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

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

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

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

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

Genealogy experiments with indirect evidence

That's the title of my article just published in the September issue of On Board, the newsletter of the Board for Certification of Genealogists. It's about how indirect evidence worked in my earlier article about the family of Indiana natives John H. and his wife Elizabeth (Smith) Smith, who ended up in Bonner Springs, Kansas.

On Board appears three times a year and anyone with $15 to spare can subscribe here. Or you can read selected article from past issues for free on the BCG's website here. The NGS Quarterly is a benefit of membership in the National Genealogical Society.




“Genealogy Experiments: Indirect Evidence Up Close,” On Board vol. 21, issue 3 (September 2015): 21-22.

“Crossing the Continent with Common Names: Indiana Natives John and Elizabeth (Smith) Smith,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 103 (March 2015): 29-35.

Fall 2015 talks

In between the sloth of summer and the hibernation of winter are the seasons where it's actually fun to get things done. This fall I have five speaking engagements coming up.

Tuesday evening September 8, La Porte County Genealogical Society, La Porte, Indiana:
"Probate Will Not Be the Death of You" (digest version).

Saturday September 19, Willard Library, Evansville, Indiana:
"Why We Don't Write and How We Can"
"Indirect Evidence: When Perry Mason Isn't on Your Side"
"Probate Will Not Be the Death of You"
" 'Are We There Yet?' Proof and the Genealogy Police," a case study

Saturday October 17, Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society, Valparaiso, Indiana:
"Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without"

Tuesday evening October 20, Marshall County Genealogical Society, Plymouth, Indiana:
"Ten Commandments for Being a Good Genealogy Client"

Tuesday evening November 17, Board for Certification of Genealogists public online webinar:
"Do You Have the Reflexes You Need to Become Certified? Fifteen Things Your Grandfather Would Tell You . . . If I Were Your Grandfather"

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two talks at the Michiana Genealogy Fair March 21

I'll be speaking Saturday, March 21, at the 17th annual Michiana Genealogy Fair, sponsored by the South Bend Area Genealogical Society, and held at the Mishawaka Penn Harris Public Library.

10:30 am -- "Welcome to the Other Midwestern Archives," a fun travelogue of lesser-known research sites in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

1:30 pm -- "Indirect Evidence: What to Do When Perry Mason Is Not on Your Side." Many genealogists build their own brick walls by looking only for direct evidence. Nine examples of how to have more fun and better results.

Methodology Monday with a golden oldie in Kentucky (NGSQ)

It just takes a while for people to "get" indirect evidence. I read and annotated and discussed "The Parents of Joseph Rhodes of Graves County, Kentucky" in the March 2009 NGS Quarterly five years ago. Most of my notes have to do with picking at the details, and I may have been looking for a full account of the family rather than a proof.

When I read it now I'm trying to figure out the logical skeleton of that proof. Tom Jones identifies four common logical skeletons in Mastering Genealogical Proof: single hypothesis, multiple hypotheses, building blocks, and "syllogisms" (AKA if-then statements). Basically the article follows the subject, Joseph Rhodes, forward from his first known record appearance in 1831. Then it follows an older 1831 neighbor, Benjamin Rhodes, forward from his revolutionary war service. There's direct evidence here involving his Benjamin's Edens in-laws, but in the end the author has sifted out eight shiny nuggets of indirect evidence that Benjamin was Joseph's father.

Each individual piece could be explained away; to explain away all eight would be a heroic task. Still, I know good genealogists who don't quite seem to believe in indirect evidence. It just seems fragile somehow -- although it would be much harder to forge, especially given the diversity of records involved in this case.

Reading the article now, I can't help but think the author had a hypothesis in mind for Benjamin as soon as it appeared he was nearby and the right age to be Joseph's father. But the article is presented  more in a building-blocks format, in which first Joseph's and then Benjamin's life stories are surveyed for evidence pro or con. The way the building blocks are constructed -- mostly following the two lives in chronological order -- may make it easier to grasp than other articles with the same skeleton.



Sarah R. Fleming, "Indirect Evidence for the Parents of Joseph Rhodes of Graves County, Kentucky," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 97 (March 2009): 5-15.

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with a golden oldie in Kentucky (NGSQ)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 May 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Rebuilding the Jaynes family with no direct evidence

Those hoping to qualify for Certified Genealogist status from the Board for the Certification of Genealogists can submit a proof argument that involves conflicting evidence, OR a proof argument that involves only indirect evidence. If you're contemplating the latter route, Mara Fein's article in the March 2013 National Genealogical Society Quarterly provides a nifty example. The keystone is an 1851 Washington County, Ohio, deed -- but in order to make the case Fein had to amass many hints in a variety of records (never an explicit statement) that the five grantors and the grantee were siblings, children of Henry and Catherine Jaynes. (One piece of evidence: the grantee paid $1 for the land.)

As someone who went through the portfolio process twice, I'm not fond of this particular route to certification, because it puts the applicant in a Catch-22: if she should find that the family can be proved with direct evidence, then she's back to square one. For an article, however, that drawback does not apply. Fein's article is also noteworthy in that there are almost no pieces of contrary evidence.

To put it another way, this article is almost the perfect opposite to the idea most of us brought to genealogy as beginners -- that the only way to prove a relationship is to find a records that SAYS what the relationship was. Fein made her case without any such records.

Midwestern researchers will note that the case spreads from Wood County, (West) Virginia, to Washington County, Ohio (right across the Ohio River); Jefferson, Daviess, and Knox counties, Indiana; and Linn County, Missouri. These counties trace what sure looks like a river-based migration path, but it's the aggregate power and logic of painstakingly gathered indirect evidence that carries all before it in this article.




Mara Fein, "Who Was the Father of Henry Norton Jaynes of Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Virginia?," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 101 (March 2013): 35-47.


Harold Henderson, "Rebuilding the Jaynes family with no direct evidence," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Finding parents and grandparents despite multiple missing records

The landscape of eighteenth-century Maryland is littered with tax, property, probate, and vital records that aren't there. Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean. My friend and colleague Michael Hait has taken these genealogical lemons and made them into an astonishing amount of lemonade in a sixteen-page tour de force in the current National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

He starts with three records for Thomas Burgan, born in the 1740s. From there he distinguishes two men from two different localities, and goes on to identify both parents and all four grandparents for the man associated with "Dear Bit" and "Black River Hundred," even though direct evidence is sparse and the indirect evidence is constantly interrupted by the static of missing deeds, missing probates, missing tax records, and mislabeled records.

The basic principles are not complicated -- most notably, follow the land even when inadequately described -- but in this records environment the application of them is intricate. Separate arrays of indirect evidence support this Thomas's descent from Philip the father, Rebecca Green the mother, and them as a couple.

William Litchman recommends reading studies of this kind four times for best understanding. Anyone who claims to understand this article after only one or two readings is either a liar or a prodigy.




Michael Hait, "Parents for Thomas Burgan of Baltimore County, Maryland," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 101 (March 2013): 19-33.


Harold Henderson, "Finding parents and grandparents despite multiple missing records," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 May 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Three Brothers Northamer: More NGSQ Genealogy Olympics

No vital records, no church records, no helpful probates or deeds, no useful pension records, no useful guardianships -- how is a Pennsylvania genealogist to identify which of three brothers fathered Jacob Northamer and William Northamer in the late 1700s? Not from family speculations, as it turned out.

Northamer descendants Catherine Becker Wiest Desmarais, CG, and Noreen Alexander Manzella found a way. They describe it in the third article of the amazing June issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

Stage one -- logically, not chronologically! -- was elimination. Census, cemetery, and church records helped eliminate two of the three brothers. They also distinguish young William from a same-name first cousin five years older.

Reasoning by elimination can be a good start, but by itself it's not terribly convincing. In stage two, the authors found affirmative evidence connection young Jacob and William to the third brother, Nicholas Northamer.

Tax records showed that the young men were of the right ages, lived in the same township as Nicholas, and moved together. Even better, the same records also showed that the young men worked in the same trade as Nicholas, again unlike Nicholas's two brothers. (Woven into the logic of discovery are hints at some colorful and tragic family stories, which hopefully will see the light elsewhere.)

None of these records comes right out and names Nicholas as the father. This brick wall was felled by a weaving of gossamer threads of evidence, no one of which by itself looks like a match for a brick. But together . . .



Cathi Becker Wiest Desmarais and Noreen Alexander Manzella, "Who Fathered Jacob and William Northamer? Pennsylvania Tax Records Help Determine Kinship," National Genealogical Society Quarterly vol. 100, no. 2 (June 2012):123-32.

Harold Henderson, "Three Brothers Northamer: More NGSQ Genealogy Olympics," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 20 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Finding Fathers: NGSQ-style Genealogy Olympics

If you've been dithering about whether to join the National Genealogical Society, this might be a good time to jump in and do so. The current (June) issue of its Quarterly (NGSQ for short) just astonished me to death! Each of its four main articles could have been the lead article in any other issue.

And the 19-page lead article, "Finding the Father of Henry Pratt of Southeastern Kentucky," by Warren C. Pratt, deserves its position. Henry was born to Elizabeth Pratt in 1809; family traditions name his father as a Huff or as a Virginian named DeWitt. Elizabeth had seven children, and one of them stated in court that she had never been married to anyone.

Few genealogical problems challenge a researcher more than identifying an unmarried father more than 200 years ago in a frontier area not known for meticulously kept records. The solution involved both DNA testing and hard-core traditional documentary research on Elizabeth and her relatives and neighbors. And it did not involve at last finding a written acknowledgment of paternity at the end of the rainbow. The evidence is indirect (circumstantial, if you will) but it is conclusive.

IMO it's well worth joining and reading the article several times to tease out its beautiful logical structure. I'll leave that pleasure to you, and just mention three points that made me gasp:

(1) The author used a road record to help establish neighbors. (Yes, we've all heard of them, but when was the last time you used one?)

(2) "A study of Bedford County Witts identified twenty possibilities for Henry Pratt's father."

(3) One piece of clinching evidence (that's a non-technical term, folks) was a mistaken date.

As time permits I hope to post on the other three articles, each at least as amazing in its own way. But you don't have to wait. Check 'em out.




Warren C. Pratt, "Finding the Father of Henry Pratt of Southeastern Kentucky," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 100 (June 2012):85-103.


Harold Henderson, "Finding Fathers: NGSQ-style Genealogy Olympics," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

William Berry: Where There's a Will There's a Deed

Archives.com has just posted my digest version of research on William Berry (1753-1839), who was born in Rhode Island, served in the American Revolution from New York, and lived much of his life in and around Stephentown, Rensselaer County, New York, and Hancock, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. The first installment of the full account was published in NEHGS's American Ancestors Journal last fall, with the second and final installment this fall. Berry made his will in Allegany County, New York, in 1839, naming seven children and ten grandchildren. Deeds made in the decades following his death enable us to identify twenty-three additional grandchildren.

Surnames involved include Bliven, Coleman, Daboll, Green, Hackett, Hungerford, Monroe, Palmer, Parks, Potter, Saunders, Sprague, Sumner, Swartwout, Trask, and Walrath. Some stayed in New York; others went west to Illinois, Wisconsin, and beyond.

Studying those records was a bit like walking into a party where everybody knows everybody else and assumes you do too. Even though this party was more than 150 years old, enough of the participants were willing to "talk" so that eventually most of it made sense. There are still some descendants on the loose!


[Note to fanatics: this is my sixth article on Archives, but the site lists only the five most recent under my name. The first one, no longer listed in that way, is "Indirect Evidence to the Rescue," 25 August 2011.]


Harold Henderson, "William Berry (1753-1839) and His Children and Grandchildren in Massachusetts and New York," part 1 of 2, American Ancestors Journal, third annual supplement to The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 165 (October 2011): 368-78.


Harold Henderson, "William Berry: Where There's a Will There's a Deed," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Top Five MWM Posts for May 2012

I have my favorites, but these were the readers' choices from May:

1. Why We Don't Write (May 6)

2. The toughest genealogy course you can take? (May 28)

3. Proving in-laws without direct evidence (May 7)

4. "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all" (May 17)

5. NGS Day 2 Thursday the 10th (May 11)

The first two were runaways, the remainder pretty closely bunched. I'll post the June rankings in about  a month to let the dust settle.

Least viewed?

So many sources, so little time (May 5)


Harold Henderson, "Top Five MWM Posts for May 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 1 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Top Five MWM Posts for February-March 2012

The people's choices during February and March on this blog:

1. Another angle on professionalism (March 14)

2. How to prove parents without direct evidence (March 8)

3. Good news for Chicago genealogists (March 20)

4. Resources: Chicago Examiner (February 7)

5. Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy's new milestone (February 1)



Harold Henderson, "Top Five MWM Posts for February-March 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 9 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Proving In-Laws without Direct Evidence (NGSQ)

If there's anything harder than finding parents without direct evidence, it's finding in-laws! That's the task addressed by Nancy Peters, CG (SM) in her article in the December issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Peters lived in Monroe County, New York, for most of the second half of the 19th century. There was no marriage record -- indeed, no document of any kind naming her parents -- and the records that did exist sometimes called her Gertrude, and other times Catherine.

Combining civil and church records with a knowledge of German culture and naming patterns resolved that last issue and showed that Conrad had just the one wife. And an 1847 baptismal record named the married parents as Conrad Peters and Gertrude Eberle. The Peters and Eberle families lived near one another and associated in church affairs and baptisms. In the Civil War, Conrad Peters and George Eberle served together in Company I of the 108th New York volunteer infantry, but George died at the notorious Andersonville prison in 1864.

George's parents were named in his 1843 baptism as Christopher Eberle and Catherina Kunz. In 1865 the federal government paid Catherine Peters a benefit due to heirs of deceased volunteer soldiers. George had never married and his parents were deceased at this time. Since New York law provided that siblings would inherit from those who died without a will, parents, or children, this payment strongly implied that Catherine was his sister and Christopher and Catherina therefore her parents.

Arguably, this might have been enough to establish Conrad Peters's in-laws, but the author found baptismal records for this Eberle family in Leimen, Waldhambach -- now better known as part of  the Palatinate. Christopher Eberle's handwritten signatures on documents there and in New York helped prove it was the same family, and the church record included a Gertrude born to the couple at the right time to be Mrs. Conrad Peters.

All the evidence now pointed the same way, except for one contradictory item. A surviving fragment of German civil records said that that baby Gertrude had died the same day! On closer examination, though, the civil recorder had probably miscopied a priest's note that referred to a burial record for an older man on the next line of the church register.

Note that this last conclusion was not made in a vacuum. Mistakes in records are always possible; what made it a probability in this case was the weight of all the other evidence linking the families and linking Gertrude Eberle to Conrad Peters.


Nancy Peters, "Using Indirect Evidence to Find In-Laws for Conrad Peters of Monroe County, New York," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 99 (December 2011): 281-93.

Harold Henderson, "Proving In-Laws without Direct Evidence," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Lecturing -- as if blogging wasn't enough!

My current brochure describing available genealogy lectures is posted at Midwest Roots. We've got orphans, the great research state of Indiana, colliding sources, Sherlock Holmes, death by probate (NOT), and more.

If you want to hear a sample, my web site is not that sophisticated yet. Feel free to drop by the National Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati at 9:30 AM Friday (Indianapolis Orphan Asylum) and Saturday (Indirect Evidence) . . .



Harold Henderson, “Lecturing -- as if blogging wasn't enough!” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you mention it on line.]

How to prove parents without direct evidence

What can you do to find missing parents when no record tells who they are?

Linda Dowd Vivian has published "Nathan W. Dowd of Ohio: Whose Child Was He?" in the current (December 2011) issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Aside from his Midwesternness, I have no particular personal interest in Nathan, who was born in Ohio; lived in Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska; and died in Florida. But I was curious how she found his parents in a difficult case.

Vivian faced obstacles that would have sent a lesser genealogist to a wailing (brick) wall. Nathan's obituary says that he was born in Athens County, Ohio, on 19 December 1833, but it doesn't name his parents. He died in Florida, but the state has no death certificate. He can't be found in the 1850 census, when he might well have been residing in the parental household. Besides searching all variant names in that census, Vivian read through four likely Midwestern counties with no result, part of the "reasonably exhaustive search" prescribed by the Board for the Certification of Genealogists' standards.

Making full use of the oft-disdained 1840 census, Vivian found four Dowd men in Athens County who could have been Nathan's father. Three of them had boys in the household between the ages of 5 and 10. She identified two of those boys as different men. The third, in the household of William Dowd and Martha Woodard, could have been Nathan.

Can this hypothesis be proved? No probate or death notice named William and Martha's children. In 1852 an Iowa state census showed four probable sons in their household in Wapello County; various sources name four of them -- William E., Alex, David, and Ichabod. Was Nathan the fifth?

In the course of her research, Vivian unearthed nine additional pieces of evidence, all consistent with the idea that William and Martah were his parents, but none decisive by itself:

* In 1856 Nathan married in Wapello County, Iowa; at the time, William and Martha were living in adjacent Henry County. (Nathan's bride also came from Athens County, Ohio.)

* In 1856 Nathan had reportedly been in Iowa five years, as had William.

* Martha had a brother named Nathan B. Woodard.

* In 1860 Nathan's family was living in Kansas Territory with Alexander Dowd, who was the right age to be William and Martha's known son.

* In 1869 (following father William's 1865 death), Nathan bought land from William E.

* In 1869 Nathan and Martha made an agreement concerning the land.

* In 1869 Nathan witnessed an affidavit for Martha.

* In 1870 Nathan lived in the same township as Martha and Alexander.

* In 1880 and 1885 Nathan lived in Wapello County, adjacent to the county where Martha and David were living. Martha died in 1886 and Nathan moved to Nebraska.

From this evidence Vivian concluded that Nathan was indeed William and Martha's son: "Their associations over their lifetimes support this conclusion, and no known evidence contradicts it."

If you've done this kind of work on your family, you too may have an NGSQ article in your future!

Linda Dowd Vivian, "Nathan W. Dowd of Ohio: Whose Child Was He?" National Genealogical Society Quarterly 99 (December 2011):275-80.