Joel Thrall is back . . .

. . . in the fall issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for the second and concluding installment, now visible to NEHGS members on line at American Ancestors and to patrons of good genealogy libraries.

His unlikely trajectory -- from pioneer/fugitive from justice to farmer to teacher to doctor to an early death in 1827 -- is not quite complete yet. His great-grandchildren scattered across the continent, but they had to be cut from the journal for space reasons. They will appear, most likely on line, in good time -- as will Joel's dozens of nieces and nephews. He was the oldest of ten children, all of whom have multiple descendants.


" 'Faultless Could I Love Him Less?' Joel S. Thrall and His Descendants in Vermont, Quebec, Ohio, and Texas," parts 1 and 2, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 172, Summer 2018:248-56, Fall 2018:341-52.

Analyze or Else! guest post on BCG blog Springboard

Earlier this week I had a guest blog post on analysis on BCG's blog Springboard. Unusually, this is a blog that is edited, so hopefully this post will stand the test of time better than some others. And, yes, the editors helped make it better.

Good news for pre-1850 US "Dark Age" ancestors

My great-great-great grandfather Eliphas Thrall (1767-1834) did not serve in the American Revolution. But when I searched for his name in quotation marks in the "Revolutionary War Pensions" section of Fold3, I got two hits. His name and signature appear in the handwritten pension files of Daniel Baker and Jesse Thrall as a corroborating witness or neighbor in the place from which they applied for their pensions. Fold3 has the files indexed that deeply. (Exactly how thoroughly overall I don't know, but some of you may.)

For anyone suffering with Dark Age ancestors in the US, this kind of searching can be a godsend. It basically uses the pension files to garner information on people who are present in incidental or supporting roles -- and of course it connects them to friends, family, associates, and neighbors, all of whom may yield additional records. It will be more helpful if you can either (a) arrange to have research targets with unusual names or (b) manage to narrow down the search for a common-name geographically or otherwise.

I have a bunch of names to run through this mill in my "spare" time. I'm looking forward to having Civil War pension files and local probate files indexed on line in this fantastically productive way in the future.

BTW, this kind of all-purpose indexing is not a new idea. Some folks had it back before 1980 and created 23 volumes of books indexing these pension files in this way until 2006 (up into the "H" surnames, and using the abridged set of pension files, NARA M805), under the cumbersome title Revolutionary War period : Bible, family & marriage records gleaned from pension applications. 




Harold Henderson, "Good news for those pre-1850 US 'Dark Age' ancestors," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 December 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.] 

Cynthia Inez Thrall Klein from Illinois to Texas

The Utah Genealogical Association quarterly Crossroads has just published my account of my grandfather's second cousin Cynthia Inez (Thrall) Klein. The story spans three states so it is a good fit for Crossroads, which is aiming for a more national audience and recently began paying for articles. (Those with multi-state articles take note!) I like the layout and the professionalism of the staff.

The magazine is a benefit of UGA membership; since they also offer a member discount for their week-long Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in January, it's an investment worth considering.

A few other branches of this mostly New-England-to-the-Midwest Thrall family went to Texas. Someday I hope to get to them. For that matter, I know there is more information on Cynthia and her family in Wharton County, Texas, where they settled.

For those interested in procedure, this article is based on roughly the last third of my Kinship Determination Project submitted to BCG last year. Don't forget to publish those puppies once the judges have had their say!




Harold Henderson, "Cynthia Inez Thrall Klein (1867-1932): An Enterprising Illinois Woman in Texas, with Allied Families Reavis and Whyde," Crossroads 8, no. 2 (Spring 2013), 6-17.



Harold Henderson, "Cynthia Inez Thrall Klein from Illinois to Texas," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.] 

Caroline (Thrall) Cooper 1804-1826

In the fall of 2011 I made what seemed like an epic journey to Mt. Carmel, Wabash County, Illinois, to walk and read the Sand Hill #2 cemetery where some of my maternal grandfather's relatives are buried. (This is the cemetery where I was accosted by a policeman, but that is another story.)

Among other things I found the graves of Caroline (Thrall) Cooper (1804-1826) and her brother Aaron (1807-1847), two of my great-great grandfather's siblings. Caroline's stone is well preserved although flat on the ground. According to it, she died just short of age 22. According to other accounts, she and husband Samuel C. Cooper left Ohio in 1824 or 1825 and went down the Ohio and up the Wabash to frontier Illinois, where her husband was involved in a foundry. There she died in childbirth, leaving four children including the baby, all of whom went on to have long interesting lives and many descendants. (Samuel became a Methodist circuit rider in Indiana and had a second family.) I took a picture of the stone.

Because she was a woman and died young, Caroline left few records and has always been a mystery. We can try to guess a few things about her from her children William, Sarah Ann, Samuel, and Stephen. It hadn't occurred to me to do any guessing based on this stone. Last week I was reviewing it for a talk and reread the inscription:

My flesh shall slumber in the ground
Till the last joyfull trump shall sound
Then burst the bands with sweet surprise
And in my saviours image rise

Now I have a high opinion of these relatives, but I didn't think her widower wrote this. Sure enough, it is from Isaac Watts and if you google the first line in quotes, the top hit should be its page at hymnary.org, where there's a short biographical sketch of Watts and two page scans of what appear to be two different tunes, or at least two different arrangements, for this hymn. It does not seem to have appeared in hymnals after 1850.

All these tunes have names, which is so cute. One is called "Felicity." The other, which rather made my hair stand on end, is called "Illinois."

Can you see a drafty cabin in the woods? A wet, clammy day in late fall? A dozen or so people inside singing this in parts, as best they can without accompaniment? Would Samuel have put it on her gravestone if it hadn't been one of her favorites?

Harold Henderson, "Caroline (Thrall ) Cooper 1804-1826," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Probate: Open Your Present!

Archives.com has just published an article in which I ask why genealogists look only for wills when the best stuff is often deeper inside the courthouse . . . and explain why we should: "Probate Records: A Gift Many Genealogists Fail to Open," featuring loose papers, with the Thrall, Webster, and Ambrose families in supporting roles.


Harold Henderson, "Probate: Open Your Present," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Comparisons: One Way to Add Flesh to the Bones

What does it really mean to "put your ancestors in historical context"? Especially when you have no letters or first-person accounts of them at all?

One approach for 19th-century folks involves that most commonplace of genealogy sources, the census. Use it differently. Compare your people with the neighbors (cross-sectional analysis) and compare them with themselves over time (longitudinal analysis). Sure, we'd all love to have a diary or a set of revealing letters. But lacking that, go for the numbers.

In 1850, 1860, and 1870 census enumerators were supposed to write down the value of any real estate owned (plus figures for personal property in 1860 and 1870). In those years, my great-great grandfather's widowed sister-in-law, Cynthia Balentine Thrall, lived in Wabash County, Illinois. Her husband Aaron had died before 1850, so the family was already a bit shadowy. The census population schedules reported that her real estate was worth $2,000 in 1850 and $10,000 in 1860. The 1855 state census showed her livestock worth  $450, and the 1865 state census showed her farm produce all together was worth $2350.

Of course you can convert these numbers into 2012 dollars, but that process is fraught with measurement problems and uncertainty. The census process itself is fraught with uncertainty (we don't know who provided the numbers, and from other research it's not at all clear to me that she owned five times as much in 1860 as in 1850), so I'm not crazy about a longitudinal comparison here either. Tax records would be a good corrective but this is a burned and tornadoed county.

My preferred way to make some human sense of these figures is to set them against those of her near neighbors in each census year: the adjacent five pages on both sides in 1850 and 1860, and the adjacent one page on both sides in 1855 and 1865 (which had only one line per household). These relative cross-sectional rankings were a bit more consistent than the raw numbers:

In 1850 five of her 70 near census neighbors had more real estate than her $2000, placing her (conservatively) in the top 10 percent.

In 1855, thirteen of her 86 near census neighbors had more livestock than her $450, placing her in the two 20 percent.

In 1860, only one of her 82 near census neighbors had property worth more than $10,000, placing her in the top 3 percent.

In 1865, five of her 117 near census neighbors had farm products worth more than her $2350, placing her in the top 6 percent.

These figures should not be taken as precise. I rounded the percentages up to give a more moderate result and to allow for poor-quality information and the randomness of which neighbors were visited. But it's clear that her family was better off than most of their neighbors -- maybe in the top 6-10 percent if we discard the outliers.

There are at least two ways to take this further: the agricultural schedules and overall county averages (perhaps a fairer comparison than immediate neighbors). As luck would have it, in 1860 she did appear in the agriculture schedule, and that was the year for which a diligent census-bureau employee compiled elaborate county-level statistics, obviously by hand (the book was several years in the making). So I was able to learn that the agriculture schedule had a much lower value for her farm in 1860 than the population schedule had.

The agriculture schedule shows that she had 120 acres of improved land; the median sized farm in the county (probably including unimproved land) was a little over 50 acres. In the preceding year her farm had produced 2000 bushels of Indian corn, more than triple the county average (mean). The household's production of butter and hay and buckwheat was also well above average. In terms of basic farm power, Cynthia had five horses (county average 3.5) and $200 worth of farm implements and machinery (county average $101). Some of these numbers can be qualified because she had significantly more land than average to work with. On yield-per-acre basis, for instance, her corn production was likely not so far above the average as the raw number of bushels would suggest.

These figures are reflected elsewhere in their lives. Her son and daughter who lived to have offspring both married into families who were better-off than the Wabash County average (although I haven't finished quantifying that casual observation yet!).

For this particular process, it helps if your folks didn't move around too much, and it helps to be comfortable with numbers and the difference between mean and median when working with "averages." This is just one approach among many possibilities.



Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Agriculture of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864), pp. 34-37, line 93 (Wabash County totals), and p. 197, line 93. Also available on GoogleBooks.

1860 US Census, Wabash County, Illinois, agriculture schedule, no subdivision named, p. 25, line 26, Cynthia Thrall;
NARA microfilm publication T1133, “Illinois Nonpopulation Census 1850-1880,” “1860 Agr.: Vermillion [sic] pt.)-
Woodford.”

1850 US Census, Wabash County, Illinois, population schedule, no subdivision named, pp. 404-9 (stamped), pp. 805-15
(penned), families 185-254; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 October 2011), citing
NARA microfilm publication M432, roll 130.

1855 Illinois State Census, Wabash County, pp. 15-17, “Township 1”; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.
ancestry.com : accessed 3 November 2011), citing Record Series 103.008, roll 2196; Illinois State Archives, Springfield.

1860 US Census, Wabash County, Illinois, population schedule, Bonpas Precinct, pp. 143-53, families 1015-96; digital
images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 October 2011), citing NARA microfilm publication M653,
roll 234.

1865 Illinois State Census, Wabash County, pp. 11-13; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www. ancestry.com :
accessed 3 November 2011), citing microfilm of Record Series 103.010, roll 2185, Illinois State Archives, Springfield.



Harold Henderson, "Comparisons: One Way to Add Flesh to the Bones," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Weekend wonderings: Is genealogy patriotic?

I see some tension between genealogy and patriotism, since genealogy is mainly about families.
And of course relatives have a way of crossing national lines and taking up arms with Tecumseh or Loyalists or Confederates or Viet Cong.


To the extent that genealogy is about the nation(s) ancestors lived in and fought for, no nation that I am aware of deserves uncritical admiration. Understanding and analysis and respect, yes. But not the kind of patriotism that led the DAR to blackball Jane Addams in the 1920s -- more like the kind that now includes her in their on-line hall of fame of "Dazzling Daughters."

The issue is difficult because genealogy also has roots in the desire to idolize our forebears and make their stories pretty prologues leading to the wonderful climax which is us. My great-great-grandfather's first cousin, Walter Thrall -- an Ohio probate judge and early genealogist -- seems to have taken this view. He wrote, “We should cherish with grateful recollection the memory of parents, and follow their good advice and example, forgetting their foibles and errors [emphasis added]” -- a viewpoint that does not sit well with the objectivity demanded by today's Genealogical Proof Standard. 

Obviously this is a personal question to which everyone may have a different answer. What's yours?

James Weber Linn, Jane Addams: A Biography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 214; searchable on Google Books.


Walter Thrall, ed. Edward G. Randall, Genealogy of the Thrall Family, also of the Rose Family, to the Year 1862 (Poultney, VT: Randall Brothers, 1890), 4; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 July 2012).

Harold Henderson, "Weekend Wonderings: Is Genealogy Patriotic?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

New on Midwest Roots

I've added nine more free lookups at Midwest Roots for a total of sixteen.

LA PORTE COUNTY

* La Porte, Indiana, city directories for 1971, 1984, 1987.

* Index to the Justice of the Peace records for New Durham Township, La Porte County, Indiana,1879-1906. (Surnames listed on web site.)

* Harold Henderson, comp., In Court In La Porte: An Every-Name Index to the First Legal Proceedings in La Porte County, Indiana [prior to 1836] (La Porte: Blurb.com, 2011).

INDIANA

* DAR-transcribed St. Joseph County, Indiana, marriage records 1830-1855, 1886-1906 (not the originals).

* Eric Pumroy with Paul Brockman, A Guide to Manuscript Collections of the Indiana Historical Society and Indiana State Library (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1986).

* Charles Alexander Martin, ed., Alumnal Record DePauw University (Greencastle IN: DePauw, 1910).

* Dorothy L. Riker, comp., Genealogical Sources Reprinted from the Genealogy Section of Indiana Magazine of History (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1979).

* Ronald L. Baker and Marvin Carmony, Indiana Place Names (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975)

ILLINOIS

* Almost 100 Flint-Thrall family letters 1870-1898, mostly from, to, and about southern Illinois.

* 1931 yearbook of Tilden Technical High School, Chicago.

* Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009).

MICHIGAN

* Walter Romig, Michigan Place Names (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988).

BEYOND

* Margaret R. Waters, Dorothy Ruiker, and Doris Leistner, Abstracts of Obituaries in the Western Christian Advocate 1834-1850 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1988).

* Karen Livsey, Western New York Land Transactions, 1804-1824, Extracted from the Archives of the Holland Land Company (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1991).


Harold Henderson, "New on Midwest Roots," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 27 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Hoosier Zion

I've been reading L. C. Rudolph's 1963 book, Hoosier Zion: The Presbyterians in Early Indiana (full text available at Internet Archive, archive.com, if that works better for you than a physical copy).

It's not just about religion and not just about Indiana. Rudolph is writing from a particular angle about the culture clash that created the Midwest among other places -- between Yankees and Southerners. (Of course both terms have to be broadly defined, since Scotch-Irish folks might appear on either side.) The author has enough distance to tell the story from both sides, and a narrow enough focus to keep it close to the ground. Indiana was the most difficult non-slave state for the Presbyterian missionaries, so in some ways it makes the best story. It's worthwhile just to remember that there was a time, around 200 years ago or a little less, when Americans were very concerned about what sort of society was going to emerge in the "West" and that would presumably dominate the country.

"Exotic" is the literal word for Presbyterian ministers in early Indiana. It was not that they had lost out; they had never really been there at all. Now they came late and mostly from the East, entering as Yankees into the hog and hominy belt. If the Appalachian settlers were culturally limited, it led them not so much to regret their limitation as to demand that their churches conform to it. These frontiersmen had no basic aversion to doctrine, but it had to appeal to their ego and be presented movingly "in a storm." (p. 49)

(These stories are of genealogical interest to me because my maternal grandfather's Thrall and allied families were from New England by way of Ohio, who settled largely in southern Illinois in the early 1800s. Although Methodist rather than Presbyterian, they had one foot on each side of the divide.)

Later on, the book focuses more particularly on Presbyterians, their doctrine, and their role in promoting education in a state that was not very friendly to the idea at first.

Rudolph also helped abstract and index the American Home Missionary Society letters from Indiana, Indiana Letters: Abstracts of Letters from Missionaries on the Indiana Frontier to the American Home Missionary Society, 1824-1893, some of the original sources on which the book is based. So it is possible to locate and read the original (microfilmed) letters by name and/or by place. And, yes, the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center does have the entire 385-roll collection for all the states. Has anyone indexed the letters from Illinois? or Michigan?



L. C. Rudolph, Hoosier Zion: The Presbyterians in Early Indiana (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963).

L. C. Rudolph et al., Indiana Letters: Abstracts of Letters from Missionaries on the Indiana Frontier to the American Home Missionary Society, 1824-1893, 3 vols. (Ann Arbor MI: University Microfilms, 1979).


Harold Henderson, "Hoosier Zion," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

St. Clair County, Illinois -- where you hope your ancestors lived

One of the most active local societies in Illinois, with a sizeable web presence, is in the southwest, right across the river from St. Louis: St. Clair County. I'm a member, so don't take my word for it -- check out their stuff.

They've just announced a new free newspaper database: "Vital Statistics Extracted from the Belleville (Ill.) Daily Advocate, 1927-1954," the gift of Nancy Giles. For those of us who have ancestors after the 1930 census (!) and who are twentieth-century impaired, this is a wonderful thing. My own Flint and Thrall lines converged in St. Clair, so it's already done my database some good and I look forward to zeroing in on the original articles the next time I'm over that way.