All My Ancestors

I’ve been obsessessed with searching Mitchells these past few days–probably because I have a class I’m supposed to be getting ready to teach.  I call it “productive avoidance.”  I set out to try to find out more about my 3rd great grandparents, Ephraim Miles Mitchell and Rebecca Jones.  I found Ephraim’s father’s name was John and that he probably has a brother also named John.

I’ve been working in the “Eggleston-Ford Connections” database at RootsWeb’s WorldConnect.  There wasn’t much info on any John Mitchell that precisely matched the information I have on Ephraim’s father.  There are 3 John Mitchells in the database, one born in NC in 1760, one born in 1788 [place unknown], and one born about 1856 in Tennessee.  From Spurlin’s Mexican War index, I figured John’s birthdate at about 1791, so 1788 isn’t all that far off.  The database has the 1788 John Mitchell marrying Patsy McClain with no dates, no places and no offspring listed.

I spent a lot of time entering Mitchells into my database today and searching and reading about the people they married and the places they lived.  They appear to have moved from Orange County, North Carolina to Middle Tennessee–mostly Maury County, and then on to Mississippi–northern Mississippi when that area opened up–Yalobusha County and probably Marshall and maybe Grenada County.

Now, here’s the leap, and I’m still not sure I’m not looking at two different John Mitchells.  I decided I’d look for a Patsy Mitchell living in Mississippi.  I knew that John Mitchell’s wife was still alive in 1847 when he wrote a letter to his son Ephraim.  I’d searched for a likely person for Ephraim’s mother in Texas but didn’t find a good candidate.  I also knew that Patsy was a nickname for Martha so when I wasn’t successful with searching for Patsy, I looked for Martha.

The most likely candidate turned up in 1860 in the household of a man named R. L. Boyd age 59, b. MS), witha wife named Mary d (age 42, b. TN) in Marshall County, Mississippi.  There was a Martha MItchell, age 67, born in TN living in their household in both 1860 and 1850.  A definite possibility.

Then I went to find out more about R. L. Boyd.  Turns out he’s Robert Louis Boyd, son of William A. Boyd and brother to Mississippi senator John D. Boyd.  I could find nothing about Robert Louis, but I did find that his brother married in 1821 in Maury County, Tennessee.  Still no direct connection but this all looks interesting in that the same places are still in play.  I checked the land patent records for Marshall County, Mississippi and found one for a John Mitchell in August 1838 (as well as Robert L. Boyd).  Again, absolutely no idea if it’s “my” John Mitchell, but another piece to consider.  I also found several John Mitchells listed on the 1846 Marshall Co. MS tax list–at least 4, so who knows?  (I also found that at least one of John D. Boyd’s children ended up in Johnson County, Texas–where my line lived prior to the Civil War.)

Then I went back to RootsWeb to do a little more specific searching for a John Mitchell and Martha McClain.  I have found a likely candidate and have written him.

In fact, I’ve written several folks this weekend and can scarcely leave my computer, hoping for a return email.  Even if this isn’t “my” John Mitchell in Marshall County, Mississippi, I believe he’s bound to be related and that will help as well.  Here’s hoping–

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The day after Thanksgiving I did what we genealogists recommend and support.

I interviewed my aunt.

A little background.  My aunt is only 4 1/2 years older than I.  She was born when  my mother was 14 and their brother was 16.  My grandmother was 40.  Needless to say, she and I have always been more of the same generation than different ones.

My mother (her sister) and grandparents (her parents) all died in 1998–Annus Horribilus as Queen Elizabeth II deemed her 1992.  My uncle (her brother) died last year.  So in some ways, it’s just us now.  We try to get together every Thanksgiving and this year I decided I would try interviewing her.  I really didn’t think she’d go along with it and I thought it might be redundant since we shared so many of the same experiences.  But I wanted to give it a try.

I started working on family history about 25 years ago, and part of the impetus was the stories that my grandmother told me.  I felt like I had done a pretty good job of asking my questions and writing down what they told me.  But the longer I’ve worked on a timeline for my grandparents’ lives, and examined photos, and tried to put the bits and pieces together, I’ve found I still have questions.  So I decided to interview my one remaining source, Aunt Cheri.

I used some of the questions in “My Memories” from Holly T. Hansen and Jennifer Hunt Johnson’s “Capture the Memories” series as a starter.  I was surprised at how pleased my aunt seemed that I was asking to interview her.  She sat up a little straighter and though typically a rather shy person, spoke eagerly and forthrightly.  I captured our conversation on an Olympus digital recorder–I have yet to transfer it to my computer, but editing will be done with Audacity, a free program I’ve used before.  We stopped after about an hour, planning to come back to it.  I should also say that I offered to send this book home with her so she could answer the questions in private, but she indicated she’d rather do it by talking.

One of the things I found out was that my grandad and his dad were perhaps WPA or CCC workers, something I never knew.  This came up when I asked her about how her family handled money.  The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl formed my granddad, her father.  But I’d never known about the work off the farm–I asked her if she had any idea how they’d managed to hold onto their land out in Beaver County, Oklahoma.  My grandmother had told me lots of stories about the window sills filled with silt and hanging wet sheets over the windows.  My granddad’s father had asthma so this was bound to be so hard on him.  [Read Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time for a fascinating account of this time and place.]  I never heard Granddad talk about this time, though I did find that he kept fritzing when I told him I was reading the newspapers from the time and place.  I remember finding that they were behind in their taxes a year or two, which in retrospect, was appalling to him.  I should have been gentler with my approach and I might have gotten a little more information from him, not to mention being a little more comforting about the importance of the long view.  My grandparents always had enough money when I knew them–Granddad was a very savvy money manager and never bought anything on credit.

Perhaps as important as the information I gained was the confirmation that interviewing relatives is important, even those with whom you have spent a great deal of time and who are “your” generation.  I hope I get to do extend this interview and now I have plans to “corner” my younger brothers.

Just a confirmation of how important it is to talk to the living.

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Randy Seaver must have finished up his Thanksgiving festivities more quickly than I did.  Last night while I still had a houseful of company, and we were enjoying watching the Bedlam that was the Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma football game, Randy was posting:

Saturday Night Fun – Who’s Number 1000?

It’s Saturday night, and I’m sitting here wondering who else is pecking away on his/her keyboard not having any real fun. So, let’s play a little game with our genealogy software:

GOAL: Find out who is Reference Number 1,000 in your genealogy software.

Sounds like an easy task, right? Well, not if you have over 20,000 persons in your database like I do. I worked with Family Tree Maker 16 for almost 30 minutes trying to figure it out this afternoon, and failed. I must be looking for RINs in all the wrong places – the Help file didn’t really help.

So after a trip to the airport this morning to send my brother back to Houston and bidding my eldest son and his girl farewell for their journey back to Tulsa, I am catching up on blog-reading.  I first read Apple’s posts–she’d checked her database for her #1000, and it’s a person who is also in Randy’s database!  What are the chances of that happening?  I guess if you have New England ancestors, it’s not all that rare.  I’m just not one of the lucky ones.

I went to my Master Genealogist database.  It was easy to sort the entire database of about 3500 people into numerical order, scroll down, and find #1000.  I was hoping it wouldn’t turn out to be one of the various Maiden Name Unknown [MNU] females in the collection.  As it happens, it is the grandson of one of my favorite ancestors, Merrimon Landrum’s grandson Merrimon Landrum Cooper.

Merrimon is my second great-grand uncle, and is a name that occurs frequently in my Cooper and Landrum family lines.  Sometimes it’s Merrimon, sometimes it’s Merriman.  And sometimes it has only one “r.”  This Merrimon Landrum Cooper is named for his maternal grandfather, Merrimon Landrum (1784-1826), about whom I have written here and here.  Merrimon L. Cooper is one of four brother, sons of Job Cooper and ELizabeth Landrum Cooper, who perished in the Civil War.  This photo is believed to be him:

My family tradition says this is him–I have seen this photo from another source labeled with his brother Elisha Fitzallen Cooper’s name.

Merrimon and his brothers John B. and Elisha all joined the 18th Texas Cavalry in 1862.  A few months later, they were captured at Arkansas Post and shipped upriver to Camp Douglas near Chicago.  Elisha and Merrimon both died at that camp.  Merrimon left a wife, Telitha Estes Cooper and 3 children:  Julia Ann, Job, and Ellender.  Elisha was not married and my great-great grandfather, John B., left a wife, Mary Mitchell Cooper and 2 children:  George C. and Rebecca Ann, known as Annie.  John B. survived the camp, was paroled only to perish at the Battle of Atlanta.  The fourth brother in this family to die in this awful war was Jose D., who’d joined the 12th Texas Cavalry and died in the Battle of Elk Horn Tavern.

So that’s #1000 in my database.  I ordered his military service record ages ago, but it’s been nice to have access to is through Footnote these days–I also have the pension his wife applied for in Texas.  Thanks to Randy for this trip down memory lane–an appropriate trip right after this generation of family has departed from all our fun this Thanksgiving.

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I need to post.

I have a couple of stories going but they’re not ready.

So I thought I’d post one of the handouts I compiled for one of the groups I’ve spoken to recently.  This was really used more as a guideline for my talk, so of course it’s not comprehensive, but I’m always surprised at what long-time residents don’t know about the good resources in their home town.  This is from a 20 minute presentation to one of the local sororiety chapters.

The bottom line is, always explore the website for the libraries in your town or the town where you are researching–public libraries, state libraries, state archives, state historical societies, etc., etc., etc.

Databases:

Ancestry census records

WorldVitalRecords

Find My Past

New York Ellis Island Passenger Records

HeritageQuest (census, books, PERSI, Revolutionary War)

Footnote

Oklahoma Historical Society Research Library www.okhistory.org

Hours: 9am – 4:45pm M-Sat Phone: 522-5225

Databases:

AncestryLibrary.org

Footnote

HeritageQuest

Catalog and indexes online at www.okhistory.org/research

Archives portion of catalog includes some images of maps and photos

Native American records (Dawes index online)

Nation wide print resources

Oklahoma newspapers on microfilm

Metropolitan Library System www.metrolibrary.org

Hours: vary by agency, check online DN Phone: 231-8650

Databases:

AncestryLibrary.org

HeritageQuest (may be accessed remotely with Metro Library Card)

Oklahoman online (may be accessed remotely with Metro Library Card)

Sanborn maps for Oklahoma

Small collection at Downtown Library, including OKC city directories and phone books

Oklahoma Room

Oklahoma County newspapers on microfilm

See “Oklahoma Images” for Oklahoma County history and essays

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Today I was to spend one hour talking at one of the local libraries about the databases available through the library system that are useful for genealogy.  I’d chosen to concentrate on AncestryLibrary.com, HeritageQuest, and the local newspaper which is available online back to about 1900.  The local paper is really more of a state newspaper, so in a small, young state like Oklahoma, that a real treasure to have free access to through the local library.

I was prepared.  I had a short PowerPoint presentation ready to go–on my jump drive as well as emailing it to myself in case the computer wouldn’t read my drive.  I’d even made copies of handouts.

The adventure started when I arrived at the library and the programmer I’d been working with was not there.  One of the circ clerks handed me the projector but indicated there was not a laptop.  I’d recalled that the programmer said the library had one, so I persisted.  I felt a little sorry for the circ clerk but we finally t on the same wavelength–she got out their lap top, and then, of course, we had trouble logging in.  We called IT for the library system, gratefully they were there on Saturday, and they walked us through.  THEN, of course, I couldn’t get the laptop to connect to the projector.

I only had about 7 students so we just pulled up chairs to the table where the laptop was, and we went through the powerpoint, starting only 10 minutes late.

Ahhhhhh, the adventures of speaking genealogically. 

One hour isn’t much time to cover such a broad topic, but I wanted the folks to know what good resources their library card entitled them to.  I spent some time educating them about PERSI on HeritageQuest–they knew about census and Rev War records, but PERSI is such a rich resource and many people don’t know of it.  Or they know about it, but since it is not full text, they aren’t sure how it might be useful to them.  We also discussed some of the other newspaper databases that are avaiable through EbscoHost and ProQuest–again, coverage varies by date, but it is a way to check newsstories in places where other family may live and work.  We also talked about WorldCat, a way to check to see if a genealogy has been published on a particular family or topic, to check bibliographical info, etc, etc.

It was a fun day–there’s never enough time but I was glad I had enough experience to be able to “punt” when we had the “technical difficulties.”

Questions from the “students” included what to do with photos with lots of people in them but not necessarily their family (DeadFred.com), where to access American Indian records (come to the library at the Oklahoma History Center), and one person said he was hoping I was going to talk about more websites for research (I offered to email him my handout from my Library Lock-In talk a couple of weeks ago).

Now, if I can just find my jump drive that somehow didn’t make it home in my pocket and the card of the man I promised the handout to.  I plan to write a note to the circ clerk’s supervisor–she saved my bacon today and I really appreciated her willingness to hang in there with me.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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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