CHEROKEE NATION CITIZENSHIP - A POLITICAL HISTORY by AARON KUSNER : ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY BOOK RECOMMENDATION

This is an excellent book to read if you're interested in the Cherokee, the Cherokee Republic, and the twists and turns of what it was and is to have Cherokee Nation citizenship.  I'll be posting a few excerpts this month from this book, but I encourage you to get a copy because it's packed full of information.  A key question about tribal membership is this issue: Is it BLOOD AS ANCESTRY or is it BLOOD AS CULTURE?

The Cherokee are one of the native tribes that has government recognition from way back and numerous members to this day. They are counted on the Dawes Rolls. From the days of the mountain men, the trappers and traders, and then the ministers coming into the country, there have been intermarriages between Cherokee and persons of European descent. (One of the most famous, because of his writings, was James Adair.) While it is understood that many a European married a Native American woman, many a Native American man married an European settlers.  In the mid to late 1800's there were also "White squatters."

This book covers historical changes in tribal recognition that includes the cultural movement from a matriarchal society to one influenced by patriarchal world views, by the government of the United States and by Protestant Christian ministers. It shows that racism, in particular against slaves and Freedmen, had its impact on who gets to have a tribal identity.  Cherokee did hold slaves, and I know that this truth has been denied in college classrooms, but I've found that on census.  

Clan affiliation and a more communal view of responsibility to others and changes in attitudes about war and much else, including marriage, may confuse things further, as each of the 64 Cherokee towns had different cultural notions. As author Kushner states,  while some couples stayed together for life, polygamy was practiced and "divorce" was at will by either party. (What this means is that children being raised by a mother with several men as fathers to her children might actually be raised within a Clan due to the inter-dependence of Clan members, but some of the children might not have the same blood quotient or tribal identity.)

This book reminded me of my first big genealogy assignment because the person's heritage was in North Carolina, a state I knew nothing about at the time, and the Central to Western portion, where there were also Melungeons - then a mystery. On page 26 of this book is the mention of a Cherokee story that taught values and "Kanadi" which translates to "Lucky One." Faintly and badly written on a census was a marriage between one of his not-direct ancestors and a woman with this name. However, it had been interpreted as Canadi, Canada, and Kennedy.  On one census, one of his relatives with a large family, had three children identified as "Negroes" and a family photo did show these children to be darker than the others.  However, I came to think that they were actually all partially Native American. This was before DNA tests... but now that there is ...

I will be posting excerpts in the next weeks from this fascinating book that I hope will be of help to those of you interested in Native American and Cherokee Genealogy and family history!

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BE HAPPY

 

TO YOU

 

ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

 

VICTORIAN

A history of the houses you or your ancestors lived in can be about architecture

 but so much more.

Did they build their own house?
Design their own house?

Add onto their house?

Buy or rent their house?

How long did they live in the house?

Where did they move to?

What did it look like?
What was your room like?

Did you share a room? With who?

Does the house still stand?

When did it last sell - and for how much?

What was Grandma's house like?

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GENEALOGY MYOPIA and PARTNERING WITH ANOTHER RESEARCHER TO BREAK THROUGH BLOCK

Genealogy myopia - a term used to mean that a researcher has become too close to their assumptions about their research subjects to break through block or to attack their research another way - can be dealt with by teaming up with another researcher as a partner.

But not just any person!  First you must like and respect the other person enough to commit to sharing work, talking to each other easily and being able to respectfully deal with someone else's personal information.

Here are some tips for choosing a genealogy research partner.

1)  Believe it or not, the best partner is usually someone who is NOT working on the same research as you are, meaning not a family member, not even someone who is working on the same place and time.  When you choose someone who is working on an entirely different family and place and time, you will both bring uneducated and unformed but fresh ideas into the research, based on what you have learned on your own and your own research.

2) Trade copies of your research.  You and your partner will "check" each other's research and write any ideas or questions that come up as you're doing so.   (One friend of mine found a simple math error that had been much depended on.  Once the proper year of birth was found, all else fell in place.)

3) Work a little on the other person's research in terms of time and place.  When someone is experiencing being stuck they may also be discouraged or bored and they may not have done enough Internet research to understand that time and place.  As an exercise, take one ancestor and put them into their historical moments. (Maybe you can help them come up with a good list of questions to ask when interviewing relatives.)

4) When you look at someone else's research ask yourself "If this was my project and this line is blocked, what else could I be doing?  Is there another line that hasn't been worked on enough?  Is there new information available on a database or in an archive or historical museum that would add to this family's story?

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This post originally appeared here at  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy on October 8 2014

THE LAST SEEN PROJECT - FINDING FAMILY : INFORMATION WANTED ORG ; A COLLECTION OF ADS BY FORMER SLAVES TO RECONNECT WITH LOVED ONES

You can get involved.

INFORMATION WANTED ORG

Excerpt: Last Seen is recovering stories of families separated in the domestic slave trade. Formerly enslaved people placed these ads hoping to reconnect with family and loved ones for decades following emancipation. The ads serve as testaments to their enduring hope and determination to regain what was taken from them. As of today, we have recovered 5020 ads.

Formerly enslaved people placed ads looking for loved ones from all over the United States and sometimes from as far away as Africa. Explore the map to see the locations of those placing ads or locations where ads appeared.

My search used the word 'Washington' and brought up ads that included an offer of $5 for information to find a wife. You can go to to the State and search newspapers from there too.

The Last Seen Project is committed to supporting the genealogical work of descendants of enslaved people. Transcribing the ads helps people today find their ancestors. You may also wish to contact us and tell us about your ancestors. Please let us know when you find an ancestor in the ads.  

(Yes there are some genealogy success stories!)

LAST SEEN by JUDITH GIESBERG : ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY BOOK RECOMMENDATION : BLACK HISTORY - LOVE STORIES

This book is about love stories: the love of family, of partners, siblings, and children who were once enslaved, of friends and those who served in the military together seeking each other to reconnect. These people were sold away or escaped to freedom. They were gone and those who loved them wanted to know the truth. Were they alive or dead? Where were they? What had happened to them since they last saw each other?  (Had they married?  Had more children?) Could the family be reunited?

Author Judith Giesberg calls these people "The Freedom Generation."

Allow me to give you some back-story on this. As you may know, after emancipation from slavery, former enslaved people were allowed to have bank accounts and own land and property (though they were often segregated when it came to where, per localities), and also allowed to legally marry (though there were rituals of commitment and sometimes services to unite slaves, (per the slave owners values and discretion). However, in those times communications traveled slowly, very slowly compared to these days when even "snail mail" has been replaced by electronic bill paying and e-mail and unlimited long distance cell phone use. Because some slaves were sold and resold or moved along, they were often out of communication entirely. The Underground Railroad moved people to freedom. The Civil War also scattered people, including those who had been part of the military or escaped to the Union while soldiering. Upon emancipation, some had no means to move from the place they had been enslaved while others took any means possible to move elsewhere. The years passed.

You may also know about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and his New Deal which resulted in federal funds being used for projects such as the Federal Writer's Project. One of the projects that writers participated in was interviewing former slaves. These writings appear in databases as "SLAVE NARRATIVES." (At my local library this database is available and searchable.) Author Giesberg search through those testimonials as well as doing research in archives for now historical newspaper advertisements and such and brought forth some stories that might break your heart too.

Some people searched for decades, not only placing ads in newspapers but traveling and networking, asking ministers and local politicians who might be inclined to help them search. Some were successful, others not. (Through genealogy that search continues.)

In the Introduction of this book, Giesberg writes, "Tens of thousands of children were taken from their mothers and fathers over the four decades of the Second Middle Passage" and "Chance meetings of formerly enslaved people were rare."

Excerpt page 65 -

"Among the one million people sold from the Upper to the Lower South before 1860, thousands were children sold alone.  According to historian Edward Baptist, between 1815 and 1820, 2,646 children under the age of thirteen were sold in New Orleans out of a total of 12,370 sales.  Of their number 1,001 were sold alone."

Giesberg writes about the emotional and psychological effects that being sold away or sent away had on children and families as an aspect of her explorations of slavery in this book. Today, we find child trafficking and child labor to be abhorrent. I will say that that children who were not enslaved were also trafficked and many went to work both in Europe and the America's very young, especially before public education. That was tied in with shorter lifespans and the fact that the age of thirteen was generally thought to be the onset of adulthood; some say being a "teenager" is also a recent experience and back in the day you were either a child or an adult. It was also an aspect of a rural or agricultural society in which large families put everyone to work in some capacity, of informal apprenticeships, and very little time to play. So we're all evolving and rejecting notions that were acceptable in the past.

This is one more book I highly recommend for its extensive researched historical content and value to anyone who wants to be inspired.

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ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY

 

SLAVE SOLDIERS FIGHTING FOR THE CONFEDERACY IN THE CIVIL WAR

Imagine being a slave and being told you will go to war, the Civil War, for the Confederacy, by the person who owns you! If a researcher finds that their ancestors who was enslaved was in the war, they may wonder "did he see action?"

The answer, generally but emphatically, is NO.  Confederate law prohibited it.  Yet, there were reports that this was so. And, there was always the possibility that a person who was forced to follow the troops as a cook or another useful supportive role could use that opportunity to escape or go north and join the Union Army! There is also another consideration. What if the person was a Free Person of Color and then joined up?

So, some of the things a researcher wants to do is to verify which company/troop the person fought in. Check the census or other records to see if that person reports being disabled or is not working for money after the war. Also see where they are living after that war. 

AMERICAN BATTLEFIELD TRUST : BLACK CONFEDERATES - TRUTH Excellent article!

Excerpt: Many Southern slaves took advantage of the fog of war to escape towards freedom. Before the Emancipation Proclamation was officially adopted, these escapes usually meant congregating around the Union armies that were operating in Southern territory. Vast columns of escaped slaves followed almost every major Union army at one point or another. These people, sometimes called “contrabands,” as in “confiscated enemy property,” frequently served as scouts and spies for the Union soldiers. 

...There were no black Confederate combat units in service during the war and no documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate soldier, although some did receive pensions for their work as laborers.

... To be specific, in the “Official Records of the War of the Rebellion,” a collection of military records from both sides which spans more than 50 volumes and more than 50,000 pages, there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of black Confederates.

***

BUT THERE WAS AN EXCEPTION FOR A LITTLE WHILE

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE : ARMING THE ENSLAVED

Excerpt: Near 21st and Main Street in Richmond, Virginia, the first legally authorized African American Confederate soldiers were assembled and trained in the final weeks of the Civil War. Legislation passed by the Confederate congress on March 13, 1865, allowed for enslaved African Americans to be mustered and equipped on an experimental basis as combat soldiers. Before that date (less than a month before the end of hostilities in Virginia), Confederate law specified that only white men were permitted to serve as soldiers....

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ABANDONED COTTAGE

 

FREEDMEN'S MARRIAGE BUREAU RECORDS 1846-1867 : USING THE ANCESTRY TM GENEALOGY DATABASE : LET THIS FUEL YOUR HISTORICAL RESEARCH!

I've posted about the Freedman * Bank Records before, but did you know that the Freedman Bureau also kept a record of former slaves (and some "free colored") who married soon after they were free from enslavement? 

In the past I've also posted on some methodology for African-American research, stating first of all it is American research and one ought to proceed with going back as neatly as possible, using census records, both federal and state, if possible. If a researcher can find their people on the census after liberation, they have some names. Other than that, there may be some oral history in the family but one must be careful to accept stories without some proofing. Our African-American cautionary tale is that upon liberation, a person could choose to change their surname and some did more than once, wanting to feel comfortable with that surname, and sometimes various family members chose various names. That said, I wonder how often that happened.

I explored this database for a few hours recently and want to give you some information that may be helpful.

So for the purposes of this post I'm using the Ancestry TM genealogy database. To find the database called Freedman Bureau Marriage Records you want to go into NEW COLLECTIONS (WHICH ACTUALLY ALLOWS YOU TO SEARCH THE ENTIRE CATALOG, not just recently added collections. You will see to the top left the words CARD CATALOG.) Put the word Freedman in the keyword search. You will see that you can search the  U.S.,Freedman's Bureau Records, 1865-1878

Then to the right bottom it says U.S., Freedmen's Bureau Marriage Records 1845-1867 

Remember that the NATIONAL ARCHIVES of THE UNITED STATES is usually the original or primary source for databases.

While the other records held in the overall records can be interesting, because if you may be able to find out who a plantation owner was, I like to focus on marriages because you have twice the chance of recognizing someone as an ancestor - a bride or a groom.  This may give you the name of a female ancestor by her married and maiden name.

My first impression was that I was able to easily pull up records without knowing any particular name simply by putting in the state. I also tried common names such as Smith, Watson, or Jefferson.

The database includes many states including, according to the database:
Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. NOTE THAT WEST VIRGINIA DID NOT YET EXIST so Virginia included what is now West Virginia and South Western Pennsylvania below the Monongahela River. However, I think you will find that this does not mean ALL THE INFORMATION EVER COLLECTED IN EACH STATE but that in some way that state is represented in the collection.

We can learn from exploring the database, even if we do not have an ancestor who was enslaved or are unsure of who was.

For instance, there may be questions such as if a person lived with another (without marriage) and for how long, how they were separated (dead, forced, separated by war, sold away), and the skin color of parents, partners, and others (mulatto, black, dark, white, yellow, milk.) Unlike the census in which a census taker might make the decision to list a person's color as they see it or because of community notions, in this case the person themselves is probably reporting parents who are not in attendance. In some cases the percentage of African- Black a person was given.  The persons who are marrying may be asked how many children they had with others and you might find a comment that they 'unitedly had children.' Once in a while the name of a former partner may come up.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND : The records were kept where the marriage was performed.

Just as many people who are part of the LBGT community rushed to be married as soon as it was legal to, many formally enslaved people who had been partnered without marriage rushed to be married.  It is not unusual to find that a particular Minister of the Gospel married twelve couples in one day. Perhaps your research can include the name of the Minister which might lead to the name of a church, church records, even church graveyard records.

Even when the couple appear on a register, rather than an individual slip of paper or form (not standardized from one state to the next), their ages are usually listed. These are adults who were generally born twenty or more years earlier. I found one record that said both persons were "free people of color" and I wondered if that meant "last week' or 'all along.'

As well, some of these forms or handwritten documents ask where the person is from. There may be the name of a place other than where the marriage took place. But you may just find a fantastic clue that the man served in the military, and most likely that means in the CIVIL WAR on the Confederate side!  If you see a line of abbreviations such as Pot. Co. C. 60 *** where it could say the name of a town or county or plantation, that means you were just given the company/troop information. You can then find what battles they might have served in...

In my next post, I'm going to write about the Black soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.

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* (I'm aware that the bank records seem to have the Freedman spelling while the other records are in plural, Freedmen.)