All My Ancestors

Last week I taught a beginner’s class on research African American ancestors. As part of the prep, I ordered and read Thulani Davis’ My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-first Freedwoman Confronts Her Roots.

I recommend it. It was fascinating to follow her as she unravelled and verified the story her grandmother Georgia was writing about their family at the time of her death. Much of the story took place in Yazoo County, Mississippi. (A place where I also had relatives during the time.) Davis’ grandmother Georgia is the child of Will Campbell, a former slave-owner and son of a prominent family, and married freedwoman Chloe Curry. Their long, complex relationship had lasting effects on both families.

Thulani Davis tracks her relatives and her story through a variety of records and travels to the places where they lived and worked. Part of her record retrieval was stymied by Hurricane Katrina–and she draws comparisons between that disaster and the violence and tragedies and legacy of Reconstruction.

I learned a great deal about this particular chapter of African American history as well her research methods and records. She put meat on the bones, as we say–exploring the whys in addition to the whens and wheres for her family–in a tumultuous historical era. The story was powerful and the methodology was informative.

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Here are Miriam’s prompts for this week. I guess I’m not really late if we consider that George Washington’s birthday isn’t until Friday–we just celebrated last Monday, supposedly.

*As a child, do you remember celebrating either Lincoln or Washington’s birthdays? How did you celebrate them? What do you remember learning about either of these men?
It’s been so long since grade school. But it seems to me I remember acknowledging both–along with the shoebox covering for the Valentine’s exchange, we cut out silhouettes of Lincoln and Washington each February.

Of course, I remember the “Honest Abe” stories–his hard beginnings, his mother’s death and his studying by candlelight, and his walking so many miles to return a penny or so he’d shorted his customer. Honesty seemed to be a big theme for emphasis because I also remember the cherry tree and “I cannot tell a lie” story for George Washington. And his wooden teeth.

The other thing I remember is that when I would visit my grandmother in South Dakota in the summers, we would sometimes stop by a little house in Blunt. The house had belonged to one of Abe Lincoln’s teachers back in Illinois who had lived in Blunt at the end of his life. His name was Mentor Graham–though I don’t know if that was really his first name or a title–but I loved going there and feeling a direct connection to Abraham Lincoln. In 1981, my grandmother and I got to take my sons there–one was an infant and the other was 3, but it is a meaningful memory for me even if they can’t remember it.

*Did you get a day off of school, have an assembly, or was there a play performed?
Not that I remember. But those were the days before “Spring Break.” ahhhh, the good ol’ days

*Do you ever remember reading any books or watching any movies about these two leaders?
I don’t remember anything specific, though I have some recollection of Sam Waterston playing/reading for Abe Lincoln in Burns’ The Civil War.

*In your opinion, who was the greatest leader of our country, and why?
I don’t know that I want to do this one here. I can say that I have a great deal of admiration for both Lincoln and Washington–for their vision and their sacrifice and their humanity.

*In your current career, do you get Presidents Day off? Why or why not?
It depends. I’ve had jobs that we did not have the day off–teaching at University, working in a public library. I now work at a state historical society and we had that day off. Who knows the reasoning?!!

*In many communities, Presidents Day weekend is well-known for sales and special deals. How do you feel about this? Do you like to go shopping on this weekend? Or do you feel this emphasis on commercialism is disrespectful?
I can’t say that I think it’s disrespectful, but I don’t shop on that weekend. Of course, I don’t shop any weekend and as seldom as I can get by with, so I’m probably not typical in this respect.

*Presidents Day is also a day when veterans and Purple Heart recipients are honored. Are or were there any Purple Heart recipients in your family or ancestry? Have you written about what they did to earn this great award?
I don’t know anyone in my family who was awarded the Purple Heart. I do remember that one year we were doing a display for Veteran’s Day at the library, and one of our security guards brought his medal for our display. That’s really the first time I can remember seeing a medal and the person to whom it was awarded.

The other things I remember about Lincoln and Washington are that the summer we took the boys to South Dakota, 1981, we also visited Mount Rushmore. What a huge undertaking that must have been.

And my husband and I visited the log cabin ?replica? in which Abe Lincoln was born on one of our vacations before the kids were born–I just remember how beautiful Kentucky was and how much it smelled like whiskey.

Another favorite memory is going through Mount Vernon on one of our trips to D.C. I loved being there and looking at the gardens as well as the house. I thought His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis was a strong biography of Washington–I tend to like to get inside people’s heads, and I thought Ellis did a good job of describing the “why” of many of Washington’s decisions.

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Lidian at The Virtual Dime Museum blog tagged me for the meme currently making the rounds.  In my quest to find fresh topics to write about by using other blogger’s suggestions, I decided I’d participate.  In one of my lives, I’m a librarian, which doesn’t make me an expert–just makes me nervous about committing. 

What issues/topic interests you most–non-fiction, i.e,cooking, knitting, stitching, there are infinite topics that has nothing to do with novels?

I love all of the above and more.  I tend to like to read about cooking more than actually performing, my shoulder has started hurting so my knitting’s going by the wayside, and genealogy and knitting long ago took over my stitching obsession.  However, almost any sort of craft “how to” I enjoy, especially if it deals with paper or fabric.  And then there’s all my genealogy and local history books–can you ever really have enough?

Would you like to review books concerning those?

Not particularly, at least in any formal fashion.  It takes time away from actually doing–the knitting, crafting, genealogy.

Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? Tell reasons for what ever you choose.

I’ve done some of the crafting and genealogy for pay and as a hobby.  I love them both, though doing it for money puts more pressure on me.  If this question refers to the writing of reviews, I tend to do it in a more informal manner–I’ve written formal reviews in a former academic life, for no $$$, of course.

Would you recommend those to your friends and how?

As I said earlier, my recommendations tend to be more informal.  I do have a  “visual bookshelf” on my facebook page, and I have some of my books up at “Library Thing,” so I suppose that could count as recommendations.  I haven’t figured out how to do it on my current blog.  But any recommending I do really tends to be more informal–especially if I come across something that I know a friend is interested in–that’s the librarian in me, I guess.

If you have already done something like this, link it to your post.

I don’t think I’ve done this–I’ll go back through my posts to be sure, but I don’t think I’ve done it here.  I usually recommend Emily Croom’s Unpuzzling your Past as my favorite beginner’s “how to” genealogy book, but that’s more likely to occur in my classes than on my blog.

….as for tagging others, I think I’ll let this branch of the meme die with my posting–I’ve read lots of others and I suspect its time has come.   On the other hand, if you’re reading this and want to take it further, consider yourself tagged.

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I found this article in the 4 January 1935 McAlester, Oklahoma newspaper, of course, while looking for something else. That this couple, James Mills and Sarah Keifer, had gotten married in a Civil War army camp piqued my interest. Seventy years married is a lot of years! There is a lot of great genealogical information in this article–I hope their descendants have a copy.  And I loved the comment that their wedding provided a break from the monotony of army camp.

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I’ve always heard of genealogists finding their family while searching for something else. In my 25 years, plus or minus, of searching this has never happened to me.

But yesterday it did!

I was researching a family that was in Vinita, Indian Territory, very early. (For Oklahoma, that means prior to statehood in 1907, which, in the scheme of things, really isn’t all that early.) I did not find that family, but while scanning through the C’s in the index, my eyes fell on Ball, Simson.

Simpson Ball is part of my Ball family I’ve written about before–they started in New York City (late 1700s) and ended up in Arkansas (late 1800s) via Iowa. Simpson is the oldest son of Dr. and Mrs. Ball–2 of his brothers perished in an ill-fated wagon train west.

I knew Simpson had married twice–first to Martha Jane Perkins but I didn’t know who his second wife was. From an interview with a descendant, I knew he had at least two daughters with this second wife–Eula and Hallie.

I’d sort of lost track of Simpson after the 1870 census where I’d found him in Carroll County, Missouri, until I found him in 1900, living in Sevier County, Arkansas, with his son Cyrus. His father had done some business in Montgomery County, Kansas in 1871, and I suspect Simpson was there, too. However, I cannot find Simpson on the 1880 census.

So, I was very excited to see an index entry that might be “my” Simpson. The index I was searching is to non-Cherokee persons who are in the Cherokee Nation in 1890 under permit. The index lists only the heads of household, and although the name was Simson rather than Simpson, I felt like this was probably my guy. When I pulled out the microfilm, sure enough, there he was.

On the actual census, it looks like to me that Simpson’s second wife’s name is Martha as well. I’m assuming the 35 year old female listed right under his name is his second wife. I know Clay is from his first marriage, so I believe the 4th entry, which looks also like Simson, age 12, is the first child with his second wife.

I can’t yet confirm the rest of children as his–they could also be grandchildren because I don’t know their names for sure. But I’ll keep looking.

This census was taken, as the title implies, of people who were in the Cherokee Nation, but who were not Cherokee Indians. To be there lawfully, they had to have a permit. Those who were not there legally, and there were plenty of those, were called “Intruders.” (Sharron Standifer Ashton has a terrific set of books called “Indians and Intruders” in which she abstracts mentions of intruders in Indian Territory.) Evidently, Simpson came legally, came in September 1889, and is working livestock for Ed Carey. Now I have to find out what all this means–who is Ed Carey and does a copy of the permit or application for the permit exist? Delaware County in the Cherokee Nation is the northeastern-most part of Indian Territory–it shares its west border with Benton County, Arkansas, which is where his parents were on the 1880 census.

In the meantime, I’m glad to have finally found some relatives in the Indian Territory.

I was starting to think I was the only person in Oklahoma who never had family there.

For me, I guess serendipity just takes a little longer.

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I found this letter my granddad wrote in 1918 among all the “stuff” we moved after his death in 1998. Based on the date of the letter, he would have been 9 when he wrote it. I don’t know who Ray was that he was writing it to, nor do I know if this was a common occurrence–his letter-writing, that is. I do know that his signature at age 9 looks just like I remember it looking 70 years later.

He mentions his parents going to Beaver. Beaver is the county seat of the county where the were living, also named Beaver. I wonder if they were doing some sort of official business there–much of their trading and shopping was done across the state line in Perryton, Texas–it was half the distance and a larger town. He also references his older sisters who were washing dishes–they were just older than him at 12 and 10.  Even when all three of these folks were in their 70s and 80s, Aunt Lorene and Aunt Edna were still referred to as “the girls.”

You can see that it’s written on that old cheap paper that turns acidic almost as soon as it is made. It’s probably pre-Big Chief tablet days, but the paper is similar. It doesn’t have a ragged edge at the top like it was torn from a tablet.

Here’s the text in case you can’t read the original:

Balko, OK.

Jan 9, 1918

Deare school mate Ray:

Are you coming to the party next Saturday night. I dont know if I will come nor not. How do you like to go to school I like to go to school all right How do ytou like your teacher. I like my teacher fine. Are you sitting in a seat by your self. My papa and mamma went to Beaver to day. They stayed till we had the chures done and the girls was washing dishes. Well I must go to bed. Yours truly

Elmer Unruh

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OK, I’ve been wrestling with Blurb.

I do think they have lovely products–I just hope I can get there.

The application is very verrrrrrry slow–and I read on one of the their forums to be sure and NOT cut and paste directly from Word.  Evidently, one should paste what’s in Word into Notebook, or something similar, and then paste into Blurb.  Even with this added step, there’s no way it can be slower than what I’ve been dealing with.

I haven’t tried pasting the text into Notebook or Wordpad yet–but I will.  I have about 46 pages of text and I thought perhaps the reason it was so slow was that it was so text heavy.  Many of the other books appear to have lots of graphics–we’ll have some, but not many.  Apparently the problem is all the formatting that comes with a paste-in from Word.

Stay tuned.  I really really want to get this book done but I don’t want to have to fight with a program to do it.  If the interim step for simplifying pasting in text doesn’t work, I think I’ll have to find another application.

Just so you know–

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