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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Autumn 2014 presentations! Bloomington, Kalamazoo, Terre Haute, Indianapolis

All four of my presentations this fall are in the Eastern time zone, even though I myself am in Central. Check your calendar and join in the fun if you get the chance!


Wednesday 15 October, 3 pm -- "Why We Don't Write and How We Can," Monroe County Public Library, 303 E. Kirkwood, Bloomington, Indiana (advance registration required before 5 pm 8 October: http://mcpl.info/calendar/2014-10). Plus a second hour of discussion and examples.

Short version: If we don't write, we won't need to wonder what will happen to our genealogy stuff when we're gone. New.


Monday 20 October, 7 pm -- "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You," Kalamazoo Valley Genealogical Society, Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane, Portage, Michigan. (I spoke on property records here last spring: these people ask good questions!)

Short version: Everybody dies. Most have probates. Few make wills. Good genealogists will not stop with wills. Previously given at 2013 Indiana Genealogical Society conference in Bloomington.


Monday 10 November, 6:30 pm -- "A Case Study: Are We There Yet?" Wabash Valley Genealogical Society, Vigo County Public Library, One Library Square, Terre Haute, Indiana.

Short version: Follow the Chilcote trail from the 1900 Chicago census to an unmarked Ohio grave – and decide when there’s enough evidence to prove that George and Edward are two men or one man with two names. Previously given at 2013 National Genealogical Society conference in Las Vegas.


Saturday 22 November, 10 am -- "How Hoosiers Got Hitched," Indiana Historical Society, Eugene and Marian Glick Indiana History Center, 315 West Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana (registration and entry fee: http://www.indianahistory.org/events/how-hoosiers-got-hitched).

Short version: Indiana marriage records have changed over the years. Between 1880 and 1930 in some counties more than one record was created for each marriage – some with different information than the others. A new naming system can help us tell them apart. New, based on the article of the same title that appeared in the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of The Hoosier Genealogist: Connections.





Harold Henderson, "Autumn 2014 presentations! Bloomington, Kalamazoo, Terre Haute, Indianapolis," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

67 Allegany County NY decedents

FamilySearch's uploading of more than 14 million New York probate images from 1629 to1971 is an immeasurable boon to genealogists with research targets in the Empire State. It can, however, be immeasurably frustrating to find any particular person in the browse-only collection! It's divided by counties, and within counties by type of record and within that by volume or box. The boxed loose papers, organized by decedent, are among the most valuable probate records, and they don't even have page numbers!

Since I had to root through one of these virtual boxes anyway, in order to find my wife's ancestor William Berry, I kept track of all the other decedents whose estate papers had lodged in Box #2 from rugged Allegany County. The list of 67, with initial image number for each, is now on my web site. They are in order of appearance; if you don't have time to read all the names, use control-F to search them. They appeared to me to all be in the 1830s-1860s time range, where such records are most valuable. There are way plenty more materials in this one collection that would benefit from any sort of finding aid.

Here's a May 1845 summons to the next of kin of the late Gideon Hayward. James Hayward was living in Vigo County, Indiana, and Jane Davis nearby in Clay County. These are not just "New York records."

Gideon Hayward estate, Estate Papers 1807-1930, Box 2, Allegany County, New York; image 755 of 770, “New York, Probate Records, 1629-1972,” FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org : accessed 10 April 2013), citing FHL microfilm 594,806.

Harold Henderson, "67 Allegany County NY decedents," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 April 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Most Viewed MWM Posts November 2012

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made here during November.

I'm happy to see that #1 ran well ahead of the pack: "Cut-and-paste genealogists are free to spread unsubstantiated, dubious, false, or absurd information -- and will remain free to do so. We can build however we want. But what we can't do is build poorly, glory in it, and expect respect from those who know better."

1. Misteaks (November 24)

2. A Day in the Life: Probate (November 29)

3. Sowing Primary and Secondary Confusion (November 14)

4. We'll Always Need Advanced Genealogy Education (November 2)

5. Lost Causes in NGS Magazine (November 6)


Least viewed:

Disasters Are Part of Genealogy, Too (November 1)


Harold Henderson, "Most Viewed MWM Posts November 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

A Day in the Life: Probate

You are six hours away from home. The probate clerk has unlocked the records room, containing probate information back to the beginning of the county, and left you to it.

The will books are there, but books of probate court proceedings from early days are hard to find. Where are the probate packets (AKA "loose papers")? In one corner, a likely-looking group of metal shelves contain boxes of  . . . original marriage returns, handwritten on scraps of paper, bundled up in groups for each year -- 1843, 1844, 1845. A treasure for another day.

You look for an overall index. You find volume 2 -- which begins in the 1850s. You find Volume 1, a different-shaped book with a slightly different label in another part of the shelving. The desired decedent, from the 1840s, is there. And her case has a number.

The probate packets are on the other side of the room in ranks of big metal file drawers. The packets are in strict numerical order, but the order is NOT chronological. Worse, the number you found in the index book applies to someone else's probate altogether.

You paw carefully through a drawer that contains three rows of tight-packed trifolds in their narrow heavy paper or light cardboard holders, all from the 1840s. The decedent you're looking for isn't there. But as you scan the jacket labels one by one, you notice that everybody in the drawer has a surname beginning with B, and every packet is dated in the 1840s. Since few people die in alphabetical order, a light dawns. You remember a classroom and a distinguished teacher admonishing students to think about how and why a given record was created. Now you need to think about how the record was treated after creation!

These 1840s probate packets were not fitted up with fine jackets back in the near-frontier days when the cases were heard in court. They were probably tied up in string and left in drawer, as the marriage returns remain to this day. At some point, perhaps in the comparatively affluent early 1900s, the probates got special treatment. The county clerk must have bought several gross of jackets, and someone went to work sorting, labeling, and numbering all the old probate packets so that they could be preserved and relocated at need.

How did the clerk organize the packets? Alphabetizing them all may have seemed like a herculean task, and it would mix probates from very different eras. But putting them in exact chronological order would have been difficult and largely irrelevant, since some probates that began in 1840 ended then, and others dragged on for years. Evidently a compromise was reached: sort them all by decade, then alphabetize each decade by the surname of the deceased, and number them in that sequence. Anyway, that's how it looks to you now, and your job is not to conjure up a history of one county's probate office but to find that one packet!

The theory was close enough to help. You quickly put your hand on the right packet -- with dozens of pages inside, each breathing a bit of life from the 1840s. Time to sit down and scrutinize every scrap, all the time wondering if someone else would have figured out this organizing scheme sooner, and how your experience might benefit the next comer.




Harold Henderson, "A Day in the Life: Probate," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 November 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.]

NGS Day Three (Friday the 11th)

At this stage of a national conference, many of us are operating like the elevator we tried to ride down in our hotel this morning: arriving at the 3rd floor, it announced the 1st floor, but never actually reached the first floor (we got out and took the escalators). Like that elevator, we're still in action, but not necessarily functioning on all cylinders due to information and sociability overloads.

My talk on the Indianapolis Orphan Asylum and its records was cordially received. It was part of an all-day same-room Indiana track, beginning with Dave McDonald on Indiana history and settlement patterns, and ending with Michael Lacopo on tips and advice in hard-core research in the state. His tour of courthouse records was very informative, especially the figures that less than 5% of 19th-century Hoosiers left wills, and perhaps four times that number had probates. "You can never have too many records."

For me as spectator Friday was Law Day. Michael LeClerc gave a virtuoso performance on Advanced Probate, minus his slides which had just been eaten by Dropbox. Two of many points to remember: read Inheritance in America, and be aware that when an estate has to be re-administered or is contested, the case may go direct to the appellate court without any obvious signals in the regular probate records.

After lunch Debra Mieszala gave the most fact-packed lecture I have yet had a chance to hear this week, on taking the "awww" out of the law library. I am looking forward to upgrading my legal knowledge and application. Knowing the difference between slip laws, session laws, code books, and annotated statutes will definitely help. (They're all good, but in different ways.)

The evening was spent in many pleasant conversations in the Hyatt lobby, the NGSQ centennial reception, and the ProGen Study Group dinner. Tomorrow is the last day of a conference that on Tuesday seemed like it would last forever.


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Three (Friday the 11th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]