Aug 10
17
The Dilemma of the Ancestress
Ancestress is a good word. It indicates the female gender by itself, instead of adding the word, “female” to the word, “ancestor.” What’s so special about that? The patriarchal nature of our society’s history has subjected the legal and social status of women to the control of men.
Take surnames, for instance. A female is born with a surname, just like a male is born with one. Yet, when she marries, starting a new family, her surname is changed to that of the man, and her birth name is no longer used. In the past, they were born as daughters of their fathers. Then, they married, and became wives of their husbands. As a female, they weren’t allowed to vote or own land. What does all this mean to a genealogist?
Simply this: When you attempt to trace the woman backward from her marriage, you need to learn her maiden name to find out about her ancestry. If you are lucky, and you have it, you can just look on the marriage record. But you don’t always have a marriage record. You can’t look at land records, because women usually didn’t own land. You can’t look at voting records, because women weren’t allowed to vote. If you are looking in a U.S. Census record before 1850, the only name you you will find listed is that of the head of the household. If the husband was alive on the day of the census, he was the head of the household. The only way the woman could be listed is if she were a widow and the head of the household.
You can’t look at military pensions for a woman who served prior to the Spanish-American War, because women couldn’t serve in the military until 1890, when they were allowed to serve as nurses. There is no point in looking for a will that will give information about a woman, because they were not allowed to write wills. All property was owned by the husband. It’s also a waste of time to try looking for signatures on legal documents, because women weren’t allowed to sign them. They also weren’t allowed to serve in the government.
If you’re thinking, “There’s got to be a record of them somewhere,” you’re right. So where can you find the records of your ancestresses?
We already mentioned the marriage records. To use them, you will need to know the groom’s full name and the bride’s first name, along with the location and date of the marriage.
Another early place to look is in the family Bible, which is probably in the hands of some member of your family. In a similar vein, check church records for records of christenings, baptisms and marriage records which may show the maiden name. Clues that might help you find these records include the name of the church, the groom, or the clergyman involved.
Wedding announcements and obituaries were published in the local newspaper. If you know the name of the groom and the estimated date of the wedding, this is a place to start. With obituaries, you need, not only the deceased person’s name, but the location of the death and/or burial. You may also find it by knowing which newspaper is most likely to have published the obituary.
After a person dies, their property is disposed of, and the record of this is kept in probate records. Sometimes there is a will in the records; sometimes there isn’t, but you will usually find the person’s name, birth date, death date, family members, final residence and and property owned at the time of death. You will find probate records at the courthouse for the county where the deceased lived at the time of her death. If you know your ancestress’ full name and the place of her residence when she died, you can use this information to find out her maiden name in probate records.
If your ancestress served in the military, you may be able to discover her maiden name through her military pension record. In order to do that, you will need to know her name, branch of service, state from which she entered the military, and the war she served in. If she served anytime after 1916, you will need additional information about her, including her date of birth, Social Security Number, military serial or identification number, dates of entry and discharge, and whether she was enlisted or an officer.
Tracing your ancestry involves going up your entire family tree. That means that when you come to a married ancestress, you need to discover her information, as well as her husband’s information. Otherwise, you will end up missing about 50% of your family history and overlooking entire branches of your family tree.
Records for women have long been considered hidden or invisible. Maybe that’s why the bank always asks you for your mother’s maiden name.
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The young man looked disgusted. He was sitting with his arms folded and staring out the window. Not sure if I could help, I asked him what the problem was.
“Google,” he said.
“Google?” I asked.
“Google.” He turned his head and gave me a direct look. “I’ve been reading that I could look up my ancestors on Google for free, instead of paying a monthly fee on a membership site. So I decided to try it out. I typed in my grandfather. I already know about him, so I thought it would be a good test. It wasn’t. I got over six million results. I did the same thing with my great-grandmother. That was better; I only got five million. Now how can anybody deal with five million results on anything? What are you supposed to do?
“Well, it can work,” I told him. “You just have to use a few Google tools to narrow the search and minimize your results.”
“I knew there was a catch. What kind of tools?” he wanted to know.
“Well, quotation marks, for one. Any time you put a phrase into Google, the whole phrase is searched, which is fine. The problem is that the individual words are searched, as well. Like this: If you type in John Smith, it will give you results for John Smith, but it will also give you results for John and for Smith. If you include a home town, it will also include results for the town individually, and the state individually, plus the town and the state together. So you have to figure out the exact phrase you want to search, and enclose it in quotes. “John Smith” Just adding the quotes will mean that only the phrase inside the quotes will be searched together, not every word in the phrase together and separately.
“That makes sense. What else?”
Add any information you can that will narrow the search. For instance, put in the name of his spouse. That will narrow it down to the instances where John Smith appears with Mary Smith. Make sure you enclose both names inside the quotation marks.
“Is that it?” He was getting impatient again.
“Actually, there’s more. When you add another item, like a spouse’s name, you need to put the word AND between the original person and the spouse. I don’t know why, but you also need to capitalize every letter in the word AND to make it work.
”That can’t be all there is to it.” I couldn’t blame him for being skeptical at this stage. He had spent hours trying to make this thing work and gotten frustrated. A simple solution to a big problem is sometimes hard to swallow.
“When you put John AND Mary Smith in quotes, you will notice a much more manageable number of results. Write those down. Now start adding other bits of information, one at a time, using the same AND and the same quotes to limit the search results. Add a birth date. Add a birth place. Add an occupation. In fact, every time you discover a new fact, add it to your search combination. In other words, start trying to add every bit of information that will eliminate the majority of those six million results you don’t want. Make sure to put them in quotation marks. The more qualifying terms, the fewer results. That means that what you end up with is probably right on the mark.”
“That’s brilliant.”
“Actually, it isn’t brilliant; it’s more like common horse sense,” I added.
“So that’s really all there is to it?” He asked.
“Of course not,” I told him. “But it really works, so it’s enough to start with. Just play around with this for awhile, and I can give you more, later.
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Jul 10
22
A Genealogical Pandora’s Box
You certainly had no intention of doing any harm. It was just simple curiosity. You had decided to trace your ancestry. It was a purely innocent attempt to find out more about your family tree. Or it could have been because you were trying to understand the trail of genes which might be the cause of the hereditary disease that has been passed down from one generation of your family to the next. Whatever your motivation, it often turns out that the devil is in the details.
Here’s an example. You have traced your family tree back six generations. Everything you discovered has been carefully noted and neatly written onto that most fundamental of genealogy forms, a simple pedigree chart. You’ve been successful in uncovering the information you were looking for, but you also uncovered a secret.
Your research clearly indicates that there was a mistake in the paternity of one of your ancestors. Actually, he was the son of another man, which means that the family history that everyone had believed for so many generations turns out to be a lie. Oh, it’s fixable. You just dig in with a little more genealogy research on the biological father. But what if it weren’t fixable? What if the ancestor, the one whose biological father was not the man he believed to be his parent, were still alive? What do you do then?
Should you tell him about the “mistake” in the personal history he believes to be his own? Or is that a violation of his privacy, even to admit that you know? And what about telling other members of your family so that they can stop believing in a family history that is false? Clearly, you have found yourself in the middle of an ethical quandary, through no fault of your own.
What about a hypothetical case where the current family members’ philosophy of life is violated? A discovery is made that one of your female ancestors had an abortion, even though her religious faith forbade the act. If the ancestor is no longer alive, the problem is theoretical, but if she is still living, her privacy and relationship with other family members can be threatened.
Here’s another. Suppose you discover that the true father of one of your ancestors was a relative of the mother. Maybe a first cousin, but then again, maybe someone much, much closer. Whether it be a case of molestation or of consensual incest, this kind of information can be scandalous.
This is the kind of data that can be very disturbing to peoples’ perception of the fundamental honor and morality of their family. It may even cause concerns that the actions of their ancestors could have caused possible biological damage to their innocent descendants.
But that’s not the only kind of problem that can arise. It’s certainly understandable that you would disseminate any findings of diabetes, heart disease or any number of health problems in your family history. But imagine that an ancestor is discovered to have been an alcoholic, a drug addict or contracted the H.I.V. virus. Can you publish your genealogy research containing this information?
This is something that has come up in the medical profession, which has found that the publication of this type of genealogical data can be a violation of patient confidentiality. It is considered a patient’s right to insist upon privacy and freedom from public dissemination of information that the patient is likely to consider as being of a personal and private nature, including genealogical details. But we’re not talking about doctors and patients, we’re talking about family members.
The choices are few. You can go ahead and reveal the previously hidden information to your family members on a selective basis, publishing nothing. You can publish the entire genealogy exactly as you found it through your research. You can alter the published genealogy in order to protect the family.
Whatever you decide to do with the secret information you may uncover when researching your family tree, remember that the one thing left in Pandora’s box after her curiosity unleashed all the evils into the world was Hope.
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Jul 10
17
Fantasy Family Crests
I grew up watching movies about King Arthur and Robin Hood, so I thought it would be cool to have a copy of our family coat of arms hanging on the wall. As with a lot of my ideas, my mother didn’t think it was as cool as I did. When I became an adult, I just wondered what our family crest looked like. But it wasn’t long until I found out that most of the companies that offered to send you a plaque with your family crest on it were talking about something pretty generic. In fact, I decided recently to check the Internet to see what I could find for my family coat of arms. It didn’t take long. All I had to do was type in my surname, and up popped a “family crest.” It had a cartoony-looking helmet and visor on a background of yellow (I think it was supposed to be gold), which, according to what I read, symbolized purity, finesse, valor, excellence and achievement, among other things.
From what I know about some of my ancestors, a lot of them didn’t live their lives according to those heraldic principles. I guess you can’t expect everyone to fit the family mold. In any case, for a price, you can get your “genuine” coat of arms reproduced on just about anything, from a wall plaque to a signet ring. They’ll even put it on shot glasses and cuff links. I wonder what my ancestors would have thought of that.
I decided to look up some other surnames to see if their family crests looked better than mine. Unfortunately, every one I checked had the same cheesy look. The worst part of this is that the people who buy these crests actually think they are getting something that is a part of their personal family history, not a generic decoration with a shield and some animals and symbols that they can hang on the wall to represent their family name.
The truth is that if you really want to know about your ancestry and your family coat of arms, you have to start researching your family tree.
In the beginning, heraldry was invented to decorate a knight’s shield with an identifying symbol so that you could tell the good guys from the bad guys. After all, everyone looks alike in a suit of armor. The basic coat of arms consists of a shield with a crest, a motto, and some sort of fierce, symbolic-looking animal, like a rampant lion.
The whole concept of family crests is controversial. Originally, coats of arms were presented to a specific person, who passed them down to their heirs through the generations. This means that just finding a coat of arms for your surname does not guarantee that it is the correct one, historically. This is why the products you get from the one-stop, family-crest shopping websites are so often inauthentic.
Instead of using legitimate genealogical proof that you are of the proper kinship, which entitles you to bear the arms, these companies are selling commercially-produced arms that enable you to claim that you have a direct kinship and descent from people who are highly unlikely to be your ancestors. Worse, by buying these inauthentic family crests, you are denying your own legitimate line of descent and your actual family heritage.
On the other hand, it is always a good thing to learn the origin of the meaning of your surname and the place where people with that name came from. A good way for you to start is by performing a search for your surname on the Internet. This isn’t the only place you can get this kind of information, and you probably won’t want to stop here, but it should give you a sense of your family’s past.
The other question that comes to mind considers the philosophy upon which this country was founded. In an effort to counteract any concept of a class system such as the one that existed across the Atlantic, our founding fathers made every effort to discourage the use of coats of arms by our citizens.
But times have changed. The Internet is rife with resources that have taken the act of tracing your ancestry for free out of the world populated by professional genealogists and people in dusty libraries. Along with these new resources have come a rebirth in the concept of finding out if you have a genealogical link to someone famous. Ah, the temptation of finding out that you are descended from royalty, people with castles and estates. Not likely, but tempting, just the same.
Another issue is the effect of personal ego. Whether or not you are entitled to use a coat of arms from your surname, you can certainly have one designed just for your family. It can make use of all kinds of charges and blazons and colors that represent your family today, and it can symbolize the values you would like to hand down to future generations. Plus, you can put it on your business cards, even have personal stationery printed up with your family crest.
If there is a purpose for this, I guess it is related to ego, the opportunity to show off a little bit and focus upon oneself. Which brings us back to the cuff links engraved with our family coat of arms. It really doesn’t have much to do with genealogy, or with the past, or even the truth. It’s more about the present and fantasy.
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It’s maddening. You’re hot on the trail of one of your most interesting ancestors. Everything is falling into place, and you’re as excited as a hound chasing a rabbit, when all of a sudden your ancestor just disappears. You can’t find any trace of him after a certain time. All of your leads have run out, and you’re at a genealogical dead end. You’ve hit a brick wall. You can’t go any farther. You’re stymied. Stumped. You’ve come to the end of the road. Sounds pretty final, doesn’t it? A lot of people have come to think that’s true for their genealogy research, and it may be. . . in a way. Fortunately, there is more than just one way to pick up the trail.
So what do you do when you’re stuck? Just do what the detectives in the movies do. Sit down with a pen and paper, and start writing down what you know about this elusive ancestor. Start with the facts. What were the last time and place you were able to find evidence about him or her? Consider the document you are going by. Is it a reliable source? If this ancestor doesn’t appear on a particular census, and you are convinced that they should, ask yourself why. You should realize that in the horse-and-buggy days, before telephones and email, people might not be able to be reached at the time when the census taker came by.
If they aren’t on the census, check other sources before you assume they are missing. Start with the Internet. Even if you’ve already looked, the Internet changes every day, so look again. Check city directories for each year, to discover the first year your ancestor’s name was not listed. Perhaps he or she moved. Look up newspapers, as well. In fact, you may find that the newspapers and city directories are available online.
Next look at court records, along with probate and land records. Even if your missing relative has moved away from the family, there may be clues about his or her whereabouts in documents pertaining to family members. Start investigating records concerning your relative’s immediate family, including any siblings, spouses, parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and, of course, children. Look at any documents that involve your ancestor’s relatives, like birth certificates, baptisms, graduation announcements, marriage certificates, death certificates, obituaries and wills.
Don’t forget to consider the possibility that your ancestor changed his or her first name or surname, whether for a marriage or some other reason.
Now, if you still can’t locate your relative, start brainstorming. What could have made this person move to another place? How old would he or she have been? Were they young enough to have gone in search of gold or some other kind of adventure? Were they old enough to have retired and moved to a more comfortable climate? What was the economy like where they lived? Were they farmers or city workers? Might they have moved in search of a better financial opportunity? Was there a drought or an epidemic that could have caused them to move?
See if any other relatives “disappeared” or moved at about the same time. Try to determine the reason, as well as the destination they headed for. Newspaper articles may hold information about local citizens moving, along with the reasons why and the place they were going. They will also be able to tell you about any severe conditions, economic downturns, famine, plagues, crop failures, floods, fires, or other sources of hardship. They may also advise you of people leaving the area because silver or gold was discovered elsewhere.
The key to looking for missing ancestors lies in examining every type of available documentation about, not only the person, but his family members. After that, try to pinpoint the approximate time they disappeared from written records. Make sure there wasn’t simply a name change. See what kind of circumstances were taking place in the area they were last located that might have caused them to migrate to another place. Keep in mind that in a time before airplanes and automobiles, moving to a new location could take months, rather than days. This could mean that your search might be confined to a smaller distance from the place your ancestor was last found.
Researching your family tree is always part fact and part imagination. When the facts dry up, you need to use your detective talents to get back on the right path. It’s a good thing, too. Otherwise, the whole process of genealogy would be more tedious than creative.
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My grandpa looked like he had stepped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Suspenders, vest, little straw Panama hat, and never without his gold pocket watch and chain. When I was a little boy, every time I went to visit him, he would walk me down to the corner drugstore and buy me a 7UP.
Grandpa was a widower who lived in a little white house with a wide porch swing that hung from chains. Inside, he had old dishes and few appliances. Everything about it seemed like it was from another time long ago. In back, there was a garage, one of the kind that had double doors that swung open, the way barn doors do. But, even when he opened the doors wide, it was still dark inside. After all, there was only one light bulb that hung from the rafters, and any light it provided was partially blocked by all the stuff around it. You could see ancient-looking shovels and rakes and hoes—even a scythe, which reminded me of those pictures of the grim reaper. There were other tools,too; strange ones that I had never seen before, and I didn’t even know what they were for.
He always liked to take Mom into the garage to show her things. She didn’t like it because of all the dust and cobwebs, plus there were spiders everywhere that scurried away whenever you moved one of the boxes that were stacked everywhere. But inside of these boxes were of old books and dishes, eyeglasses and other stuff from his life. Family heirlooms. Other boxes contained thick wooden frames holding pictures of people from long ago. The men in the pictures wore shirts with stiff collars and handlebar mustaches. The women wore long dresses. The thing I noticed most was that they weren’t smiling. They just seemed stern and unhappy. I just assumed that it was because they didn’t have televisions and stuff that made me happy.
Back in those days, when I was about 11, I felt like these trips to the garage with Grandpa were boring. He tried to explain everything to me. He would tell me about the people in the pictures, and explain who they were, but I just wasn’t interested. Then one day something happened. I saw a picture sticking up out of one of the boxes. It was a man wearing a braided uniform coat and a wide-brimmed hat with a huge plume in it.
I held the heavy frame up and showed it to Grandpa. “Who’s that?” I asked him.
“That’s your great-great grandfather.”
“Why is he dressed like that? I wanted to know.
“He was a colonel in the Civil War.” Grandpa explained.
That was when my attitude changed. Never in my wildest dreams had I suspected that any of my ancestors had been soldiers or that they had done anything interesting at all in their lives. I had assumed they were all just sad and stern and boring, like the people I had seen in so many of the pictures in Grandpa’s garage.
All of a sudden, I was interested. I wanted to know all about my great-great grandfather, and I asked Grandpa to tell me everything about him. He just looked over the top of his glasses and smiled. He knew that I was finally going to listen to his stories about our family tree. I did listen for many years, after that.
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Jun 10
29
What’s the Big Deal about Genealogy?
When I was a child, my grandparents would show old pictures to my parents and say, “This is your great aunt so-and-so,” and then proceed to tell a story about her. Sometimes, they would even make trips to old cemeteries and point out all the family members buried there. To me, all of this was boring. I couldn’t see the fascination for dead ancestors.
Nowadays, things are different. In 2001, Congress passed a resolution sponsored by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, recognizing October as National Family History Month. A new emphasis on genetic influence and inherited disease, as well as the popularity of using DNA to trace peoples’ ancestry, have kindled more interest in researching your family tree. More recently, the television show, Who Do You Think You Are? has introduced genealogy to the television audience. It is now considered to be the second most popular hobby in the United States, with more than 80 million Americans believed to be actively searching for more information about their ancestors.
But why? Why all this interest in visiting dusty archives of hard-to-read documents just to find out something about a relative who died over a hundred years ago?
Actually, it is obvious why. It’s because the topic is your favorite subject: you. It’s all about you; where you came from; what your surname means, what traits you inherited, and whether or not there is royalty in your blood. Is it true that you are part Native American? If your ancestors were slaves, what part of Africa did they come from? Are you genetically susceptible to any diseases? The questions are fascinating, and the quest for answers is irresistible.
The reason many of us didn’t start family tree research sooner is that it all sounds so intimidating, and even dry and boring. All the dread and grumbling aside, you might want to realize that tracing your ancestry doesn’t have to take over your life. Look at it as a hobby, and do a little at a time. As you begin to uncover facts, tell your immediate family and your other relatives. They may even have bits of information to share with you. Soon, you’ll start to feel like a genealogical detective uncovering clues. The whole process of being an ancestor finder starts to become addictive, and ultimately rewarding.
The first reward is your health. Haven’t you noticed that your doctor asks you about your mother and father’s health history when you go in for a check-up? Your genes can pass diseases from one generation to another. If you learn about the health of your parents and your grandparents, this information may help you and your children take preventative measures against hereditary diseases.
For instance, if your grandparents were diabetic, you may be able to avoid suffering from the same illness through a healthier diet and more exercise, while seeing that your children do the same. In some cases, you may learn that you have likely inherited a predisposition for certain illnesses, such as alcohol addiction. This allows you to make informed decisions about your lifestyle choices. In fact, you can even share family health history trends with your relatives to ensure that they and their children are also aware of them.
Some of the other information you discover through investigating your family tree is just plain intriguing. Did you ever wonder what your surname means? Does your family have a special family crest or insignia, and what does it look like? What country does your family come from originally?
Learning about all of these things helps you stay educated about yourself.
If you involve your children in your research as a fun project, both you and they will learn a little more about looking up information on the Internet and using a library for research. As you progress with your ancestry studies, you may uncover previously-unknown information about some family heirlooms that you own. This is the kind of thing that gives new meaning to them for your family. Sometimes you can discover famous, or infamous relatives, or uncover information about ancestral burial places that would be perfect vacation spots. All of this can be done in a spirit of curiosity and fun, not as a tedious pursuit of the monotonous. In the process of discovering about your ancestors, and filling in a the gaps in your family’s history, you will be able to pass information on to your children to help them stay healthy and be proud of their heritage.
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You did it all yourself. You interviewed your older relatives. You found genealogical information on the Internet. You went to various libraries. You visited cemeteries, courthouses and other sources of information pertaining to your family history. You sent letters requesting information out of state. You recorded every fact you discovered and noted the source. At last, you finished researching your family tree. You’re a full-fledged ancestor finder, and the findings are all yours. But if you have any intention of publishing your work, you may face legal issues of copyright infringement. It may seem hard to believe, but it’s possible that certain information about your own family may not belong to you.
How do you prevent this? You can start by learning about copyright laws. This will help you to understand how important it is for you to be careful not to steal from other sources. Then you should always protect your work with copyright registration, which will also keep other people from stealing your work from you.
Some things can’t be copyrighted. It doesn’t matter how much time you spent on researching them. For instance, you can’t copyright a simple pedigree chart, or specific facts about your ancestors’ lives, regardless of where you found them. However, once you have traced your ancestry and researched your family tree, you will begin your personal family history narrative. Now, the information contained in your narrative can be found in many sources and is not copyright-able. This is also true of any titles, charts and documentation of your relatives’ lives, which are not copyright-able either. However your exact words are copyright-able, which means that they cannot be taken and used by anyone else.
Always be aware that the act of copying and pasting information from an Internet source, and then publishing it as your own, is illegal. If you have any doubt, it is always best to contact the original author and ask for permission before using them as a source in your research. Chances are that the person you are asking is a distant relative, which increases the likelihood that he or she will be willing to grant you permission.
Your own original writing automatically belongs to you. All you have to do is put a copyright notice on your work. This protects you against anyone saying that they didn’t know the work was copyrighted. Just type either the word “copyright,” or the symbol consisting of a letter C inside of a circle, and then the year you created it, followed by your own name. As added protection for unpublished research narratives, you can also also add this notation to the beginning of your work.
You don’t have to go through the process of copyright registration to have legal protection from its being stolen. Unfortunately, if a legal assertion of copyright infringement were to be claimed against you on any work that you have not registered, your opponent can say that you are the one doing the stealing. It is impossible for you to prove in court that any piece of work is yours if you haven’t registered it.
Luckily, copyright registration is a simple process. You just pay a flat fee to the U. S. Copyright Office. The necessary registration form can be downloaded from the Internet and printed out, or it can be mailed to you. When you read the directions, you will see that the requirements are for two copies of the work that you want copyrighted, which will be archived in the Library of Congress. In return, you will be sent documentation showing that the work is protected by copyright. This will serve as proof in the event that any legal problems arise.
Always be aware that this is a two-way street. Since you don’t want anyone to steal the fruits of your research labor, don’t ever steal from someone whose work has been published prior to yours.
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