Genealogy

[nebo113]

If we already have a genealogy site (I couldn't find on via Search), would someone point me to it?  If not, I'm starting one now.

[namazu]

Are you talking about family history (and if so, what do you mean by "do we have a...site"? -- a thread?) or is this some community platform I've never heard of and can't find easily because the former is much more common in search results?

I have extensive experience with the former, and I think Mamselle does, too.

[mamselle]

Oh, dear, guilty as charged.

No, I don't think there is a thread here within the Fora but I'm happy to see one started.

I don't dare do much about it until I get a few tasks done for a job I'm finishing up, but if it's any use, I can:

a) Probably (standing on my aunt's shoulders) trace our family back on my dad's side, maaaayyybe to the 15th c. (there's a little matter of sharing our last name with a Renaissance composer who, as it turns out, was an unmarried RC canon in a Belgian cathedral, and so may or may not have left any progeny about...tricky, tracking those, sometimes...)

More recently, I'm in touch with cousins in the UK and Belgium whom we have more secure links back to the 17th c. (UK) and the 18th/19th (Belgium)

b) On my mom's side, we're partly traced back to (maybe, I'm a bit dubious about some of these very early links) the 10th c. Palatine region, and more securely, to 18th c. Cork on her father's side. She proved us into the Ohio Pioneers (family had to be there within some time framework around the time that part of the (unceeded Wyandot/Iroquois/Shawnee) Northwest Territory became a state, in 1803.

As a result of all her work, we have letters from an ancestor who left his farm to fight in the Civil War--saying he wished the rest of the family understood why he felt he had to go--and my cousin on that side thinks she's found a link to the Revolutionary War that might put us in the D.A.R. (but again, I'm dubious, there are several strands of arrivants in at least three areas I've seen, and I'm not sure she's got them lined up correctly).

My mom did a huge 3" spine'd notebook for each of us as a Christmas present one year. It has copies of the completed family page for each branch of the family (this was before computers) and all the clippings, certificates, letters, etc., she found. I still add to it, and bless her for it every time.

c) My own research is currently based around doing a town's own genealogy for itself as relates to its colonial burying ground. The whole town's history and all the family work was done by a 19th c. writer (bless him, truly) but as I work on each of the gravestones I'm writing about, I'm following them back and looking for interesting intersections and other telling facts as they appear.  I'm in the 17th c. now. I hope to get to the 18th c. by next fall.

I also may pick a gravestone with an interesting inscription and do a "360-degree" study, looking at various aspects of its background, for articles; I've done two of those, one published (I can send the online link via PM if you're interested). It was fun, just last year, locating the midwife's license for the 18th c. woman I'd traced back to London....but now I can't find her birth name before that because she'd been married and widowed twice already, and the earliest marriage I have documented gives her first husband's surname, but not hers. (She married again, after she reached the colonies...that one was easier to find and had its own interesting sidelines)

So you can go crazy over people NOT in your own family, too...

d) I've also done colonial research on an East Coast home with a 17th c. core, which involved going back through the abstracts to its original owners and the subdivisions of the land in the 1630s (that was kinda cool, finding the site on a hand-drawn map in the library's downstairs archives one day).

Working from deeds is often omitted in genealogical work, and it's definitely a significant resource, since people are often described by their occupations to distinguish them from others with the same names, and lost descendants sometimes appear when a property has to be split up and the town recorder has diligently sought them each out and gotten their signed approval on the plan for the subdivided land.

I found six unknown family members that way, once.

e) And, while I haven't (yet?) done my own family work further back, my "other area" of work, French medieval liturgical arts, have taken me into many libraries and archives where genealogical materials are often found. So I could....(but I don't dare, right now...)

I'm always quite happy to natter away about these things if anyone is interested, or if you think I can be helpful somehow.

I'm editing something right now that is calling me back, but I could list (if it's needed) useful online sites , and some of the other resources available.

One off the top of my head: The New England Historical Genealogical Society offers time-delimited paid help in locating ancestors who are proving elusive. I worked with someone last fall and it was very helpful; I can look for the link for that as well.

Ok, back to the 21st c. (I much prefer the 18th).

M.     

[nebo113]

Yes, I did mean a thread.  I have been so immersed in the past that I forgot the terminology for the present.  Mamselle...Will respond after another cup of coffee!

[sinenomine]

My siblings assumed that since I'm a medievalist, I'd be the one to do the family history research. I've traced some ancestry back to the Middle Ages, and have added lots of information to more recent generations; when I started, we didn't even know the names of some of our great-grandparents. I've really enjoyed the digging and discoveries, and last year put together a thick binder of pedigree charts, pictures, and narratives of notable ancestors and connections. I particularly enjoyed learning that great great grandfathers on both sides of my family served together in the Civil War, and getting in touch with cousins we didn't know about. My brother-in-law then asked me to help him with his family research, and I've enjoyed helping others dig into their histories as well. Lots of discoveries to be made!

[mamselle]

Yes, and the stories that come up.

My mom discovered this whole racy situation between a long-ago family member and the fellow who owned the next farm over.

They decamped together, leaving both their children for her husband and the other fellow's wife to raise, and went to Oklahoma, apparently.

The family did NOT want to hear about this....

;--}

M.

[nebo113]

Ah yes....the next farm over.  I've got one of those.  And a question:  what is a bond and bans for a marriage in 17th/18th century America?

[mamselle]

Banns were "read out" or "posted" to given advance notice of an intended wedding at some length of time before the marriage.

The idea was to advise the community in case any other promises had been made by one of the parties to someone else, in case a community member was aware of some reason the marriage should not go forward, and to generally prepare the community for the event and the newly contracted engagement.

I've not heard of a "bond," but it might be the same thing, or someone might have been bonded over to being required to marry someone if it was believed they're impregnated them, to prevent them departing before the ceremony.

Bascially, in genealogy, they can serve as a kind of documentation for marriage, although in some cases banns could be posted or read but the marriage might not have finally happened. If nothing else, they give names and sometimes parents' names, or occupations, by which to disambiguate similarly-named individuals in the same town or area, and they suggest directions to look for when seeking out last names of females you've "lost."

They can also, depending on where you're finding them, suggest ages, if the area or church or town required the individuals to be of some particular age to be considered legally able to marry.

Note that in some towns in early colonial New England, marriage and burial were civic, not church functions, also: one of the separations of church and state that were enacted to oppose Anglican/Catholic practices.

M.

[nebo113]

Mamselle...Many thanks for the information on banns.  My family investigation begins in the south, which is not as well sourced as some of the New England states, and which also experienced destruction over time, including during the "Wah of Succession."  At the moment, my goal is to trace back to as many dead ends as possible, whether within the US or lines that stop at the water's edge.  For the time being (covid in part), I'm using only on line sources.  The dead ends will give me two paths.  Dead ends within the US will allow me to chart in person research in court houses/grave yards, etc.  After compiling dead ends at the water's edge, I will add the European component to my Ancestry account, and search from there. 

[mamselle]

Three thoughts come to mind.

1) If you do have access to online documents, that's a very good start, since many different sites, like American Ancestors and Legacy and other overseas sites pull those in when you do searches with them. One does hit a spot where you have to be onsite to look in the books (like my midwife's license turning up in the London Met. Archives...) but it's also cool to have online stuff because it's easy to copy the .pdfs for backup, and work with them.

2) Can you say what colony or roughly which century your earliest documents are from? You're right that the resources are very uneven in various places and time frames. But there are work-arounds, sometimes.

3) The American Ancestors site is out of NEHGS ("Hist-Gen" for short) and their weekly email is super-cool (a survey with results on interesting questions is posted each week, and many resources are described, for one thing).

Their basic info is not only for NE; it is very extensive:

   American Ancestors by New England Historic Genealogical Society

Mission:
To advance the study of family history in America and beyond, NEHGS educates, inspires, and connects people through our scholarship, collections, and expertise.

Phone: 1-888-296-3447
Email : WeeklyGenealogist@nehgs.org.
Online: AmericanAncestors.org

They're the ones who offer phone-in help with knots on the branches in your family tree: The website page for that is at:

   https://www.americanancestors.org/services/consultations

My Legacy materials come to a different email, I'll have to put those in later.   

M.

[mamselle]

1. (con't)
OK, American Ancestors is doing a six-course series on At-Home-Genealogy https://my.americanancestors.org/1537/1612?utm_campaign=Education%3A%20Online%20Learning&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=106128094&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9yso3rAGI4nBUdFdbNs_CWRLAHve7CKAxJNba4LVuZ7wDi6qzsCfaRrjgBJ0HYDaqZcPU7gvnXOeqgnSQ_e2j0_7i9IA&utm_content=106128094&utm_source=hs_email (sorry, I can't get the embedded site thing to work).

2. Legacy (the "Family Search" folks, out of Salt Lake City) is here:

   https://legacyfamilytree.com/

and they're also offering a number of webinars; I get their emails as well.

3. You may have luck, too, with the "Find-a-Grave" site:

   https://www.findagrave.com/

There are ways to search it that will give you all the listings in a given burying ground or cemetery, and they have a PM system as well for communicating with the photographers and researchers who contribute to individual markers' pages.
   

[nebo113]

Thanks again Mamselle.  I do use Findagrave, though I try to check it against original sources, which is not always doable.  Will check out American Ancestors.

I have found that the LDS "temple work" data is not always accurate, though I do use Family Search.

And the family trees on Ancestry often just drive me nuts, as they are so often just down right wrong!  One of my current tasks is to try to clean up my own data that is on Ancestry.

[mamselle]

Yes, it's a matter of verification for everything, which can be maddening.

I've also sent in corrections on Find-a-Grave, and re-written descriptions for a couple of very wrong-headed matchups on Family Tree.

The tendrils and tentacles of mis-understood relationships and documents are undending...

M.

[lillipat]

And then there's the difficulty if you suspect that maybe, just maybe, that elusive ancestor was being snarky!  In my mother-in-law's family, her great-grandfather, a widower, married for a second time a couple of years after his first wife's death. (They had been married twice, once in their local county by a justice of the peace, and then a couple of days later several counties away, with a "married by Catholic clergy" notation in the second county records.) For this late-in-life marriage, he traveled to yet a third county, which required him to list his father's name on the marriage license.  Bridegroom wrote "Adam."  But nobody can find an Adam with the proper family name in any sort of sensible place at anything like the logical time, though, so we all wonder whether Great-Grandpa was reflecting on how old he was to be getting married and having to jump those kinds of hoops, as in "I go clear back to the beginning of creation"!

[mamselle]

Well could be!

Some states are now getting all their church records digitized. The RC records might have his name!

M.