136 years ago: the Upper Midwest from the back of a horse

During the 1800s, even ancestors who would end up staying home often tried going West to see how it suited them. My great-grandfather spent a few years in Kansas hoping to alleviate his wife's asthma, but they returned to southern Illinois.

And in the spring of 1879, my wife's great-grandfather left his young family behind for several weeks and took a 430-mile horseback ride west across part of Wisconsin and most of Minnesota. He sent back postcards and letters, which I transcribed and annotated, and which have now been published in the Minnesota Genealogical Quarterly. It's all there -- the rain, the cold, the boredom, the jokes, the universal presumption that if your traveling companion fell sick you could find him a bed in a farmhouse along the way, and forge on.


"Across Wisconsin and Minnesota on Horseback, 1879," Minnesota Genealogical Quarterly vol. 45, no. 4 (2014): 7-9.

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.]

Of Migrations and Swimming Pools: Book Reviews at H-Net Online

Two book reviews from social history spotlight books that can illuminate genealogy too:

Jeannette Keith reviews Jack S. Blocker's A Little More Freedom: African Americans Enter the Urban Midwest, 1860-1930. It's clear the book contains much detail on the northward migrations of African Americans, including case studies of their lives in Washington Court House (Fayette County), Ohio; Springfield (Clark County), Ohio; and Springfield (Sangamon County), Illinois. He also discusses lynchings and race riots. In the words of the reviewer, "In their reaction to antiblack collective violence, African Americans in the Midwest demonstrated that they did indeed have a little more freedom than they might have had in the South. Black newspapers crusaded against mob rule, as did black self-help groups ranging from Sunday school conferences to women's clubs. Most strikingly, African Americans armed themselves for collective self-defense." The review is detailed and the book promises more.

Christopher J. Manganiello reviews Jeff Wiltse's Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. Your immigrant ancestors may have played a role in getting municipal swimming pools started. The reviewer summarizes: "Boisterous and naked working-class boys and men bathed in Philadelphia, Boston, and Milwaukee rivers because urban tenement housing offered limited indoor facilities. When these bathers offended Gilded Age citizens’ Victorian sensibilities, reformers justified the establishment of bathing pools on public health arguments."