All My Ancestors

Saturday we had a customer who came in, thrilled to have found us because her husband was in town at a meeting and she needed a diversion.  She hadn’t brought her notes because she hadn’t known of our existence.   She knew of some American Indian history in her family and the main name she could recall was John Smith. 

Yikes.

We have challenges every day.  The majority of our customers believe they have American Indian ancestry and we assist them in their search for verification.   This customer was a little different in that she didn’t think her family had ever come west, on the Trail of Tears or other wise, so I wasn’t sure where to begin.  She had the name of one of the many rolls, which we checked.  What we had was a 20th century published version of the roll–she thought she remembered that her family had been rejected, so they would not be included.  She kept saying that she would just work on it another time, that she hadn’t come prepared, and that this was probably hopeless.

We kept talking and trying things.  Finally my much more knowledgeable colleague came back from lunch–we picked her brain for a while.  By this time the customer came up with a few more names.  My colleague went to yet another published roll and looked up one of the collateral names and said, “Well, here’s the XXX name and he was born in (place).”  The customer said, “Oh, my, that’s where my family was from.” 

So we pulled out the microfilm.  One of the first things I read while she was looking at other names in the index, was that this person was applying based on his great grandfather John Smith having been an Indian. It’s a common name, of course, but the story and the name were close enough, I told her about it.  She immediately wanted a copy and then she went through it more carefully.  The places were correct but she wasn’t certain about the names until we came to the name of one John Smith’s daughters–this applicant’s grandmother.  It was a distinctive name and we knew we had the right family.

She said she was going to be very hard to live with because she had found such a treasure.  She was so thrilled.

As I reflected on the experience, I thought about its lessons for the researcher looking for a person with a common name.  What helped with this search was the place and an uncommon first name.  John Smith was not listed in any of the indexes.  But the surname for the son-in-law of one of his daughters was listed.  Did you follow that?  Three generations away from John we found some of his descendants and verified the story that another descendant had heard.  The file said that applicant was applying based on his great-grandfather being an Indian.  He was rejected because John Smith’s name could not be found on any of the earlier tribal censuses.  All that matched the story our customer had heard. 

All in all, it was an interesting search and lesson.  We kept encouraging her not to give up–she was happy to be there and wanted to search but somewhat embarrassed that she had come so unprepared.  We, of course, saw her story as a challenge, and with each bit of information that we pulled out of her, we moved a bit closer to finding what she was looking for. 

The other personally interesting part of this story is that IF I have any American Indian heritage, the part of the country her family was from is the part where mine is from.  I told her that, she asked the name, and  when I told her, she knew many people by that name.  I wasn’t surprised as they appeared to be quite prolific and many with that name are still there.  I also told her that once my part of the family came to Oklahoma, one of them married a person of the same name as her rejected applicant. 

Collaterals, place, collaboration, and persistence seemed to be the keys to this successful search. 

Now, to find details on my own George Jones.  Who married Nancy Jones.  Honest.

Yesterday I wrote about finding the Missing Crew Reports of the U.S. Army Air Forces at Footnote. These are evidently called MACRs in the lingo of the day. My great-uncle Lloyd Crabtree was a prisoner at Stalag I at Barth from the time of his plane going down on 11 Jan 1944 until liberation 1 May 1945 when it was liberated by the Russians. Uncle Lloyd suffered damage to one of his ears from frostbite he received while in the camp.

In doing my research for that post, I also found a terrific website entitled World War - II Prisoners of War - Stalag Luft I, created and maintained by Mary Smith and Barbara Freer, daughters of Dick Williams, Jr., also a former POW. I found it by googling on Uncle Lloyd’s name.

This site has maps, sketches of the layout of the camp, lists of who was there and where they were located in the camp, some of the stories and poems and diaries from the prisoners, and photographs. There is information on the guards and interrogators as well as copies of letters. There are links to other POW stories and websites. I found Uncle Lloyd’s name listed in two different rooms in the “Roommates” section, and then when I consulted his book, I saw that he had indeed lived in two different rooms. One of his roommates was also named Crabtree, which he acknowledged, and referred to him as “Bugle,” his nickname while he was there. He talked about there being more space in the North Compound, so he and Bugle moved to the North 1 Compound, Barrack 8, Room 7 from the crowded South Compound about May 1944. He lists some of his roommates which match those listed on the website’s “Roommates” section.

Uncle Lloyd was the bombardier in his crew. That means he was the guy whose position was right up in the nose of the plane, in a plexiglass nose cone. Here’s a picture. It gives me the willies just to look at that person in the nose-cone. This site is just one example of what’s available online about the B-17s.

Another online site that proved helpful is the good ol’ Wikipedia. Reading through the entry for B-17 Flying Fortress, I found that 11 January 1944, the day Uncle Lloyd’s plane went down, was not a good day for the USAAF. They lost 60B-17s that day. The planes flying this mission were actually called back because of worsening weather, but several had already entered hostile air space and did not turn back. Uncle Lloyd’s crew was evidently among these.

I never cease to be amazed at what the Internet has enabled us to do in sharing our information. The World War - II Prisoners of War - Stalag Luft I website is wonderful, with excellent instructions for conducting this type of research as well as a real wealth of information that until the Internet, was difficult to locate, much less obtain.

Take a look and say one more prayer of gratitude for those who served. And one for those whose efforts make this sort of information available.

Today Kim Powell at About.com:Genealogy addresses the “our name was changed at Ellis Island” myth in her most excellent column..  She address 4 of the common family myths in an earlier article entitled “Family Legends–Fact or Fiction?“–the 3 brothers, the Indian Princess, name change at Ellis Island, and the family inheritance gone awry.

Where I work, we see these myths on almost a daily basis.   We have one customer who has written us 6 times about his Indian great-grandmother.  No matter how we phrase it, we cannot convince him that the girl with the same name who is on the Dawes Rolls is in fact not his great-grandmother.  And another repeat customer is certain we can find out what happened to the inheritance her mother was “cheated out of” by an uncle who went for ministerial training.

One of my great-aunts insisted that her family name was originally “Unrau” instead of “Unruh” and that it was changed at Ellis Island.   At some point in time, the family name may very well have been “Unrau,” though I’ve found some fairly old church records from the time they spent in Russia that have “Unruh” recorded.  As for the Ellis Island myth, the family actually came in through Philadelphia.  The came at the end of 1874, almost 20 years before Ellis Island was opened in 1892.

I tend to believe that most family stories have a kernel of truth, but it’s my job to research and sort fact from fiction.  It’s one of the things I love most about doing this sort of research.   Our family did indeed immigrate, but the port they came in through was not even in operation at the time of their arrival.  This underscores the importance of doing good, basic research of the history of the time.  Contemporary records, such as the church records, are another means of determining what’s gotten changed through time in the the family story.

Kimberly Powell is reporting that a version of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? is coming to US television. Here’s a bit more information from The Guardian. And, as a bonus, Phoebe will be there!

All I can say is, it’s about time. I watched this program while I was in Ireland last September, having heard of it before I visited. I actually managed to watch two episodes and I thought it was wonderful.

I started to say it’s surprising to me that it’s taken mainstream media this long, but it really doesn’t, even though genealogy is one of the most popular pursuits in the US. [snark ends here]

I can hardly wait!

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.

I recently found the obituary for my mom’s one surviving cousin from her father’s side of the family. There were only six of them to begin with, and with my uncle’s death last year, there’s now only one.

This cousin died 5 1/2 years ago. I feel a little guilty for not knowing sooner–I called her and let her know when my mom died, but I heard nothing about her death. I should have traveled the 75 miles to visit her or at least called her up. I sort of went into hiding for a couple of years after my mom died–actually, my mother and both of her parents, my grandparents, all died within 6 months of each other the end of 1998. It took me a while to do anything more than what was absolutely necessary and I didn’t really even know I was operating in a fog. So I didn’t keep in touch.

At any rate, I regret not knowing about Lavada’s death. But her obituary is the model of what an obituary should be. It lists her maiden name, her nick-name, and the maiden name of her mother. It lists the full names of her husband, her parents, and her children–it lists the in-laws full names and the names of her grandchildren. It also lists the towns where they each live–I’ve been thinking about giving them a call. We only know each other from the times we’d be visiting Aunt Edna’s–their grandmother–at the same time they were there visiting. We didn’t really overlap all that much. I probably know more about them from my mom keeping me current than I do from first-hand experience.

Her obituary states where she graduated from high school–she must have been living with her aunt, my great-aunt Lorene of bladder-training fame, in Kansas, at the time. Her wedding was there as well–and the obituary listed their wedding date–all information I didn’t know. What an obituary can reveal.

I found the obituary on the USGenWeb Archives page. I had to hunt–there is no apparent link between the Payne County webpage and the Payne County archives. It’s the archives that has the obituaries, as well as the cemetery listings and lots of other good information. I first found an SSDI record which gave me the date of death–the only way I could find her obituary since I wasn’t certain I was spelling her surname correctly–it’s sort of tricky. But find it I did.

I’m sorry I didn’t talk to her before she died. In the past few years, I’ve learned how much I depended on my mother for “family news.” I’ve come to know that I have to put forth the effort myself if I want to maintain those ties. The hunt for this obituary also reinforced what I know about searching the internet–you can’t just put in a name and expect what you want to know to pop up. You must know the resources and how to use them.

I’ve always appreciated the USGenWeb project–I was a county coordinator for a time for the Texas county where I grew up–before they had good internet service themselves. There’s a great deal of variety among what is offered on the various county websites, but that’s part of the chase–you just never know what you’ll find. But you cannot depend on Google to search each page and “find” what you’re looking for. You have to know where to look.

So I learned some things about my cousins, I learned a bit about what goes into a good obituary, and I reinforced what I know about searching that wild animal known as the Internet. This search prove a worthwhile, though bittersweet, experience.

Update:  I went to the newspaper on microfilm to look at the original, and there was a photo!  Again, it often pays to go to the source.

So many topics floating through my head.

I’ll pick two–more info about the Missouri Blair line and research in Oklahoma.

I found the burial site of the governor’s father–he’s in the same cemetery in Jefferson City as the governor. As is the governor’s brother Sam C. Blair, US Attorney, and a third brother, William Clark Blair. I haven’t dug about long enough for William C. yet, but all three of these men served in World War II, one a colonel, one a major and one a lt. (jg) in the Navy.

Then there’s Dr. Anna Lou Blair, whom I found as well. She is the sister of James T., Sr. and distinguished enough in her own right. She taught 49 years at Missouri State University in Springfield, served as the chair of the Modern Languages department, and has a building named for her. I found her on the 1930 census studying at Yale and in 1940, she’s returning from a trip to Chile. She sounds like no slouch.

That’s just one of the topics I want to explore. (Not to mention that I keep thinking I should be able to find an obituary for James T., Sr. So far, I have not been successful in any of my subscription databases.)

Then there’s the article in one of the recent genealogy magazines that lists online sites for each state. There’s one lonely entry for Oklahoma, and it’s the Access Genealogy site that has the index to the final rolls of the Dawes Commission. It’s listed as a site that charges, which I’ve not found to be so, and the site also has in caps and bold letters the most ignored statement in Native American genealogical research:

IF YOUR ANCESTOR WAS NOT LIVING IN INDIAN TERRITORY DURING 1898-1914 THEY WILL NOT BE LISTED ON DAWES!!

But the point is that there are some other Oklahoma sites that are pretty terrific. One of the best, in my opinion, is the database of the Indian Pioneer interviews done in the 1930s–another one of those great WPA projects. These interviews were done with “89ers” (those who came to Oklahoma for the 1889 land run, or a subsequent run) or their descendants AND with Native Americans who already lived here, or their descendants and covers a time period of about 1860-late 1930s. With almost 80,000 entries, it is a rich, rich resource, and the University of Oklahoma Western History Collections has all the interviews mounted for access by name, place or subject.

The Research Center at the Oklahoma Historical Society has some good information up as well. The index to the 1890 Territorial Census is available at here. This census is particularly important since most of the 1890 census for the rest of the country was destroyed. Because Oklahoma was not yet a state, this census was not with the federal census and thus survives. It covers a portion of the Unassigned Lands (Logan, Oklahoma, Cleveland, Canadian, Kingfisher, and Payne Counties) in the center of the state and Beaver County in the panhandle.

Photos from early Oklahoma are also available online at the Oklahoma Historical Society’s site. Use the Archives link in the online catalog and type in a subject. If you see “file available” in the lower right corner, click on that link and see the photo. This database is no where near complete, but it’s fun to browse–type in the name of an Indian tribe or an old Oklahoma town and see what comes up.

Another online source, though not tied to any agency or company, is the work done by the late Mary Turner Kinard. She indexed many of the pre-statehood marriages from Indian Territory and that index is available online here. The documents themselves are in various repositories, but the site tells the searcher where to obtain copies.

We shouldn’t forget the Oklahoma portion of the USGenWeb project–I still find myself using it on an almost daily basis when I’m at work. It’s well maintained and has some very good information for anyone researching in Oklahoma.

I’ll stop.

Those are just two of the topics floating through my mind, and they aren’t even related except that they both address genealogical quests. Granted the Oklahoma resources aren’t all that straightforward, but they are there and they are free for now. And what’s the use of having a blog if not to use to clear my head?

After I wrote about cousin John Wright earlier in the week, I decided to look again at his family.

Finding his Civil War questionnaire was accomplished early in my genealogical endeavors. In going back through his file, for example, I found that he’d been in Camp Douglas, the prisoner of war camp for Confederates. I knew I had other family members who died there but I’d forgotten that John W. had been there.

After the death of his mother, his father Thomas remarried, to Eveline Matlock, and had several more children. The first child of that second marriage was Louisa M. Osborne, with the M. probably standing for Matlock. Louisa married a physician, Dr. S. T. Blair. I believe her sister married Dr. S.T.’s brother, but there were lots of Blairs in that area, so maybe a cousin.

On a lark, I entered the good doctor’s name into Google and found one of those fabulous Goodspeed write-ups for him. (I actually think I was looking for information about the college John Wright refers to–Ewing and Jeff, which turns out to be a Cumberland Presbyterian college with the official title of Ewing and Jefferson College.) To my surprise, he’d moved to Missouri. I always say I’m one of the few people I know who doesn’t have family in Missouri or Kentucky. That just changed.

So I started looking for records on this family in Missouri, and, again, surprise, surprise, I found that at least one of Samuel and Louisa’s sons and grandsons distinguished themselves by being the Supreme Court Justice, and in the case of the grandson, serving as first the lieutenant governor and then the governor of the state. The father served in the state legislature as well.

Part of what allowed me to get to this information was accessing Missouri’s online death certificates–I found one for both Dr. Samuel and wife Louisa. Each was signed by James T. Blair, I believe one by the father and one by the son. That lead me to searching for more information via the census records and newspapers.

I was sorry to read about the untimely death of James, Jr. and his wife Emilie. What a freak accident. So I get to add these to my other (2) relatives listed as “famous“at the Political Graveyard site. Now, of course, since that site notes that his burial site is unknown, one of the things I have to know is where James, Sr. is buried.

There’s a 1930 census entry for a James T. Blair, b. about 1868 in Tennessee that matches the James Sr. who was in Missouri, but is this the same man? He’s managing a hotel in Palo Pinto County, Texas. (I don’t know if he knows it or not, but he has other relatives in the area at that time.) Maybe it is him–who knows? Maybe he needed something completely different to do. Maybe he went to Mineral Wells for the “waters.” Places of birth and dates match, but more work will need to be done.

At any rate, this was an interesting find. I look forward to more like this–after you’ve done genealogy for so long, these sorts of finds are few and far between. I like it!

It’s amazing what you can learn by just listening at family funerals.

I learned where one of my aunts was from–didn’t think it was all that interesting until I started looking for her family on the census. Her birth name is not the same as what I always knew her by. And her mother died when she was very young. I remember a light sort of going on when someone said where she was from–why hadn’t I ever asked that question?

Another aunt’s father was married 3 times–the wife I knew was #3 and quite a bit younger than him. Guess that could account for why she is almost contrary about digging for family history.

I also heard about a couple of arguments in the family, long ago, that account for some of what I saw growing up. I don’t want to go into detail here, but I never could figure out why there was such a gap between members of the same families who lived only 60 miles apart.

I didn’t go to that funeral hoping for more family information–I was glad that I’d gone to family reunion last month and that this wasn’t our only recent get-together. I went to honor my uncle, my dad’s brother. All his siblings were known and dear to me as a child–and now there are only two left. I went because that’s what we do in families–I went for the living. I enjoyed being in the cemetery where 3 generations of my family are buried–not because I’m glad they’re gone, but I am glad that I knew so many of them and it’s somehow meaningful to me that they are buried all together in the same cemetery. As the minister recited the “dust to dust” passage, it seemed especially appropriate–my family were farmers and they loved the land. It’s comforting to me to hear that “dust to dust” part because I think they’ve always viewed themselves as part of the land. As I told my brother, there was a lot of Osborne dust at that cemetery.

This week I’ve been caught up in Chris Dunham’s Genealogue Challenges.

I recently read one genealogist’s statement on “why I do this,” meaning research one’s family, and he or she (don’t remember which) said in what I took to be a rather superior tone that they certainly didn’t do genealogy because they loved puzzles.

I must be the inferior type because that is part of what I love about family history–solving the problems. And Chris’ challenges provide just the thing.

I do have to admit to wondering how (and maybe why) he puts them together. Whatever that process, I enjoy the chase. It provides an opportunity to sharpen my skills and learn new resources. I’ve had fairly good success with solving the challenges and what I’ve learned!!

The most recent was a chase to find out Irene Ryan’s birth name and how she was listed on the 1920 census. I learned her mother was an Irish immigrant, that Irene was born in El Paso, and that even at 17, she was listed as an actress on the census. The “extra credit” was to confirm that the woman she was buried with was her sister–I didn’t make it that far, but others did. I could make a fairly good circumstantial case, but I had to give up and go to bed before I could put the final nail in the case.

In the chase to find the name of one of the undertakers for Frank James, I discovered that “racket store” was a variety store–I thought that’s what the census said, but I’d never heard the term. Now I know. My having worked in a very old small town in western Oklahoma across the street from a former furniture store that had “caskets built” still lettered on the window came in handy on that search.

I also learned that Barnett Kulp’s “most famous granddaughter” was Sara Lee. Solving that one entailed learning where Barnett Kulp died, locating his death notice in LA that said he was to be buried in Chicago. That enabled me to find his obituary, with his survivors, including the married names of his daughters. When I finally decided to run their names through Google, sure enough, daughter “Tillie Lubin” emerged as the mother of Sara Lee–Mr. Lubin bought a chain of bakeries in Iowa and Mrs. Lubin insisted on naming the cakes for their daughter.

Big Nose Kate was a fun chase as well. That name sounded vaguely familiar, and sure enough, she was also known as Katie Elder, off and on companion of Doc Holliday. Lesser known, though, is that she lived her last 20 years with a man named John Jesse Howard and was executrix of his estate. The challenge was to find his full name, and the name of his estranged wife. The Arizona death certificates and birth certificates from that era are online, and they provided the names.

Some I haven’t done so well on–Chris wasn’t kidding when he said the one about Casey Stengel was trickier than it first appeared. I not only learned a lot about Casey Stengel, I learned to remember to use more of the free resources out there–Google books, e.g.

Did you know there really was a Chef Boyardee?

The chase isn’t always about famous or infamous people, but nearly always, I go to some of my favorite sources. There’s Joe Beine’s Online Searchable Death Indexes and Records, which includes links to the necrology index at Cleveland Public Library and the death and birth certificates in Arizona and Missouri.

Check out Chris’ site–he’s also got top ten lists, links to current news stories with a genealogical twist, and he maintains a genealogy blog finder if you’re looking for more to read.