MEMORIES

ANDREW JACKSON : GOOD- EVIL- AND THE PRESIDENCY

Someone who told me that they were a descendent of Andrew Jackson was lying or Andrew had a love child that few know about. 

Watching this PBS special, I learned that Andrew Jackson and his wife were childless. I also learned that they had married when Rachel left her first husband and unhappy marriage to take off with Andrew.  His wife Rachel, a divorced woman, though their marriage was long and strong, was not accepted by Washington society women.

YOUTUBE link to ANDREW JACKSON Documentary

 Andrew Jackson was orphaned by 13 and, with daring-do, a strong sense of personal integrity about right and wrong (characteristically for the times he found nothing wrong with slavery), he was highly important to the formation of the United States as we know it. 

He wasn't considered to be the most sophisticated of men with his back-woods beginnings, roughhousing, military might, and so on, but he was very much OF THE PEOPLE and that's why he got to be president.

C 2022  ANCESTRY WORSHIP - Genealogy BlogSpot

YOUTH

 

SALLY HEMINGS EXHIBIT AT MONTICELLO

The exhibit dedicated to Sally Hemings (also spelled Hemmings) at the home of President Thomas Jefferson, in Virginia, includes genealogy documents.  This African-American woman was a half sister to Jefferson's wife, sharing a father with her, and had lived in the Jefferson household as a slave since childhood.

Controversy around this story has brewed for years, but the story has now been accepted as truth.  She returned from Paris with him, pregnant, and in agreement that any children she had would be freed upon adulthood.

Many have tried on this story, wondering if there was love.  I tend to think so.

So see the video, the timeline, some of the documents...

MONTICELLO ORG

Descendants of slaves of Monticello also have participated in an oral history project called Getting Word https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/people

CLAYTON RESEARCH LIBRARY in HOUSTON HAS ONE OF THE LARGEST GENEALOGY COLLECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

CLAYTON RESEARCH LIBRARY in HOUSTON

Yes, you'll likely have to go there to use most of these offerings, but that doesn't mean you can't call to find out more information.  Go to the site, click on research and check out those databases and special offerings.

HIRING A GENEALOGY PROFESSIONAL? SOME ADVICE!

ANCESTRY WORSHIP - Genealogy BlogSpot contains a lot of 'how to' advice for those who are researching their own genealogy.  However, not everyone who is interested in their own genealogy has the time or the skills set to do it.  Or perhaps you started but had to stop and need someone else to continue the work. Or perhaps you just want a pro to help you get through a block. So if you are going to be working with a professional, here is some advice.

1) Gather up all the documents you can first, to present to the pro... Birth and death certificates, school diplomas, obituaries, bibles,  whatever you have.  While there may be more you find when the project has already begun, it is far more efficient and less expensive if you are organized and have these things to hand over or copy for the pro, who is going to be making some judgement on how to proceed.  Also, any research that has already been done, charts, and so on, hand them over.  These will be evaluated.

2) Also write out or plan a meeting in order to record or otherwise communicate any stories of the family history.  We know that these stories can be important - or may eventually be dismissed in favor of research - and will be discussed again. You may remember or collect more but do try to have them ready to present at the beginning of the project.

It may be useful to tell a story about great-grandma fighting to get an 8th grade education, however, we need to be specific as to which great grandma that was, her name, and other details, to record the story properly and place it where it belongs.

3) Expect that there may be times when the genealogist will request that you send in forms or provide your signature. There are certain records that are going to require your participation to obtain, others that a letter from a genealogist will obtain without.

There is no way around this.  If a genealogist asks you to fill out, sign, or send in a form, do so without delay.  You can't put it all in the hands of the pro because of the policies determined by governmental agencies that, for instance, only a child of a person in the military can obtain the information. That you know the date of someone's death is not the same as having a copy of a death certificate. 

(Currently I have a project held up for months. The client said she already had a certain vital record but had not found it or presented it to me, and we needed a certified copy for her International purposes. I thought the delay was Covid closure related, but after six weeks wait, it turned out she had not followed my instructions.)

4) Fees to governmental agencies and archives are your responsibility and also require your participation in the project. It's a good thing.  A genealogist does not profit from these fees, such as charging you $35 when the fee is $25, and you'll have a sense of where things stand on your project.  (However, a genealogist's charging to write a letter or filling out forms that require your signature is valid.)

5) If you have done some of the work, expect that the genealogist will need to review it and get their bearings on the project. Also, don't expect the genealogist to remember every date and every detail, especially if you are starting and stopping the project. What a pro will do is keep research copies to refer to. If more than a few months has gone by since you requested work last, expect another review process to start back up.

The pro will want to obtain copies of all documents possible in order to proof. There can sometimes be wait times of weeks or months when newly ordered or requested from archives. While the pro will use databases and some results come quickly compared to the old days, no database has it all and there are still times when other resources will have to be used. Census records are important and easy, but there may be other records that are only available to an immediate family member.

6) Communicate about how it is best to communicate with you. Are there certain hours or days in which you want to talk on the phone?  Do you prefer e-mail?  While there may be times when a quick message will be best, you may need to do in person meetings as well.

What hours does the genealogist work?   (I had one client who acted as if he was the only person I worked for, as if he owned me, who started calling inappropriately late, on Sunday mornings, and so on. as if pestering would make it all happen faster.  Needless to say, I ended working with him.)

At the same time, if you are too hard to get, that may be frustrating for the genealogist who is excited about the assignment and wants to buzz along.

If the genealogist is working out of a certain archive or library (though not necessarily an employee of it) realize that they may be there working for another client and you still need to respect an agreed upon meeting time. Do not interrupt them with questions and break their concentration before or after your meeting time.

7) Discuss privacy.  For instance, I never post my work for a client on internet or databases. 

That said, someone else that is related to you might put their work up there - without proofing it - which is, in my opinion, one of the worst aspects of the whole 'sharing' aspect of databases.  There is so much unreliable data that may even look official. One database I looked at had eight people doing charts relying on information about one person that had never been proven and I knew they had to be all following each other along. 

Original work is most often the best because you are paying for a pro's time and I know I find the time looking at other people's work can be time consuming.  Do I ever? Yes, but judiciously and usually only if the usual methods seem to not be bringing up useful data but then I'm going to question it. If something is posted that is not proofed - say that certain people were born in a certain place in Germany, I'm going to want to find those documents in Germany but only after the link to them has been proofed first.

Get a general idea of the pros and cons of exposing information for potentially millions of people to see and use but understand what may or may not be under the genealogist's control or your own control. 

8) Be realistic. This one is difficult to define. I love shows about genealogy of celebrities and watch them, sometimes learning from them, however, what you see on these shows appears almost miraculously. Sometimes several or many researchers who are experts in niche areas spent hundreds of hours working behind the scenes obtaining what you see in twenty minutes on the show. Also, I have the instinct that there may be situations in which, if the genealogy research is not going well for a certain person or proves to be not so interesting, that show might not proceed.  Putting together these shows is expensive and they want the stories that will hook you.

Also, the genealogist is not to blame if they themselves run into what is called "the brick wall" or "block" in which they must accept that the trail of ancestors can go no further or must "go around another way" which can be tricky, inconclusive, and expensive.  I've done this for my own family research, for instance, because records kept in church books only went back to the early 1800's, following other family with that surname to see if there was a connection just to add one more generation to a chart.  If I did that for a client I'd have to bill out an easy thousand.

9) There is no such thing as a "rush job" in genealogy.  There may be bits of information that can be obtained quickly, but in general, you have to go with the flow, as well as your agreement on how much time and money you want to spend.

Do not blame the genealogist if the finding is that no, that information does not exist.

Here is an example:  I found the Irish ancestors on the boat coming to America for one side of a client's family in less than an hour, but when I went to the other side, I found twelve candidates, all with the same names. This is further confused because on the ship manifest they reported the port as their last address and this was likely true because they first left a village and then worked for some time around the port to pay for the ticket...

The client had no identifying information at all, so I knew I would have to do much more traditional research that would take time. For instance, I would have wanted to find the family on census, pull from the Catholic archives of Boston, and also looked to see if perhaps any of the children had left clues on their documents. Anything that would give names of the parents, county of origin, would be helpful, though the request was to find so and so on the boat. Of course this would be more expensive and if the database wasn't pulling it up fast (and cheaply) then his interpretation was that this was my fault.

10) Be prepared for questions and surprises. Sometimes information comes up that refutes memory or oral history and that has to be brought up.

I've come up against this a few times, and frankly most often when it was a question of a missing or questionable birth parent.

So, I may not officially be able to be the spokesperson for every pro genealogist here, but it's my experience that a genealogist has seen and heard it all. Maybe more than your hairdresser or bartender.  Stolen children, murders, lies about who the birth parent is, confusion over ethnicity... speak up about your concerns!

In trying to find a way to the truth, we often speculate to ourselves or with our client.

In one sensitive situation, the client implored me "just the facts" but speculation can be helpful as we try to situate ourselves in that missing ancestor's shoes, their era, their ethnic culture, their family. 

Remember that a genealogist is not a therapist, so if you're having a problem processing that is being discovered, consider that the genealogist can't change what has happened in the past.

All for now!

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

HERE'S SOME FLOWERS FOR YOU MOM!

 

TRYING THE 1950 CENSUS SEARCH ON ANCESTRY TM GENEALOGY - SOME SUCCESS SOME FAILURE

I've been trying the Ancestry TM genealogy databases once a week to see what progress that big database company is making on indexing the 1950 census, which came out on the NARA web site on April first.  (Disclosure:  The title of this blog is not in reference to that site.  Ancestry TM is one of many databases that I use.)

Having found some, but not all of the people I sought to find, I kept trying Ancestry TM to see what, if anything, would come up that I had not found on the NARA web site.  Yesterday I was pleased to have brought up one of the people who I sought, and indeed the surname was spelled incorrectly enough that I might have played games with it a dozen or more different ways in hopes of finding it. So in this case, Ancestry's implied soundex did make a difference.

Interestingly, however,  the person's son,  living independently, who I did find on a NARA exploration, did not come up on Ancestry, though I spelled that surname the same way as it had come up on NARA. And he was living in the same town, not far away. 

A further surprise was that a relative of mine was counted TWICE, at two different locations in the same small town, listed as a 'lodger.'  In one it says she is 24, in the other that she is 30.  The 24 is closer to the mark, making me think that the family where she is listed as 30 years old might have talked to the census taker rather than the census taker talking to her.  Had she been in the process of moving?  Neither family is related to her, so ???

Ancestry TM is suggesting that you send them your e-mail address in order to be informed about the 1950 census.  I simply looked at the numbers and saw that about one and a half million had been indexed. About 151 million people were counted that  1950 census and no doubt about it, there must be many people working on it. So, I think I must have just been lucky enough to have been searching for a surname that comes up within the count.

Another surprise was learning that a person who I knew to have been divorced three times had two more children with the third, brief, husband. They were born after the 1940, and I know the husband was living in a boarding house that year.  I do wonder what the arrangement was.  This woman had a very hard life.  Her age is a little off on the 1950, and it says she was born in the United States, though I have her coming into New York Harbor in her mother's arms, and thus believe she was born in Europe.  Did she perhaps not know where she was born?  Since I cannot find any baptismal for her in Europe but also cannot find any baptismal for her two siblings who were born in the United States, I wonder...

The other pleasure was finding two individuals who had middle initials listed.  I had been told that the M for one stood for Mary, and that is was an honorific for her mother.  That has pretty much been proven.  However, it was only a childhood memory - I must have been ten years old -  when I asked an adult what the middle name of the man was.  I was told Peter and that makes sense of the P.

I'll be reporting on 1950 census progress again.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

SUBURBAN BUILDING ON THE 1950 CENSUS - USING ED MAPS - HOUSE LOTS AND VACANCIES - FARM LAND SOLD TO DEVELOPERS

I've mentioned how the suburbs were being built in the 1950's.  Using ENUMERATION DISTRICT MAPS can be interesting.

Usually there were people living rural in the area before the suburbs sprung up.  Farmers sold their land to developers as they do now.  Just for fun, I decided to see what was happening in a particular part of Pennsylvania near a big city, knowing that as of 1960 people there were still getting their mail via "rural route."

I used the State and County, then read ED descriptions to focus on an unincorporated area, and noticed that the farms were there, as were some named streets and also some HOUSE LOTS by number.  

From historical maps elsewhere I know some of the farmer's surnames.  They are mostly German heritage Americans.  There are also Scottish surnames represented.  Some of the surnames are also possibly Jewish though the given names are not obviously so.

Looking over the maps, I was surprised to find that there were smaller farm lots (the 40 acres and a mule lots) that also had Germanic surnames that come up in high school yearbooks in the 1970's; a few of the families that were in this area way back stayed in place for 3-4 generations. (Sixty to a hundred years.) Most of the surnames in the 1970's yearbook that are represented on the 1950 census lead me to the grandparents of the students and some parents; the students are not born yet.  (I may be seeing some older siblings in some cases.)

The HOUSE LOTS indicate that there is some plan for building in place in 1950 and each is numbered. The named and planned streets extend out to the farm land and the particular map teamed with the ED district does not show HOUSE LOTS on these streets.

The HOUSE LOTS seem to relate to an area of the census where there are no named streets.

And I am seeing VACANCIES indicating that a new house has been built but has not been sold yet, rather than an old house has been abandoned.

Now, I do not think the names of many of these streets remained what it says on the map for 1950. I notice that some of the streets ended up being called road or lane. 

Street

Lane

Road

Way

Drive

Boulevard

Highway

ARE THESE DESCRIPTIVE?  Drive almost sounds scenic and, I think, comes after automobiles.

The whole place has a township name that is no longer in use as well as a town name that is no longer in use.

The long roads that had the names of early settlers or early farmer's surnames still have these names.  These are the sometimes winding and miles long roads that and were probably used historically to travel between farms because they were fairly straight and level passages. through hilly regions.  Houses had been built near these roads for easy access to them.

I'm not finding that a Smith lives on Smith road in 1950, so likely they purchased houses that were being built in the 1930's and 1940's.  One of the larger land owners has several families who've gone to live off the original farm land but build or bought nearby.

I look at the ED district's front page which is where the total population count is placed.  There are about 5000 people in 1950.  I know that by the 1970's it's more like 20,000.

I see what the people who are living near each other are doing for a living.  I find an area of ghettoized Blacks who all do physical labor for the coal mine nearby. But there are some White people living near and on these streets as well, who also do this physical labor.

Have a look at some place where ancestors of yours lived !

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

MARILYN MONROE DNA : IRISH ANCESTRY and HER BIRTH FATHER REVEALED

Actress Marilyn Monroe's birth certificate says Mortensen, her mother's ex husband, is her father. However, she also went through live being called Norma Jeane Baker, Baker being the surname of her mother's first husband and that of her half siblings.

Some books suggest that the search for her birth father was ongoing in Marilyn's life others that her mother first revealed a photo of him to her daughter on her fifth birthday.  It turns that due to a DNA test in which strand's of Marilyn's hair from her mortician and the saliva of a great grand-daughter of a man named Charles Stanley Gifford are a match.  Gifford was for a time a supervisor at the company where Marilyn's mother was a film cutter, Consolidated fims. 

VARIETY : Documentary DNA Marilyn Monroe's Father Reveal  Francois Pomes is the documentarian. 

As this summer will be the 60th anniversary of Monroe's controversial death,  a number of books and films will be released. 

As for her Irish in Scotland ancestry, based on the name Monroe (so her mother's paternal line), the evidence has been in for a while.IRISH TIMES : MONROE ROOTS a THOUSAND YEARS and IRISH MUNRO's in SCOTLAND

CLAN MUNRO  Looking for Munro volunteers and funds to keep testing.

 

Ancestry Worship - Genealogy