.)

It's a small and intense world but big news still percolates in: this was the week FamilySearch announced the end of microfilm loans. Meanwhile GRIP keeps rolling along, with three separate week-long sessions and several new courses on tap for 2018, including various levels of DNA studies.

After a fifteen-month nap (er, hiatus) I will try restarting this blog on a weekly basis.

* The big genealogy news is Karen Jones's planned retirement as editor of one of the top five US scholarly genealogy journals. Those who have worked with and for her at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record wish her the best (and longest!) retirement, with many delayed ancestors found and published.

* Speaking of the Record, I have a short article in the January issue: “‘A continual claim and struggle’: DeGrove Gleanings from the Appellate Court,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 148 (January 2017): 61-64. It's a brief addendum to William DeGrove's ongoing saga of this New York family in the 19th century.

* It's never a mistake to draw up a timeline! I prepared one just to cut out a lot of boring text in a family history. It showed some interesting connections and unexpectedly provoked more city directory research, leading to some original records that may shed light on a Pennsylvania-Ohio family that is visible in only one census between 1860 and 1900. With luck this could be a publishable article in itself.

* GRIP may be the only genealogy institute capable of bilocation, with Deb Deal representing it at this weekend's Ohio conference and Elissa Powell doing the same in New England.

Fourth and (sort of) last installment of "A Missing Heir" on the Bassett family in NYGBR

My mother-in-law's paternal Bassett line has now got its due in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. The Record does problems, which is how this four-part series started off, with the puzzle of how apparent oldest daughter Elizabeth could be omitted from the list of legal heirs when her father died.

The Record also does documentation of families, which in the case of Lewis Bassett (1776-1871) and Dorcas Hoxie (1782-1832) amounted to twelve children and 67 grandchildren, plus assorted spouses. Each of the 79 has their own sentence or paragraphs in the genealogical summary, which is why the article had to appear in four installments. The nine children who had descendants were:

* Elizabeth (Bassett ) Porter (1798-1855) with 13 children,
* Peleg Hoxie Bassett (1800-1891) with 9,
* William Riley Bassett (1802-1889) with 10,
* Lucy (Bassett) Hoffman (1805-1882) with 10,
* Harriet (Bassett) Burdick (1807-1874) with 6,
* Nathan Lee Bassett (1808-1833) with 5,
* Samuel Clark Bassett (1811-1878) with 7,
* Sarah Emiline (Bassett) Utter (1817-1898) with 5, and
* Hannah (Bassett) Crandall (1822-1899) with 2.

As with many 19th-century families, the older children were far more prolific than the younger. Five of the nine stayed in New York; Elizabeth, Lucy, and Harriet died in Illinois, Nathan in Wisconsin.

Grandchildren or their spouses worked as farmer, miner, local official, attorney/soldier, clerk, box manufacturer, hoe manufacturer, dry goods merchant, machinist, blacksmith, teacher, lumber agent, insurance salesman, college professor, engineer, carpenter, tailor, cowboy, and auto mechanic. Many served in the Civil War, arguably the defining event for this generation.

Three women among the grandchildren lived on their own without marrying. One was a milliner, one ran a boardinghouse, and one may have become a Catholic nun -- if true, a most unusual career path from a long-time Baptist family.

The grandchildren's generation lasted 136 years, from the birth of Harry B. Porter, Elizabeth's child, in 1815 when James Madison was President, to the death of William Henry Bassett, Samuel's child, in 1951, when Harry Truman was President.

Most of the grandchildren's stories could occupy more than a paragraph or two. So if 45 pages and 583 reference notes sounds like a lot, these folks could easily fill a book, and maybe someday they will. (And strictly speaking we're not quite done, as the Porter family into which Elizabeth married has its documentation still to come.)

“A Missing Heir: Reconnecting Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter to Her Parents, Lewis and Dorcas (Hoxie) Bassett,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record in four parts:

145 (July 2014): 165-84,
145 (October 2014): 281-91,
146 (April 2015): 117-23,
146 (July 2015): 198-208.

Methodology Monday with Mysterious New Yorkers

In the April and July issues of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Perry Streeter doggedly pursues his likely 5-great grandparents, Aaron and Lucy ([-?-]) Beard, from western Connecticut and Massachusetts into southern New York. Both died in the 1820s. His 4-great grandfather Thomas Streeter married a woman named Louisa whose children mostly reported her born in Connecticut. A process of elimination in Connecticut's well-preserved but not perfect vital records suggested the Beards as her parents.

It did not get easier from there. From a genealogist's point of view, Aaron and Lucy were not ideal ancestors. But they did produce a handful of records. In 1777 Aaron was fined for not serving in the American Revolution from Salisbury, Litchfield County, Connecticut, just a month after their son Ai Frost Beard was born there. They also had a son named Parks. These distinctive names plus patterns of association among Baptists and among lumber-industry workers helped confirm the family as they moved around -- including, implicitly, Louisa, who produced no records after her birth. Aficionados of early-day travel will appreciate Streeter's analysis of the route of the Catskill Turnpike, which helped suggest an answer to the always relevant and always provocative question, "How did those two [in this case, Thomas Streeter and Louisa Beard] ever meet in the first place?"

Like many NYGBR articles, this one is followed by a substantial genealogical summary documenting the family beyond those involved in this intricate problem. Several went to southeastern Michigan. Not all families make colorful reading, but these do, and there's more to come in October -- or whenever you want to check out the author's extensive research-oriented web site.



Perry Streeter, "Was Louisa, Daughter of Aaron and Lucy ([-?-]) Beard, the Second Wife of Thomas Streeter of Steuben County, New York?," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 145 (April 2014): 85-99, and (July 2014): 222-236.


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with Mysterious New Yorkers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 August 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday in three dimensions

My friend and colleague Cathi Desmarais has produced an excellent metaphor for the dilemma every genealogist faces when we size up the evidence we have collected during our thorough  (but only reasonably exhaustive) search: we're trying to turn a complex three-dimensional knot into a smooth untangled piece of string that is easy to follow in two dimensions.

Those who deal regularly with actual knots and tangles of string might say that there's no substitute for just sitting there and working on it until done -- which is true although not very helpful. In genealogy we do have some of the steps broken down into

• analyzing individual pieces of evidence, 
• correlating (comparing and contrasting) different pieces of evidence, 
• resolving any conflicts that appear, and 
• writing up the result in a form that is clear and convincing (or to put it another way, in a form that does not require the reader to take your results on faith).

But the problem can still exist when one gets down to the writing part. And once again, there is no substitute to just sticking with it. As my grandfather-in-law (by consensus the most distinguished of any of my or my wife's ancestors) reportedly used to say, "The most important application in writing is the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."

It helps if we have been writing all along -- in the research log to remind us of what we were thinking, as well as any any work-in-progress inspirations that cropped up along the way. It also helps if we had a clear research question to begin with, but sometimes the question changes along the way. And a late-arriving piece of evidence can shift the nature of the presentation even when the question stays the same.

It helps not to have to reinvent the wheel. The more our minds are furnished with the ways that other genealogists have tackled similar problems -- in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, and other publications with similarly high standards -- the more different approaches we can try to see if they fit. (For instance, I love to use timelines, but they are not always the most efficient way to deal with a string of property deeds.)

One way to furnish the mind is to read and study a new article from the above publications every week or two. Another way would be to attend the course that Kimberly Powell and I will be co-coordinating at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy next January, "From Confusion to Conclusion: Writing Proof Arguments." And I'm sure you can think of others!




Photo credit: "Knot," Quinn Dombrowski's photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/4780103370 : viewed 15 March 2014), per Creative Commons

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday in three dimensions," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday: The questions we ask in genealogy

Most genealogical questions, according to Thomas W. Jones in Mastering Genealogical Proof, ask about relationship (R), identity (I), or activity (A). Of course we can think of much more tangled ones, but usually they are "supporting questions" enabling us to better answer one of the basic ones. (p.8)

After a Facebook discussion the other day, I wondered how this idea checked out at the top end of the field in 2013. Classifying articles this way turned out to be more difficult and more subjective than I expected, and I never found anything that quite fit "activity." Activity-type questions may end up in DAR applications more often than in published articles.

The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEHGR) and American Ancestors Journal: R 14, I 3, A 0, others 2.

The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (NYGBR): R 10, I 1, A 0, and others 3.

The National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ): R 11, I 3, A 0, others 2.

The Genealogist (TG): R 6, I 1, A 0, others 0.

Totals: R 41, I 8, A 0, others 7. Roughly three-quarters ask about relationships. The "others" are generally individual life stories, or ask what would usually be supporting questions, such as, "Where was he buried?"

How does this play out in less formal publications like NGS Magazine, American Ancestors (NEHGS), and some state magazines? What questions do their articles answer? Your turn!



Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday: The questions we ask," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

January in Salt Lake: new workshop, new practicum case, new talk

Genealogists don't hibernate during the winter -- we go to Salt Lake City for the APG Professional Management Conference, immediately followed by the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy!

Here's where to find me speaking in Salt Lake City in January 2014:

• Friday afternoon January 10, as part of the Association of Professional Genealogists' Professional Management Conference, a workshop: "The Story of the Story of Jethro: The Making of an NGSQ Article." Registration for the PMC is cheaper if you sign up before January 6, if you are an APG member, and if you are a full-time undergraduate. (Check out our great lineup even if this workshop is not for you.)

A finished article in a top-tier genealogy publication normally shows some ways of cracking a tough research problem. But it necessarily omits much of the research, writing, editing, and agonizing that went into its creation. Workshop attendees will review and discuss the logic, structure, writing, omitted research, and more of a recent article in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Not all professionals will write for NGSQ or similar publications, but the writing and thought habits needed for such articles make other genealogical writing and editing easier.

• Tuesday-Wednesday, January 14 and 15, as part of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy's Advanced Evidence Practicum, a western Pennsylvania problem from the 1800s: analyze and correlate evidence to prove or disprove a family story and determine parentage. Don't be spooked: The early-bird discount for SLIG registration ends October 31! 

•  Tuesday evening, January 14, a talk open to the public as well as SLIG enrollees (for a fee): "Reading Genealogy: Why Not Follow the Best?" An introduction to and sampling of the five top genealogy publications: NEHGR, NYGBR, NGSQ, TAG, and The Genealogist. They're all hard-core, and they're all different.

I hope to see you there -- especially for the last one, where I'm scheduled against Judy Russell and Kimberly Powell!



Harold Henderson, "January in Salt Lake: new workshop, new practicum case, new talk," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, no. 1267, posted 27 October 2013 (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.]

"I" and "we" in genealogy writing

This year's Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati sparked some good discussions, including one that came out of Ohio Genealogy News editor Sunny McClellan Morton's Friday morning talk. Like many of us, she's trying to encourage new writers to take up the pen or word processor as the case may be.

I admit to being a bit surprised that there was anything to discuss. There are many kinds of good genealogical writing, and the first person can be effectively wielded in most of them.

. . . Except at the top of the pyramid. In the five most scholarly magazines -- NEHGR, NGSQ, NYGBR, TAG, and The Genealogist -- the first person singular or plural is out of bounds, I think reasonably so. The focus there should be on the methods, the records, and the people being researched -- not on the researcher's false trails and travails. Having journals like this is one of many factors that will make genealogy more respectable as an intellectual endeavor and not just a harmless obsession of geezers. Also, once you get the hang of it, leaving yourself out of the picture actually makes it easier to tell one story, without having to shift back and forth from the story of the past to the story of your attempt to reclaim the past. Scholarly accounts deliberately suppress process details because the logic of proof is often very different from the travelogue of discovery.

But this is not the only way to tell these stories, and it is not always even the best way. For one thing, up-and-coming researchers have a natural hunger for accounts of how it went. A research find can look very different in the heat of battle (or more likely in the courthouse basement) than it does in a polished article. And nothing prevents such accounts from being well-written and well-documented.

So, pretty much everywhere else -- in commercial popular magazines, in trade publications (APG Quarterly), and in quality mid-level publications (such as NGS Magazine, Ohio Genealogy News, and many state publications) -- I would expect good editors to be open to the possibility of using first person to tell a solid genealogical story. (I blogged about a couple here; Sunny has been publishing research travelogues under the heading "Genealogy Journeys" in OGN.)

Many people may find it more natural to write in the first person at first, and I'm in favor of any approach that will get more of us writing (as opposed to dying with file cabinets full of uncommunicated discoveries). But writing WELL in the first person is much harder than it looks, for at least three reasons:

(1) All storytelling and all writing is about selection, and when you write about your own experience you have to do all the selection. You know too much. (In an interview-based article, for instance, both the interviewee and the interviewer filter the direct experience, so that the result of the interview has already been winnowed down considerably from the raw experience, making it easier to craft a readable narrative out of it.) It can be hard to see the forest because you know so much about each individual tree -- but if you tell all, the reader will quit rather than figure it out.

(2) First person can tempt us into careless writing. As beginners we often rely too much on adjectives and adverbs, and on general ones at that. First-person may make it harder to realize that we are emoting vaguely, rather than painting a clear picture.

(3) First person poses a special technical problem in genealogy. We then have at least two separate narratives going: our own research chronology, AND the life we are researching. It takes considerable skill and experience to keep both stories on track, separate, and memorable.

These caveats aside, I think first person opens realms of possibility. Some of the most memorable genealogy or family history books I have ever read use it: Leonard Todd's Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave; Martha Hodes's The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century; and (in a somewhat different and slightly less documented vein) Ian Frazier's Family. I found them impossible to put down, and well worth rereading and learning from. It's true, these are world-class writers. Few if any of us can use the first-person tool as well as they do, but that is no reason to banish it altogether from our toolbox.




Harold Henderson, "'I' and 'we' in genealogy writing," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Fun with Gazetteers

Meldon J. Wolfgang has a nice article in the current New York Researcher on gazetteers in general and New York's six 19th-century ones in particular, all now visible on line: 1813, 1824, 1836, 1842, 1860, and 1872.
(The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society is planning to issue its own New York Family History Handbook: Research Guide and Gazetteer later this year.)

The old gazetteers are something like a cross between the best parts of a newspaper, an almanac, and a history book. (They're a bit like an encyclopedia annual edition, if you remember those.) Every little place in the state gets its mention -- not as it seemed to a historian or sentimental genealogist a century and a half later, but as it seemed to them right then. I can't think of a better source, pre-photography, for seeing the country as our ancestors saw it.

Closer to home, the 1849 Indiana Gazetteer has four detailed paragraphs on the Indiana Medical College in La Porte (a long-since-faded memory); the names of all the Methodist preachers in every district; and a brutally honest dollar-by-dollar account of the 1830s internal improvements fiascos, from a point in time when it was not quite clear whether canals or railroads were going to save the state. And now, they're almost sinfully easy for us to find and read. Which one is your favorite?



Meldon J. Wolfgang, "Exploring New York State's Nineteenth Century Gazetteers," The New York Researcher, vol. 23, no. 3(Fall 2012): 54-55.

The Indiana Gazetteer, or Topographical Dictionary of the State of Indiana, 3rd edition (Indianapolis: E. Chamberlain, 1849), illustration at 167; digital image, GoogleBooks (http://books.google.com : accessed 16 October 2012).



Harold Henderson, "Fun with Gazetteers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Yorkshire to New York to Michigan in Letters

Ronald Hill draws on an amazing collection of letters and other saved family documents in following James Snowden (1805-1869) across the Atlantic to New York and the Erie Canal in 1833 and on to Kent County, Michigan, in 1843, all in the lead article of the current New York Genealogical and Biographical Record.

Publishing annotated letters is a sub-genre of genealogy writing that doesn't seem to get much attention, but it presents an ongoing tension between the imperatives of understanding and readability. The author needs to explain to today's readers the many items, now mysterious, that were familiar to the original correspondents. Full explanation of everything would clog up the story; none at all would leave the letters barely comprehensible. Hill follows a middle path.

There is no outstanding genealogical problem here, just a great deal of life as lived 175 years ago, give or take. A cousin and friends left New York for Pittsburgh in 1837; one friend had a certificate that no bank would cash due to the ongoing financial panic. There is much description of masonry jobs or the lack thereof; a page-long account of the death of James's wife's sister; a family tiff over money; and a lament that needs no explanation at all: in 1842 James wrote to his wife of a rental property, "It would all moast be as well to set it on fier when we have got the things out as to pretend to rent it."

Eventually James gave up stonecutting and became a farmer in Michigan, accumulating a compact 280 acres in Alpine Township, Kent County. Family papers include four years of Snowden's farm accounts  -- showing, as Hill explains, that Snowden was able to do much better as a farmer. Another installment is promised.


Ronald Hill, "James Snowden, Stonecutter on the Erie Canal: Part 1 -- The Snowden Letters," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 143, no. 2 (July 2012): 165-85.


Harold Henderson, "Yorkshire to New York to Michigan in Letters," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Weekend Wonderings: What Genealogy Periodicals Do You Actually Read?

I do suspect that the famous top five genealogy journals are more revered than read, but would be happy to hear otherwise. FYI they are National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ), New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (NYGBR), New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEHGR), The American Genealogist (TAG), and The Genealogist.

For more popular fare, I tend to prefer NGS Magazine and NEHGS's American Ancestors to the commercial publications. With state and local publications, I tend to be inconsistent because (from my point of view) most of them are. This is not a slam on them, it's a slam on us because we don't write enough.

What do you look forward to reading and why? (Especially things I haven't even mentioned!)


Harold Henderson, "Weekend Wonderings: What Genealogy Periodicals Do You Actually Read?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

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 Midwesterners in NYGBR

For those who enjoy national-level publications -- but enjoy them even more when they contain Midwesterners! -- the October issue of The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (vol. 142, no. 4) includes the second and final installment of Dawne Slater-Putt's "John and Elizabeth (Halbert) Blair of Ontario and Yates Counties, New York." Descendants of theirs are identified in Michigan (Lapeer and Wayne counties), Ohio (Williams, Portage, and Summit counties), and Illinois (Henry County) -- as well as in the California Gold Rush.

Midwest in major journals

This is the blog post where we pick up top genealogical journals, in which skilled genealogists scrupulously apply recondite methodologies to obscure records -- and ask only whether they discuss anyone from the Midwest.

Fortunately for this post, they do. (And all deal with people from the difficult pre-1850 period.) In the March 2011 National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Judy G. Russell's account of Josias Baker (1787-1870) includes his lengthy sojourn in Monroe County, Indiana, en route from North Carolina to Texas. Indiana's being a free state helped create one piece of evidence connecting Josias to his home, in that he chose to sell a slave in Burke County, North Carolina, in 1835, rather than in nearby Kentucky. And B. Darrell Jackson applies both DNA and documentary evidence to the ancestry of George Craig (1782/3-1868) of Howard County, Missouri.

In the April 2011 New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Perry Streeter concludes his article, "Streeter Immigrants of Greene and Steuben Counties," with a genealogical summary that documents Ann "Nancy" Streeter (1814-early 1860s), child of Thomas and Louisa, who was born in Steuben County, New York; married Michael Buchanan; and later lived in Tuscola, Saginaw, and Genesee counties, Michigan.

South Bend in NYGBR

In the January 2008 issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (contents not on line), Stefani Evans, CG, finds circumstantial evidence of the identity of Nathan MacCorkle's wife Catherine that might satisfy a hobbyist. She pursues the case to find an unusual piece of direct contemporary evidence confirming Catherine's Dodge parentage. Nathan and Catherine lived in New York and Pennsylvania; their youngest two children wound up in South Bend (St. Joseph County), Indiana -- Emma Elizabeth (MacCorkle) Housekeeper 1850-1918, and James Monroe MacCorkle 1853-1925.

The article doesn't carry them forward, so of course I had to go look. The 1900 census enumerated J. M. and Anna (____) "McCorkle" and six children in the city's First Ward, and "Nick" and Emma Housekeeper with one child present (out of a total of four) in the Second Ward. J.M. was a clerk, and Nick a blacksmith.