All My Ancestors

13 March 2010

WDYTYA: Episode 2 with Emmitt Smith

Filed under: General — allmyanc @ 10:37 am

I got to watch the second episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featuring Emmitt Smith last night on television.  It’s much more powerful than on the small screen of my computer, though the small screen is definitely better than not seeing the episodes at all.

I’ve seen some people saying they liked the Smith story so much better than the first story with Sarah Jessica Parker, but in some ways, that is like comparing apples to oranges.  I learned from both of them–SJP had no idea she had other than German ancestry from her growing up in Cincinnati, and it was fascinating to see her journey unfold as she learned about the gold miner 49′er in her family on the west  coast and the great-grandmother who was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s, on the east.

Former Cowboy football superstar Emmitt Smith’s trip was emotional.  He understood going in that his family had probably come from slaves but when he was actually in front of the records, it opened another whole dimension.  I wrote about the discovery of slave documents in my husband’s family and how powerful that was–how much more potent that experience would have been had it been my family who were the enslaved.  It felt like a privilege to go with Smith on his journey.  Listening to the experts talk about the meaning of his enslaved family being kept together and the strength and savvy of his 4th great-grandmother Mariah was both heart-wrenching and captivating.

There is much to learn about records generated at these difficult times in our history, when we mistreated persons–the court document accusing Parker’s great-grandmother of witchcraft and knowing that it could mean the end of her life is almost not believable.  The documents listing persons by only first names with monetary values are difficult to even look at, much less contemplate the impact.  The reality of slaves being bred and then families separated and sold is cruel beyond belief.  But as Emmitt Smith graciously notes, “I’m glad I’m not like him”–even though he is referencing his 5th great-grandfather.

Fascinating stories.  Educational experts.  Illuminating records.

You can catch up and read more at the NBC website.

Oklahoma Territorial Census of 1890

Filed under: Oklahoma — allmyanc @ 9:55 am

At my place of work, the library in the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division, we have just finished re-scanning and re-indexing the 1890 Oklahoma Territorial Census.  The new index is available online at the OHS website, and the cd with the census (and more) will soon be available for purchase.

As you probably know, most of the 1890 federal census was destroyed, leaving a huge gap in searching families as they began moving west as the lands started opening up.

On the eve of preparing for statehood in 1907, a census was taken of Oklahoma Territory.  At the time, this included 7 counties, though that number is deceiving.  For example, what was then called Beaver County encompassed all of the panhandle and what was then called “No Man’s Land”–much more than the current Beaver County.

For some unknown reason, this census was never sent to Washington, DC.  We have the original sheets at the Historical Society.  Within the last year or so, this census became available on Ancestry.com, though it is not included in the search when “U.S. Census” is chosen.  It was badly scanned and badly indexed, both originally and then at Ancestry.

The new scans are much clearer.  And the new index is much better.  “We” probably still have mistakes.  Some of the handwriting is incredibly bad and by census takers who obviously could not follow directions and may have been only minimally literate in the English language.  But those of us who have worked with census records know this is the way it works.  This time, however, the index was done by genealogists–persons who are used to working with these sorts of records.

Later I will post about a project I’ve pulled from this census.  I’m still mulling it around in my head, but it took initial shape as I was indexing page after page of the digitized scans.

7 March 2010

A Favorite Recipe Lost

Filed under: Mom, Texas — allmyanc @ 9:36 am

March is Women’s History Month and Lisa Alzo at The Accidental Genealogist has posted 31 prompts for celebrating the women in our lives.  I, of course, am late getting started, but here’s today’s prompt.

March 7 — Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother’s kitchen. Why is this dish your favorite? If you don’t have one that’s been passed down, describe a favorite holiday or other meal you shared with your family.

Cooking was not my mother’s joy or strength.

She did it and she did it fairly well–especially since her boundaries were fairly fixed.  We lived in a rural area where it was almost too hot to have a garden–at least for my red-haired, fair-skinned mother.  And we always had beef in the locker in town, and later, in our home freezer.  I was shocked once to hear a friend’s mother talk about how tired she was as a child of eating lobster.  But she was a child of maritime Canada–I was a child of the Texas plains, and we ate beef.  My mom was known to sneak in a package of bologna or liverwurst occasionally, but it was never put on the table as the main dish.  She did pass to me her skill at making gravy–one of the secrets is letting the flour cook a bit first–I later learned this was called “making a roux” in official cooking terminology.  The other secret is having the right utensil to stir to keep from having lumpy gravy as the liquid (usually milk in our case) is added.  Mom’s utensil of choice was some sort of coiled, springy metal thing probably originally intended to beat egg whites or somesuch.

But at some point she had a great recipe for a dessert that has been lost.  She got it from her best friend Phyllis, and when I moved to the same city Phyllis left our small town for, I called her, but she couldn’t remember the recipe.  I can see it written on a scrap of paper and stuffed in the recipe drawer, but I cannot re-create it nor can I find one despite handy sites like AllRecipes that let you type in the ingredients and provide you with a recipe using those foods.

It started with graham cracker crumbs.  I think it probably had sugar and seems like some whipped egg whites folded in.  These, along with some undoubtedly additional forgotten ingredients, were patted down into a 9 x 13 pan and baked for a bit.  Then, what made it truly amazing, a boiling mixture of crushed pineapple and I can’t remember what else poured over it right as it came out of the oven.  This resulted in a yummy gooey bar that was so good, at least as I remember it.

And maybe it’s the best kind of recipe.  I certainly don’t need the calories, but I relish the memory of cooking in my mother’s kitchen, from recipes she’d scrawled on scraps of paper, making food that had come from her shared friendship with other women at the church.  I was able to locate her “quick” fruit-cake recipe after many years through the magic of the Internet, so perhaps the pineapple, graham-cracker bars will eventually appear as well.

5 March 2010

At Last!!

Filed under: How to, Spindle Family, Virginia — allmyanc @ 11:51 am

Today I am mailing in my husband’s SAR application.

I am both thrilled to be sending it in and chagrined that it has taken me so long.

When we first started researching his family, we discovered there were no Spindles registered as Patriots in the National Society for the Sons of the American Revolution.

My husband is not a joiner. Those of you who know him know that is probably the understatement of the century.

But he has wanted to be an SAR member for a very long time. I have worked through three different chapter registrars–one of them is now deceased. Sad, but true.

But through my work at the library at the Oklahoma Historical Society I met the most helpful man who was willing to do the bit of hand-holding that I needed.

And it was so much easier than I ever imagined. (Of course it’s not accepted yet but I’ve been given hope.)

I had the line back to John Spindle, Jr. who furnished beef and brandy to the Continental Army. What I did not have was a piece of documentation for each date and line on the application.  Documentation of John Jr’s marriage to Mary Barbee Sears has taunted researchers for years, for example.

Turns out, I may not need it. The application for SAR says very clearly, “Proof is needed only for individuals in the bloodline.” Between birth and death records, wills and census records and probates for each of the 7 Spindle generations back to John, Jr., it’s not difficult at all to document.

Another SAR member filed a Supplemental Application back in 1997, so while we aren’t the first to get John Spindle, Jr. on file as a patriot, here’s hoping what I’m sending in will work for Hubbo to finally get his wish.

28 February 2010

Restore My Name–Slave Records in the Family

Filed under: Carnival of Genealogy, Spindle Family, Virginia — allmyanc @ 12:32 pm

written for:

Carnival of African-American Genealogy

Restore My Name – Slave Records and Genealogy Research

Restore My Name – Slave Records and Genealogy Research, will kick-off this African-American themed carnival intended to be a gathering place for the community to share and learn about African-American genealogy.

This first CoAAG theme will deal with how records of slave ownership are handled by the genealogy researcher. Contributors will be asked to write a blog post (at their own blogs) on one or more of the following aspects:

What responsibilities are involved on the part of the researcher when locating names of slaves in a record?

Does it matter if the record(s) are related to your ancestral lines or not?

As a descendant of slave owners, have you ever been pressured by family not to discuss or post about records containing slave names?

As a descendant of slaves, have you been able to work with or even meet other researchers who are descendants of slave owners?

Have you ever performed a Random Act of Genealogical Kindness involving slave ownership records? Or were you on the receiving end of such kindness?

One of the first documents I found when I started working on my husband’s line was a division of slaves when his great-great grandfather Mordecai L. Spindle died in Virginia in 1857.  I remember being stunned.  I was sitting in the Virginia Library and looking at microfilm and just couldn’t move for a while.  My own family had stories of slave-ownership but I’d never seen any corroborating evidence.  But here was name after name after name, including, ironically enough, two enslaved men with the names of my husband and his brother.  With values assigned out to the side of each name to be sure that each of the 6 heirs received an “equal share.”

This is the page that shows the portions for Thomas M. Spindle (at the top) and his sister Alice M. Spindle.  There were 4 other similar lots, one for each surviving child–James E., Margaret B., Sallie, and Mordecai L. Jr.

Later, as I collected more documents on this family, it became apparent that some of these people had been inherited from a previous generation.

So what was I to do with this information?  I chose what I thought were the right moments to share the info with family members and I encountered no push-back.  The news was received solemnly and with not a small degree of discomfort, and we soon changed the subject.  But I felt an ongoing sense that this information might help someone.

In reality, the descendants of the persons names as property in this division may already know about their heritage.  IF, as some evidence indicates, some of the persons assumed the surname of Spindle at emancipation, many of them stayed in the same area of Virginia.  As far as I can determine, very few descendants of this family left the original area of Virginia.  Spindle is not a name that is widely spread.  Looking at the surname distribution for this name at  World Names Profiler shows the concentration of the name is still in Virginia and Texas, where Thomas M. migrated (and had 13 children!) after the Civil War:

So I determined to try to make the information available where I could.  When I collected the wills of additional persons in this family, including the females, that contained the names of enslaved persons, I transcribed the documents and contributed them to the appropriate webpages at the Virginia USGenWeb sites.  (Remember when that was the main way we had to share records online?)  And later I typed up the names and contributed them to AfriGeneas, though I have been unable to find them posted there.

My mind kept going back to these documents when I was reading Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family. And the story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  And Francois Furstenberg’s In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation–one of Washinton’s homes was right across the Rappahannock from where these people lived. Sharing the documents I have is what I know to do.  I’ve also educated myself about doing research on African American families–I took the first African American research course offered at Samford’s IGHR.  On a weekly basis, at my place of work, I assist persons of color looking for their families in the census records.  My finding those early records fit right into my curious nature and insured that I learned more.  And as a teacher and a librarian, I hope some of that learning helps persons looking for their ancestors.

14 February 2010

A Trip Down Memory Lane via Google Maps

Filed under: Cemeteries, Oklahoma, Perryton, South Dakota, Texas — allmyanc @ 5:46 pm

Written for 52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge #7

from Amy Lenertz Coffin at http://wetree.blogspot.com/2010/01/52-weeks-to-better-genealogy.html

Play with Google Maps (http://maps.google.com). This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.

As I’ve written here many times, I come from a family of farmers–persons who had land, for the most part.  Those farms and ranches are no longer in the family.  But I can visit any time I like using Google Map.

My maternal grandparents lived on a ranch in South Dakota.

The main buildings were the house and the barn.  The barn, at the time of this photo, sported my grandad’s brand above the doors, Lazy XY.  The house actually faced north, but this is the southern exposure.  It was too cold in South Dakota to have a north facing entry, so we always used the “back porch” as the entry.

My grandparents had moved most of their things back to Texas by the 1980s–they were in their 80s by then and they first spent winters in Oklahoma and Texas with my folks and my aunt and uncle, and later stayed “in the south” year round.  Shortly before my grandmother died in 1998, the house burned.  We don’t know the details, we just know that it burned to the ground.  In a sense, it was a blessing that the house took care of itself–

When I find myself thinking about the carefree summers I spent at my grandparents’ ranch, I look at my photos, but I also often pull up their place on Google Maps:

I can still see the barn and the tree rows planted east of the house to catch the wind and snow.  A trailer home replaces the house for the family that lives there now.  If I really want to, I can move to the right on the map to “roam” the pasture.  And I can follow the road (306th Ave. on this map) a couple of miles down the hill to the little village of Canning where my grandmother ran the country store and post office, and where we lived the year I was in the 6th grade.

This picture brings back lots of memories.

Over there at the left is the beginning of the spring-fed lakes where we swam in the summer time and ice-skated in the winter.  At the right, the “top” of Cactus Loop, is where the school was.  There was a cemetery behind it and a huge hill down the side.  We sledded in the winter and rolled down in tractor tires in the spring.  Why we weren’t killed is amazing to me.  My grandmother’s store and PO was to the left of the intersection of Chesley Rd and 206th St.  It looks like there’s some sort of barn there now.  Above where Spring St, crosses Chesley St. is the church, with another cemetery behind it.  On up that hill takes me back to my grandparent’s ranch.  See the house at the lower right?  I won’t include the name of the people who live here, but my granddad helped build that house–with someone as particular as he was–they got along fine.  The drilled holes for the nails before they pounded them in–no nail guns here.

I have these places, and others, bookmarked on Google Map.  I like visiting them occasionally.  There’s a country cemetery in Beaver County I like to visit–it’s easy to count the miles as I travel down the road, and I know how many miles and which directions it is to visit where my great Aunt Edna and Uncle Gurly lived, and where my great-grandparents lived out there in Beaver County Oklahoma.

And then I can always “drive-by” the house where I grew up (marked with the small white heart)–it’s a different color now but it’s still located across the street from the high school, between the First Christian Church and the Church of Christ on Jackson Dr., and I can drag Main Street if I’m feeling really nostalgic.

7 February 2010

Perspective and a Book Review

Filed under: Cooper Family, Mitchell Family, Texas — allmyanc @ 3:17 pm

I received and read this book this past week.


I discovered its existence last week.

As I’ve been blogging,  I’ve been working on my Mitchell line.  Mary Mitchell was the wife of John B. Cooper and they were the parents of George C. and Rebekah Ann Cooper.  Both of these children were orphaned by shortly after the Civil War.  I am descended from George C. Cooper–he was my great-grandfather.  The author of From Flour Sacks to Satin is the granddaughter of Rebekah Ann, or “Annie” as she was known.  I did not know my great-grandfather–he died almost 20 years before I was born.  But one of the chapters in this book is entitled “Grandma Hall,”–Annie, my ggrandfather George’s sister.  She knew her grandmother.

Some pages of this book were difficult to read.  It is illustrative of the point that we don’t all grow up in the same family.  My youngest  brother remembers events in our family much differently than do I, for example.  He wasn’t there for some of them, and I wasn’t there for others–his being 6 years younger and having siblings who essentially left home when he was 12, leaving him to be a type of only child, means we were reared in families essentially different in many ways.

That is the case with the story told in this book.  Her story is no less true or valuable or compelling for having been the descendant of Annie.  The bones of the story are the same–the children left Johnson County with their widowed mother after the War, were orphaned, were rescued from Fayette County, Texas from living with a Mr. Burns after the death of their mother, and were returned to Johnson County to live with their grandparents, Job and Elizabeth Landrum Cooper.

Other details and events vary.  According to Flour Sacks, George was offered opportunities to continue his education.  Annie was allowed to only attend school through the third grade, despite her thirst for more knowledge and formal education.  I do know that George was a school teacher–that’s how he met Sallie Duval, his wife.  Annie and her now-blind husband and children were “invited” to leave the Hall’s place.  The subtitle of the book tells the tale: The Story of a Sharecropper Family. These are events of which I have no knowledge–either from firsthand experience or from family lore.  And the author herself says in opening remarks,

“The purpose of this books is not to embarrass or slander anyone in recording the events of my early life, which I believe were unique in the circumstances I experienced.  Through the years I have come to dearly love all of my relatives and appreciate the people with whom I was associated, both living and deceased….”

I am indebted to her for writing this story.  It is on the shelf next to one of her books of poetry she gave me nearly 20 years ago–a collection that includes the thoughts of a young John B. as he looked out over his plowed fields, as the clouds of War approached.  They are treasures.  I wrote her a letter before I received the book, asking her if she wanted to know more about our Mitchell line.  Unfortunately, it was returned–putting it out on the mailbox for the postman to pick up evidently resulted in part of her address washing off the envelope.  I must revise and send it along again–none of us are getting any younger.

And I must express to her directly how grateful I am to her for putting down her story, which is, of course, part of my story.

1 February 2010

. . . and one more [WorldCat] thing

Filed under: How to, Memes — allmyanc @ 7:09 pm

Have you used the OAISTER part of WorldCat?  There was a Facebook posting about it after I wrote my original post for this week.

This is the answer to all of us who have wished for a catalog of materials that have been digitized and put online–“books and articles, audio and video files, photos, data sets, theses and research papers” to quote the WorldCat blog.

I’ve used it when it was housed at the University of Michigan, but I played with it some more and I was amazed at the breadth of what was available, including interviews and photos.

Have fun!

30 January 2010

The Researcher’s Toolbox: WorldCat

Filed under: How to, Memes — allmyanc @ 11:30 am

Written for  52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge #5

I love WorldCat.

I downloaded the app onto my iPhone, thinking, as a librarian, I should have it there, but not imagining that I would ever use it.  Not so.  I have used it multiple times when I’ve found myself away from my computer and wondering about the availability of a title.

WorldCat is an uber catalog.  When folks at the library where I work ask me about a title we don’t have within our 4 walls, I nearly always offer to do a lookup for them in WorldCat.  Most of them don’t know what WorldCat is, so it’s an opportunity to shed some light as well.  I tell them it’s one way to determine if that particular title is available in our area–we are privileged to have a wonderful public library system in our area and also to have the holdings of 4-5 college and university libraries available to us.  So sometimes it’s just a matter of visiting an area library.  Other times, I can tell them how to request the item through interlibrary loan at their public library.

This caveat regarding interlibrary loan is also always given–many libraries will not loan their genealogical titles.  BUT, customers can request photocopies of the table of contents or the index or perhaps the entries for a certain person.  Most libraries are willing to do this copying of a specific topic when they are not willing for their books to go out the door.

And of course, books are not the only format of information cataloged in WorldCat.  It’s possible to search for serials or microfilm or cds or musical scores or maps and even internet links.

One of the ways I used WorldCat is to find the actual title of a work.  Since I work in a historical society library, the library where folks come to do their genealogical research, I use it a lot to help customers who start by saying something like, “My mother’s cousin’s uncle’s grandmother wrote a book about our family.  It’s blue.  Do you have it?”

Using WorldCat, I can determine what titles have been published about that given family.  I ask about the family name–the customer doesn’t have to know the name of the author or the title of the book.  Then WorldCat can be searched using “Mitchell Family” as a subject search, and I can see what books have been published about the Mitchell family and also what libraries hold those titles.  For such a common name, I might also throw in a keyword search as well, such as including the name of the state where they lived or perhaps one of the collateral lines.

Knowing that the cover is blue, however, is not all that helpful.  :-)

With Amy and others posting about this tool, I encourage you to get acquainted with WorldCat.  I typically access it through my public library’s website–if “my” library system has the title, WorldCat lets me know that with a highlighted line.  Otherwise, I can look to see how many libraries hold it and where I might find it in my area.

Use it to see what’s been been published on a topic of interest–your family names or location where they lived.  You’ll feel so smart!

22 January 2010

NEGHS, Patsy, and John

Filed under: Mitchell Family, Tennessee, Vital Records — allmyanc @ 12:18 pm

Since I never met a database I didn’t like, I took advantage of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society’s offer to WorldVitalRecord subscribers for 10% off the membership fee.  I’ve heard such good things about this society and its holdings, I thought it was a safe purchase.

I have no New England ancestors that I know of.  I do have that one line that was in New York City fairly early, so maybe that counts.  I tend to think of New England ancestors as being in places other than the Big Apple.  But I am a genealogy librarian, so I think of this as a work-related expense.  I need to know what’s out there for my patrons, right?

So imagine my surprise when I found something in the NEHGS’s manuscript collection that a cousin and I recently discovered and have been trying to find one accessible to us.  Short of a trip to Boston, this one is still not all that accessible, but I can at least check into having a portion of it copied and mailed to me.  I sent off the request this morning.  It’s only money.

I’ve documented my quest for documenting “Patsy McClain” as the wife of John Mitchell.  We believe we have definitely connected Martha “Patsy” McLean, daughter of Ephraim and Mary “Polly” Boyd McLean, Jr., as the wife of John Mitchell.  They probably married about 1810 or so in Maury County, Tennessee.  My cousin recently unearthed a Maury Co., TN bond of some sort between John Mitchell and John McLean–but there is no date and no mention of Patsy!  It was sent to her as a “marriage bond.”  Of course she is pursuing it further.  But it is as close as we’ve come to linking the two. What do the headings on this hard-to-read document mean?  As with any bit of information, this one engenders the need for still more data.

And hopefully the manuscript will help as well.  IF portions can be copied.

If not, a trip to Boston may be in order.

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