NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES : DAWES ROLLS : 1896 APPLICATIONS AND THE CURTIS ACT : APPLICATIONS TAKEN 1898 - 1907

ARCHIVES GOV RESEARCH DAWES ROLLS 

Excerpt: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has custody of the Final Rolls of the Five Civilized Tribes, known as the Final Dawes Rolls, as well as related census cards, enrollment applications, land allotment jackets, and maps. These records are found in Record Group 48, Records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior, and in Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Final Dawes Rolls and related records are some of the most heavily used records at NARA for researching membership in the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Note that these tribes were originally exempted but did end up being counted, and it's controversial.

Excerpt: Then, in 1895, Congress authorized a survey of Indian Territory, and in 1896 Congress authorized the Dawes Commission to add names to existing tribal rolls as a preliminary step to allotment. The Commission received more than 7,500 applications for enrollment and traveled throughout Indian Territory conducting hearings.

These applications, known as the 1896 Applications, were declared null and void two years later, when Congress passed an act on June 28, 1898, authorizing the Commission to proceed with enrollment and allotment for the Five Civilized Tribes without tribal consent. The 1898 act, known as the Curtis Act, also provided for the termination of the Five Civilized Tribes’ tribal governments. By 1902, each of the Five Tribes had negotiated and ratified an agreement that modified the terms of the Curtis Act and became the basis for enrollment and allotment.

With new guidelines in place, the Dawes Commission accepted enrollment applications from 1898 through 1907, with a handful accepted in 1914.

STATE CENSUS ADVENTURE ! #1 WHAT STATE CENSUS ARE AVAILABLE SINCE THE 1890 IS MOSTLY GONE?

Over the years many people have asked me how to start their research but also, some have come to me because they are blocked in their research.  It happens to me too but I love trying to figure out how to break that block or go around it and am often successful. Often it's simply knowing how to find the resources. - Christine

You may know the saying "The United States Census (meaning FEDERAL) is the BACKBONE of AMERICAN GENEALOGY."  While we wait and wait and wait for the 72 years that must pass before the 1960 census is revealed (April 1, 1960) to the public for the first time because we DO respect privacy (back in the day when privacy rights were understood as rights very few people lived past 72 years old) we can look back on previous census...

It's true that the FEDERAL CENSUS is the BACKBONE... though the 1890 barely exists... But it depends on what state and county you're researching too. The very LAST United States STATE CENSUS WAS IN 1985, and in Massachusetts. 

State census' certainly can help "fill the gap" when the 1890 census that you need is missing forever. 

So first, let's go to the NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES for the definitive statement about what happened and what still exists! 

Here is the general consensus on that 1890! : fragments (that offer only a small percentage of the original data) are surviving for specific counties and townships in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas, plus a special schedule for Civil War veterans and widows. 

NATIONAL ARCHIVES RESEARCH CENSUS This is in more detail...

Excerpt: On January 10, 1921, a fire in the Commerce Department building, Washington, DC, resulted in the destruction of most of the 1890 census, to the woe of researchers ever since.

***

If you're researching KENTUCKY or OKLAHOMA you have half a chance! But, interestingly, the census of CIVIL WAR widows and some items of interests to Native Americans and African Americans are available. Forget WEST VIRGINIA! There has never been a state census in that state!

***

This is going to be a SERIES of POSTS and so I'm going to designate a TAG that will (eventually) bring them ALL up!

The TAG WILL BE  "STATE CENSUS ADVENTURE"

C 2026 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

CHECKING BACK IN ON YOUR GENEALOGY and FAMILY HISTORY PROJECT? Please Do!

Just a reminder to those of you who put your project aside...  DO check to see what, if anything is added to databases you've been using at least a couple times a year.  Also check the internet for new sites or additions to archives and libraries that help you understand (and write about!) your family history.  I know it's a tough call to quit, knowing that you could publish and then find more information, but maybe it could be said that a genealogy project is always in process.  So if you must leave that project, leave it in the hands of someone you know will use your work with respect and continue it.

Just did that for a client who I hadn't done any work for in about two years or more! Wow!

OKLAHOMA is rich in resources and a very interesting state, lots of German Immigrants, Native Americans.  We were surprised and elated to find that there WAS more information relating to his German immigrant family posted sometime in those two years. This included photographs of those who would be great grandparents and a grandfather.

THE DUST BOWL by KEN BURNS - ONE OF THE BEST DOCUMENTARIES AMERICAN GENEALOGISTS COULD WATCH

Did you know that when the Dust Bowl refugees (called "Exo-Dusters")  came to California on Route 66 citizens tried to stop them from entering the state at the borders ,not wanting these people to have any public support?  THE 1930's  MIGRATION OF THE DUST BOWL PEOPLE  DWARFS THAT OF THE MIGRATION OF THE COVERED WAGON ERA!  This was also one of the worst ecological disasters to happen in the 20th century.

This and many other facts that were brought forth make THE DUST BOWL by Ken Burns a film that should intrigue anyone working on American genealogy. The film has a multitude of black and white images of the people, the farmsteads, and the black clouds of dust that devastated farming and caused many to die of dust fever, a lung disease, including many children, and left many with life-long lung ailments.  This wasn't a little dust.  This was a chronic barrage of massive clouds that even left the equivalent of sand dunes of dusk and is a testimonial to ecological disaster that was man made but also man resolved after much suffering.  The film also has testimonials by some of the children who experienced migration who are now past mid-life.

Among the facts covered that are compelling to me and other American researchers are the following:

The clouds of dust were so fast and dark that some people thought the Biblical end of the world was upon them.  The dust blackened the skies and chocked them and gave them dust pneumonia. The dust caused static electricity that made using phones impossible.  The Buffalo grass that they had replaced with wheat is what nature and time had evolved as the perfect ground cover for a sometimes wet and sometimes parched area of the country there near Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle.  Eventually 40,000 farmers signed up to learn a new technique called contour farming which over several years time did resolve the issue, but through the 1930's 80% of the Great Plain soil was eroded.  As a result of the Dust, COUNTIES LOST 30-40% of their population in the 1930's. Schools closed.  (See the changes by looking at the 1930 and then 1940 census.*)  But 75% of the population hung in there maybe because they had families in the local cemeteries.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took a train ride, covering a couple thousand miles, in order to see for himself and talk to the farmers.  Now that we know that Roosevelt hid his crippled body, when we see film of him standing, with an aid next to him, arm provided support, and then raising his arm to wave, we know what an actor he was.   He saw that millions of acres were abandoned and that the children were underweight.

Many Dust Bowl families were too proud to accept what public relief there was.  HERE THEN COMES THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS...  Young men made $30 a month and had to send $25 of it to their families.  Some people were critical, feeling that they were being paid to stand around, but others saw that over time these young men learned skills and used their hard physical labor to improve the country.  (I can tell you that there is a park nearby where I live where the walls and steps that CCC's members built are still in use and in great shape.)  And here then comes THE WORKS PROJECT ADMINISTRATION.
THE WPA BECAME THE BIGGEST EMPLOYER IN THE NATIONS with 8 million people employed and saving themselves from starvation.

By 1937 other ecological disasters were happening.  The 1937 OHIO RIVER FLOOD that effected the city of Pittsburgh with houses floating away


THE DUST BOWL a film by Ken Burns is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Television   C 2012  The Dust Bowl Film Project, LLC

Review C 2014 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

WOODY GUTHRIE WAS MOVED TO LOS ANGELES BECAUSE OF THE DUST BOWL and is probably the most famous DUST BOWL migrant.