Death Will Bring Us Together; or, Look to the Future to Learn the Past

A classic problem: a woman born in the early 1880s appears in her parents' household in 1900 with a stupendously common name for the time (Mabel). And then she vanishes, whether into death or marriage I can't tell. Two potential husbands fail the test, as marriage records show their Mabels as having the wrong parents. The known parents don't show up in her household in later years, nor she in theirs.

It's an old lesson but it bears relearning. We often bewail our failure (or our parents' failure) to learn all the genealogical details we might have obtained from elderly relatives, but we often also ourselves fail to seek out their knowledge in records they helped create.

When Mabel's mother died in the 1930s, the newspaper death notice -- in infinitesimal, worn type -- named an extra daughter (as Mrs. H. Husband, naturally) living on the other side of the state. Mrs. Husband appeared again as the informant on mother's death certificate, with a tiny scrawled street address as well. Case closed when Mr. Husband's death certificate bore the same address. Strictly speaking, I didn't even need to know that her name was Mabel!

Looking back on 2015 writing and prospects for 2016

Last year, with the help of kind editors and colleagues, I published a dozen genealogy articles (four in peer-reviewed journals) and six book reviews. The full list is at Midwest Roots.

I experimented with "double-decker" publishing, following a problem-solving article about an eastern Indiana Smith family in NGS Quarterly with the full genealogical summary of the family in later issues of Indiana Genealogist. (BTW, one needs a long running start to do this. I have been puzzling over this family for six years!) And I experimented with a "review essay" which appeared in the December NGSQ.

And I've had fun with a series of short methodology articles on indirect evidence, negative evidence, and historical context in the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly.

Early 2015 saw the long-awaited publication of La Porte County, Indiana, Early Probate Records, 1833-1850 with Genealogical Publishing Co., a joint production with Dorothy Germain Palmer and Mary Leahy Wenzel -- one of the few such books containing a nearly-every-name index of the probate materials, so that early La Porte researchers can track non-decedents in these records. Proceeds go to our genealogical society, of which Dorothy is president.

I also changed professional focus from client research to client editing. The plan is to spend more time on writing (and more on specific problems and families), and less time on committee work, speaking, and (sigh) blogging. I hope 2016 -- or the 11 1/2 months of it that remain -- will be good for y'all, with publications and credentials galore.

Crossing the Continent with Common Names and Living to Tell the Story

As we genealogists soon learn, an amazing number of people have common names. I ran into a few of them seven years ago while working on my first BCG portfolio: Who were the parents of Ina Smith who married Frank Burdick in Kansas City in 1885?

He was the third generation on my kinship determination project, so I didn't have to deal with this side issue right then. But I was intrigued.

It turned out that Ina's parents were John and Elizabeth Smith. They appeared to have come from Indiana, but which ones were they, and where in Indiana -- and was Elizabeth's maiden name Smith too?

I made several runs at this problem over the years, going from thinking it was hopeless to thinking it was too easy. Now I'm on even keel, and the finished article is in the newly posted March issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, so readers can see how I solved it. This version is a little sharper than the original submission, thanks to peer review and good editors.

Of course, it's not likely that either of these two Smith families is one of yours. But you may have a similar sort of problem with different people. Hope it helps!

 NGSQ is a benefit of membership in the National Genealogical Society. Members can read the latest issue (and many old ones) as soon as it is posted.



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

Yet another reason to join the National Genealogical Society

"One of the best ways to learn problem-solving techniques is to analyze NGSQ case studies," writes editor Melissa Johnson, CG, in the brand-new first issue of the on-line NGS Monthly. "Case studies demonstrate how challenging genealogical questions can be answered." Since every problem is a little different, stop looking for one-shot cure-alls and rules, and see the examples published quarterly in NGSQ and analyzed monthly in the new magazine.

If you've tried the National Genealogical Society Quarterly and found it tough sledding, NGS Monthly may be your gateway to a whole new level of research and analysis. If you're a member, the February 2015 issue should be in your email. If not, join here.

A great new book and a need for connection

Robert Charles Anderson, FASG, best known for the definitive Great Migration series published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, has written an important book of genealogical methods and theory, laced with real-life examples. Anyone who's serious enough to know what the Genealogical Proof Standard is, or who reads the New England Historical and Genealogical Register or the National Genealogical Society Quarterly for more than just the names of their ancestors, should read Elements of Genealogical Analysis. It's instructive and thought-provoking.

Such readers may also find themselves feeling a bit dizzy. Anderson defines sources and records and methods differently than the Board for Certification of Genealogists. It's as if someone were doing carpentry and building good houses with an entirely different set of tools and measurements.

More remarkably, Anderson nowhere mentions the Genealogical Proof Standard or the more detailed standards that have been widely distributed since 2000. (He does acknowledge that other systems are possible and that they "quite likely . . . might be developed.") {xv}

For myself I don't mind this. As an avid consumer of the Great Migration books (long before I understood anything else about genealogy), I don't mind it.

As a professional I do mind it. Insofar as genealogy is a profession, it cannot grow the way it has  mostly grown: with every lone wolf taking his or her own tack with little regard for others. It has to grow incrementally, building on and revising and improving others' contributions. So I am disappointed that Anderson saw fit to publish his system, complete with its own concepts and methods, without any explanation of how they relate to the standards and methods that have been publicly available for more than a decade -- and that are the creation of a many skilled genealogists, not just one.

Having read the book, I know it offers deep thought and good counsel. Genealogy must include both these thoughts and the body of work surrounding the GPS, as well as a clear understanding of how they all fit together. And sooner or later it will.



[Full disclosure: Although I serve as a trustee of BCG, the above are my personal opinions only.]


Robert Charles Anderson, Elements of Genealogical Analysis: How to Maximize Your Research Using the Great Migration Study Project Method  (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2014).


Harold Henderson, "A great new book and a need for connection," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 December 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Friday from immigrant origins to economic causes

In the current (September) National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Allen R. Peterson pieces together a Sandham family that showed up in Derbyshire out of the blue in 1806. Where did they come from?

The IGI -- used as an index to the underlying records -- suggests a hypothesis. The family may have come from 56 miles away in Lancashire. Comparisons of names and birth and death information from the two places confirm that the parents and 4-5 children are the same in both places at different times.

Why did they move? By digging through records ot taxes, inheritance, and warnings-out involving both ancestors and in-laws, Peterson goes beyond "pure" genealogy, making the case that the parents were probably leaving a marginal agricultural existence and seeking steadier factory work in Derbyshire. Those without English ancestry can learn something here about taking the next step of restoring more than just dates and places in the past.




Allen R. Peterson, "The Origin of Peter and Jane Sandham of Thornsett, Derbyshire," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (September 2014): 189-200.


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Friday from immigrant origins to economic causes," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 November 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

What I learned from one year's family postcards

More than half a century ago my mother wrote dozens of postcards to her mother, who lived an hour away. The families also visited two or three times a month. At this time there were five children under nine years old in the house. Reading them over is fun, sometimes a bit spooky, and it made me think about using family resources because in this case I can remember some of that year.

Yes, these are original sources containing primary information (from an eyewitness). Reading cards from a later year completely overturned a well-established family story. Another family story about when I gave up a nickname is kiboshed by one of these cards. Memory is changeable. So one lesson from these postcards is that we need to write down verbal accounts ASAP. Over time, what we remember of that verbal account will change in ways that the written one will not.

So in some contexts these family records are pretty authoritative. But as usual, the more we know (and reflect on) how these records were created, the better we can evaluate them. First of all, they can contain mistakes. In some ways like diaries, they leave out things, sometimes the very things we would most like to know. Because these happen to fall within my memory, I can see some warning signs as to how we use them. In general, they may not be good sources of negative evidence. If they never mention X, that may not be very strong evidence that X was not the case or did not happen.

For instance:

(1) Some difficult or embarrassing or upsetting things. I had to change schools that year (2nd grade), which was a big deal. I threw at least one major fit. It's not in the postcards.

(2) Current events that Mom and her mom had surely discussed during their visits. Our move across town took place that spring, but it is only alluded to in a couple of places; a casual reader might even miss the clues.

(3) Background information that everybody knew and took for granted. Sometimes these facts are alluded to: on one day the big news was that the baby had a tooth and that Mom was caught up on her ironing. ("Grandma, what's an iron?") Everybody who lived in town walked to school -- including my father to his teaching job; he would sometimes add a quick P.S. to a card or letter at the post office on his way. Some background is not mentioned at all: diapers were made of cloth and were regularly washed and hung out to dry and reused; coal was delivered by truck and shoveled into the "coal room" in the basement where it was later shoveled into the furnace.

I think I will read the previous generation's letters more carefully after this experience. What lies between the lines and beyond the lines? These precious records deserve our best attention even when there is no brick wall in sight.



Harold Henderson, "What I learned from one year's family postcards," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 November 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

How I learned what to do with undocumented family trees

Back in the 20th century, my wife's father's mother's family spent a lot of time (and some money on a professional genealogist in North Carolina) trying to find the ancestors of her great-great grandmother Jennie (Cochran) Boren.

They got nowhere; my daughter and I got nowhere too -- until she came across a family tree on Rootsweb's WorldConnect pages, a more static predecessor of today's Ancestry trees. The tree contained names and dates -- no sources. But it approached Jennie from the "other side," that is, her birth family.

Did we sneer at this tree -- unsourced as it was, and connected to an address whose owner never responded to our inquiries? We did not.

But we didn't believe it and take its statements as gospel, either -- we had been around long enough not to do that either.

We did the same as reasonable people do with family stories they heard in person -- checked the claims out against the available records. Was Jennie found in census records with her claimed parents? Were they the ages claimed? What about the siblings and aunts and uncles? Could we find quality sources, information, and evidence that confirmed or denied the claims in the tree?

We did. There's more work to be done on this line but without this rather disreputable-seeming lead, we might still be looking for Jennie (AKA Jane E.).

Wise genealogists use all available clues. Dogmatic rejection of apparently low-quality sources is no more sensible than dogmatic acceptance of them. Don't be a source snob.


Harold Henderson, "How I learned what to do with undocumented family trees," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 November 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Two kinds of genealogists and the question that sorts them out

You're researching Thralls, and someone posts this image on line. What's your first thought?

(a) Thank the poster for breaking down your brick wall.

(b) Enter the information into your genealogy database.

(c) Message ten friends about this breakthrough.

(d) Ask "Where did that come from? How do they know?"


Options a, b, or c = Type 1 Genealogists

Option d = Type 2 Genealogists (For details, check out the first section of Evidence Explained.)

One goal of genealogy education, from which most everything else follows: to encourage Type 1 folks to recognize that (d) is a possibility, and to choose it more often.



Harold Henderson, "Two kinds of genealogists and the question that sorts them out," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Thursday: working with derivative sources

We can't say it often enough: if we have only an index entry or an abstract of a record, we need to find the original record, because the index or abstract may contain mistakes and it is likely to have left out some pieces of information that were in the original. Genealogists who take the easy way out and rely on indexes or abstracts are not only failing to meet standards but also may be creating their own brick walls.

The other day I was busy wallowing in derivative sources and realized that there are more dimensions to this question. I was trying to identify a J. W. Smith family living in Joplin Township, Jasper County, Missouri, in 1880, and had little luck backtracking them in previous censuses. Eventually I came across Ancestry.com's database, "Jasper County, Missouri Deaths 1878-1905." 

My search for "J. W. Smith" (exact, in this database produced a remarkable result: 

Name:	Mrs. J. W. @ Smith
Age or Birthdate:	abt 78
Death Date:	14 Jun 1908

I was pleased to see that this person was about the age I was hoping to find. As a result, I didn't spot the oddity about this entry right away, but you probably did! When I did notice it, I looked to Ancestry's explanation of the source for this database. Ancestry says it came from two compilations by Kenneth E. Weant of newspaper death notices in the county, one volume 1878-1899, and another 1899-1905.

Obviously this information did not come from where Ancestry said it did. (I will say right now that I have long criticized Ancestry's shoddy quality control and will continue to do so, even though in some cases poorly cited and  poorly organized online data are better than nothing. But this post is not about Ancestry's lack of commitment to genealogical excellence, except as to the additional research skills it requires of us.)

Fortunately I was working at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, and I was quickly able to locate the volumes Ancestry had drawn on. In addition to the two the on-line giant named, there is a third: Kenneth E. Weant, Jasper County, Missouri, 6957 Deaths Reported in & Chronological Index to Selected Articles from The Joplin Daily News Herald 1 January 1906 to 31 December 1910 (N.p.: privately printed, 2002). Mrs. J. W. Smith appears on pages 100 and 294 of this book.

One mystery down. But you may well wonder why Mrs. J. W. Smith, with such meager information, appears twice in the book. The answer is that not all derivative sources are created equal. When Ancestry turned the book into an on-line database, it chose to omit a good deal of information that Mr. Weant had collected.

Mr. Weant also tells us that either Mrs. J. W. Smith or (more likely) her husband was a military veteran. (That's what the @ sign signified, as explained in the book but not in the online database.) In addition, Mr. Weant gives the date of newspaper publication and list of the specific newspaper microfilms he consulted and where to order them from. He also includes for most people a de facto partial abstract of relationships mentioned in the obituary: Mrs. J. W. Smith was named as the mother of Mrs. J. W. Cole and sister of Mrs. Mary Keane. 

For my purposes that day, this was enough to tell me that Mrs. J. W. @ Smith was not likely of interest to my research. But if I were to seek out the original record(s) here, in particular the published obituary, it would be a lot easier to do by going back systematically from Ancestry's data entry to its (unmentioned) source, because that source (Mr. Weant's third volume) is one step closer to the original and contains a lot more information than Ancestry troubled itself to reproduce -- just as the original obituary may contain its quota of useful information that Mr. Weant left out. 



Harold Henderson, "Methodology Thursday: working with derivative sources," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]


 

Methodology Monday backtracking Jacob Wynkoop (NGSQ)

Jacob Wynkoop died in Morgan County, Ohio, in 1842, placing his entire life in what I call the "Dark Ages" of US genealogy, before the first every-name census was taken in 1850. In the June 2014 issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Stephen B. Hatton traces the Wynkoop family back by studying their associates (and in one case the associates' associates), the Sears, Power, McNabb, Brabham, and Combs families.

These five families lived near one another, intermarried, went to court, sometimes bought land -- and, most importantly, produced more records than the Wynkoops did! Clues from both Ohio and Virginia show that they all went back to Loudoun County, Virginia.

The importance of this sizeable pile of evidence becomes even clearer near the end of the article, when the author reveals a much smaller pile of direct evidence about Jacob's family, and shows how the pieces fit together. See the article itself for details (the quarterly is a benefit of membership in the National Genealogical Society and is available in good genealogy library collections).

Many of us would have put the direct evidence up front, but I think Hatton is on to something in this case by playing his strongest cards -- indirect evidence from friends, associates, and neighbors -- first. Check it out and see what you think!



Stephen B. Hatton, "Using Networks to Backtrack the Migration and Identify the Parents of Jacob Wynkoop of Morgan County, Ohio," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (June 2014): 111-27.


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday backtracking Jacob Wynkoop (NGSQ)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 September 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.]

Methodology Monday with three generations in three pages

Not all articles in top genealogy periodicals have to be long or involve a convoluted tangle of indirect evidence. If you're having a short-attention-span day, Arlene V. Jennings's recent inquiry into the mother of Jane (Fife) Smart (b. 1769) is quick and to the point in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.

Sometimes good methodology is just about knowing where to look. In this case two parallel record sets give varying results: no name for Jane's mother in one, and two different surnames for her in the other. Probate files for her father and husbands provide the "glue" to piece together vital records, identifying Jane as a daughter of her mother's middle (second) marriage, and reaching back to Jane's mother's mother's surname in the early 1700s.



Arlene V. Jennings, "Jane Fife's Mother, Elizabeth (Sowersby) Stather Fife Hought," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (June 2014): 93-95.


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with three generations in three pages," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 18 August 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

New York Thursday with Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter's mystery in the July NYGBR

How could Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter (1798-1855) be included in her parents' family Bible record but never mentioned as an heir in her father's 1876 probate proceedings -- especially when New York law required all heirs to be named? In the July issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record I tell the story and try to cope with the conflicting evidence by confirming Elizabeth's ongoing role in the family, and looking into how probates were handled in Madison County, New York, in the 1870s.

NYGBS members can read this and other new and continued articles at the society's a preview and await the physical issue's arrival in their genealogy library. Non-members can become members here.
web site; non-members can access

Elizabeth was the husband of "Col." Harry Porter (a private in the War of 1812) and the oldest sister of my mother-in-law's great-grandfather Samuel Clark Bassett. One curiosity of this story is that Harry and Elizabeth in the late 1830s settled in the same small Illinois town where I grew up in the 1950s -- and are buried three blocks from our house!

Like most NYGBR articles, this one has a double purpose: to resolve a knotty problem (highlighting a prized New York record type) and to document a New York family. The documentation (genealogical summary) occupies more space than the problem-resolution part and is continued in later issues. Many thanks to editor Karen Mauer Green for her relentless help and encouragement in bringing this project into print.



Harold Henderson, “A Missing Heir: Reconnecting Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter to Her Parents, Lewis and Dorcas (Hoxie) Bassett” [Part 1], New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 145 (July 2014): 165-184.


Harold Henderson, "New York Thursday with Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter's Mystery in the July NYGBR," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 August 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Quick hits: August, finishing, choosing, researching, and genealogy management

* Early August: the absolute best time to visit a university library.

* As genealogists, we don't finish enough things. It's as if we run from framing one house to framing another. But the finish work takes longer than anything, and sometimes it reveals the quality of the framing. That's one reason I'm in favor of trying for a credential -- or just writing thorough articles. Finishing teaches lessons that don't come any other way.

* On the Genealib list, Barbara J. Hill recently recalled one of her top priorities when buying for the California Genealogical Society's library: a book of local newspaper abstracts ("worth its weight in gold"). Not only are many small newspapers not digitized, even that may not help. Often the result of worn type on cheap newsprint may be such that only humans, not OCR, can decipher it.

* Not so many years ago, I would raid a library by way of the copy machine, then carry and sort and label the paper. Now I scan the pages with a smart phone app and try to email them to myself and then sort and label them from one program into another. I think I'm saving money -- not so sure about saving time, at least until I can refine the process. (It's also often an improvement on just taking notes.)

* Genealogy management and administration is almost a missing specialty (even with FGS in the vanguard). And I'm pretty sure one tenet of it would be not to try to do at the last minute tasks that in their nature require considerable preparation. Another tenet would be that its best practitioners deserves the same respect that DNA specialists and high-end editors and tech wizards receive. It's getting to be too important to be a sacrificial sideline.

* Don't miss Jill Morelli's new blog post, "What Kind of an Historian Are You?"



Harold Henderson, "Quick hits," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 August 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday: Is a good memory a method?

This morning Jill Morelli's excellent blog post reminded me of one of the six qualities Donald Lines Jacobus required of a good professional genealogist: "Ability to grasp and retain an infinite amount of detail."

The idea that a genealogist (or anyone) needs to know lots of facts was more fashionable 80 years ago than now, when we can always look things up on line. But the reason to have them in our heads is to be able to flag things as we see them and make the connection.

Some examples from a set of records recently viewed. What would you suspect about the parents, or the place, or the time of birth, if you found a child with one of these given names?

W. H. H.
Wilbur Orville
Byron Garfield (1880s)
James Blaine
Chester Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
Raymond Roosevelt (1899)

The more we know, the more we can learn.

Do you have more obscure examples? Share them in the comments!



Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday: Is a good memory a method?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday with city directories

City directory research can be time-consuming, but the truth is I rarely spend enough time on them. This morning's stint reminded me that they are deceptively easy to use -- deceptive in that it's easy for us to leave some of their information ungathered. (It also reminded me why I sometimes prefer physical directories to the on-line versions.) Eight suggestions:

(1) Especially in the 19th century, different publishers may have issued multiple directories in the same year. Make sure to see them all.

(2) Look at every edition. Not only do some years contain obvious mistakes (obvious if we know the context), some years also contain unique pieces of information. More importantly, seeing them all allows the series of still shots of our research target to merge into a motion picture of his or her life.

(3) Check for known associates or relatives of interest and work them the same way as the research target.

(4) If one person is at 444 E. 44th Street and another is at 666 S. Presidential Avenue, check the directory's map or street listing or both. They might be right around the corner from one another.

(5) If previous research or the directory itself has provided the name of an employer or a business or a partner, look them up in the business portion of the directory. Where are they? Who's in charge? Do they relocate or disappear over time? . . . And check to see if there is a "vertical file" or clippings file on them.

(6) For cities and towns of the right size at the right time, don't overlook the criss-cross directory (which lists addresses in order, number by number and street by street). Not only does this make neighbors easier to detect, these listings may indicate who was thought to be the owner, whether they had a telephone (still an issue in the 1950s!), and who the various tenants were.

(7) Again, for cities and towns of the right size at the right time, don't overlook the appended directories for twin cities, small towns, suburbs, and farmers (AKA rural taxpayers, often with the acreage and/or assessed amount listed). Our people might be a few steps outside the city limits.

(8) Don't be too sure that a place was too small to have a directory. Size is relative -- especially a century and more ago, when most small towns really believed they had a future as economic centers. You may need to go there to be sure. Even towns that have some directories digitized or on microfilm usually have additional years that have not been picked up, for whatever reason. Worse yet, some small-city directories have been grouped randomly together on unlabeled reels of microfilm identified only by the state name. I have provided indexes to these reels for Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But don't believe for a minute that those towns didn't produce additional directories. A lot of local, niche, and small-market publishers saw this as a business opportunity.

I haven't made up a form for all this stuff (similar to forms some people use to make sure they don't overlook items in deeds), and it wouldn't always help. Sometimes we learn of a new associate or employer, the research turns back on itself, and we have to go back through. City directories are the records that just won't quit.



Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with city directories," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 June  2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday with NGS Magazine on women and DNA

The April-June issue of NGS Magazine includes two introductory "gateway" articles (including further references) that can help us jump-start some potentially neglected aspects of our genealogy:

* Jane E. Wilcox on "Finding American Women's Voices through the Centuries." In research on five centuries of records on her surname family, "The records where I most often 'heard' their voices were court records, letters, journals, and newspapers."

* Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, on "Using Autosomal DNA for Genealogy." Unlike more familiar male-line Y-DNA and female-line MtDNA, autosomal DNA involves the other 22 chromosomes. Over the generations DNA from the two parents is mixed but some comparatively long segments are retained. To make the ancestral connection, both automated and hand analysis of matches and an accurate document-based family tree (preferably including collaterals) is needed. "The atDNA test offered today for genealogical purposes looks primarily at five hundred thousand or more individual locations or markers on the chromosomes. The value at each location of one person is compared to the same location of another person . . . . It takes work to determine who a common ancestor is."


Jane E. Wilcox, "Finding Women's Voices through the Centuries," NGS Magazine vol. 40 (April-June 2014):28-32.


Debbie Parker Wayne, "Using Autosomal DNA for Genealogy," NGS Magazine vol. 40 (April-June 2014):50-54.



Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with NGS Magazine on women and DNA," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 16 June 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Methodology Monday: Extending and Enriching the Story (NGSQ)

Not every genealogical question is, "Who were the parents?" In "Explaining the Sudden Disappearance of Mitch Evins of Georgia and Texas," William M. Litchman tackles the problem of a midlife disappearance. Finding where Evins went turned out not to be the hardest problem, thanks in part to one of those over-the-top census enumerators who listed county and state of birth.

In this case, the hard-core research came in finding court records that help characterize the family (not a laid-back bunch) and testing out the ongoing family story that Mitch's disappearance had to do with his Cherokee ancestry. In the end no source states outright why he took off, but the author gives the readers a much better (if less melodramatic) idea of what the factors may have been.

When we think of top-level genealogy publications, we don't usually think about problems of this kind -- but we should.




William M. Litchman, "Explaining the Sudden Disapearance of Mitch Evins of Georgia and Texas," National Genealogical Solciety Quarterly 102 (March 2014): 41-50.


Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday: Extending and Enriching the Story (NGSQ)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 May 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Perspectives from history: Shakespeare enthusiasts and naval life under sail

Sometimes we can benefit from stepping back from the daily grind.

Close reasoning about history belongs to other disciplines than genealogy. In a recent New Yorker (paywall or in any decent library) by the excellent Adam Gopnik, we learn of two long-running disputes about Shakespeare. See what you think. My take was that these people were not paying attention in the class where they were encouraged to try to disprove their own favorite hypothesis.

Sometimes we need a different kind of reminder -- about how different the past was. Good historical fiction can help us get a feel for that. My current recommendation would be a sampling (or more) of Patrick O'Brian's series of 20 novels of Napoleonic-era naval adventures, known as the Aubrey-Maturin series and listed in order on his Wikipedia page. Even as a non-aficionado of sailing, I was fascinated to see an entire tightly knit social world with highly developed expertise and hierarchical divisions of labor -- and of course now completely gone. Two hundred years ago might as well be two thousand. Maturin's medical practice alone should also cure readers of nostalgia for the "good old days."




Adam Gopnik, Life and Letters, “The Poet’s Hand,” The New Yorker, April 28, 2014, p. 40.

"Aubrey-Maturin Series," Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey-Maturin_series : viewed 1 May 2014).

Harold Henderson, "Perspectives from history: Shakespeare enthusiasts and life under sail," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted    2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]