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.

April 2015 New York Genealogical and Biographical Record!

Some Empire State reasons why I don't blog here as often as in the past . . .


If you have New York interests, don't hesitate -- go out and buy the NYGBS's new research guide and gazetteer! I reviewed it in the April NYGBR.


Also in the April issue is the third installment of "A Missing Heir" involving the intertwined families of Lewis and Dorcas (Hoxie) Bassett and  John S. and Zerviah (Hawkins?) Porter. This installment follows descendants of

* Lucy (Bassett) Hoffman and husband Matthew, whose trails lead to Genesee County, New York;, Lake County, Illinois; Chicago; and St. Louis;

* Harriet (Bassett) Burdick and husband Rodman, who also went to Lake County and Chicago; and

* Nathan Lee Bassett and wife Adelia S. (Reed) Bassett, whose trails lead to Jefferson County, New York; Walworth County, Wisconsin; Freeborn County, Minnesota; Larimer County, Colorado; and Chippewa County, Wisconsin.

More descendants to come.


Meanwhile I have had the privilege of joining NYGBR's editorial board as well.

Isaac Humphrey and his descendants in The Genealogist

More than ten years ago I heard a cliche come to life. On my first genealogical road trip (to Licking County, Ohio) I overheard a library visitor ask a genealogy society volunteer where the book of her family was kept.

A week ago the cliche came to life again, but in a much better way. The new Fall 2014 issue of The Genealogist arrived in our mailbox, and it included the first installment of a full account of the ancestors and relatives of my mother-in-law's great-grandmother Sarah Mehitabel Humphrey Coleman Bliss, researched and chronicled by William T. Ruddock of Michigan.

TG is published twice a year by the honorary scholarly American Society of Genealogists. Among other things it specializes in family accounts that are too long for any other magazine to consider. The descendants of Isaac Humphrey (1748-1829) are numerous and obscure and include multiple generations of men named Isaac. They gave my daughter and me multiple migraines when we struggled with the family back when we had fewer internet resources and less expertise.

Isaac's daughter Sarah married John Russell (4 children) and stayed around Stephentown, Rensselaer County, New York (a crossroads village for several lines of ancestors). Daughter Asenath married William Dixon (6 children) and went west to Lorain County, Ohio. Son Lemuel married Sarah Allen (6 children) and went north to Warren County, New York. Some of Lemuel and Sarah's children went to Wisconsin.

The article covers female lines to the grandchildren and male lines to the great-grandchildren. If the numbers of descendants in this first installment are typical, it may be a year before I get to see the whole "book" of this family, but it will be worth the wait.




William T. Ruddock, "Isaac6 Humphrey of Stephentown, New York, and His Descendants" [part 1], The Genealogist 28 (Fall 2014): 202-222.

Harold Henderson, "Isaac Humphrey and his descendants in The Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

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.]

Glimpse of the past: at work 181 years ago

The seven commonest reported occupations in a New York City directory of July 1833:

No Business Named . . . 3326
Widow . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2963
Merchant . . . . . . . . . . .  2255
Grocer . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2106
Carter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1581
Carpenter . . . . . . . . . . . 1392
Shoemaker . . . . . . . . . .   999

At the other end, I spotted a total of only 350 clerks/accountants/bookkeepers/secretaries, nine "comedians," one "bone turner," and one "philosophical instru. maker."

Most of these people did not have "jobs" as we think of them today. They were in business for themselves.




Edwin Williams, "Classification of Citizens," in The New-York Annual Register for . . . 1834 (New York: author, 1834), 267-74, citing Longworth's July 1833 City Directory; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=IxcXAAAAYAAJ : viewed 1 April 2014).



Harold Henderson, "Glimpse of the past: at work 181 years ago," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 April 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.]

On-line newspapers by state

Digitized newspapers are everywhere, but so many different outfits -- both free and commercial -- are getting in on the act that it can be hard to keep with which ones are available where your ancestors lived. Kenneth R. Marks over at The Ancestor Hunt has a series of listings by state, including Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, as well as New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Maine. I haven't used them all . . . yet.


Harold Henderson, "On-line newspapers by state," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 March 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy problems can grow, shrink, or metastasize

Often genealogy problems grow. What I once described as a "small genealogy article" has now metamorphosed into a draft in three parts, each of which is (at the moment) well above the normal size.

Sometimes genealogy problems shrink. At one point I was trying to answer an identity question: whether same-name men in eastern New York, western New York, and central Illinois were the same or different. The problem seemed fiendishly difficult, but it turned out to be quite simple to solve (land and probate records were the keys, of course). "Problem shrinkage" can be a real problem for someone trying to locate suitable cases for a BCG portfolio: what looks difficult going in may turn out to be easy after all.

To some extent, problem-spotting is a skill in itself that develops over time, as we read more advanced articles, encounter more situations, and get to know the relevant record sets and ways to use them. But sometimes it's just a matter of luck.

There are also problems that grow laterally, also known as "rabbit holes." Usually they involve collaterals rather than ancestors. An upstate New York cousin of my wife's great-grandfather married into a wealthy Chicago clan (wealthy in the sense of paying lawyers tens of thousands of dollars in order to avoid spending too much money on lawsuits, a full century ago). Some of the ensuing probates and lawsuits name and locate many relatives and associates -- much as the will of a bachelor uncle or spinster aunt can do. So much data -- now I need to identify a question that it answers!



Harold Henderson, "Genealogy problems can grow, shrink, or metastasize," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Good news for New York researchers!

The Internet Scout Report tells about the New York State Library's new collection of "Selected Digital Historical Documents," that is, resources for finding historical materials about the Empire State, such as laws (including revised statutes of 1829 and 1882), and a list of bibliographies and indexes of state documents. Revolutionary and Civil War holdings are also available.

Don't miss the statistical summaries of the state censuses, which have what could be backhanded information about individuals (if you can identify them) as well as contextual information on what was happening in particular towns. The Town of Amity in Allegany County, for instance, had no lunatics, two idiots (both under 21), eleven sawmills, one distillery (producing $1100 worth of distilled product), and one ashery. I have mainly used these summaries to compare my research target's land and production with the town or county average.

Also don't miss the 1981 publication that gives a full listing of questions asked each year in both state and federal censuses.

The interface here is not ideal. The above-mentioned publication places original page 43 on digital page 49, for instance.


Harold Henderson, "Good news for New York researchers!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 November 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

I almost went to the library by accident: agriculture schedules

Trying to pinpoint a landless research target in the 1850 census between his landowning neighbors, I realized I needed to see if they were also neighbors in the agriculture schedule -- and made a note to check those records next time I visited a library that held them. Then I remembered which century it is, and typed "Ancestry nonpopulation schedules" into Google -- much easier than trying to locate them within Ancestry -- and discovered that their on-line holdings of these underused resources have grown.

Still nothing for Indiana or Wisconsin, but the 1850-1880 agriculture schedules for most counties in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, can be browsed (at the township level, which is pretty quick) or searched. A total of 21 states are listed, including also Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and New York.



Harold Henderson, "I almost went to the library by accident: agriculture schedules," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 September 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Sixteen lookups on the web site

It's a famous midsummer holiday, and what better to celebrate than free? Midwestroots.net now offers free lookups in 16 resources (actual indexes and finding aids in the next post).

 INDIANA
1830s La Porte County court records every-name index
1830-1855, 1886-1906 St. Joseph County marriage index
1910 DePauw University Alumnal Record
1971, 1986, 1987, 1990 La Porte directories
1975 Indiana Place Names
Pre-1979 Genealogy Articles in the Indiana Magazine of History
1986 Manuscript Collections in Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Library

ILLINOIS
1931 Chicago Tilden Tech yearbook
2009 Illinois Place Names

MICHIGAN
1986 Michigan Place Names

NEW YORK
1804-1823 Western New York Land Transactions

THE SOUTH
1949 Gulf Coast pilot's guide, Key West to Rio Grande
1949-1950 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary directories

METHODISTS
1834-1850 Obituary Abstracts from the Western Christian Advocate

FAMILIES
1870-1898 Flint-Thrall letters (southern Illinois)
1976 Thrall genealogy

Please do not abuse this offer. If you use any of these regularly and it is purchasable, support the author and publisher and buy your own.



Harold Henderson, "Sixteen lookups on the web site," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 July 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

NGS Day 3 Friday May 10

For logistical reasons only, Friday was my last real day at the conference. Please refer to other bloggers for Saturday!

My day began about 6 am in the nearly deserted free internet area (no problem with too many connections) and segued into the invitational FamilySearch breakfast (assigned tables and assigned places at each), where we learned that they add about 1.7 million new records per day, are desperately in search of Italian-speaking volunteer indexers, and are exploring ways to adapt facial-recognition software to word recognition as a way of indexing handwritten documents.

Dawne Slater-Putt's 8 am talk, "Fail! When the Record Is Wrong," was a boon to note-takers in that she spoke clearly and not too fast. Her bouquet of original records giving direct but erroneous evidence was striking. Takeaway: "Know your ancestor as a person so as not to be blinded by incorrect evidence."

I spent the rest of the morning in a New York intensive. NYGBR co-editor Karen Mauer Green emphasized the difficulties researchers from record-rich areas like New England and the Midwest will find in New York, where some record types are missing, and each of the 62 counties was to some extent a law unto itself. "Clerks essentially did what they want . . . plan to start over with each new county." A substantial aid in this process, the New York Family History Research Guide and Gazetteer, is forthcoming later this year.

NYGBR co-editor Laura DeGrazia gave a more upbeat perspective on the same situation, showing some of the records finds there to be made, such as town clerks' Civil War registers that can include time and place of birth and parents' names. I concluded that New York is the mother of innovative research techniques. And I have to say that if you must leave home for days to hang out in a desert filled with casinos in order to learn about genealogy, there is just no better place to be than in the front row of the hall, hearing DeGrazia and trading thoughts and wisecracks with Kimberly Powell and Michael Hait.

Melinda Henningfield and I chatted with visitors to the APG table in the exhibit area during the lunch hour, and then I retreated to become ready for my 4 pm talk on a Chicago-to-Ohio case study. The evening saw a meeting of mentors in preparation for the early June debut of small discussion groups on Tom Jones's popular new book Mastering Genealogical Proof, being organized by Angela McGhie.

And I know just from syllabus browsing that I had to miss great talks by Debbie Parker Wayne on DNA and Elizabeth Shown Mills on discoveries in the details.

It's now five years since my first NGS conference and I haven't even come close to regretting attending one yet. Don't miss it when it comes within your travel area.



Harold Henderson, "NGS Day 3 Friday May 10," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Missing in Action But Present in His Descendants: William B. Parks (1814-1862) of Waushara County, Wisconsin

Newly published in the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society Newsletter is my article documenting the children and grandchildren of William B. Parks (~1814-1862). Parks was born in New York state, a grandson of Revolutionary War veteran William Berry and Ruth (____) Berry, son of Isaac Parks and Elizabeth (Berry) Parks, husband of Mary (Mead) Parks, father of seven children, and grandfather of 30 grandchildren born between 1867 and 1895.

I foolishly expected that this article would be a quick brief followup to my article on grandfather William Berry, but it was not to be. Even though William B. Parks and his second wife Mary both died relatively young, their children were survivors, and prolific ones at that. Chasing them all down required two trips to Wisconsin. In itself that's never a problem -- it's a great state to research in, and you should so instruct your ancestors.

And then it turned out that there was a Civil War pension file, and that three of William B.'s sons-in-law had pension files as well. Best of all from a genealogical point of view, there was a dispute over whether one son-in-law had officially divorced his first wife, creating lots of trouble for his widow but also creating fascinating affidavits reflecting the way people talked and did things in post-Civil-War rural Wisconsin.

These documents also turned up three not yet fully plumbed mysteries, all involving relatives not lineally descended from William B. -- a potential stepdaughter, a stepgrandchild with an unknown father, and a much-married daughter-in-law who was also part of the larger clan who made the move from western New York to central Wisconsin. Throughout the generations, these folks were more or less "fellow travelers" of the Seventh Day Baptists, so I am way overdue to pay another visit to that denomination's historical society research room in Janesville. It is truly said that research is never done.

Readers of the reference notes will observe that I did my best to follow the advice of Tom Jones to get your people's surnames in the titles of your articles, so that they will be indexed in the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center's Periodical Source Index. William Berry was my wife's 5G grandfather, and William B. Parks was the first cousin of her 3G grandmother Jerusha (Berry) (Humphrey) Coleman.

The Wisconsin quarterly newsletter is on line but is a member benefit. If you have the right sort of ancestors, I think you'll find it well worth while to join the Wisconsin state society. The current issue also has an article I'm looking forward to reading on the much-neglected agriculture schedules of the US census.




Harold Henderson, "Missing in Action but Present in His Descendants: Civil War Soldier William B. Parks of Waushara County, Wisconsin, and Allied Families Berry, Mead, Bliven, Monroe, Gethers, Haskins, Pells, Dubois, and Morgan," Wisconsin State Genealogical Society Newsletter vol. 59, no. 2 (April 2013):31-44.

Harold Henderson, “William Berry (1753-1839) and His Children and Grandchildren in Massachusetts and New York,” parts 1 and 2, 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, "Missing in Action But Present in His Descendants...," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 15 March 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

1855 New York State Census on Family Search!

FamilySearch has just posted the wonderful 1855 New York State Census with 84,000+ images from 46 of 62 counties, and it's searchable!

SLIG 2014!

Those who attended the concluding banquet of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy last Friday received the flyer announcing the twelve courses that will be available 13-17 January 2014, a short walk from the Family History Library.

Five of the twelve were offered in 2013:

Paula Stuart Warren, "American Research and Records"

John Phillip Colletta, "Writing a Quality Family Narrative"

Thomas W. Jones, "Advanced Genealogical Methods"

Angela McGhie and Kimberly Powell, "Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum" [hardest course ever ;-]

Judith Hansen, "Problem Solving"

Seven are new additions for 2014:

J. Mark Lowe, "Research in the South"

Karen Mauer Green, "New York Research"

Carolyn Barkley, "Scottish Research"

Richard G. Sayre and Pamela Boyer Sayre, "Advanced Research Tools: Land Records"

Maureen Taylor, "Comprehensive Photo Detecting"

Kory Meyerink, "Researching in Eastern Europe"

Apryl Cox and Elissa Scalise Powell, "Credentialing: Accreditation,Certification, or Both?"


Early-bird registration ends 31 October 2013. I'm not saying which one(s) I want to take. But if you can't find a topic essential to your genealogy on this list, you might be reading the wrong blog!

#






Harold Henderson, "SLIG 2014!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

William Berry and His Progeny: Property + Probate = Results

William Berry was born in Rhode Island in 1753, was bound out at a young age, served in the Revolutionary War from New York, was captured on his fourth hitch, and survived 3 1/2 years' captivity on Prisoner Island in the St. Lawrence River. His 17 October 1839 will in Allegany County, New York, named seven children (two already deceased) and a few grandchildren.

William bequeathed mostly land, and specified how his children should dispose of each parcel. In part because of that provision, children and grandchildren made numerous deeds following his death. By correlating these with probate and other records I was able to identify more than 30 grandchildren, born between 1802 and 1833. Those so far identified and traced lived in New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Nebraska.

The two-part article appears in American Ancestors Journal 2011 and 2012, an annual supplement to the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. NEHGS members can read the articles and documentation on line.

Surnames in the children's generation: Berry, Palmer, Greenfield, Hungerford, Potter, Parks.

Additional surnames in the grandchildren's generation: Sheldon, Hornecker, Clark, McNaught, Goodrich, Green, Daboll, Saunders, Sprague, Hackett, Humphrey, Coleman, Bliss, Walrath, Weaver, Burdick, Wheeler, Swartwout, Morgan, Lauther, Sumner, Trask, Mead, Bliven, and Monroe.

William was my late mother-in-law's great-grandmother's great-grandfather. Several mysteries remain, and I hope to have a continuation article written next year on just one of William's grandchildren, a Civil War veteran with more than two dozen grandchildren himself.




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, "William Berry and His Progeny: Property + Probate = Results," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 December 2012 (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.]

How Harry Porter's first deed was recorded in a county he had nothing to do with: Beware peripheral vision!

Last week I spent some time focusing on Harry Porter, the husband of my mother-in-law's great-grand aunt Elizabeth Bassett. Back in 2009 he had only been in my genealogical "peripheral vision." In other words, my interest in him had extended only to his relationship to another (non-problematic) relative. He wasn't crucial to that project, but I was just interested enough at the time to jot down the book and page numbers for his property transactions, as recorded in Orleans and Monroe Counties, New York.

Now that I'm focusing on him, I went back and copied and read the deeds themselves. What a revelation! I had always wondered what he'd been doing in Orleans County in 1825 when he never showed up there again.

Well, he was never there. That deed was made in 1819, when Harry bought 1.5 acres in the Town of Murray in Genesee County. Later that year, the Town of Clarkson was split off from the Town of Murray. In 1821, the Town of Clarkson and more was taken from Genesee County and went into the making of Monroe County. In 1824, Orleans County was split off from Genesee County, taking with it the smaller Town of Murray. Harry and his family lived for the next 15-20 years in Clarkson, where he'd made his first land purchase and where all his later land dealings took place as far as I know.

(If you're getting dizzy, take the map cure. For the county part of these boundary changes, check out the maps at the on-line Atlas of Historical County Boundaries from Chicago's Newberry Library.)

In 1854, some diligent person from Orleans County went down to Batavia (the Genesee County seat) and laboriously copied out by hand every pre-1824 deed recorded in the area that later became Orleans County -- or what he thought was the area. The Town of Murray was in Orleans County in 1854, of course, but not the part of it that became Clarkson. So Harry's 1819 deed was erroneously re-recorded in Orleans County after the fact, in Deed Book A.

Fortunately, the book was labeled properly and the recopied deed included mention of the book and page in Genesee County records. Even more fortunately, when I in turn went to Batavia, I was pleased to find that the original 1819 recording of the deed was far more legible than the 1854 copy!

The rewards of going to the original just keep coming.


Harold Henderson, "How Harry Porter's first deed was recorded in a county he had nothing to do with: Beware peripheral vision!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Timothy Bush (1735?-1815?) and Descendants in The Genealogist

Michael Thomas Meggison and R. Andrew Pierce have given the fullest account yet of the prolific family that gave rise to the two US Presidents Bush, in a 73-page article spread across the three most recent issues of The Genealogist. Unpublished work by Elaine Bush Prince helped frame their account. Previous published works focused on the male line of Presidential descent only.

This is the kind of article (or book) that we all more or less dream of writing for our families; sadly, for many of us it remains a dream. Seeing a living, breathing, lengthy example like this may provide the inspiration we need.

The authors begin by discussing the intricate and still unresolved question of Timothy Bush's parentage, where the minimal direct evidence is ambiguous and not enough indirect evidence is yet available to reach a conclusion. Note to interested researchers: "A thorough search of Windham County court records before 1754, including files, might turn up further evidence of him." In his documented later life Timothy lived in Connecticut, Vermont, and western New York.

For Timothy and his wife Deborah House, the article documents ten children, 36 grandchildren, and 122 great-grandchildren. (Female lines are not followed as far as male lines.) Eight of their children married: to Nathaniel Willis Seaver and Abner Chamberlain; Abigail Marvin; Hannah (nee Porter) Preston; Lydia Newcomb; Maria Chamberlain; Cyrus Hamilton; Amy Yeomans; and Lavinia Barnes. Descendants lived in New Hampshire; Maine; Massachusetts; Kansas; New York City; Cleveland; Cincinnati; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Kansas; California (beginning with the Gold Rush); and several counties in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. Various descendants served in the Revolution, War of 1812, and Civil War.

Stories are plentiful. Grandson Rev. George Bush had a stormy tenure in an Indianapolis Presbyterian pulpit in the 1820s. Grandson Obadiah Newcomb Bush died aboard ship en route between Acapulco and Panama in 1851. Great-grandson John E. Roberts died of wounds incurred at the Battle of Gettysburg. An interesting indirect-evidence argument as to the parentage of Lydia Bliss, wife of grandson Timothy Bush, is condensed into a footnote.

There's plenty to learn here even if your family tree has sprouted no Bushes.



Michael Thomas Meggison and R. Andrew Pierce, "Some Descendants of Timothy Bush of Connecticut, Vermont, and Western New York," The Genealogist 25 (Spring 2011): 35-55 and (Fall 2011): 233-56, and 26 (Spring 2012): 102-32.

Harold Henderson, "Timothy Bush (1735?-1815?) and Descendants in The Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]