Methodology Monday with William Gray and an earthquake (NGSQ)

What's worse than a burned county? Would you believe an earthquake county? In the September 2013 National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Melinda Daffin Henningfield expertly traces a common-name ancestor, William Gray, who was briefly a judge in New Madrid County, Missouri Territory, just after the gigantic earthquakes of 1811-1812, during which the Mississippi River briefly ran backwards.

Those who have common-name brick walls, missing records, and tantalizing potential records scattered across several states can pick up ideas from Henningfield's account, even if their problem family has another name. They will also appreciate the variety of records she brings to the table.

Readers of Thomas W. Jones's Mastering Genealogical Proof will find here an example of one of the less common ways to structure a proof argument: the "building blocks" approach (p. 89). The author moves from one cluster of evidence to the next, but the clusters are organized more by relevance to the case than by chronology or other logic. Gray was in middle age at New Madrid; gradually his later Kentucky and earlier Virginia residences come to light, as do the family Bible. Census evidence, church records, handwriting samples, and onomastics (naming patterns) come late in the story. No piece of evidence names William's father, but the combined weight of the evidence from seven counties and four states is as hard to resist as -- an earthquake.





Melinda Daffin Henningfield, "A Family for William Gray of New Madrid County, Territory of Missouri," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 101 (September 2013): 207-28.

Photo credit: Richard Miller Devens, Our First Century (Springfield MA: C. A. Nichols, 1881), 220; digital image, Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=XJU_AAAAYAAJ : viewed 21 April 2014). Also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811%E2%80%9312_New_Madrid_earthquakes

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with William Gray and an earthquake (NGSQ)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Your ancestors felt the earth move if they were in the Midwest in 1812

The Missouri State Genealogical Association's blog reminds us of the New Madrid Earthquake -- actually four or five earthquakes -- of 1811-1812, and links to the US Geological Survey page on it (don't miss the pictures of visible damage 90+ years later).

USGS's take:

At the onset of the earthquake the ground rose and fell - bending the trees until their branches intertwined and opening deep cracks in the ground. Landslides swept down the steeper bluffs and hillslides; large areas of land were uplifted; and still larger areas sank and were covered with water that emerged through fissures or craterlets. Huge waves on the Mississippi River overwhelmed many boats and washed others high on the shore. High banks caved and collapsed into the river; sand bars and points of islands gave way; whole islands disappeared.

My take on it in the Chicago Reader when I had the chance to learn from the experts and read up on it:

Monday morning, December 16, 1811, on the Mississippi River in the village of Little Prairie, Missouri Territory. The ground rocked and rolled so hard it knocked people down. Sixteen-year-old Ben Chartier had been hanging around his family's cabin door, where his mother was having a smoke. "The sky turned green, and then it shook hard. My father and my cousins ran and turned the hogs out. The ground burst wide open and peach and apple trees were knocked down and then blowed up."...

Thursday afternoon, November 9, 1995, overlooking the Mississippi River from the William Campbell farm near Dyersburg, Tennessee. Over the years David Stewart has worked as a geologist, preacher, author, natural-childbirth activist, consultant, and entrepreneur. Most recently he's been in the business of reminding anyone who will listen that the big quake of 184 years ago will be back some day. And when it comes it could do more than just rattle your dishes off the shelf.

Campbell uses the seemingly solid sand-and-gravel hillside Stewart's standing on as a gravel pit. For Stewart it's a ready-made earthquake laboratory, where he can re-create Little Prairie's nightmare in miniature. He stamps his foot on the ground again and again. The ground begins to shake like jelly where he stamped. Water seeps up out of it, and his feet begin to sink. He stamps one last time, then jumps away a few feet. "Usually you get quicksand," he says. "But under the right saturation conditions you can even get quick gravel."