Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, taken May 1913 ( Ruth Rous, on loc.gov )
If you are looking for your southern ancestors’ story, you need to know about the textile mills. Join me at NGS in Raleigh May 9-13, specifically Thursday Morning at 8am (yes, you can do it!) for The Industrial Revolution Comes Home: Textile Mills and Your Ancestors and we will talk about Ruth, murder, communists, and many other things that impacted your post Civil War Southern family. See you then!
I have 3 conferences scheduled this year (so far) where you can hear me speak.
At RootsTech I am doing a couple of military talks including one on my favorite subject, the Civil War! And I have three talks scheduled for NGS. The era of the textile mills is really fascinating and has an interesting history in the North and South Carolina area. And it’s a new talk. And the Research Guides talk will be a bit of a different take. Promise! I don’t have the titles for the Texas Conferences but the subjects are Tax Lists, which are an excellent resource in Texas and Collateral Research.
Hope I see you somewhere!
photo by J Paul Hawthorne
I had a great time with the San Diego Genealogy Society and San Diego Historical Society!
You can find the slides from my lectures How Do I Know I Am Right and Finding and Researching Women on my Slides and Presentations Page. (Note: I updated the How Do I Know I’m Right so it works!)
Also, I will be in Annadale, Virginia doing an all day presentation for the Fairfax Genealogy Society on October 29th.
Register today at Fairfax Genealogical Society 13th Annual Fair for:
Amy Johnson Crow wrote about Breaking Out of Your Genealogy Comfort Zone. Seemed like a good idea. I’ve felt a little bit uninspired in my genealogy research lately. I needed a new approach. Amy broke out of her comfort zone by taking a non genealogy class and improving her social media skills.
So this idea has been rolling around in my head: Where do I need to improve my skill set? As I wrote up my proposal for a Civil War class for NGS 2017, it occurred to me, that I focus on researching Civil War and the records, but what about the war itself? The years leading up to it, the years after it? And how did it change the lives of my ancestors? Context is everything.
I turned to The Google and found this gem: Hist 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 It’s a free college course taught by Yale Professor David W Blight.
Yes, please. 🙂
Even if I never watched a single session, the required texts alone are worth it! No discussion of records or the GPS, but lots of discussion about the mindset of the people on both sides.
And understanding our ancestors in the context of their time and place will make us better genealogists.
And I’ve gained some new inspiration to tackle old problems with some new ideas. How do you break out of your comfort zone and learn new things?
On my latest research trip I stopped by Buffalo Baptist Church Cemetery in Blacksburg, South Carolina. Now I had seen the graves on Find A Grave. And I had looked on Google to see the cemetery.
I could see it was broken into two sets of graves. But it is always so different when you pull up to a cemetery. Each one has its own feeling, its own character.
Next to the road in the first graveyard, I found the older graves. They were starting to turn black and many were unreadable. The ones that caught my eye were the bright white ones. They marked the Confederate graves and I believe they all came from the veterans administration. It was mowed and kept up, but the graves had a forgotten by time feel to them.
The very first grave I saw that caught my eye was Lansford M Hopper.
I actually said out loud, “Well, hello there.” Do any of you talk to your people when you find them?
Lansford was my 3rd great grandfather who survived the Civil War, but was murdered by his nephew when they were working on a road in 1870.
Looking at his grave marker, I realized he had been in the 18th SC Vol Infantry. I have him down as being in the 28th North Carolina Infantry. There is some work to do there.
Most of the white stones that marked Confederate Graves stood in front of the original ones. My 2nd great grandmother, Delila Parthenia Hopper was born in October of 1861. Her father died when she was nine. I can just imagine the family standing in front of the grave. Susan, Lansford’s wife, was left alone with 7 children. She was pregnant with number 8. She had raised them throughout the war without him and now she was his widow.
I continued walking through this section of the cemetery. Maybe 200 stones at most. And all the Confederates for the most part served in the 17th or 18th SC Infantry. I haven’t really researched that bunch yet. But this group lived together, fought together, and eventually died in the same place.
I’ve proposed a new class for NGS 2017 in Raleigh, North Carolina titled: Researching the Civil War in the Southern Community. A small community like this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Hopefully it gets accepted!
A couple weekends ago I was traipsing through court houses collecting deeds and other documents for my ancestors. And yes, it was as much fun as you imagine!
But how do you easily make copies? And cut down on the expense? Some court houses charge 0.50 cents a copy! And that can add up quickly. Also, the books that you find deeds and other documents in can be very difficult to photocopy. Sometimes you have to take them apart which is very time consuming; sometimes you have to balance a heavy book on a photocopier.
Not all courthouses will allow you to take pictures of documents. And you should always ask and follow the rules. ALWAYS!
But if they do allow it, I recommend an app I use on my iPhone called TurboScan. It’s available on both Apple ($4) and Android ($5). (And I have no connection to the company at all.)
It takes 3 copies of the image and chooses the best one. You can then crop it on your phone or use the full image. You can also choose between black & white, color or photo. I usually go with photo because I want the detail of how the document looked. On this map, you would hate to lose the detail that the color provides.
Once I’ve scanned all the pages in the document, I can then save it or my preferences is to email to myself. I label the document with the book and page numbers so I can source it correctly later, and then when I get home, I can go through my email and start processing the documents.
I think I probably made twice as many copies as I would have if I had gone with the photocopier method. And save a lot of money. I must have copied around 250 pages. At 0.50 cents a page that is $125. Money better spent elsewhere!
It’s an affordable app and I suspect you’ll be happy with the results. And thanks to my friend Kathleen for introducing me to it.
Last weekend, I was in Wytheville, Virginia doing a little research and giving a couple of Lectures.
On Friday, I was lucky enough to spend time at the Wythe County Genealogical and Historical Association Regional Research Center:
This is their new home. Wonderful building, with lots and lots of great material. I spent time digging through notes and researching, including this map which has land owned by a John Snavely that I found in Joseph Cameron’s notes. Not sure which John Snavely this is, but given that the land was sold to Joe Hounshell in 1833 and I have a John Snavely in my records who lived from 1760-1833, I suspect that it is him. No known relationship, but it is likely it is related to my Snavelys some how.
Then I hopped over to the Wythe County Courthouse, where my cousin Bev Repass Hoch took me down to the basement and I was able to look through original chancery records, wills and deeds. Heaven! These particular deeds were from the early 1800s. Didn’t find my ancestors in there, but such a joy to look through these records.
The next day, I was lucky enough to present two lectures. I’ve included links to the PDFs for the slides below.
J Paul Hawthorne started this fun little exercise for all of us genealogists. Map where your ancestors were born in a tree. (Template here)
You can understand why my research focuses in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina:
To change it up a bit, I broke it down into counties as well:
It’s a fun little exercise!
This is a cautionary tale about reading what is there and not making assumptions. Fortunately, in this case, I didn’t lose years of research or spend time randomly driving around York County, South Carolina. Here is my confession:
My Martin’s are buried in Martin Cemetery in Cherokee County, South Carolina.
I like to pinpoint the cemeteries on a map. When I start to map their property it gives me a starting place on where to look, especially with family cemeteries. I found this list of York County Cemeteries on Rootsweb:
Now, you the observant reader, probably notice that Find A Grave said Cherokee not York. But the probates are in York and I got it in my head that it was York. And I looked and looked in various maps of York and couldn’t find Highways 97 & 80. I found 97, but no cemetery.
But somewhere around here, I suspect is the cemetery:
I started pulling land records and found this tidbit:
State line? It’s on the state line? But if it is on the state line, it isn’t south of Smyrna.
Could I be wrong? Oh yes. I turned to The Google and found this little tidbit: Martin’s Cemetery
Which had all sorts of my people recorded as being there:
And it was on the NC/SC line. I did some more searching on Find A Grave and found the Little Bethel Methodist Martin Cemetery in Cleveland County, North Carolina. The directions led me to Rippy Rd, about 0.3 miles from the southern end.
This is right in the area where a lot of others in my tree lived. It is all starting to make sense now. So much more sense.
So the cemetery isn’t in York. And it isn’t in Cherokee. It appears not to be in South Carolina. It’s in Cleveland County, North Carolina. Now I know a lot of my ancestors lived on county and state lines. But this appears to be across the state line!
So, first, I hang my head in shame. No rushing! Second, read what is there, not what you think is there. Third, verify what you find. One source is simply not enough.
And finally, I will be in the area in early April. I am going to find this one. More to come……
We all know that sourcing is an art, not a science, right? And there is no one way to write a source. Lots of wrong ways, but also correct variations that allow you to find your source and the information it contains again. Also you allow others to assess where the evidence came from and how credible it might be. Or might not be.
But I also use my sources as an organizational tool. I’ll bet that you use Find A Grave in your normal genealogy routine. When I write my sources, I start with the name of the cemetery:
Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, Lexington, Rockbridge, Virginia, James C Donald (1836 – 1899), Find A Grave (http://findagrave.com : accessed 16 Mar 2015), Find A Grave Memorial no. 34,346,979. Memorial by Thomas Daniels, photo by anne mitchell; photo and maker legible.
Now when I look at a listing of all of my Find A Grave entries, I can easily scan the list and see everyone in my tree who is buried in the same cemetery:
I also do the same thing for census records. It allows me to look within a county and district and see more or less who seemed to live near each other. If I were going to publish a census citation, I would make it follow the Evidence Explained format, but for examining data to show people in relation to each other, this suits my needs. And I can find what I need to write the full citation as needed, when needed.
Usually you find people living near each other as expected, but sometimes you find people who surprise you.
Ready Cash and William Wallace appear on separate, consecutive pages in the 1840 census, but in a source listing, the “nearness” pops right out. Charlton Wallace was very likely living in the household of William. Martha Jane Cash was very likely living with her father Ready. In 1842, Charlton married Martha Jane. Wonder how they might have met!? 🙂
Finding new ways to organize your data and use what you have, usually brings new insights. And this one, is pretty easy to implement.
cluster genealogy 