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 However, in those times communications traveled slowly, very slowly compared to these days when even "snail mail" has been replaced by electronic bill paying and e-mail and unlimited long distance cell phone use.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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MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE

 

IF YOU or AN ANCESTOR WERE MEMBERS OF LATTER DAY SAINTS THERE IS A 1960 CHURCH CENSUS as well as 1914, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935, 1940, 1950, 1955

This is a census of the members...

FAMILYSEARCH CHURCH CENSUS  This is an information page and will bring up some data but you'll have to go into your FamilySearch account to go further.

Excerpt: Church census records include censuses for the years 1914, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935, 1940, 1950, 1955, and 1960. Included with the 1914-1935 census are some delayed birth certificates which originated in the Church Historian's Office and a few Salt Lake Granite Stake genealogical survey cards. The records are arranged alphabetically by the head of the household. Microfilm of original records in the LDS Church Historian's Office, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Church records are kept by many denominations. For instance for Roman Catholics the records are usually in the Diocese archives. And church records are usually of baptisms, marriages, and deaths, while sometimes there are also records of Confession, Communion, and Confirmation, as well as Converts

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TRAVELS WITH GEORGE : TOBIAS LEAR EVENTUALLY MARRIED INTO BOTH GEORGE and MARTHA'S FAMILY

 

One of the surprising things about genealogy research is that one never knows when some unexpected archival type documents will be found in an individual's possession or buried in some library where maybe no one ever understood the value of them...

Excerpt and Notes: Page 109 -110  (What is now Kittery Maine marks the northernmost point of Washington's tour.  He stayed in what was called "the Red cottage" built about 1740 and Washington stayed there November 2nd, 1789.  Author Philbrick and his wife called the present owner and met with him. It is on Portsmouth Harbor.  The owner Jim is related to Tobias Lear and Stephen Decatur a American naval hero during the War of 1812.  He opened a chest that belonged to his grandfather that had not been open in 80 years and there found a family and genealogy treasure.  It is a ledger kept by Tobias Lear when he served as George Washington's private secretary during his first term as President of the United States.

"The large red-leather book, filled with daily transactions, from the purchase of theater tickets to that leopard-skin saddle pad, provided a remarkably detailed window into Washington's household during his first term as President.  Drawing upon this and other Washington-related documents that had come into Lear's possession after the President's death and never before seen the light of day, Decatur compiled Private Affairs of George Washington: From the Records and Accounts of Tobias Lear, Esquire, His Secretary.

Excerpt page 111 (How this became part of Jim's family's possessions.)

By the time the President had died, Lear was married into the family.   His first wife died of the Yellow Fever epidemic in 1793, and he first remarried Frances "Fanny" Bassett Washington.  After he was widowed again, because she died within the year of TB, he married Frances Dandridge Henley, who was niece of Martha's.  Therefore he had married into BOTH George Washington's family and hi wife Martha's.

C 2023 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

NEVER MY LOVE: THE ASSOCIATION

Don't often post music videos here at Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot but I felt like it... This is one of my favorite old love songs.

PRAGMATIC MARRIAGE and DEATH

Pragmatic marriage - matchmaking or introductions - and no contraception.  Children dead from diseases now conquered through vaccinations and antibiotics - Fragile beings.  Or because their mother was malnourished during her pregnancy.  Or had too many children close together to actually recover between births.  Or they wore born without a father to support the family. Or their mother had no milk.

Today we talk Grieving.  We say it takes time to heal.  We have psychotherapy.  Then?

They had religion -informed world views. Children born as replacements (but not reincarnated) for previously born children who died. It seems to me that our ancestors had a whole lot to grieve as intimate family members, wives and husbands, parents, siblings, as well as friends and people they surrounded themselves died.  Reminding them that they too would and that life had many risks.

They often remarried - pragmatically  and quickly- as they might have the first time around in youth - and there were blended families due to death rather than divorce (which we think is another form of death.)  A woman without a husband needed another one quickly.

Were they so different than us?  Did they always have to carry on and get to it?

Villagers in Europe were often quite genetically related.  

Children on farms worked young.

Girls were left uneducated more than boys.  Even well-to-do families thought education - reading and writing - though educating a girl was handicapping her, making her a less desirable and dependent wife.

This was socially acceptable.

I think of the brides of pre-contraception and modern medicine days as especially brave.  They all knew that pregnancy and childbirth could kill them. 

As I try to understand my ancestors, I'm glad for the choices that modern medicine has given us.

And that be it them or me, life is short.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

VALENTINES DAY

The day to wear your heart on your sleeve but why buy chocolates or flowers when you can write a love letter or poem and leave it under a special person's pillow?

HER DNA SUGGESTS RACE AND ETHNICITY - WAS IT MARRIAGE OR RAPE? : QUESTIONS FROM READERS of ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY

Question for Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

(Please note that this person showed me her results and asked me to interpret them.)

My genealogy research takes me back to Southern Poland and parts of what is now Slovakia, Hungary, and Ukraine. I know this was the Austrian Empire, but my ancestors always had their "ethnic I'm" as these ethnicities. I'm showing Asian ancestry on one side and Near Eastern ancestry on the other. Percentages would l be about one sixteenth of each - so that would be great great grandparents - right? Is this the end of my standard paper trail research?  Please comment.  Thanks.

G.

Answer from Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

Not necessarily.

First remember that all results are statistically based and dependent on all the people who have chosen to contribute their personal data to that particular company's results and that stats are reworked based on an ever-growing number of considerations. Also, as more understanding of genetics and DNA comes forth, it can get more specific - such as what tribe (be that Native American or Native European - so to speak). Sometimes this information can lead us past a block.

One sixteenth could be a great great grandparents. We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and sixteen great-great grandparents. However, it could be some other combination such as four of the thirty two great great great grandparents. Or some small strain in many ancestors that adds up.

Today many people simply feel American or Canadian or British - or whatever - though only one of their lines show that. Other people relate to an ethnicity or way of life - including attitudes and lifestyle - that they may be criticized for adopting because there is no biological evidence for it.  (This is one of the reasons I think sometimes that a past life experience is why.)

As for the paper trail - standard genealogy - it is always worth pursing even if it is at odds with the DNA or genetic results.  However, the notions that genealogy will prove generations of marriages - chosen and happy marriages - or unite a fractured family are myths. People may have lives that were more controlled or regimented or limited than we have come to expect as Americans, but there were still affairs and there was rape. Rape is so common that I doubt there is anyone alive who doesn't have some DNA as a result of rape.

Some areas of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine, experienced invasions and occupations that included murder and rape. I suspect you will not likely find church or temple records going into the 19th or 18th century that reveal that. You might want to read about the Tatars, Mongols, and Ottoman Turks.

In my years as a genealogist, I've rarely found notations in records that expand on the explanation of illegitimacy, for instance. (Once in a while an understanding priest wrote in "father in America" or something about a death before marriage - alluding to a romance or plan to be married when the unfortunate happened.)  It's so sad to me when I find a woman in the records who had one child after another without a father and see how soon those children died. I always wonder if she was a woman repeatedly taken advantage of by men in the village - perhaps an orphan or someone born without average intelligence - someone who might have been forced into prostitution.

A W G

C 2020 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy Blogspot

SEARCH FOR HERITAGE - ORPHANAGE - ADOPTION - LOVING HOME Research Path Heritage Search 1 - Three

Since the surname of the birth mother - her maiden name - seems to be the one she went through life with - I search for her grave using FIND A GRAVE.  

I would not have found it if I had not known the name of the birth father!

To my surprise I find both her maiden surname and the name of the birth father who never married her (unless he was a bigamist which no longer seems likely) on the tombstone as if they were married. I also now have a full birth and death date.  If I get the burial record it's going to tell me who informed the undertaker. Tombstones are generally not inexpensive so someone had this carved. But would the funeral home do research to prove that this woman was indeed MARRIED and had a married surname?  NO, they would not. So someone paid for her funeral and someone paid to have this gravestone made. I asked my client if he buried his mother.  He doesn't take the bait. (Information on tombstones can be wrong.)

Also, on FIND A GRAVE I see that someone responsible for photographing and listing the grave has put down that she was the child of "Bob and Mary So and So."  Who is this person?  I click on his info and he's someone who has uploaded thousands of photos of graves and so on. He probably is not a family member with a personal interest in this. I doubt that he has also looked at cemetery records and other paperwork. Is he a relative?  Perhaps from that birth father's side of the family? 

Turns out that birth father and his legal wife are in the same cemetery.  

Well, there are not too many cemeteries around in that area and now that I know that this birth mother lived her life alone and unmarried - that he was LOCAL all those years - well, I feel upset. The birth father never visited the birth mother, who remained unmarried her whole life. He must have known where she was. I wonder.  Did she tell people she was a divorced woman when she was not?  Use his surname? 

What's going on?

I locate the couple that are attributed to be the birth mother's own birth parents according to the FIND A GRACE listing on census in another state, along with dozens of other prospective families. By now I feel pretty sure that it's my client himself who did the funeral, burial, and the tombstone, and maybe he's forgotten or he doesn't want to discuss it.  (Is he playing a game with me to see if I'm a good genealogist?)

It's important that he be honest with me. Now I begin to wonder if his birth mother was honest with him. I begin to wonder if anyone at the orphanage or her birth family were honest with her as well because...

I run a search for everyone in the United States born in the year she was using the 1930 census, when she was already a child and in the Catholic orphanage or a mid-west city. Up come dozens of families who already had a child in or about 1924. Unless she was a TWIN and was given away while the other twin was kept, she does NOT FIT INTO THE BIRTH ORDER of ANY OF THESE FAMILIES who are located in the same diocese - the diocese that was behind the Catholic Orphanage she lived her childhood in.  

This opens the possibility that though all oral history and evidence thus far points to her being connected to the dozens of families there with her birth surname, she may actually have been sent there to them from somewhere else.  I remind myself not to get map bound.

But there is ONE candidate family in the area simply because there are no children listed born in that family after the date she was born....


C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy Blogspot
To follow along on this genealogy research path click on the label below that says Research Path Heritage Search 1

TYING THE KNOT by AMBER KEYSER : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW : ALMANACH DE GOTHA as MATCHMAKING BIBLE?

Excerpted from the book Tying the Knot - A World History of Marriage by Amber J. Keyser

EXCERPT:  OLD STYLE MATCH.COM

Between 1763 and 1944, European nobles looking for a marriage partner could consult a reference book called the Almanach de Gotha. Originated by a German chaplain in the city of Gotha, the book sorted and ranked all members of European noble families in great detail. Families used the book to determine which matches were acceptable.  Specifically, marriage partners were supposed to be of the same rank - that is, a duke was supposed to marry the daughter of a duke, not the daughter of a man of lower rank.  If a man did choose a lower-ranked wife, he entered into what was called a left hand marriage. During the wedding ceremony, he held the bride's right had with his left hand instead of the traditional right hand.

In 1998 a British company issued a new edition of the Almanach de Gotha, but critics noted that it was sloppily written.  And even though some Europeans still inherit titles of nobility, these titles are mostly symbolic,  For instance, the United Kingdom still has a queen, princes, dukes, earls, and other nobles, but they no longer run the country.  Instead, citizens of the United Kingdom vote for their leaders.  Since its no longer necessary to maintain power by marrying into another royal family, European noble no longer have reason to consult the Almanach de Gotha.

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HOLY MATRIMONY

FAMILY RECORD

THE RED QUEEN by MATT RIDLEY : BOOK EXCERPT : COURTLY LOVE

THE RED QUEEN by MATT RIDLEY 
COURTLY LOVE
pages 218-219

"Human mating systems are greatly complicated by...inherited wealth... indeed in more stratified societies the poor often favor their daughters over their sons. But this is not because of certainly of paternity but because poor daughters are more likely to breed than poor sons. A feudal vassal's son had a good chance of remaining childless, while his sister was carted off to the local castle to be the fecund concubine of the resident lord... Sure enough, there is some evidence that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Bedforshire, peasants left more to their daughters than to their sons. In eighteenth-century Ostfriesland in Germany, farmers in stagnant populations had oddly female-biased families... It is hard to avoid the conclusion that third and fourth sons were a drain on the family unless there were new business opportunities....

"But at the top of society, the opposite prejudice prevailed. Medieval lords banished many of their daughters to nunneries... Through the world rich men have always favored their sons and often just one of them. A wealthy or powerful father, by leaving his status or the means to achieve it to his sons, is leaving them the wherewithal to become successful adulterers with many bastard sons. No such advantage could accrue to wealthy daughters... "

Harper Perennial is the publisher.
C 1993 by Matt Ridley

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