FamHist

1,000th Cousin Contact

2009-07-10T14:39:00.000-06:00

1,000 extended cousins have now contacted me after finding my websites. Years ago, I wondered if the effort to create the sites was worth the investment of time. I wish all of my investments had such fantastic returns.

The contacts have been mutually beneficial for all of us. I share information that I've found about our joint family during my lifetime of research and they share information that they have inherited or have found in their own ancestral quest.

All of us have unique perspectives and advantages of local resources and family knowledge. The combination of our efforts in continued research always produces more than the sum of our two data repositories. Perhaps it is generated by the spark of renewed interest resulting our contact, but it is probably due to many factors especially the complimentary engagement of our skills and perspectives.

If you are reading this you are probably already using the Internet and social tools focused in genealogy in your own quest. If you aren't enjoying a lot of contacts yet, don't give up. Keep posting your successes, your brick wall lineages and the surnames and locations you are researching.

Help others if you can. You'll always receive substantial interest from this investment of your time, talents and resources.

Technorati Tags: Cousin Contacts,Brick Wall Genealogy. Genealogy Social Networks

Grandpa Liked To Sing

2009-06-27T12:17:00.000-06:00

While working to put additional information on the fact frames associated with my ancestors, I turned the music to random play. A male baritone voice cycled into play as I added information to my grandfathers record. I was immediately reminded of the stories I’d heard of his life long enjoyment of singing.

Looking through the words I’d added to his history over the years, the only mention of his singular public expression were the words, “Grandpa liked to sing”.

The stitching of the word quilt that covered his life in my genealogical records didn’t contain one of the most important design elements. This very private man had one sustainable public facet during his life. Grandpa liked to sing.

My mother often described her two bedroom childhood home that housed ten or more family members. They were crowded into every space, especially at night. Even the screened back porch had cots where grandpa and some of the boys slept year round. Privacy was just a word.

Grandma cooked from sun up to well after sun down, day after day, year after year, regardless of the temperature in the kitchen. The old coal stove probably didn’t cool off completely for thirty years. When it wasn’t heating or baking food, it was warming water for baths and with that many family members, even semi-daily baths taxed its ability to heat enough water.

The large family required a lot of food and the family raised and grew almost everything they consumed. Grandpa augmented the meager earnings from their “cash crops” with his skilled blacksmith hands.

I only remember really talking to him a few times, even though he lived until after I was married. He was a shy kind of a fellow unless you were working with him or in his presence regularly.

Mom said that he would arise at 4:30 a.m. every morning and start the fire in the kitchen stove while the rest of the family slept. The daily ritual always included numerous selections in his strong baritone voice.

While the stove warmed, he would prepare a pot of coffee, gather enough wood to feed the stove until his boys got up to do their chores before school and then he’d stare out of the window above the sink trying to read the sky for the weather of the day. And he would sing.

In the winter months, he stayed in the kitchen to drink his morning cup of Joe, but when the temperature was twenty degrees or warmer, he sat on one of the two steps on the front porch and serenaded the neighborhood.

I’ve been told by several of those who were kids in the area during the years, that they loved waking to his songs. He sang old-timey songs, love songs, songs of the season and songs that he made up.

He didn’t take requests. In fact, if anyone approached him or even glanced at him with too much interest while walking down the street, he’d immediately stop singing and go inside. He was a shy kinda guy.

When I was five, he took me out to his blacksmith shop one afternoon while he worked to repair the rakes on a hay rake. Even though I was a small town kid, I wasn’t a farm kid and was basically useless pumping the bellows. At least, I was until he taught me the rhythm of the pump. Singing a song with emphasis on the final word in each stanza, he showed me how to keep the heat in the hearth just right so he could work the metal with his hammer on the anvil for a few minutes before returning it for more heat.

It was an unusual day in my experience with him, because while my reedy five-year-old voice called out the bellows-pumping ditty, he sang harmony and circled my tune with layers and layers of beautiful music. In fact, it was so beautiful that he had to remind me to start pumping again several times when I stood in silent amazement at music coming out of this quiet man.

He sang to his dog, to his sheep and to a cow that day too. They liked it. I could tell. Their heads all popped up and they all moved to the point of their pens and pastures closest to him when he turned to face them over the bellows. It wasn’t a new experience for them, but like me, they all stood still in rapt attention to the generator of such beautiful sounds.

Grandpa sang at funerals in town with three other fellows during most of his life. I suppose he knew that the attendees weren’t going to ask him to sing a song just for them at those times and as one of four, most of the limelight spread away from him even though his voice was the pillar that supported the less dynamic notes sang by the others.

Some say that if he ever had a little liquor, his shyness retreated a little but even then it was contained among his circle of friends who each had a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon in their paws.

I wish I’d heard his morning concerts, but never did. I asked him to sing a few songs once when I was sixteen, but he declined.

Grandpa was a shy kind of a man.

Technorati Tags: Grandpa,Histories,Singing

GPS and Lost Graves

2009-06-17T12:34:00.001-06:00

I’ve visited the grave of my great grandfather a number of times over the years. It was usually covered with Memorial Day flowers as were most of the graves in the cemetery. It is a memory of a sea of color and fragrant smells – folks greeting each other, pointing to headstones and markers – a reunion of sorts.

In the last decade, mylar windmills, balloons and plastic blossoms have almost overwhelmed the iris, peonies, babies breath and snowball floral tributes left by us older folks. There seem to be fewer of us visiting the burial locations of our families now. There are too many big boy toys, outing distractions and to some degree, lack of respect for our lineage that has become associated with Memorial Day in recent years.

I try to show our grandchildren where their ancestors are buried with pilgrimages to the cemetery every year or so hoping they will retain the ancestral memories after I’m gone or can’t remember them myself in some future day.

Apparently that future day is arriving even as I write this note. I couldn’t find my great grandfather’s grave this year. I couldn’t find my aunt’s grave.

There are only 20,000+ burials in the cemetery where their bodies reside and the old parts really haven’t changed that much but apparently someone moved their graves during the past couple of years.

At first I chuckled. Then I frowned and visually searched for the familiar landmarks that I’ve known since my youth. Finding some of them, I tried to triangulate and ‘walk to the graves’ like I’d done as a young man. That didn’t work. Someone really had moved the graves!

Apparently, the only thing that had moved were a few synaptic links in my brain because after an hour of walking up and down row after row of markers, I finally found the headstones. I enjoyed reading the markers during my walk but had other graves to visit, clean and photograph that day.

I’ve visited the graves of my ancestors in Plymouth, Massachusetts several times, but during the last visit, I couldn’t walk right to the ones that “I was sure of”. When have you fly across country to visit a cemetery, ‘wasting’ time to find a grave that you knew you can ‘walk to in my sleep’ but can’t find any longer is an expensive and frustrating exercise.

Could it be that I’ve now been to so many cemeteries in so many locations that they are starting to merge in to a blended picture in my memory? Probably so. Have I lost synaptic connections? Probably so. Hence, I purchased a GPS specifically for my traveling genealogy kit.

Now when I visit a cemetery, any cemetery, I record the lat / long coordinates of the headstones of my ancestors. That data is entered in my database directly tied to their burial data. Yes, I know that my commercial GPS handheld is only accurate to 14 feet or so of the real spot I’m standing on, even if it has acquired eight or more satellites, but, that means that I should only have to walk a maximum of 28 feet in any direction to find the grave in the future if I can’t ‘walk to it in my sleep’ that day. I can do that in short order.

I record the information on Find-a-grave, Names In Stone, Picasa, Panoramio, my own genealogy sites and other websites when I post headstone photos on them as well. Maybe the information will help someone else in the future. Additionally, I can use my web enabled cell phone to look at those sites and remind me where the graves are located in future visits.

One thing is certain. I will continue to visit more and more cemeteries in the future. The blended memory picture of them in my mind will continue to meld into an even more generic image as time goes on. I’ll probably forget how to exactly walk to even more of the graves too.

I won’t be alone. You’re all walking down the same path with me. Some of you are ahead of me. Some of you are behind but if you love to visit cemeteries like I do, you are right on track to arrive at the same destination eventually. If you haven’t purchased a GPS handheld or have the software in your iPhone or other device, you might as well put one on your ‘stuff I want list’ so your family and friends will know what to get you for Christmas, birthday or graduation.

Once you start documenting the exact location of graves, you’ll find that it adds to the fun of cemetery visits and you too will be able to find your great grandfathers grave in the future.

Technorati Tags: Cemetery,Lat-Long,GPS,Photos,Headstones

Grave Dowsing ~ More Stories

2009-06-09T18:18:00.000-06:00

In a recent post, I briefly covered an article about dowsing for graves that I’d stumbled upon. The article was the first that I'd every heard of anyone using dowsing for that purpose.

The response to my post was surprising. Apparently, there are a lot of folks who engage in this activity to locate lost graves.

The University of Iowa has a good treatise on the subject found here. The document will download as a .pdf file.

In 2005, Dick Eastman posted about a grave dowsing experience by Tom Corey on the Oregon Trail. As usual, his readers have posted some interesting comments in response to his post.

Linda Bell wrote about dowsing methods used to find county graves for the North Forty News. Dowsing plays a key role in finding graves on the Roberts Ranch in Livermore, California.

The Archer Cousins Genealogy website has an article that covers their experience in dowsing to find the graves of family members that includes photos of their efforts.

The Hughes and Related Families site has a detailed article that covers the theory, tools and methods used to dowse for graves.

Jay McAfee posted an article written by Thomas A. Markham about dowsing to find old graves in a GenForum post in 2004.

Glenn Adams wrote an article on his blog about his use of dowsing rods in the search for the bodies of a murdered couple.

Wendell Culberson of the Mississippi GenWeb site wrote a great article on his experiences in finding lost graves in Shelby County, Illinois.

Chris Dunham of The Genealogue blog quoted an article about grave dowsing that was published in the Wichita, Kansas Eagle newspaper.

Brenda Marble wrote a detailed article for the cemeteries.missouri.org site about grave dowsing and the tools and methods used in this activity.

The list of articles about Grave Dowsing is surprising long. A Google search for “dowsing for graves” produced over 1,200 hits. Needless to say, I was surprised by the number of results given the fact that I’d never heard of the subject before finding the “Old Ways Help Women Find Old Graves” article two weeks ago.

Are you familiar with these efforts to find lost graves? Personally, I don’t have interest in the occult or entities that use dowsing to tell fortunes, the sex of unborn children, etc. As I noted in my first post on the subject, I’ve used dowsing rods to find water and power lines as simple convenience. I’d witnessed dowsing to find water lines as a youth and as a young man working for a electric utility. Simple tools. Simple needs. Quick and accurate results were produced followed by putting the hastily constructed wire wire rods in the trash or bent back to their normal shape for use in construction.

Reflecting on it, I suppose I always thought the metal dowsing rods simply reacted to gravitational disturbances created by buried metal pipes full of water or energized power lines. Tenuous reasoning I know, but who cared. The job they were used for got done faster with them than without. I gave the dowsing rods no more thought than I would a tooth pick at a restaurant.

But dowsing for buried bodies? What is that all about? How does it work? Is the power of the human mind greater than we’ve been able to measure thus far?

Apparently so, or at least it is so for some folks.

You’ll note that the people writing or quoting the articles above have had success using dowsing to find graves. It’s just an example of folks having a small need that can be difficult to impossible to resolve via normal means, yet by exhibiting a little faith in oneself followed by the use of simple tools focused on a specific subject seems to bring results.

Whether you decide to dowse for graves or not, research of the subject provides interesting reading. I probably won’t use my bent up old galvanized tie wire rods for this activity, but who knows, maybe the need will arise for some unforeseeable reason in a future day. If so, I wonder if it will work for me? I guess I’d shouldn’t think about it too much and cobble up the works.

Technorati Tags: Dowsing,Graves,Tales

The Problem With Primary Source Documents

2009-06-07T16:34:00.002-06:00

We know that primary source documents always are desired to assist in proving our lineage. Can we count on their accuracy?

The answer is NO. They frequently contain errors. Dates are wrong. Locations are frequently wrong. Names are wrong or misspelled. Why does this happen?

Looking at my great grandmother’s death certificate, I immediately noticed that her name was different than the one written in various publications and family records.

Great Grandma’s birth name was “Helen Marr Farrar”, yet the name listed on the certificate is “Helen Mary Drew”. Did the recorder hear the information wrong or accidentally write a name frequently used in his family?

That is one possibility. I make the same error at times. However, her certificate offers a greater clue to the problem. The informant listed on the certificate is "Lula H. Johnson”. For some reason, great grandma’s death information was given to authorities by her niece rather than by any of her six children that lived in the area.

Can you provide the full birth name, birth date and parents names for your aunts and uncles from memory? Not many of us can. Lula, was probably helping the family take care of ‘foot work’ while the children arranged the funeral, burial and mourned the loss of their mother.

We know that the birth information listed on a death certificate is suspect. It came from someone’s memory. The only facts that should be correct on the certificate are the name, death date and place and burial date and place and yet, even they are ‘suspect’.

The birth information and even the parents names on death certificates are secondary sources at best.

One of the key indicators that grandma’s name was Helen Marr was a letter from her “family historian” granddaughter that states that great grandma was named after her mothers sister, Helen Marr Tirrill.

Wondering if “Marr” was a rare name in that day, I searched for others that may have had the name and was surprised how frequently it was used. A misspelling was undoubtedly less of a factor than I initially suspected.

Errors abound in the birth and death certificates that I’ve found for my family. In fact, they are more common than not.

My aunt died as a young child in the now non-existent town of Knightsville, Utah. My grandparents lived in the area when grandpa had a wagon and horse team hauling supplies and anything else needed between Salt Lake City and the remote mining towns in Juab county.

The informant listed on Gladys’ certificate was my grandfather but unfortunately, the registrar, Mr. E. J. Howell incorrectly recorded her burial location. It states that aunt Gladys was buried in the American Fork, Utah cemetery, yet she and her baby sister are actually buried side-by-side in the family plot in the Alpine cemetery.

Was she initially buried in American Fork and later moved to Alpine? No. Her uncle Charles and aunt Ada were buried on the plot in 1901 and 1904 respectively. Two other aunts and an uncle died as babies and were buried on the family farm in the late 1880’s – early 1890’s, so the family didn’t own the cemetery plot then, but by the time their eldest son was buried in 1901, they owned or had purchased the lot.

Gladys was buried in Alpine not in American Fork. The “primary source” information on her death certificate is wrong.

I wonder how many errors exist in the thousands of certificate that that I’ve collected over the years yet don’t have enough other information to cause me to suspect errors in them. There are probably quite a few, but since I know that even “Primary” source documents frequently contain errors, I still list them in my databases with the highest level of confidence. What else can be considered a “Primary Source Document”?

You have the same problem in your own source documents. Don’t let it throw you. Don’t obstinately argue over minor factual differences with other researchers. Establish a rule in your negotiations with others declaring that the primary source documents are the base used for accuracy but that codicil statements can be added to that knowledge to argue or exhibit additional information to consider in the decision of the ‘true facts’ associated with the record of your family member.

Technorati Tags: Primary Source Documents,Death Certificate,Marriage Certificate,Birth Certificate

Dowsing For Graves And Other Wives Tales

2009-06-05T01:14:00.002-06:00

If you are like me, there are graves of your extended family that have either lost their grave markers or were never marked for a variety of reasons.

In my family, three of my great aunts and uncles died as youngsters and were buried on the family farm in Fort Canyon, above Alpine, Utah. I made a post about them called “Little Ones Lost” earlier this year.

Today, I found an article titled, “Old ways help women find old graves” that describes the efforts of Cate Culver, who is using dowsing rods to find old unmarked graves around the Pioneer Cemetery in San Andreas, California.

As expected, scientists say that dowsing doesn’t work and that her efforts are a waste of time. Unfortunately, the soil in that area is less ‘soil’ than rock and has a fairly high copper and other mineral content. The article notes that ground penetrating radar won’t work in the area due to the terrain and of course, officials aren’t going to grant permission to open the suspected locations for ‘no’ reason other than to prove that the dowser can find old graves.

Long ago, I was surprised when I was first told that dowsing didn’t work and that it couldn’t be proven. I’d grown up watching people dowse for water, power and other buried lines with great success. In fact, when I was told that dowsing was bunk, I had actually dowsed for a long lost water line that was leaking the weekend before. Running water could be heard in a pipe that entered the basement of our home but wasn’t attached to anything inside.

Curiosity got the better of me one Friday evening, so I pulled out the dowsing rods, marked the location of the pipe on the lawn and started digging with a shovel. The location was about 100 feet away from the city water line feeding our home.

While dowsing, I had flagged a couple of 90 degree turns in the route of the line.

A few hours later, my wife was less than happy to find about forty feet of five foot deep trench winding its way through our north lawn.

Yes, the water line was exactly where I’d marked it and at the depth the rods had indicated. No surprises. The trench was so long because I had to follow the line to find the leak and then to clear enough length of pipe so that it could be lifted, cut, spliced and tested for new leaks.

As it turned out, the water originated three hundred feet south in the basement of the neighbors home. They had owned our home before building their new home. The water lines to the chicken coops that used to be on the back properties had originally fed from our home. When they built the new house, they simply capped the water line in the basement of the old house and fed it from the new house. Finally, decades later, the old water line deteriorated and began to leak.

Being on the end of the shovel doing the digging, I’d long ago decided that the dowsing rods had better work or you were only involved in a less than satisfying way to exercise.

We often used dowsing rods to find buried power lines when I worked for the power company. The younger generation had to use the expensive tools that semi-find electrical fields, but the old hands just grabbed a pair of iron tie wires, bent one end of each long enough to use as a handle and marked the line. No big deal. Fast, accurate and easy. And because the fellows were doing the digging by hand, the marks had to be accurate due to the seemingly never ending layers of river rock or they’d never use their dowsing sticks a second time. Inevitably, the dowsing marks were always more accurate than those created the using multi-thousand dollar buried line identification equipment.

I’ve continued to use dowsing rods to find the dozen or so telephone drop lines that cross our orchard when I’ve installed fence posts, sprinkling systems and other buried features in our landscaping. Thus far, they’ve always provided 100% accuracy. I guess that I need to read the scientific reasons why the rods don’t work but really don’t want to. If I do, I may believe the scientific reasons and then the rods won’t work any longer. After all, scientists are rarely wrong. Right?

Over the years, I’ve chatted with folks from all over the world who have dowsed to find water and other buried features for all of their lives with great success. They grew up using them and apparently, none of them had been taught that dowsing doesn’t work either.

My ancestors dowsed. Their ancestors dowsed. Maybe you have to have a naive faith that dowsing works for it to work for you. Maybe it is tied to string theory or quantum mechanics. Maybe you have to acknowledge that the laws of the universe are a lot stranger and more elastic than all of us whiz kids realize.

Maybe the old healing and ‘wives tales’ medical remedies that my mother, grandmothers and great grandmother taught and practiced don’t work either. I guess you’d have to convince the almost invisible scars on my body that the old remedies didn’t work though. While in that discussion, maybe you could tell the adjacent scars from wounds that were ‘healed’ by doctors that they shouldn’t be so big and ugly because they were treated by highly educated men who convinced me that my ancestors old remedies didn’t work. But that topic is a whole other discussion.

I wonder how many of the old remedies and ‘ways’ have been relegated to the pit by us as we’ve become more ‘educated’ over the generations?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m absolutely delighted to be living when so many medical, technological and other advances have been made to make our lives so much physically better than those of our ancestors, but I wonder what we’ve lost in the process of worshiping our scientific ‘Gods’.

What commonly practiced old ‘Ways’ and ‘Remedies’ in your ancestral history have been lost? Post a note and let us know.

Don’t necessarily expect us to believe them though. Maybe you can ascribe our unbelief to our being taught that they don’t work and hence our faith in them being literal is missing.

Remember, my dowsing rods ’don’t work’ either and most readers will probably assign me to the group of ‘characters’ of a past age. That’s ok. We’re relatively happy in our ignorance….. and, before you ask, no, I don’t dowse for water or power or telephone lines for anyone else. Who’d believe that it worked in today’s world anyway?

Technorati Tags: graves,dowsing,remedies,ancestors,wives tales

Gold In Your Drawers

2009-05-28T22:31:00.003-06:00

Sometimes we have to look in the mirror and shake our heads in wonder. The person in the reflection doesn’t look as dumb as they feel, but it is hard to argue with facts.

I’ve looked for clues to aid in the quest to find of one of my ancestors for years. The results were always the same. Nothing. I’ve reread my research notes, rethought my research strategy and recommitted it to writing. The new plan required plotting possible migration routes of my ancestors, deep delving into the Family History Library Catalog and subsequent printing of dozens of pages of source materials that need to be explored at the library. A hand clasp binder is sitting on my desk bulging with these pages, group sheets, summaries of old research activities and the new plan.

I won’t need most of them now. One last reading of a page that I’d photocopied over a generation ago resolved much of the issue. I had to reread it four or five times to believe what I was seeing. I even suspected that it was a ‘new’ page that someone had slipped in to my file. Surely, I couldn’t have missed that brief sentence so many times ….. but of course I had.

We are creatures of habit. We form impressions that often eclipse reality. I remember reading the document on a microfilm reader when I first found it. I took notes from the page and even traced some of the hard to read writing on the page that day. I’ve probably looked at the page and the photocopy of the microfilm page a hundred times since then but my mind knew what it contained, and hence, the little sentence was apparently ignored, skipped or had become invisible to my mind.

How often have you reread your old research notes and reviewed the documents you’ve collected in your own ancestral quest? If you haven’t used a fine tooth comb review of them lately, make an entry on your calendar to look through them again. Mine them for hidden Gold.

Perhaps we have to turn the paper 50 degrees side to side to see something new. Personally, I’ve found that reading the data out loud is the best method to restart my frozen cognitive research review process. My ears hear information that the lobes of my brain used for reading seem to obscure.

Give it a try. You’ll probably find real treasures in your papers. Treasures that you’ve owned for years. Treasures that may open new windows in your quest.

Once you have finished your perusal and have then settled down enough to stop exclaiming your wahoo’s (and some of the grin off has melted off your face), walk to the bathroom, turn on the light and take a good look at the clueless person who is staring back at you. Do they look any smarter now?

Lesson learned. Go a little slower. Review frequently. Look at the data through a different window. Gold. There is Gold your drawers!

Technorati Tags: Certificates,Genealogy,Documents,Data Mining

Recording Life ~ Fishing

2009-05-09T02:33:00.001-06:00

My father had a unique skill in interpersonal relationships. Without selling someone something they didn’t want, he could nonetheless divert their objections as if he was Obi-Wan in the Star Wars movie.

The power company needed to install a new feeder circuit in a fast growing city in Utah. Everyone wanted the power for their homes, offices and stores but none of them wanted the power lines necessary to provide that service. Frustrated with months of fruitless conversations, public meetings and incentives, the district manager responsible for the city turned to my father.

“Elwood, I’m taking you out of your position as foreman and am giving you a car, line plans and little if no money.” “Go get the right-of-way we have to have to upgrade that feeder circuit before the whole south end of the city goes black!”

Great! An assignment that had stymied numerous ‘professional’ right-of-way agents, management and even high level city officials. “Get the right-of-way”. “Much of the city will be in a permanent blackout by July - three months away.” “You have little money to spend.” In those days, little money was the $100 contingent fund in district offices. Management authorized their district managers to spend up to that amount without having to go through an arduous budget hearing.

Opening the rusted trunk lock on the 1962 Ford, he placed a bucket full of wood stakes, wood lathe, fluorescent marking tape and a hammer inside. A puff of smoke always followed the vehicle when a foot pressed the accelerator. Two hundred plus thousand miles of start, stop, idling driving in a city will cause that problem in a meter reading vehicle.

Within three weeks, Dad’s uniquely calm reasoning had awaken the common sense in all but one property owner along the route. He hadn’t approached the old man yet. Having heard the stories by the legions who had preceded him in the quest, he opted to resolve the issue last and with finality.

Wearing his normal tan Dickie work shirt, shrink-to-fit Levi’s with rolled up cuffs, work boots and a shirt pocket full of pens, pencils and a plastic template, he told the old man answering the door that he was there to finish driving the last stake in place before construction started the next morning. The old man shouted, “What power pole on my property?” “You aren’t doing anything on my property!”

Giving the old man a look of pity just as you would to a dunce and with a slight shake of the head, Dad pointed to the four foot tall lathe with four six-foot-long tails of fluttering survey tape centered in front of the man’s living room window. “It’s going in there.” “We’ll be here at 7:00 a.m. and I just wanted to let you know to not sleep in tomorrow.”

Sleep in? The old codger probably hadn’t slept past 6 a.m. in his life. Dad knew he was always up working around his house or yard shortly after 5:00 a.m. every morning.

With his hands on his hips, Dad looked at the stake then up at the living room window and back down again at the stake. Shaking his head, he unrolled the maps. “I’d have put it a little that way - closer to the house if I’d have designed the job, but it looks like one of the engineers has definitely taken your view into consideration.”

“What?” “A pole in front of my window is taking my view into consideration?” “Are they crazy?” Commiserating with the old man, Dad agreed that a fifty foot tall pole was hard to interpret as a window even with the best imagination, but that’s what Dad’s ink dot on the plans said … “See?” “Don’t worry, the auger on the truck is only 28” wide. In this rocky soil, the hole will get bigger as it bounces around, but it shouldn’t end up being much over four feet wide when we’re done.”

You know the rest of the story. After ten minutes of arguing, Dad let the man move the lathe stake to the fence line and pound it in the ground --- right where he wanted it when he arrived that morning.

Turning to leave, he heard the old man say, “See. You can’t push me around. I’m a better negotiator than all of you”. Yep. Dad had brought out the best common sense negotiation skills from the old man.

Flash back to the early 1950’s. A stream fisher all of his life, he frequented the hard to access streams where the big fish lived. The Ute Indian Reservation in eastern Utah includes the south slope of the Uintah Mountains. Rock Creek was a favorite stream for serious fishermen but it was both expensive to fish because of the fees associated with the permit and the permit restrictions themselves.

A fishing trip was needed. If you stayed just a little to the west, there were excellent streams to fish. The old Plymouth and LaFayette were loaded with tents, grub boxes, sleeping bags and fishing gear. My sister, brother-in-law, mother and myself enjoyed the two hour ride to the campsite.

Early the next morning, Dad and Roy went fishing and fishing was good. Some were released. Many were kept for breakfast back at camp.

Splashing behind them got louder. Looking up, they saw a federal game warden riding up on his horse. Dad lifted the front brim of his old fishing fly covered Stetson to get a good look at the wardens face.

“Good morning.” “How is the fishing this morning?” “Oh, its not too bad. We’ve released all the smaller ones. We just need enough good pan sized Brookies for a good breakfast.” “What fly are you using?” “Well, according to Ken Aycock over in the Basin, these rock roller flies are the best and they seem to be working this morning.”

“Ken Aycock?” “You know Ken Aycock?” “Sure we work together. I’m out this way working on projects all of the time.” “Do you know …. “ The list of names and places started to flow.

Staying close to hear when the power of the law was going to drop on them, Roy finally moved away to fish up stream while they talked.

When he came back almost an hour later, they were still talking. The fishing creel on Dad’s hip was still full of grass and trout although they were both getting a little dry. Dad’s old bamboo fishing rod was still in his left hand. The three pound test leader and fly was trapped between his palm and the pole.

Finally, the warden tired of reminiscing and comparing notes on people and features in the area. “Well, I guess I’d better ask to see your fishing licenses and permit.” Roy’s heart stopped and his blood ran cold. Fishing on the reservation without the permit could result in a thousand dollar penalty and loss of fishing rights for a long time.

Dad turned his head and the warden could see Dad’s fishing license in its plastic holder neatly tucked under the hat band on the right side.

“Well, you do have a permit too don’t you?” With a guffaw, smile and a headshake, Dad said; “You don’t think we’d be fool enough to be fishing here without one do you?” Apparently, the music of the conversation still echoed through the mind of the warden. He turned his horse and started off saying; “No, I don’t suppose you would.”

Roy claims he didn’t start breathing again for twenty minutes, but everyone knows that even standing in water the temperature of ice, humans can’t hold their breath for more than fifteen minutes.

As I remember, the fish were very good eating although I was really hungry by the time they arrived back in camp to be cooked.

Another Elwood Drew story to add to the book. There are hundreds of them. Probably thousands. Forty years after his death, I still hear them from time to time, especially from people who were children in the families that received his quiet assistance.

There are choices. There are consequences. Paying it forward will eventually rebound to your own assistance.

I suppose you’ve recorded your own similar family stories so they won’t be lost in the next generations. Without them, how will your grandchildren know your parents and grandparents? Don’t let them be lost to time.

Spend a little time and effort and record your own precious family stories. They are the flavor, texture, smell and substance that extend the memory of our ancestors.

Technorati Tags: Family Stories,Pay It Forward,Journals,Drew

More Genealogy Research Aids

2009-05-03T17:39:00.000-06:00

Author and podcaster, Lisa Louise Cooke, posted a new vidcast on her site recently about a new ‘beta’ tool called Google News Timeline. The timeline tool displays news, magazine, book and other documents that discuss events in history. Enter keywords and / or dates in your search and you’ll see results presented by day, week and month of the year. Google News Timeline is a significant resource to family history researchers.

See Lisa’s vidcast at the bottom of this post.

The Google News Timeline is located here.

Of course, published materials decrease significantly the farther you go back in time, but don't let that deter your timeline searches. You may be surprised with the results from these searches.

Recently, I noted that the New York Times is now posting a lot of old articles on their site. Search for names or events on the search box on the site. The old articles are in .pdf format. Most are free but some of the more lengthy articles require a subscription to the archival services at the Times.

Listening to Lisa's vidcast, I wondered if she had ever seen the wonderful articles about the San Francisco earthquake that the USGS has posted. They include Google Earth (free download) files that show the fault lines and 'shake' values of the quake during the event. Additionally, they have added before and after photos showing the destruction down to the house level. Even though the earthquake is called the 'San Francisco earthquake' it affected a significant section of California and the Google Earth files show its impact in those rarely noted locations.

If you don't have Google Earth installed on your computer, download it from here, then install the free program. The files associated with the earthquake are listed as links on in the articles on the USGS site. Browse to the links from the home page and you'll see them under each article heading.

If you haven't used Google Earth before, you are missing a real treat. Not only does it let you view all locations on the earth, but it also includes the sea floor topography for all the oceans on earth and it also includes a full view and tour of all the celestial bodies.

Why am I focusing on Google Earth? The answer is simple. Technology has pushed through the brick and mortar walls of schools and extends knowledge, learning and research opportunities to our home computers, mobile laptops and mobile phones. Google Earth is one of the tools that enable the spread of virtual education and knowledge.

Mashups of various technological tools allow educators and folks like you and I to create interesting presentations of our research, stories and topics of interest in ways that exceed anything known just a few short years ago. We are only limited by our imagination and desire to learn the use of technology. The technological tools that most family history researchers will embrace is actually very simple to use. We just have take the time to read the instructions and then apply the knowledge.

I know most folks think they can't create presentations, podcasts or vidcasts, but you really can. Believe it. You CAN produce presentations that will help you in your ancestral quest. They WILL draw the interest of family members and others who are researching your common lineage if you post them on a blog or on your website and tell folks about it.

Now is the time to use the tools at hand to accelerate your research efforts. Go for it! You are the only person saying that you can't do it. You know how much you love proving wrong that surprisingly older stranger that you see in the mirror every morning.

Start today by installing Google Earth. Then use it to find the cemeteries where four or five generations of your ancestors are buried. Mark them and create a slideshow of them to show to your family. Change the angle of the inward zoom. Spin the earth under you. Label your bookmarks. Put them in the order you want then save the file.

Once completed, you'll be able to send the file to family members and other researchers. Remember that sharing a file like this almost always produces information in response and it frequently is the information or clues that you are seeking.

In another blog post, I referenced a Google Earth file that takes you on a flight to all the cemeteries of my ancestors on the island of Bornholm in the North Sea. Now that you have Google Earth installed on your machine, download my file from the link near the bottom of the posting and see how a simple file used for genealogical purposes looks on your screen. It is very simple presentation but it only took me ten minutes to create and it graphically conveys the information I wanted others to see in a format not available before.

One last time… Try it ... Mikey, Gina, Charles, Annette (insert your name here).... You'll like it!

Technorati Tags: Google Earth,Google News Timeline,Mashups,Genealogy

Christmas in April

2009-05-02T01:08:00.000-06:00

Christmas came to our house on Apr 30th this year. Years ago, I saw the diary of my great grandfather, David Lewis Drew, in Copperopolis, California. One of my older distant cousins had it in his possession. He allowed me to take one photo of it and then sent me on my way. When I developed the film, none of the photos on it were any good. The film stock was bad from the factory.

When my cousin died, his attorney called and asked if I had anything coming to me. I mentioned that my cousin said I could have the diary, but that was the end of the conversation. I never heard from him again.

Last week, a second cousin in California found my website and sent me a note. She'd had the diary in her possession since the death and had recently looked at it with renewed interest. Searching the web, she found my family history website and sent me a note

Long story short. The journal is sitting in front of me as I write this note. I can't keep it but I'm touching it and will scan the pages. They contain all my great grandfathers recorded thoughts during his first year in California during the tail end of the gold rush. He left Plymouth, Massachusetts, sailed down around the Cape in a very long voyage and joined the rest of multitudes who were looking for their fortunes.

Long ago, I transcribed the diary text from an old historical newsletter found in the Calaveras County Historical Society vaults. It can be seen here.

Two contiguous entries state that he finished the Bible and started reading it again the next night. I love those two entries.

Over the years, several folks from around the country have contacted me about the diary. Their ancestors are mentioned in its pages. One of them is a professional genealogy speaker and uses my site and the entry about her great granduncle in her speeches. I just talked to her and am going to send her a copy of the image for that page, etc. She is as excited about it (her soon to be “held” treasure) as I am about my good fortune.

Looking at the names of great grandpa’s mining partner and other associates, I decided to find out who they were in life. Two of the three men he partnered or worked with in the gold fields were his distant cousins! In fact, his primary partner, Len Covington, was a distant cousin seven times over. That happens when families live in the same area like Plymouth, Massachusetts for three hundred years before the descendants start to scatter around the world. The other part-time partner was ‘only’ a cousin four times.

Did these fellows decide to leave Plymouth for the wild and woolly gold fields in California together? I’m trying to trace down any ship passenger records to see if they traveled together. It was a very long trip across land and many of not most of the folks from Massachusetts who participated in the gold rush traveled went by ship. Apparently, some of the intrepid young men opted to sail through the Gulf of Mexico and hike across Panama where they took passage on another ship to Sacramento.

The remainder took the long journey south around the Cape of South America and then back up the west coast of the Americas to Sacramento. No matter which path these folks took to find their fortunes, the trip was long and arduous.

Now for the rest of the story... Also in the package were a dozen photographs of David Drew's family in California. Working from the smallest photo to the largest, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I think I have a photo of my brick wall ancestor, Thomas Farrar! I've looked for him for over 50 years. I can't prove it yet, but will spend considerable time trying to find out the truth behind the photo.

Next were photos of all of David's children except my grandfather (he ran away to Utah at age 16 and apparently was disinherited from the family).

I was finally down to the last photo. It is in the largest old mounting cover. Opening the flaps, I found a photo of my father and aunt when they were youngsters. It was obviously taken during at the same photo setting as a photo we have but none of the living descendants of my Utah Drew grandparents have ever seen this pose before. It is in mint condition... Wonderful... AND I like the pose better…

I know a few of you have had similar experiences like this during your own ancestral quest and can appreciate my excitement.

Christmas presents? They are nothing. It was Christmas at our home on April 30th. The photos and diary are valued beyond price in my opinion.

Technorati Tags: Diaries,Family Histories,Family Stories,Handwriting,Journals,Photos

Spanish Flu of 1918 – 1920

2009-04-26T15:09:00.013-06:00

With all of the news today of the outbreak of Swine Flu, my thoughts were drawn to stories my mother told me about her experience with the Spanish Flu in 1918 – 1920.

The Spanish Influenza or “La Grippe” (flu) was a pandemic that spread through almost every location on earth. It was an indiscriminant killer, taking rich and poor, old and young victims. Declared a crisis in March 1918 it continued in a pandemic state though June of 1920. The total count of its victims ranged from 20 to 100 million people worldwide.

At my grandparents home in Utah, the family was quickly infected and were quarantined to their home. Mom related that extended family and neighbors had to bring fresh food and milk to their doorstep and yell through the closed windows to alert the family to retrieve them after the benefactor backed away. No face to face or touching contact could be allowed.

Their home only had two bedrooms but housed nine sick children, two sick parents and two sick grandparents. She said that the children were put in two bed in the same room and laid out head to toe in alternating rows. Most were too sick to stagger out to the outhouse and multiple honey buckets often littered the floor.

Her grandparents were too ill to get up for weeks to help her desperately ill parents care for the children. As one person would improve enough to rise from the bed, they would be replaced by one of the caretakers who was now too ill to stand.

Their doors were marked with quarantine signs to keep people away. Wearing masks, a few brave souls would break quarantine from time to time to clean up the home, do the washing and bring in prepared meals. These actions violated the law and exposed the benefactor and their family to the illness too.

Fortunately, none of the family died although Mom’s description of their illness indicated that they often felt or looked like the walking dead.

Worldwide the situation was equally dire.

Not only were the meager medical facilities stretched to the breaking point, the doctors and other medical personnel were also ill.

In almost all locations, people had to take care of themselves, neighbors, family and friends. The medical system simply could not handle the enormity of the pandemic.

According to newspaper articles at the time, between 300,000 and 350,00 people had died in the United States in the three months spanning between September 15, 1918 and December 6th, 1918.

An article in this posting goes on to state that the record keeping was poor and that the number probably exceeded that estimate.

The world was in a state of panic and despair from not only the pandemic but the terrors of World War I. A newspaper article dated 19 Nov 1918 stated that more people were dying in the United States from the flu than as U. S. soldiers fighting the Germans.

Victims were ordered by local authorities to not leave their homes. Special deputies and health officials were authorized to enforce the orders in the hope that containment, no matter how brutal to the afflicted would help contain the pandemic.

Personnel and resources to bury the dead were stretched so severely that even small communities in rural Utah struggled to keep up.

Public gatherings, like funerals, were outlawed. If they were still alive, parents were frequently too ill to attend the burials of their own children, spouses, parents, extended families and friends. Indeed, attendance by more that a couple of family members was construed as a ‘gathering’ and hence fell under the penalty of the law.

By January 1919, the death rate in the United States had increased to 19.6 per thousand individuals. The corner had not yet been turned, but in ensuing months the number of new cases would begin to decrease. Unfortunately, the flu frequently started to take the caretakers. They were worn so low by exhaustion that any semblance of resistance in their immune systems was compromised.

By early March, 1919, the government inserted a constant stream of news articles alerting Americans that survivors of the flu were now coming down with Tuberculosis.

Survivors bodies and immune systems had been sufficiently weakened to the point that yet another scurrilous disease had seized the opportunity to infect them.

Despair and feelings of hopelessness spread around the world. Illness upon illness afflicted mankind in addition to the terrors and destructions of war.

Of course, many flim-flam men came out of the woodwork with Patent Medicine cures. Desperate to find anything to treat and prevent further illness drove millions to purchase and take these often toxic mixtures.

Governments told their citizens to not purchase patent medicines because they were a waste of money. If people felt symptoms of the flu, they were instructed to have medical examinations several times a month and to “build up your strength with right living, good food and plenty of fresh air”. “Become a fresh air crank and enjoy life” statements concluded the advice.

The U. S. Navy has created a website that details the impact of the Spanish Flu Epidemic on their branch of the military. They noted that victims suffered from “pneumonia and fatal pulmonary complications” and that “they literally drowned in their own body fluids”.

Stanford University has written that the “Spanish Flu” or “La Grippe” was a global disaster. They state that “the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years” because of the extreme virulence of the flu.

Until reading the news of a possible pandemic today, I was felt far removed from the terrors that Mom described in her stories. I had few to no reference points in my experience that allowed me to appreciate the scope and impact of the experience in her life.

Today, the CDC, calls the 1918 Influenza pandemic “The Mother of All Pandemics”. No wonder the survivors were so abraised by the experience. Quite frankly, I’m surprised that I haven’t read more references to it in my ancestors surviving notes and journals. No doubt they were too busy working on their farms and in their homes to take time to record something that was such ‘common knowledge’ among everyone on the planet.

When we are researching our lineage, we have to study their environmental and societal events and conditions to really have any many of us have looked at our appreciation of their lives. How many of us have looked at our records and quickly spotted an inordinate number of deaths in the families of our ancestors during the four years of the Spanish Flu pandemic?

Have we even considered the causes of the deaths and tried to envision combined impact of illness, war, stress and family deaths in the lives of our ancestors?

Lesson learned again. Event timelines overlaid on the life spans of our ancestors should be studied in detail to aid in the creation of our research plans. Failure to do so will severely impact our research success.

In our own lives, let’s hope that the current Swine Flu outbreak won’t turn into the life altering event that will be overlooked by our descendants. We need to regularly write in our journals and include the events of our lives with some supporting news articles and related information so our they have the reference points needed to envision our lives and times.

Technorati Tags: Spanish Flu,Pandemic,Small Town Newspapers,Utah Digitial Newspapers,Research Tips,Newspapers,Town Histories

The Execution of Small Town Newspapers

2009-04-15T12:24:00.001-06:00

If your part of the world is like ours, less ink and paper is being published that has any resemblance of the community that existed in small town newspapers of days gone by. Electronic media is probably the main culprit but coupled with corporate greed (need?) to ever increase the bottom line, their demise has been assured.

Newspaper organizations are laying off employees, reducing the number of pages in print by half and are becoming generic given that here only seems to be ten or so newspaper journalists remaining in the world. Everything on the page seems to come from a common pool of articles created by one or two news organizations. Pool all the daily and weekly articles together and the price per word goes down when you shop from the same trough.

Today, we rarely read about weddings, golden anniversaries, missionaries and who visited whom. Instead, the news organizations have created “Community Posts” sections on their websites. These sections were supposed to replace the hard copy weekly publications that we’ve loved for generations, but alas, they are nothing more than headline grabbers from the normal paper sprinkled with an occasional community concert, play or scout activity notice.

Gone are the papers we loved for generations. Gone are the informative articles that were like manna to genealogists.

Looking back through my own research, almost all of the ‘knowledge’ about the lives and personalities of my ancestors came from small town papers. At first glance, I thought that their surviving letters and notes probably had the edge, but on closer inspection of my files, it quickly became apparent that my memory was wrong.

I love touching my collection of letters and notes because my ancestors touched and created them. That alone has a big impact on how I perceive them as data mines and probably biased my thoughts that they provided the majority of the personality facts about my ancestors. In truth, most of my knowledge about them came from the thousands upon thousands of small town newspaper clippings in my files.

My mother was a perpetual newspaper article clipper with a determined focus on any that contained information about family and friends, near and far. A few years before her passing, she asked what I wanted from her estate. The answer was easy. Her genealogy and the newspaper clippings. In my opinion, nothing else had value by comparison. The clippings were significant additions to my own family history research documentation. The smell of the clippings has gifted the atmosphere in my office and genealogy library rooms in our home with the patina of old newsprint and documents. The hard core genealogists among us know that we’d rather smell that scent than the most expensive French perfume.

Knowing that the pages of the small town papers were dripping with much more information than mom had collected, I called the editor of the small town papers in our area a couple of years ago hoping to wrangle access to their storage library. With some vehemence, he related that the new owners, a national chain of mid-sized newspaper titles across the country, had ordered all of the old papers be trashed. Gone were the 100 plus years of the American Fork Citizen, the Pleasant Grove Review, the Lehi Free Press. “Trash the 'd___’d” things right now while we watch. We need the room for other things”. He was still as sick at heart as I now felt.

I argued the act was a capital crime in my book - that I’d have stored them myself - that I’d have digitized them for posterity out of my own pocket. How could anyone be so blatantly stupid to destroy them? Pound for pound, page for page, the small town newspapers contained the richest content in that medium for a genealogist. Now the old brittle yellow pages have turned to compost at the local land fill.

Small town newspapers of old will never be recreated in the modern world. Our times are too full of identity thieves, privacy laws, and the sons of Satan who feed on society through theft and deception. A current day recreation of the folksy articles in the old papers would be too inviting to these miscreants. We already have to guard homes during funeral services for family members because the bad guys know that the family will be gone at a set time and date. What would they do with the details found in stories of days-gone-by in a current day setting?

Fortunately, not all of the old papers have been lost. Many colleges and other entities are digitizing some of the old papers and making them available to us through the web, libraries and other similar venues. If you haven’t taken the time to find them and explore their content rich pages in your own ancestral quest, today would be a good day to do so. Don’t just read these words and nod in agreement. Dive in and find the genealogical Gold that awaits you in their pages.

In an earlier post I wrote about making the ‘Essence of New Mown Hay”. I wish someone would create the scent of yellowed old newsprint. A puff or two during our electronic forays into the old papers would add the aroma required to enhance the research experience. Add a weathered old page or two of a current day newspaper for texture, turn the lights low and clutter your office. Ahhh…. the cozy feel of researching old newspapers like it used to be in “the good old days”.

Technorati Tags: Digital Newspapers,Small Town Newspapers,Utah Digitial Newspapers,Digital Collections,Genealogy,FamHist

Finding Thomas Farrar ~ Attacking a Brick Wall

2009-04-10T12:25:00.000-06:00

Little was known about my 2nd great grandfather, Thomas Farrar. Time and location had separated his descendants. Family stories and memories died over the generations.

A cousin recorded a few notes about Thomas that she’d heard over the years and passed them on to my mother. She related that he was from England, that his wife had died while still young and he had moved west to Copperopolis, California bringing his two small daughters with him in the mid-1850’s. End of story.

When I visited my great grandmothers grave in Copperopolis, California, I noted the inscription on her tombstone said that she was a native of South Carolina. I had a reference point to start the search. The stone said that Grandma Helen Farrar Drew was born in 1851 and I knew she was age ten or younger when grandpa Thomas Farrar took Helen and her sister, Julia, west to California. The 1860 census for South Carolina probably wouldn’t provide any help in finding the family and that quickly proved true.

1850 Census and Town History

Did Thomas and his wife, Mary Tirrill live in South Carolina in 1850? After a long search, I found them there in Lexington. The census entry said Thomas and Edith Farrar. Edith? Her name was a mystery for a quite a while, until I found a book titled “History of Bristol, Grafton, New Hampshire” by R. W. Musgrove. In it, Musgrove listed Mary as a child in the family of Seth and Azuba Chandler Tirrill. Her full name was Mary Adith Tirrill and her family lived in far northern town of Stewartstown, New Hampshire.

The ear of a southern census taker no doubt heard the New England accent of Mary or the English accent of Thomas pronounce grandma’s name as Edith. This census record told me that she went by her middle name … at least at that point in time.

Thomas was listed as coming from England. Importantly, the young couple were living with Jno. and Sibla Farrar and their four children, William, Alfred, Sarah and Samuel who were also born in England. Were they Family? I assumed “Yes” and knew that Jno. = John, so I had more clues.

Thinking that the family emigrated together, I now had six more match points for ships passenger records.

Ship Passenger Records

Occasionally, researchers are lucky and find their ancestors listed in passenger records with no misspellings. I was looking for a pre-1850 record, which always proves to be a more difficult search. Ellis Island hadn’t been created as an immigration point yet, so I looked for records on the Castle Garden site which lists information on immigrants through New York from 1830 – 1892.

Success … but not until I looked at the data with an open mind. Thomas along with John and Sibla’s family did travel together, however, their name was listed as Fanin not Farrar. I knew that I had to search for spellings other than those I was familiar with and that proved true yet again. Traveling to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I found them listed on a CD of ships passengers records but this time listed as Farran. Because of the numerous match points of first names, I knew that this Thomas was my Thomas Farrar. They had traveled on the ship Columbine from London.

Citizenship

The History of Bristol, New Hampshire book said that grandma had died in Walworth, Wisconsin. I never would have looked for the family there without that information. What were they doing there?

The answer took a lot of research effort. I had to find records on most of Mary’s family and cousins to find the clues. Other than some lumbering and sawmills there wasn’t much industry in Stewartstown, New Hampshire to support a new ‘crop’ of young men needing to start their adult lives and support their families. Many of them migrated westward in search of their fortunes or at least in search of the opportunities offered on the ‘frontier’. Several of Mary’s brothers and some cousins moved to Wisconsin with that thought in mind. I surmise that Thomas Farrar heard of their plans and related them to his brother John, because they moved there too.

Another trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City provided great rewards in my quest. I found the naturalization applications of both Thomas and John Farrar in Walworth County. Thomas’ application stated that he was born in England in 1820 and had arrived in America in 1847. The arrival date matched the ships passenger record information.

The day at the library provided further rewards. The Walworth County Historical Society had inventoried the cemeteries in their area and their publication had newly arrived at the library. Looking through it, I found the burial listing for grandma Mary Tirrill Farrar, her son, Thomas and her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Farrar in the Brick Church Cemetery. After three decades of looking, I’d found gold. I contacted a member of the society and shortly thereafter had photos of their tombstones to add to their records.

Hopping the Pond and Tombstone Records

I could trace Thomas forward in time in California until he disappeared after moving to Sacramento after 1870. How was I going to trace his lineage in England? The passenger information and naturalization records told me that he was from England and had left from London. Wonderful! …. There were thousands of Farrar’s in and around London. Thomas and John were very common names. How could I find ‘my’ Thomas in that group?

I’ve had to make an ‘assumption’ that I still hope is correct today. In the Brick Church Cemetery in Walworth, all of the Farrar’s are buried next to each other. In fact, one of the burial spaces next to Mary and young Thomas is empty but in the name of Thomas Farrar. He’d obviously purchased a burial plot for his family when his wife and son died within months of each other. Adjacent to their graves is the grave of Elizabeth Farrar. Her tombstone says she was born in 1795 and died within weeks of Mary and young Thomas AND that she was the wife of Eli Farrar. My assumption is that Elizabeth is the mother of Thomas and John Farrar and that she died from the flu epidemic that killed her daughter-in-law and grandson. Elizabeth was old enough to be the mother of Thomas and John. Unfortunately, I have not found any additional evidence of her existence other than the tombstone.

After a few weeks of research, it was obvious that I had to look for another way to find the Farrar family in England. Fortunately, John Farrar married a woman with an ‘unusual’ first name. I found John listed in the 1870, 1880 and 1900 censuses in Macon, Missouri. His wife was listed as “Selina”. The passenger record listed her name as “Sibla” as did the 1850 census record in Lexington, South Carolina.

Additional research on the Internet provided a link to obituaries in Macon, Missouri, that had been transcribed into a book that was placed in the Macon library. I contacted a very sweet librarian there and was sent a copy of all of the Farrar obituaries in the book. Selina Farrar’s obituary revealed that she was born near Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England and that she and John were married there. Wow! I’d been looking in London when they were actually from far north Huddersfield. Looking at the Free BMD records on RootsWeb, I found their marriage entry in Huddersfield and have assumed that John’s family was from that area.

I still haven’t found “my” Farrar ancestry in Yorkshire. The location seems to have been home to a huge group of Farrar’s, so I’m spending my time transcribing all of the Farrar census records in and around Huddersfield hoping to find enough clues to punch through the Brick Wall that is blocking my ancestral knowledge.

As time goes on, I’m confident that with enough hours spent in research, keeping an open mind and distrusting any of my ‘assumptions’, I’ll push through the wall. It may be one brick at a time or I may find one keystone bit of data that causes the entire wall to collapse …. but that wall is going to come down. Failure is not acceptable.

When you run into brick walls in your own research, remember to open your mind and look for spellings and locations that you’d never typically consider. Assemble your known facts and review them constantly for clues that you haven’t explored. You probably know a lot more than you think, but aren’t recognizing the clues in your hands. Put on your Sherlock hat and assemble your thoughts on paper. Draw a vertical timeline and add your discoveries along its length. Then review everything you have found repeatedly over time, looking at the data through a different “window” every time. Eventually, with focused effort, you’ll probably destroy your brick walls. Here’s to success in all our own ancestral quests.

Technorati Tags: Brick Wall Genealogy. Thomas Farrar,Mary Adith Tirrill,Lexington South Carolina,Walworth Wisconsin,Huddersfield England,census,naturalization,cemetery,tombstone

The Kindness of Alexander Duff

2009-04-04T02:02:00.000-06:00

Not all of the life of my 8th great grandmother, Jane O’Laggan, was perfect. Born near the Glenlivet River in Laggan, Morayshire, Scotland to James O’Laggan, she married David MacWilliam of the Stewart Clan when she was eighteen. The young couple were not rich, but David was able to make their lives comfortable with the earnings from his mill and a home at Pittyvaich, Morayshire.

The land produced few crops but there was enough feed for the family to own some sheep and several cows. Winters were especially hard but the residents of Dufftown were resilient and hundreds of generations had passed down the skills to survive in the ofttimes difficult climate.

The MacWilliam’s had a growing family of young children when disaster struck. David became ill and died, leaving Jane with little income and in debt.

After struggling for a short time, David’s cousin, Alexander Duff, turned his eye to the family.

Cousin Alexander was a rotter, according to a rare document that I found on a shelf in the basement of the Banffshire Field Club, titled “The Gordon’s of Laggan” written by John Malcolm Bulloch.

The document covers my Gordon ancestry and associated lineages. The ancestral research was commissioned by my 5th great granduncle, Cosmo Gordon. The MacWilliam branch of our family notes that there were two David MacWilliam’s in succession. Reading from the entry for David MacWilliam Sr., a sad commentary spills off the page.

“David, his son, married Jane, daughter of James O'Laggan, and died while a young man, leaving her a widow with several children. She was prevailed upon to dispose of Pittyvaich and the mill to Alexander Duff of Braco, her husband's cousin, in terms as little creditable to him as disreputable to herself, it being constantly reported in that part of the country that she sat down in the mill dam to stop the mill that he might take infeftment of it, the miller refusing to do it. Be this as it may, her children were reduced to great distress, for which Braco appeared perfectly indifferent, being a man callous to humanity, as well as natural affection, if he could by any means gratify his thirst for the acquirement of lands. The daughter (Jane O’Laggan) then married John Forbes of Keithack, son to Gordon Arthur Forbes, and left several children.”

With no thanks to Alexander Duff, the MacWilliam children survived these deep impacts on their lives. One of the daughters, Anne MacWilliam, is my seventh great grandmother. Anne married James Gordon of the Gordon family in about 1712. James was born in Achlochrach, Morayshire and the couple were the grandparents the above mentioned Cosmo Gordon and my fifth great grandmother, Elizabeth Gordon.

Once again, history has recorded the bad deeds and avarice of man. He couldn’t take any of his lands and properties with him when he passed but in their place left a sad story that will ne’r be forgotten.

Technorati Tags: Scotland,Gordon of Scotland,Duff of Scotland,MacWilliam of Scotland,Family Histories,Histories.

Choices ~ Consequences

2009-03-25T14:02:00.001-06:00

Choices. Consequences: They never sleep.

From the time we are born, we make choices and enjoy the consequences of those choices. We often associate the word “consequences” with something bad, but it also represents something good happening in our lives. The “good” is a result of a choice or choices that are building blocks or enablers of positive positioning and positive results in the experiences of life.

My father was not known as a leader in the community, in business or even in his neighborhood. Rather, he was an activist who quietly and often anonymously improved the lives of others. His choices were usually simple, yet always consistent. He actively looked for a way to improve the life or outlook of others and rarely failed to immediately act on an opportunity. Frequently, his actions consisted of only a few kind words spoken to address an area in the personality of his contact that was shunned or ignored by others. On some occasions, he gave all the money he had to those in need. A pair of shoes for a twelve year old. A ride and tank of gas for a stranded traveler. He even gave his vehicle to a widow who was struggling to feed her three small children.

Over the years, many new people came into his circle of “friends”. They were from all levels of the social strata. Some were wealthy, some were movie stars and others lived in shacks hidden away along the river or in an orchard. However, most of them were just ordinary people who only needed the polishing of a few kind words or acts to help them reveal their nobility.

The term “Pay It Forward” was first introduced into his vocabulary in 1962 when his vehicle stalled in the center lane of a bridge in Seattle during the evening rush hour. Cars honked, people said things out of their windows and others shook their fists in frustration, but one young man stopped to help.

After years of quietly helping other people, he received a return payment for his way of life. The vehicle was easy to fix. The carburetor was only vapor locked. The young mechanic poured some cool water over the hot fuel system and the vehicle started easily. Dad tried to pay him for his help only to receive the words, “Pay It Forward” to someone else in need”.

Like ripples from a rock thrown into a peaceful lake, the good deeds of a lifetime had reflected off the far shore and had come back to help in a time of need. It was time to send them out again and continue to “Pay It Forward”.

During the visitation at his funeral, our family was astounded to be greeted by hundreds of people from all over the western United States who had come to pay their respect. We didn’t know most of them but the visitors all had stories to tell about how they were helped by our deceased father and husband.

Many of the visitors had only met him once, but the interaction had established a life-long feeling of friendship. They came from all walks of life. There were mayors, truck drivers, waitresses, a man on parole, a bank president, an attorney, and hundreds of other occupations. Their stories were as varied as the personalities telling them. Enthralled, we listened for hours.

One ‘friend’ was a police officer whose life had been saved, another had driven 16 hours non-stop from northern California to make it in time for the funeral. He explained that he received a hot meal when he was at the ‘bottom’ from a fellow who quietly walked over and sat by him. He said that he was now a successful husband and father and that his life had turned around after talking to the man at the counter in the bowling alley that day. Retrieving his wallet, he showed the worn, tiny slip of paper on which he’d written the name of his benefactor, saying that he often looked at it when life threatened to harden him.

The stories were new. The impact of repeatedly choosing to perform small positive acts resulted in consequences never imagined. Ripples were almost waves.

Choices. Consequences. They never sleep.

It has been said that the gate of history turns on small hinges, and so do people’s lives. The choices we make determine our destiny. -– Thomas S. Monson

"I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence;
two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference."
-- Robert Frost, poet

Technorati Tags: Pay It Forward

Murder In Salem - Susanna Martin Hung as a Witch

2009-03-14T16:50:00.008-06:00

My 9th great grandmother, Susannah North Martin, and two great aunts, Rebecca Towne Nurse and Mary Towne Estey, were hung as witches in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. I’ve visited their home towns, hanging hill and hopefully their graves or at least areas near their graves.

Sorrow and some anger arose in my mind during my first visit to hanging hill in Salem. I still feel twinges of those emotions when I visit Salem today. Why were these people murdered by their neighbors?

Maybe the trial documents and notes will help me understand the mindset of the day. Maybe you had to be there and be part of that culture. It’s a sad commentary at its best.

The supporting documents below tell part of the historical story. The transcriptions will help those who can’t read the old handwriting. Double click on the images to see them in a larger size.

THE WARRANT

30 Apr 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

To the Marshall of the County of Essex of his Lawful Deputies or to the Constable of Amesbury:

You are in their Majests names hereby required forthwith or as soon as may be to apprehend and bring (before us) Susanna Mertin of Amsbury in ye county of Essex Widdow at ye house of Lt. Nathaniel Ingersalls in Salem village in order to her examination Relating to high suspicion of sundry acts of Witchcraft donne or committed by her upon ye Bodys of Mary Walcot, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis of Salem village or farmes whereby great hurt and damage hath beene donne to ye bodys of said persons according to complt of Capt. Jonathan walcot & Serg Thomas putnam in behalf of their Majests this day exhibited before us for themselves and also for several of their neighbors and here you are not to fail at your peril.

Dated Salem Aprill 30th 1692.

John Hathorn

Jonathan Corwin

Assistants

APPREHENSION

2 May 1692 | Amesbury, Massachusetts

According to this Warrant I have apprehended Susanna Martin Widdow of Amsbury and have brong or caused her to be brought to the place appointed for her examination pr Me.

Salem Village this 2d May 1692

Orlando Bagley

Const of Amsbury

PRELIMINARY TRIAL

2 May 1692

Preliminary Trial, May 2nd 1692

[Note - there are actually two transcripts of Susanna's Prelimnary Examination which have survived and are similiar in content. They have been combined here solely for the purpose of easier understanding.]

For the crime of witchcraft and sorcery, Susanna Martin pled not guilty. As soon as she came in many had fits.

Magistrate: Do you know this woman?

Abigial Williams saith it is Goody Martin, she hath hurt me often. Others by fits were hindered from speaking. Eliza Hubbard said she hath not been hurt by her. John Indian said he had not seen her. Mercy Lewis pointed to her and fell into a little fit. Ann Putnam threw her glove in a fit at her. The examinant laughed.

Magistrate: What! Do you laugh at it?

Martin: Well I may at such folly.

Magistrate: Is this folly, the hurt of these persons?

Martin: I never hurt man or woman or child.

Marcy Lewis cried out, she hath hurt me a great many times and pulls me down. Then Martin laughed again. Mary Walcott saith this woman hath hurt me a great many times.

Magistrate: What do you say to this?

Martin: I have no hand in witchcraft.

Magistrate: What did you do? Did not you give your consent?

Martin: No, never in my life.

Magistrate: Pray, what ails these people?

Martin: I don't know.

Magistrate: But what do you think ails them?

Martin: I do not desire to spend my judgment upon it.

Magistrate: Do not you think they are bewitched?

Martin: No, I do not think they are.

Magistrate: Tell us your thought about them then.

Martin: No. My thoughts are my own when they are in, but thwen they are out they are another's. Their master.

Magistrate: You said their master. Who do you think is their master?

Martin: If they be dealing in the black art, you may know as well as I.

Magistrate: Well, what have you done towards this?

Martin: Nothing at all.

Magistrate: Why, 'tis you or your appearance.

Martin: Well, I cannot help it.

Magistrate: Is it not your master?

Martin: I desire to lead myself according to the word of God.

Magistrate: Is this according to God's word?

Martin: If I were such a person I would tell you the truth.

Magistrate: How comes your appearance just now to hurt these?

Martin: How do I know?

Magistrate: Are not you willing to tell the truth?

Martin: I cannot tell. He that appeared in the shape of Sam[uel] shape a glorified saint may appear in anyone's shape.

Magistrate: Do you believe these do not say true?

Martin: They may lie for aught I know.

Magistrate: May not you lie?

Martin: I dare not tell a lie if it would save my life.

Magistrate: Then you will speak the Truth.

Martin: I have spoke nothing else. I would do them any good.

Magistrate: I do not think you have such affections for them whom just now you insinuated had the devil for their Master.

Eliz Hubbard was afflicted and then the Marshall who was by her said she (Martin) pinched her hard. Several of the afflicted cried out they saw her upon the beam.

Magistrate: Pray God discover you, if you be guilty.

Martin: Amen, Amen. A false tongue will never make a guilty person. < P> You have been a long time coming to the Court today; you can come fast enough in the night, said Mercy Lewis.

Martin: No, sweetheart.

Then Mercy Lewis and all many of the rest were afflicted. John Indian fell into a violet fit and said it was that woman, she bites, she bites, and then she was biting her lips.

Magistrate: Have you not compassion for these afflicted?

Martin: No, I have none.

Some cried out there was the black man with her and Goody Vibber who had not accused her before confirmed it. Abigail Williams upon trial could not come near her. Nor Goody Vibber, nor Mary Walcott. John Indian cried he would kill her if he came near Hear but he was flung down in his approach to her.

Magistrate: What is the reason these cannot come near you?

Martin: I cannot tell. It may be the Devil bears me more malice than another.

Magistrate: Do not you see how God evidently discovers you?

Martin: No. Not a bit for that.

Magistrate: All the congregation think so.

Martin: Let them think what they will.

Magistrate: What is the reason these cannot come near you?

Martin: I do not know, but they can if they will, or else if you please I will come to them.

Magistrate: What is the black man whispering to you?

Martin: There was none whispered to me.

MERCY LEWIS TESTIMONY

May 1696 | Salem, Massachusetts

MERCY LEWIS v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The Deposition of Mercy Lewis aged about 19 years who testifieth and said that in the latter end of April 1692 there appeared to me the Apparition of a short old woman which told me her name was Goody Martin and that she came from Amesbury who did most grievously torment me by biting and pinching me, urging me vehemently to write in her book, but on the 2 May 1692 being the day of her examination Susanna Martin did torment and afflict me most grievously in the time of her examination for when she looked upon me personally she would strike me down or almost choke me and several times since the Apparition of Susanna Martin has most grievously afflicted me by pinching and almost choking me to death, urging me to write in her book, and also on the day of her examination I saw the Apparition of Susanna Martin go and hurt the bodies of Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, Abigail William and Ann Putnam Junr.

Mery Lewis

INDICTMENT BY WITNESSES

May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

Anno Regis et Reginae William et Mariee nunc Anglice etc. Quarto. Essex ss.

The Jurors for our Sovereign Lord and Lady the King and Queen presents that Susanna Martin of Amesbury in the County of Essex, widow the Second day of May in the fourth year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord and Lady William and Mary by the Grace of God of England, Scotland, France and Ireland King and Queen Defenders of the faith etc. and divers other Days and Times as well before as after certain detestable arts called witchcrafts and Sorceries wickedly and Feloniously hath used Practiced and Exercised at and within the Township of Salem in the County of Essex, aforesaid in upon and against one Mary Walcott of Salem Village singlewoman, by which said wicked arts the said Mary walcott the second day of May in the fourth year aforesaid and at Divers other Days and times as well before as after was and is Tortured Afflicted Pined wasted and Tormented as also for Sundry other acts of witchcrafts by said Susanna Martin committed and done before and Since that time against the Peace of our Sovereign Lord and Lady William and Mary King and Queen of England their Crown and Dignity and against the Form of the statute in that case made and Provided.

Witnesses

Sarah Vibber, Sworn

Mary Walcott, Sworn

Mr. Samuel Parris, Sworn

Elizabeth Hubbard

Mercy Lewis

JOHN ATKINSON TESTIMONY

May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

JOHN ATKINSON v. SUSANNA MARTIN

John Atkinson aged fifty six years or thereabouts, Testifieth that some time about five years since, one of the sons of Susanna Martin Senior of Amesbury exchanged a cow of his with me for a cow which I bought of Mr. Wells the minister which cow he took from Mr. Wells his house. About a week after I went to the house of Susanna Martin to receive the cow of the young man her son. When I came to bring the cow home notwithstanding hamstringing of her and halting her she was so mad that we could scarce get her along, but she broke all the ropes fastened to her. We put the halter two or three times round a tree which she broke and ran away and when she came down to the Ferry we were forced to run up to our waists in water. She was so fierce but after much ado we got her into the boat, she was so tame as any creature whatsoever, and further this Deponent saith that Susanna Martin muttered and was unwilling this deponent should have the cow.

Jurat in Curia

SARAH VIBBER TESTIMONY

May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

SARAH VIBBER v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The Deposition of Sarah Vibber aged about 36 years who testifieth and saith that on the 2 May 1692 the Apparition of Susanna Martin of Amesbury did most grievously tormet me during the time of her examination for if she did but look personally upon me she would strike me down or almost choke me and also the same day I saw the Apparition of Susanna Martin most grievously afflict the bodies of Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis and Ann Putnam by pinching and almost choking them and several times since the Apparition of Susanna Martin has most grievously afflicted me by beating and pinching me and almost choking me to death, and that she believes the said Martin is a witch and that she is bewitched by her.

Jurat in Curia

ELIZABETH HUBBARD TESTIMONY

May 1696 | Salem, Massachusetts

ELIZABETH HUBBARD v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The Deposition of Elizabeth Hubbard aged about 17 years, who testified and saith that I have often seen the apparition of Susanna Martin among the witches, but she did not hurt me till the 2 day of May being the day of her examination, but then she did afflict me most grievously during the time of her examination for if she did but look personally upon me she would strike me down or almost choke me and several times since the apparition of Susanna Martin has most grievously afflicted me. Also on the day of her examinatioin I saw the apparition of Susanna Martin go and afflict and almost choke Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Abigial Williams and Ann Putnam Jun.

(her Mark)

Eliz. Hubbard

SARAH ATKINSON TESTIMONY

May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

SARAH ATKINSON v. SUSANNA MARTIN

Sarah Atkinson aged forty eight years or thereabouts testifieth that some time in the spring of the year about eighteen years since Susanna Martin came unto our house at Newbury from Amesbury in an Extraordinary dirty season when it was not fit for any person to travel, she then came on foot. When she came into our house I asked her whether she came from Amesbury a foot, she said she did. I asked her how she could come in this time a foot and bid my children make way for her to come to the fire to dry herself. She replied she was as dry as I was and turned her coats on side and I could not perceive that the sole of her shoes were wet. I was startled at it that she should come so dry and told her that I should have been wet up to my knees if I should have come so far on foot. She replied that she scorned to have a drabbled tail.

Jurat in Curia

JOHN PRESSEY TESTIMONY

11 May 1692 | Salisbury, Massachusetts

JOHN PRESSEY v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The testimony of John Pressey of Amesbury aged 53 years or thereabouts taken before me at my house at Salisbury the eleventh day of May: Ano: Dom. 1692 is as followeth. That about twenty four years ago, he this deponent was at Amesbury Ferry upon a Saturday in the evening near about the shutting in of the daylight (which was about three miles From his house) and as he was going home a little beyond the field of George Martin at a hill called Goodal's hill this deponent was bewildered and lost his way and having wandered a while he came back again to the same place which he knew by stooping trees in that place, which perceiving he set out again and steered by the moon which shone bright, and was again lost and came back again to the same place.

And then set out the 3rd time in like manner and was bewildered and came back but not so far as before but knew where he was and so set himself in his way as before and in Less than half a mile going he saw a light stand on his left hand about two rod out of the way; it seemed to be about the bigness of a half bushel, but this deponent kept on his way and left it and in a matter of seven or eight rod going it appeared again at the like distance from him as before and so it did again the 3d time, but the deponent passed on his way and in less than twenty rod going the same or such another light lay in his way and he having a stick in his hand did with the end of it endeavored to stir it out of the place and to give it some small blows with it and the light seemed to brush up and move from side to side as a turkey cock when he spreads his tail, but went not out of the place, which perceiving this deponent laid it on with his stick with all his might he thinks he gave her at least forty blows, and so was a going away and leave it but as he was going his heels were struck up and he laid on his back on the ground and was sliding into a deep place (as to him seemed) but taking hold of some brush or brushes and so recovered himself and having lost his coat which he had upon his arm went back to the light, saw his coat and took it up and went home without any more disturbance there.

He farther say he do not know any such pit to be in the place that he was sliding into. He also saith that when he did strike at the light he did certainly feel a substance with his stick. He further saith that after striking it and his recovering himself and going on his way as aforesaid, when he had gone about 5 or 6 rod he saw Susanna Martin then wife of George Martin of Amesbury standing on his left hand as the lights had done. There she stood and looked upon him and turned her face after him as he went along, but said nothing nor did nothing to this Deponent, but that he went home as aforesaid. Only he again over went his own house but knowing the ground that he was upon returned and found his own house, but being then seized with fear could not speak till his wife spoke to him at the door and was in such condition that his family was afraid of him, which story being carried to the Town the next day it was upon inquiry understood, that the said Goodwife Martin was in such a miserable case and in such pain that they swabbed her body (as was reported). This deponent further saith that these things being noised abroad, Major Pike sent for this deponent and had an account of the case, but seemed to be troubled that this deponent had not told him of it in season that she might have been viewed to have seen what her ail was. John Pressey aforesaid made oath to the truth of what is written in these two sides of the paper the eleventh day of May Anno Dom 1692.

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

JOHN KIMBALL TESTIMONY

16 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

JOHN KIMBALL v. SUSANNA MARTIN

T he deposition of John Kimball of Amesbury aged 45 or upwards testifying saith, That about 23 years ago this deponent being about to remove from Newbury to Amesbury having bought a piece of land of George Martin of Amesbury for which he was to pay him in cash or goods upon a certain day in March next following, and when the Day of payment was come Martin and hiw wife came for the pay and the said Kimball offered them the choice of three cows and other cattle but did reserve two cows which thy were not free to part with, they being the first that ever they had, and Martin himself was satisfied with other pay but Susanna his wife understanding from this deponent and his wife that they would not part with one of these 2 cows, the said Susanna Martin said (you had been as good you had) for she will never do you any more good (and so it came to pass) for the next April following that very cow lay in the fair dry yard with her head to her side (but stark dead) and when she was floaed [perhaps flayed] no impediment did appear in her for she was a stout lusty cow, and in a little while after another cow died and then an ox, and then other cattle to the value of 30 pounds that spring.

Sworn by John Kimball May the 16 1692.

Before Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

John Kimball of Amesbury aforementioned further deposeth that the same year after he was come to live at Amesbury and was dwelling in the house of Edmund Elliot he was needed to get a dog and hearing that the wife of said George Martin had a bitch that had whelps and this deponent went to her to get one of her, but she not letting him have his choice he did not absolutely agree for any but said he heard one Blesdell had a bitch by which he may supply, but if not there was no one else he would have heed of her price, but being upon that account at said Blesdell's and marked the whelp that I agreed for, George Martin coming by asked me whether I would not have one of his wife's whelps to which this deponent made answer on the negative.

The same day Edmond Elliot said that he was at the house of the said Martins and heard the said Martin ask his wife why this deponent were not to have one of her puppies and she said he have got one at Goodman Blesdell's and he saw him choose it and mark it (to which his said wife said), "If I live I'll give him puppies enough."

Within a few days after this I, this deponent, coming from his intended house in the woods to Edmond Elliot's house where I dwelt about the sunset or presently after and there did arise a little black cloud in the n.w and a few drops of rain and the wind blew pretty hard. In going between the house of John Wood and the meeting house, this said deponent came by several stumps of trees by the wayside. He by impulse he can give no reason of that made him tumble over the stumps one after another through, though he had his ax upon his shoulder which put him in Danger and made him resolved to avoid the next but could not.

And when he came a little below the meeting house there did appear a little thing like a puppy of a darkish color. It shot between my legs forwards and backwards as one that were distract the hay and this deponent being free from all fear used all possible endeavors to cut it with his ax but could not hurt it and as he was thus belaboring with his ax the puppy gave a little jump from him and seemed to go into the ground.

In a little further going there did appear a black puppy somewhat bigger than the first but as black as a coal to his apprehension which came against him with such violence as its quick motions did exceed his motions of his ax. Do what he could and it flew at his belly and away and then at his throat and over his shoulder one way and go off and up at it again another way and with such quickness seized and violence did it assault him as if it would tear out his throat or his belly while he was without fear, but at least I felt my heart to fail and sink under it that I thought my life was going out and I recovered myself and gave a start up and ran to the fence and calling upon God and naming the name Jesus Christ and then it invisibly away my moaning as it looked that out but this deponent made it not known to anybody for fretting his wife.

The next morning Edmond Elliot (as he told aborad and in his own house) said that he was going toward the house of said Martin to look his oxen went in to light his pipe and the said Martin's wife asked him where Kimball was (said Elliot said abed with his wife for aught he knew) (she said they say he frightened last night) with what said Elliot she said with puppies. Elliot replied that he heard nothing of it and asked where she heard of it and she said about the Town which story said Elliot having told it was all the Town over when this deponent came home at night for he had been all day alone in the woods at work at his frame work.

John Kimball made oath to the truth of all that is written on both sides of this paper May the 16th 1692.

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

ROBERT PIKE – CERTIFYIN GWILLIAM BROWN’S TESTIMONY

16 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

Wm. Brown made oath that the above is a true relation according to his wife's complaint. Concerning the truth of what is sworn by William Brown concerning his wife with respect to her being a Rational woman before she was so handled and of her now present condition and her so long continuance all that then knew her and now know her can testify to the truth of it for she yet remains a miserable creature of which myself is one as witness my hand 16 May 1692.

Robt. Pike

WILLIAM BROWN TESTIMONY

11 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

WILLIAM BROWN v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The Deposition of William Brown of Salisbury aged 70 years or thereabouts, who testifying saith, That about one or two and thirty years ago Elizabeth his wife being a very rational woman and Sober and one that feared God as was well known to all that knew her and as prudently careful in her family, which woman going upon a time from her own house towards the mill is Salisbury did there meet with Susanna Martin the then wife of George Martin of Amesbury. Just as they came together the said Susanna Martin vanished away out of her sight which put the said Elizabeth into a great fright. After which time the said Martin did many times afterward appear to her at her house and did much trouble her in any of her occasions and this continued till about feb, following, and then when she did come it was as birds pecking her legs or pricking her with the motion of their wings and then it would rise up into her stomach with pricking pain as nails and pins of which she did bitterly complain and cry out like a woman in travail and after that it would rise up to her throat in a bunch like a pullet's egg and then she would turn back her head and say, witch you shan't choke me.

In the time of this extremity the church appointed a day of humitting [humility, ie., fasting] to seek God on her behalf and thereupon her trouble ceased and she saw Goodwife Martin no more for a considerable time for which the church instead of the day of humiliation gave thanks for her Deliverance and she came to meeting and went about her business as before. This continued till April following at which time summonses were sent to the said Elizabeth Brown, Goodwife Osgood by the Court to give their evidences concerning the said Martin and they did before the Grand Jury gave a full account.

After which time the said Elizabeth told this deponent that as she was milking of her cow the said Susanna Martin came behind her and told her that she would make her the miserablest creature for defaming her name at the Court and wept grievously as she told it to this deponent.

About 2 months after this deponent came home from Hampton and his said wife would not own him but said they were divorced and asked him whether he did not meet with one Mr. Bent of Abbey in England by whom he was divorced. And from that time to this very day have been under a strange kind of distemper frenzy incapable of any reasonable action though strong of body and healthy of body. He further testifieth that when she came into that condition this deponent procured Doctor Fuller and Crosby to come to her for her relief but they did both say that her distemper was supernatural and no sickness of body but that some evil person had bewitched her.

Sworn the eleventh day of May Anno Dom 1692

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

BERNARD PEACH TESTIMONY

11 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

BERNARD PEACH v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The deposition of Bernard Peach aged 43 or thereabouts, who testifying saith, That about six or seven years past this deponent living at the house of Jacob Morell in Salisbury being in bed on a Lord's Day night he heard a scrabbling at the window, he this deponent saw Susanna Martin wife of George Martin of Amesbury come in at the window and jumped down upon the floor. She was in her hood and scarf and the same dress that she was in before at meeting the same day. Being come in she was coming up towards this deponent's face, but turned back to his feet and took hold of them and drew up his body into a hoop and lay upon him about an hour and half or 2 hours in all which time this deponent could not stir nor speak, but feeling himself beginning to be loosened or lightened he beginning to strive he put out his hand among the clothes and took hold of her hand and brought it up to his mouth and bit three of the fingers (as he judge) to the breaking of the bones. Which done the said Martin went out of the chamber down the stairs and out of the door.

And as soon as she went away this deponent called to the people of the house and told them what was done and that said Martin was now gone out of the door this deponent did also follow her but the people did not see her (as they said) but without the door there was a bucket of ___ on the left hand side and there was a drop of blood on the handle too, more upon the snow for there was a little flight of snow and there were the print of her two feet about a foot without the threshold, but no more footing did appear.

He further deposeth that some time after this as he supposeth about 3 weeks after, the said Martin desired this deponent to come and husk corn at her house the next Lord's Day night, say that if I did not come it were better that I did, but this deponent did not go being then living with N___ Osgood of the said Salisbury and that night lodged in the barn upon the hay and about an hour or 2 in the night, the said Susanna Martin and another came towards this deponent. He having a quarter staff made a blow at them but the roof of the barn prevented it and they went away, but this deponent followed them and as they were going toward the window made another blow at them and struck them both down but away they went out at the shop window and this deponent saw no more of them. And the rumor went that the said Martin had a broken hand at that time but the deponent cannot speak to that upon his own knowledge.

Sworn May the eleventh 1692

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

JARVIS RING TESTIMONY

13 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

JARVIS RING v. SUSANNA MARTIN

Javis Ring of Salisbury maketh oath as followeth, That about seven or eight years ago he had been several times afflicted in the night time by somebody or something coming up upon him when he was in bed and did sorely afflict by laying upon him and he could neither move nor speak while it was upon him, but sometimes made a kind of noise that folks did hear him and come up to him and as soon as anybody came, it would be gone. This it did for a long time before and since but he did never see anybody clearly, but one time in the night it came upon me as at othr times and I did then see the person of Susanna Martin of Amesbury. This deponent did perfectly see her and she came to this deponent and took him by the hand and bit him by the finger by force and then came and lay upon him awhile as formerly, and after a while went away. The print of the bite is yet to be seen on the little finger of his right hand for it was hard to heal (he further saith). That several times he was alseep when it came, but at that time when bit his finger he was as fairly awake as ever he was and plainly saw her shape and felt her tooth as aforesaid.

Sworn by Jarvis Ring above said May the 13th 1692

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assit. at Salisbury

Jurat in Curia

JOSEPH RING – 2ND TESTIMONY

13 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

JOSEPH RING v. SUSANNA MARTIN

Joseph Ring of Salisbury aged 27 years having been strangely handled for the space of almost two years maketh this Relation upon oath as followeth, viz: That in the month of June next after Casco Bay fort was taken this deponent coming between Sandy Beach and Hampton Town met with Thomas Hardy of Great Island and a company of several other creatures with him which said Hardy demanded of this deponent two shillings and with that dreadful noise and hideous shapes of these creatures and fireball, this deponent was almost frightened out of his wits and in about a half an hour (or indeed he could not judge of the time) they left him and he came to Hampton. About ten days after as the deponent came from Boston this deponent was overtaken by a company of people on horseback who passed by him and after they were passed by him, the aforesaid Thomas Hardy turned about his horse, and ame back to this deponent with his horse in hand and desired this deponent to go to Mrs. White's and drink with him, which being refused he turned away to the Company and they all came up together such a weth (i.e. with so many horses) that it seemed impossible to escape being trod down by them, but they went all past and then appeared no more.

About October following coming from Hampton in Salisbury Pine Plain a company of horses with men and women upon them overtook this deponent and the aforesaid Hardy being one of them came to this deponent as before and demanded his 2 s of him and threatened to tear him in pieces to whom this deponent made no answer, and so he and the rest went away and left this deponent. After this this deponent had divers strange appearances which did force him away with them into unknown places where he saw meetings and feastings and many strange sights, and from August last he was dumb and could not speak till this last April. He also relates that there did use to come to him a man that did present him a book to which he would have him set his hand with promise of anything that he would have and there were presented all Delectable things, persons and places imaginable, but he refusing it, would usually and with most dreadful shapes, noises and screeching that almost scared him out of his wits, and this was the usual manner of proceeding with him. And one time the book was brought and a pen offered him to his apprehension there was blood in the ink horn, but he never touched the pen. He further say that they never told him what he should write nor he could not speak to ask them what he should write. He farther in several of their merry meetings he have seen Susanna Martin appear among them.

And that day that his speech came to him again which was about the end of April alst as he was in bed she did stand by his bed's side and pinched him.

Joseph Ring abovesaid made oath of the truth of all that is above written this 13th day of May 1692.

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia the substance of it viva voce.

It is to be understood that the matter about that two shillings demanded of said Ring was this, viz: That when Casco was assaulted before it was taken, Capt. Cedric Walt was going from Great Island in Patascataway with a party for their relief of which party said Ring was one and said Hardy coming up into the room where said Ring [was] before they sailed and played at shovelboard or some such like game and urged said Ring play, said Ring told him he had no money and said Hardy lent him 2 s and then said Ring played with him. Said Hardy who won his money away from him again so he could not then pay him this account was by said Ring given to me.

Robt. Pike Ast

JOSEPH RING TESTIMONY

13 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

JOSEPH RING v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The deposition of Joseph Ring at Salisbury aged 27 years being sworn saith, That about the latter end of September last being int he wood with his brother Jarvis Ring hewing of timber, his brother went home with his team and left this deponent alone to finish the hewing of the piece for him, for his brother to carry when he came again, but as soon as his brother was gone, there came to this deponent the appearance of Thomas Hardy of the great Island at Patascataway and by some impulse he was forced to follow him to the house of ___ Tucker which was deserted and was about half a mile from the place he was at work in, and in that house did appear Susanna Martin of Amesbury and the aforesaid Hardy and another female person which the deponent did not know. There they had a good fire and drink, it seemed to be cider, there continued most part of the night, said Martin being then in her natural shape and talking as she used to do, but toward the morning the said Martin went from the fire, made a noise and turned into the shape of a black hog and went away and so did the other two persons go away and this deponent was strangely carried away also and the first place he knew was by Samuel Wood's house in Amesbury.

Sworn by Joseph Ring May the 13th 1692

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

JOHN ALLEN TESTIMONY

7 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

JOHN ALLEN v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The deposition of Lt. John Allen of Salisbury aged 45 years testifying saith That in or about the year ____ this deponent was hauling timber for Mr. George Carr for building a vessel at Amesbury at Mr. Goodwin's building place and having done and bout to go hom, Susanna Martin the wife of George Martin desired this deponent to cart staves for them which this deponent refused to do because of his oxen which were weak and neede now to get flesh, but she seemed to be discontent (and as James Freeze and others then present told this deponent) (that she said) I had been as good I had (for my oxen should never do me much more service) upon which this deponent said, dost threaten me thou old witch or words to that effect resolving to throw her into a brook that was fast by which to avoid she flew over the bridge and so escaped. But as he was going home one of his oxen tired that he was forced to unyoke him to get him home. And after they were come home, put the said oxen to Salisbury beach where several othr oxen and cattle usually are put where they had long range of meadow to feed on and where cattle did use to get flesh, but in a few days all the oxen upon the beach we found by their tracks were gone to the mouth of the River Merrimack but not returned from whence we thought they were run into the said river, but the next day sending to Plum Island found their tracks there to be come ashore which tracks they followed to the other end of said island and a considerable way back again and then sat down which being apprised by those that sought them they did use all Imaginable Gentleness to them to some acquaintance which some of them seemed to attend, but all on a sudden away they all ran with such violence as if they their motion had been diabolical till they came near the mouth of Merrimack River and then turned to the right hand and ran right into the sea all but two old oxen (which had before left their company) and all the rest went to sea as far as they could see them, and then one of them came back again with such swiftness as was amazing to the beholders who stood ready to ___ him and help his tired carcass up, but letting him loose away he ran up into the Island and from there through the marshes up into Newbury town and so up into their woods and there was after a while found about Hartechok river over against Amesbury. So that of 14 good oxen only that was saved, the rest were all cast up some at Cape Ann some in one place and some in other of they only had their hides, he further saith that the abovesaid James Freeze did often move the prosecuting of the said Susanna Martin in the case being confident that she was a witch.

Lt. John Allen made oath to the truth of all that is above written June the 7th 1692.

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

BARNARD PEACHE TESTIMONY

20 May 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

EXECUTION WARRANT

19 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

Execution Warrant cover and report.

SUBPEONA

27 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

Subpeona for Susanna Martin

ROBERT DOWNER TESTIMONY

30 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

ROBERT DOWNER v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The deposition of Robert Downer of Salisbury aged 52 years who testify and say, That several years ago Susanna Martin the then wife of George Martin being brought to Court for a witch, the said Downer having some words with her (she at the time attending Mrs. Light at Salisbury). This deponent among other things told her he believed that she was a witch by what was said or witnessed against her at which she seemed not well affected, said that a she devil would fetch him away shortly at which this deponent was not much moved, but at night as he lay in his bed in his own house alone there came at his window the likeness of a cat and by and by come up to his bed took fast hold of his throat and lay hard upon him a considerable while, and was like to throttle him. At length he minded what Susanna Martin had threatened him with the day before. He strove what he could and said avoid thou she devil in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost and then it let him go and slumped down upon the floor and went out at window again.

Sworn by Robert Downer June 30 1692.

Before Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

JOSEPH KNIGHT TESTIMONY

29 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

JOSEPH KNIGHT v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The Deposition of Joseph Knight aged about 40 years. This Deponent do testify and say that on the 20th day of October or thereabouts in the year of our Lord 1686 Nathaniel Clark Junior of Newbury together with this Deponent going out into the woods together to fetch up horses there met with Suanna Martin of Amesbury with a little dog running by her side and in my sift she took up said dog under her arm, but coming up near to her she had a keg or a half firkin under the same arm. This deponenet then looked her in the face and told her that that keg was a little dog, but now Nathaniel Clark said so it was and then passing from her we found our horses and brought them to a small causeway but could not get them over, but there being a small knoll of land near our horses ran round about it the greatest part of that day we often bringing them up to the Causeway but then they turned to that knoll and ran about it the same way, but at length there came a young man with a yoke of oxen to go over the Causeway who with some difficulty got them over for although the Causeway was very good yet one of the oxen hung back as though he were frightened, but at length were forced over and then we got over our horses.

Joseph Knight owned this his testimony to be the truth on his oath before the Jurors of Inquest this 29 of June 1692.

ELIZABETH CLARK TESTIMONY

29 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

ELIZABETH CLARK v. SUSANNA MARTIN

Elizabeth Clark who then was the wife of the abovesaid Nathaniel Clark do testify that when my said husband Nathaniel Clark came home he told me this deponent the matter mentioned in Joseph Knight's testimony and he related to me the whole of the matter and all the circumstances related in said testimony excepting that my husband told Joseph Knight that the keg undr Goodwife Martin's arm was or had been a dog. This deponent do further testify that Goodwife Martin abovesaid came to our house the same day mentioned in Joseph Knight's testimony before my husband came home and coming into the house our dog bit her by the leg as she said whereupon she being angry said that he was a churl like his master.

Elizabeth Clark owned this her testimony to be the truth on the oath which she had taken before the Jury for Inquest this 29 of June 1692.

ROBERT DOWNER TESTIMONY

30 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

ROBERT DOWNER v. SUSANNA MARTIN

Sworn by Robert Downer June 30 1692.

Before Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

MARY ANDREWS TESTIMONY

30 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

MARY ANDREWS v. SUSANNA MARTIN

Mrs. Mary Andrews aged 40 years testify that she did hear the said Susanna Martin threaten or tell the said Robt Downer that a she devil would fetch him away shortly. She further saith that from some of her father's family she did hear that what the said Su Martin told them how said Downer was served that night that he was afflicted as abovesaid.

Sworn by Mrs. Mary Andrews June 30 1692.

Before Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

MOSES PIKE TESTIMONY

30 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

MOSES PIKE v. SUSANNA MARTIN

Moses Pike aged 26 years or more testify that he did hear Susanna Martin tell how Ro Downer was handled and as he remembers it was the next day after it was done at night.

Sworn by Moses Pike June 30 1692.

Before Robt. Pike Assist.

Jurat in Curia

SAM PARRIS – NATHANIEL INGERSOLL – THOMAS PUTNAM TESTIMONY

30 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

SAM PARRIS & NATHANIEL INGERSOLL & THOMAS PUTNAM v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The Deposition of Sam Parris aged about 39 years and Nathaniel Ingersoll aged about fifty and eight years and also Tho. Putnam aged about forty years all of Salem, testifieth and saith that Abigail Williams, Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, Susanna Sheldon, and John Indian were much afflicted at the examination of Susanna Martin of Amesbury, widow, before the honored Magistrates the 2 May 1692, and that Goody Vibber (who before had not accused her) and some others of the afflicted then and there testified that there was a black man whispering in her ear and also that the said Vibber, Abigail Williams and Mary Walcott and John Indian could not come near said Martin, whereupon in all they were ordered by the magistrates to attempt it and their agonies and tortures they charged said Martin as the cause of and also we further saw that when the said Martin bit her lips they were bitten and when the afflicted were ordered to go towards her they were knocked down.

Jurat in Curia

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS TESTIMONY

30 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

ABIGAIL WILLIMS v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The Testimony of Abigail Williams witnesseth and saith that she had several times seen, and been afflicted by the apparition of Susanna Martin Amesbury widow at and before the 2 May 1692.

ANN PUTNAM TESTIMONY

30 Jun 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

ANN PUTNAM JR. v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The deposition of Ann Putnam Junr who testifieth and saith some time in April 1692 there appeared to me the Apparition of an old short woman that told me her name was Martin and that she came from Amesbury who did immediately afflict me, urging me to write in her book, but on the 2 May 1692 being the day of her examination Susanna Martin did most grievously afflict me during the time of her examination for when she did but look personally upon she would strike me down or almost choke and several times since the Apparition of Susanna Martin has most grievously afflicted me by pinching me and almost choking me urging me vehemently to write in her book. Also on the day of her Examination I saw the Apparition of Susanna Martin go and afflict the bodies of Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard and Abigial Williams.

JOHN AND MARY PRESSEY TESTIMONY

11 May 1692 | Salisbury, Massachusetts

JOHN PRESSEY & MARY PRESSEY v. SUSANNA MARTIN

The deposition of John Pressey aged 53 and Mary his wife aged 46 or thereabouts testifying saith that some years after that the said John Pressey had given his evidence against the said Susanna Martin she, the said Martin, came and took these deponents to do about it and reviled them with many foul words saying we had took a false oath and that we should never prosper and that we should never prosper for our so doing particularly that we should never have but two cows and that if we were never so likely to have more yet we should never obtain it. We do further testify that from that time to this day we have never exceeded that number, but something or other has prevented it, tho never so likely (to obtain it) though they had used all ordinary means for obtaining it by hiring cows of others that were not their own, this for twenty years' space. John Pressey made oath to the truth of all that is above written at my house in Salisbury the eleventh day of May Ano Domino 1692

Before Me

Robt. Pike Assist.

Mary Pressey testifieth to all the above Except Susanna her threatening of the not raising above two cows.

Jurat in Curia by both

DEATH WARRANT

12 Jul 1692 | Salem, Massachusetts

Death warrant of many individuals accused as witches.

EXECUTION REPORT

19 Jul 1692

WITCH TRIAL PRISONERS

List of most of those accused of being witches in Salem

Bridget Bishop’s Death Warrant

BALLAD OF SUSANNA MARTIN

Hear the song on Cantaria

Susanna Martin was acte witch who dwelt in Amesbury

With brilliant eye and saucy tongue she worked her sorcery

And when into the judges court the sheriffs brought her hither

The lilacs drooped as she passed by

And then were seen to wither

A witch she was, though trim and neat with comely head held high

It did not seem that one as she with Satan so would vie

And when in court when the afflicted ones proclaimed her evil ways

She laughed aloud and boldly then

Met Cotton Mathers gaze

"Who hath bewitched these maids," he asked, and strong was her reply

"If they be dealing in black arts, ye know as well as I"

And then the stricken ones made moan as she approached near

They saw her shaped upon the beam

So none could doubt 'twas there

The neighbors 'round swore to the truth of her Satanic powers

That she could fly o'er land and stream and come dry shod through showers

At night, twas said, she had appeared a cat of fearsome mien

"Avoid she-devil,"they had cried

To keep their spirits clean

The spectral evidence was weighed, then stern the parson spoke

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, 'tis written in the Book"

Susanna Martin so accused, spoke with flaming eyes

"I scorn these things for they are naught

But filthy gossips lies"

Now those bewitched, they cried her out, and loud their voice did ring

they saw a bird above her head, an evil yellow thing

And so, beneath a summer sky, Susanna Martin died

And still in scorn she faced the rope

Her comely head held high

Susanna Martin was a witch who lived in Amesbury

With brilliant eye and saucy tongue she worked her sorcery

And when into the judges court the sheriffs brought her hither

The lilacs drooped as she passed by

And then were seen to wither

Hear the song on Cantaria

SUSANNA MARTIN TRIBUTE AND HISTORICAL SITES

Much as been written about grandma Susanna Martin by her descendants. You can see some of their sites

SUSANNA MARTIN AND GOVERNMENT

~~Author Unknown~~

In 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the site of a major historical event. This infamous event, the Salem Witch Trials, was a major injustice in America's history. Once the accusations started, all Hell broke lose. By the time the trials were over, nineteen people and two dogs were hanged, and one man was pressed. Of the 150 people imprisoned, fifty-five of them had confessed to witchcraft.

To begin to understand how civilized people could act in such barbaric ways, one needs to know some background information about the village and its citizens. The people who lived in Salem Village were Puritans. They followed and interpreted the Bible literally, and without question. As many people know, the Bible states, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22.18). To the Puritans, this meant that if there was a witch, they had an obligation to kill him/her. Also, the people of Salem, like the people of Europe, believed that witches existed and that many of them were evil. People believed in witchcraft, even when it contradicted scientific evidence proving that it did not exist. It is important to note that the magic that was "evil" was black magic, or magic that was used maliciously against another. Black magic witches were

The girls all had the same symptoms (which ranged from becoming mute and blind to having "fits"). On top of that, it was so long ago that their mistakes seem so foreign to us; we can't really relate to what happened back then. In 1697, the General court proclaimed a fast day, and many of the jurors and judges that convicted "witches" publicly apologized. Many of the accused were easy targets of blame. During Bridget Bishop's trial, Mercy Lewis screamed, "Oh goody Bishop did you not come to our house the last night?". Lewis was obviously referring to Bishop's specter, for Bishop was in jail the whole time. As far as the trials having an impact on our lives today, I don't think it really has one. The adults that led the witch hunts, namely the Putnams, wanted to regain control of Salem Village, and many of the people that were accused were ones standing in the Putnams' way. If it didn't happen, we'd still have the McCarthy era, so we didn't really learn anything from it.

Before that though, in May 1692, the governor appointed the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer, which was comprised of seven judges. By the end of October, he disassembled the court of Oyer and Terminer. After Bridget Bishop was convicted, on June 2, Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned his seat as judge. This is what is believed the girls were doing. Another woman accused, though she admitted to being a witch, was Tituba, who was an easy target. One family, the Porters, who were against the Putnams from the beginning, were staunch objectors to witch trials.

PARDON

31 Oct 2001 | Boston, Massachusetts

On October 31, 2001, acting governor of Massachusetts, Jane Swift, signed a law that formally pardoned Susanna Martin, Bridget Bishop, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, and Wilmot Redd.

Technorati Tags: Salem Massachusetts,witch trials,Susanna Martin,Rebecca Nurse,Mary Easty,witch,salem

Amazing Grace

2009-03-09T16:56:00.001-06:00

I’ve spent a lot of hours looking for ancestral information in old newspapers over the past few weeks. Some of the articles brought Joy. Others made me Sad. Thank goodness that these treasures weren’t lost when the newspapers were discarded years ago.

I knew that one of my great grandfathers had experienced a nervous breakdown after spending years in a particularly nasty work environment, but didn’t realize how badly he was affected. Reading article after article about his problems made me ache over the impact his problems had on his wife, children, parents and extended family. The articles provided answers to many questions I’ve entertained for decades about his life. The situation was worse than I’d imagined.

Bless great-grandma. Bless grandma. Now, coupled with the articles, my mothers notes about the details she’d heard as a child provide windows into scenes that I wouldn’t have imagined.

Today, when I think of great grandma, the song Amazing Grace comes to my mind alongside her photo.

My continued newspaper research quest revealed articles about the sad story surrounding the death of my great uncle, Hyrum Huggard. My mother told me that her father’s brother was killed in an accident in Idaho. She’d said that grandpa and his brother were very close and that he had grieved over the loss of his brother for years. Other than knowing the date and place of Hyrum’s death, I didn’t have any other knowledge about the accident. Thanks to the digital newspapers that the University of Utah has online, I now have at least part of the story.

Hyrum James Huggard was the oldest son of Hyrum and Annie Featherstone Huggard. Born in 1883, in American Fork, Utah, he decided that there was little future on the family farm and went to Sugar City, Idaho to work in the sugar mill when he was twenty. Less than a year later, he was dead.

The news articles describe the accident. A steel beam fell from an upper floor in the plant “severing half of his ear and cutting a very ugly hole in his head”. He survived the train trip to Salt Lake City, but died shortly after arriving at St. Mark’s Hospital.

His body was brought home for burial and after the memorial service, he was laid to rest in a plot that his parents purchased. Later, his parents, several sibling and their spouses and their children would be buried surrounding his grave.

Today, days into my latest foray into the old newspapers, I have copies of numerous obituaries, military draft notices, articles about life events and work events of my ancestors and their families. Without the digital images, all of this information would be lost to time.

Are you using the Internet to search for similar articles and notes about your family? If not, you are missing a treasure trove that literally resides at your finger tips. To access them, you can pay for subscription sites or you can search the free sites that many universities have established using funding that is awarded by the federal government every year.

Check out the U. S. Newspaper Program site to see if there are digitized newspapers that cover your area of interest. If not, check out the Newsbank subscription site and others like it. You’ll also want to talk to your local library and see if they have logon credentials for digital libraries and newspapers. In most cases, they will provide login information at no cost to residents in their city / county / township.

Late evening hours seem to produce the best results in my own ancestral news article quest. Maybe it is because the noise of the day has settled to a rippling layer on the floor by then. Find your own ‘sweet spot’ slice of time and give these resources a try. You’ll be well rewarded for your effort.

Technorati Tags: Digital Newspapers,Genealogy,Obituaries

The Slow Death of Handwriting

2009-02-26T14:13:00.002-07:00

After spending several nights trying to interpret the handwriting on old census records, I realized that I haven’t written anything extensive on paper for a long time.

How does my handwriting now compare to what it did when I was young? Well, it depends on the day. Some days, my current hand strokes produce very legible well-formed text. On other days, the message still leaves my brain but seems to degrade by the time it reaches my hand and my writing suffers as a result.

Of course, some days I’m apparently dyslexic when using a keyboard and some days it isn’t a problem. One thing is for sure though, the less I write by hand, the more the quality of my handwriting suffers.

I took a calligraphy class years ago and enjoyed learning how to apply artful strokes to build alphabetic characters. Unfortunately, that skill set has settled back into the primordial goo from lack of use.

The handwriting of my ancestors has always fascinated me. I constantly look for any examples of it on old documents and am happy when I find their signature and ecstatic when I find a letter or more lengthy document that came from their hand.

I’m using my great grandfathers letters as a base for the current series of postings on my lineagekeeper blog. The letters are treasure in my estimation. Not only do they convey his sometimes irascible humor, but they are windows into his personality, life, loves and concerns. His character, mannerisms and view of his fellow man would be lost without them. Grandpa and his family would be reduced to the basic statistics that are so common to family history researchers: Name, Dates, Places .. end of story.

If you’ve read my earlier notes, you know how much I love the old account books, family records on bible and remembrance pages and legal documents that were created by my ancestors. They are Treasure. Pure treasure.

The topic of handwriting was on my mind when I found story on the BBC Magazine website titled “The Slow Death of Handwriting”. I couldn’t resist parroting its title for this note. The article posits that handwriting will soon be a thing of the past because we are all moving to computers to communicate, send cards, keep our financial records and historical documents.

Shaking my head in dismay, I realized that the article describes me and probably you too. Unless we make a conscious effort to convey our handwritten words to paper, any extensive writing we do today is via our keyboard. That’s not to say that I still don’t burn through pens and stacks of note paper, but the ink I usually spread today is limited to brief notes, rows of record numbers from my genealogical database or telephone numbers. None of my longer notes are handwritten now.

I mourn its loss but truth is, other than my journal which I purposely record by hand, I probably won’t go back to doing much extensive handwriting. It is just too slow and my spelling errors don’t automatically correct themselves or at least tell me that I’m probably wrong.

How about you? Are you contributing to the mass extinction of the art? If not, how are you feeding its continued existence? Personally, I have written letters to my children that they will receive after I die. Hopefully the words and the letters themselves with be esteemed as treasure to them too.

If you have interest in learning more about handwriting and the personalities behind it, watch the video below and the associated videos on the same page. If you are a genealogist, the series of videos will serve you well in your ancestral quest.

Technorati Tags: Handwriting,Signatures,Family Histories,Lineage Keeper,Genealogy

Destroy That Drive

2009-02-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

A fellow recently demonstrated his ability to recover data from a hard drive whose data had been overwritten a seven times using a data shredder program set to a supposed DOD data destruction standard.

If you have ever had any experience with identity theft, you understand why the hackles on the back of my neck stood up when I read the story. I’m a genealogist. I have a lot of data on my hard drives that contains private information about living individuals.

From time to time I buy a new computer or hard drives and migrate my data to them. I’ve always wiped my old drives with partition removers and then a five or six overwrites with data shredder programs thinking I was ‘protecting’ my data from dumpster divers. In most cases, I probably did, but now, I’m not so sure.

I have a friend who manages computers worldwide that contain extremely sensitive data. He leaves nothing to chance when retiring an old hard drive. He takes out into the parking lot and breaks the disk platters into many pieces and throws the pieces in multiple dumpsters scattered around the city.

Is this an extreme action? Maybe a little, but having had experience with identity theft, I find that I’m inclined to agree with his policy. I don’t use a ten pound double-jack hammer on my old drives, but do use a 3/8” drill bit to create twenty or so holes in the drive platters before tossing them. Additional scratches and gouges on the platters are encouraged during this process.

How are you disposing of your old computers and hard drives? Are you carefully doing your best to remove the data using a method other than just dragging your data files to the trash and then deleting them? Are you crushing your old floppies that had data on them?

How about your thumb drives? Do you keep the data on them encrypted? The odds are that you will loose one or more of them this year or next. It happens, especially if you are visiting libraries or other venues doing research. We download data to the drives and in the excitement of the quest walk off at the end of a day and leave the thumb drive plugged in to the computer we were using, or on the floor after falling out of our bag, pocket, or case. Frequently, we have all or part of our genealogy data on these drives and an unscrupulous finder may have a treasure trove of information to mine for nefarious purposes.

Think about the ramifications of someone getting the data about you and other living folks in your database and I’m sure you’ll be encouraged to make a substantive plan to remove or destroy it on your old machines.

Is the physical destruction too much work or you don’t have a drill? Talk to the law enforcement officers in your area. They may need some targets for their shooting range. A hard drive painted orange may be a perfect target for some of their exercises. Just remember to ask to observe the destruction.

If that isn’t the answer and you don’t want to destroy them yourself, consider a shop like Compax that will do the work for you.

Whatever method you use, be sure to do it. Don’t set yourself up for a potentially disastrous problem.

Technorati Tags: Data Theft,Data Deletion

Recording Life

2009-02-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

How do you record your life? Do you write in a journal daily? Do you use software to record your history in regular sit-down sessions? If so, do you print it out so it isn’t lost when your hard drive fails?

How are you recording the histories of your ancestors? If so, you probably use a series of writing sessions that are inspired because of a story you remember or research find that you encounter.

Today, reading of a news story in Australia reminded me of a story about my father. I’ve enjoyed it ever since one of his employees told me about it during a lunch hour years after his death. We laughed as the story unfolded and others around us joined in the story telling session. It seems that all of them had ‘Elwood Drew’ stories.

A half an hour lunch soon extended to an hour and a half. We only broke up when an interruption from my administrative assistant reminded me of a meeting. I wish the reminder had not occurred and the session had continued. I’ve always wondered how many other great stories I missed because of it.

When dad was the foreman of the tree trimming crew for the power company, he received a call just before quitting time while filling out paperwork at his desk in the foreman’s room. The normally noisy room became quiet as his side of the conversation was overheard.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I knocked on the door and got permission.” “No, it is in short lengths or has been run through the chipper.” “He said he owned the home.” “We only wanted to trim it. He insisted that we remove it.” “You can’t transplant a fifty foot tree. I don’t know where you’d even find one.”

By now, the door to the office was crowded with workers listening to the conversation. Chuckles and barely contained laughter started to emanate from them. It took a minute for Dad to recognize where the commotion was coming from. He then realized that the caller may hear the guffaw's and motioning for them to ‘shut up’ only brought on more laughter.

After hanging up, he told the story. It seems that the thirty-year-old ‘homeowner’ was actually the son of the lady who owned the home. She arrived home from work to see that the large cottonwood tree in front of her home was missing. After a double take, she went into her home and asked her son what had happened. He said that the power company guys had cut it down.

Her parting comment to my father was, “He was just released from the insane asylum yesterday!!” Dad couldn’t resist saying, “I’m sorry, but he made more sense than our conversation has so far.”

The workers were hanging on each other howling with laughter by now. They had been there. They’d heard the conversation with the son. None of them thought that he was nuts either. He even helped them lift the large pieces into the dump truck. A trash tree had been removed and within a week a new hardwood tree was planted on the homeowners property farther away from the power lines.

A few years earlier dad and some of other electrical workers were on their way home from a two week project in eastern Utah. Deer season had started the weekend before and they wanted to get home so they wouldn’t miss the second weekend of the season.

On the high 'Strawberry’ plateau of the Uintah National Forrest, a white tailed doe and her fawn ran onto the road immediately in front of a large oil company truck. The doe was struck and killed instantly. The oil company truck never slowed.

Dad had his equipment operator stop their electrical line truck and walked over to confirm that the doe was dead and not suffering. It was, so he cut its throat to bleed it out and then immediately cut the throat of the tiny fawn. There was no use wasting the meat of the doe and the fawn would have died within a day or two with its mother dead.

None of the crew had their deer hunting licenses with them, so Dad put the doe behind the seat and the fawn under the seat for the trip home.

Farther down the road, a deer checking station blocked the highway. The guys on the crew were petrified. They could go to jail or get big fines for having the deer in their vehicle. The law would rather see the meat rot than used to feed families in these situations.

Dad told them not to worry. “Just let me do the talking”.

“Hello officer. Yes, we are on our way back from Vernal. How has the season been going so far? Yes, we saw a few up around the ‘Berry’.” The officer then asked, “I don’t suppose you guys have any deer in the truck do you?” Dad immediately answered, “Sure! We have a doe behind the seat and a fawn under it.” Breaking out in laughter the officer waved them on.

The truck bucked a few times as the operator tried to get his shakes under control so he could let the clutch out smoothly. The other three crew members were white and their mouths were so dry they couldn’t speak for a few minutes. Only dad was chuckling.

Stories of his innate ability to avoid trouble in situations like this were legendary at work. All were new to me. I should have been recording the session rather than just laughing along with everyone else. I knew dad was a character, but the dozens of stories fleshed out a facet of his life that was totally unknown to me.

How much of your lives are you recording? Are you recording just the names, dates and places or are you telling the stories that are the real you? Are you writing down the absurdities that you encounter or create in the fabric of your daily existence?

Color. It’s all about Color. Yes, you need a frame to hang the story on for reference providing the point and space in time, but the story is the fabric that wraps the frame and makes it take form creating a mental picture that isn’t easily forgotten.

Be sure to include lots of Color on the frames that you are creating in your own family history records and histories. Their texture and ‘flavor’ will make your writings as enticing as the smell of Mom’s Sunday dinners.

I use Personal Historian software to write my own history. It might work for you too. Whatever you use or do, just be sure to do it regularly. Keep a back up copy on a second hard drive and off-site. Print your story with some regularity so a hard copy is available for both archiving and to use to markup while editing your stories.

As the day ends, if you haven’t already … remember to write some of your story while it still is today.

Technorati Tags: Life Histories,Family Stories,Personal Historian,Recording Memories

Little Ones Lost

2009-02-06T18:19:00.001-07:00

I’d heard stories about my great grandparents, Robert and Rosa Logie Bennett homesteading a farm since I was very young and often wondered about them. Of the ten children in the Bennett family, three babies died either at birth or before they were three. All three were buried on the family farm in there in the bottom land of Fort Canyon, Alpine, Utah.

I missed living on the old homestead by a few months and never knew where the Bennett children, Beatrice, Pansy and a stillborn son were buried.

In 1983, I asked my family about them and my oldest brother could still remember where grandpa had buried them beside each other in a small area on the north end of a section of the orchard. Our grandmother and other family members had shown him the site many times when he was a young man.

Great grandpa Bennett had planted a large apple orchard on part of the 160 acre farm. When we went to look for the site, all of the trees were either dead or had been removed. I thought to myself, “This is going to be hopeless. He won’t be able to find the spot now that it looks so different than it did years ago.”

A few landmarks still existed, so I stood back while Bob looked around orienting himself. Within seconds, he knew exactly where we were standing in relation to the old orchard.

He looked at the ground, turned left and started to walk calling out what the topography should look like under our feet. Within five minutes we were at the five foot deep dip in the ground that he said we’d find. Looking left and then right, he said we should see a wide spot in the dip fairly near our location.

Again, he was right on. Less than twenty feet to the east the depression widened and we walked to it. Bob raised his arm and pointed to a spot just south of the bank and stated that the babies were buried ‘right there’. I asked if he was sure only to receive a look that answered the question better than words.

I made notes about the spot and then began stepping off the distance directly back to the road. Having designed thousands of miles of power lines over the years, tying down a location was simple business, especially since I had wandered the location repeatedly in my youth and was very familiar with the land.

I told Alpine City employees where the graves are located and have put a map of them on my family history website hoping to keep some focus on the tiny cemetery. I hope the babies won’t be disturbed by future building and growth in the canyon.

A new home was built just west of the graves and a road was constructed just to the north of them a few years ago. The babies were buried the same day they died, so I doubt if caskets were used. My ancestors probably buried them in blankets and over the 100+ years since, I doubt if any of the soft bones have survived. I’m not as sure about the two-and-a-half year old young daughter though.

Dick Eastman mentioned a webpage that identifies cemeteries in unusual locations in one of his posts recently. The page is well worth reading. It will make you wonder if you have ever unknowingly passed by similar sites. Click here to read it.

Do you know of any similar burial sites? If so, you’ll want to let as many folks know about them as possible including government officials if they haven’t been preserved already.

There must be tens of thousands of small burial grounds like these around the U.S. I wonder how many exist all over the world?

As for me and my wife, we long ago purchased burial lots in a well established city cemetery to receive our mortal remains. With any luck, the property won’t become so high in value that our graves also end up in a parking lot or under a multi-unit dwelling.

I included the video below in one of my postings about eighteen months ago. The efforts of the young Eagle Scout are so noteworthy, that you’ll be well rewarded by taking a few minutes to watch it. Hopefully, it will inspire you to protect the burial location of someone in your own realm of experience.

Technorati Tags: cemetery,Alpine. grave,Dick Eastman,Bennett

A Matter of Temporary Insanity

2009-01-31T18:45:00.000-07:00

There are times when you just have to sit and shake you head. There are no words to describe the situation fully. Today hosted one of those events for me.

I have been searching for one of my ancestral family for years without success. I’ve looked at my research notes repeatedly hoping that they would offer up a clue or initiate a thought process that I hadn’t explored already. The result was always the same. No missed clues, no new ideas, nothing found in new searches.

That was until today. My Pavlonian trained mind was apparently working with a disconnect because when I looked at the name in my records today, I realized that I’d written down the wrong surname way back when. The expected name wasn’t there.

When first entering the data, I had written the surname of one of my Danish ancestors rather than the very similar name that I should have been looking for all of this time.

No matter how many times I’ve looked at the problem, my brain saw the name it expected to see…. the one it was familiar with after years of use. Not believing I could make this error and not find it for so long, I typed the name without looking at the screen. Looking up, there it was … the wrong name again!

I wonder how many of our research brick walls are self-created or at least self-defeating errors like this?

After a few minutes of head shaking, I started searching again using the correct name and immediately hit pay dirt. All of that time wasted just because I’m apparently nuts at random intervals.

If you have brickwalls that have stumped you too, take the time to SLOWLY read the data in your records compared to what you’ve added to your database.

I don’t know whether to hope you have made a similar mistake or not, but just hope that if you have, you quickly find and fix it and are successful in your own ancestral quest.

Technorati Tags: Research Tips,Genealogy,Review Your Work

Slow Burn to War

2009-01-23T00:22:00.006-07:00

While researching further information on my ancestors who served as soldiers in the Revolutionary War, I realized that over the years, my memory regarding the sequence of events leading up to and during the war was faulty.

Over time the nuggets of information and stories we find about our ancestors tend to create divergent parallel universes in our minds. The longer the period of our research and larger number of persons in our quest often result in a struggle to remember which universe is the ‘real’ one.

In my mind, the ‘Battle of Bunker (Breeds) Hill’ shifted closer to the end of the Revolutionary War rather than being near the leading edge. I’d been using a false timeline in my mind when assigning search parameters. Once dates, places and events are set in our memories, we usually don’t refer back to hard copy to confirm them again. We just pull the information from the mental universe we’ve created for them. “I know that. Why waste my time to keep looking it up?”

When I found the error in dates, I started studying the Revolution and wondered why my ancestors chose to fight the British. The classic stories from grade and high school years are wonderful, but they don’t tell the whole story.

The shots at Lexington and Concord were fired in April 1775. The adoption of the Declaration of Independence wasn’t until over a year later in July 1776.

The British won a great victory in the French and Indian War in 1763 and suddenly found themselves with a huge empire in the eastern third of North America. Governing this large territory was going to require more than the few clerks and nominally powerful governors that had existed up to this point in time.

Larger government, additional troops for policing and protection and other governmental functions cost money and the King of England knew that the burden should fall on those who required these services, not the citizens from other areas of the empire.

Legislative acts began to be passed by the English Parliament: The Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts and Coercive Acts arrived on the shores of North America. All involved taxes and regulations that impacted the Colonists, but that they didn’t have any voice in their creation. The slow burn began.

The First Continental Congress in 1774 and even the Second Continental Congress that extended through 1775 up to July 1776 offered solutions that probably would have soothed the feelings of the Colonists, but King George III and Lord North would not listen to them. The Sovereign did not take instructions or input from his subjects. It was an impossible thought.

My Revolutionary War combatant ancestors were all independent by nature and constantly rubbing them wrong with aloof legislation was akin to a continued friction that starts a fire. By the time of the outbreak of hostilities in Lexington, all were ready to fight. The slow burn was now a hot fire in their minds and acts.

Jonathan Thomas was a farmer and seasoned backwoods hunter in New Hampshire and Maine. He didn’t need someone thousands of miles away telling him how to survive and live his life. Jonathan fought to win. The rules of war were abandoned. Guerilla war was his forte’.

Abiel Chandler was still in his teens when the men in Bristol, New Hampshire formed their militia. War may have looked more exciting through the eyes of a young man with less life experience, but his convictions ran deep in his nature. He fought in the war and remained in the militia as a captain for a large percentage of his life.

William Bennett was a fairly recent immigrant from France. He came to America for more freedoms than those experienced in France. He undoubtedly took up arms early in the war because he was wounded in the early Battle of Bunker Hill. He is listed as one of the personal guards of General Washington. One of many, but one of them. His wounds stayed with him for life, partially crippling him, but he willingly paid the price.

Stephen Churchill was already a lieutenant in the militia in Plymouth, Massachusetts and served as a captain for most of the remainder of the war. An able and popular leader, his signature and written messages are found on many documents supporting those requesting military retirements and benefits throughout later years.

William Anderson escaped from the English as a young Scottish soldier who supported Prince James. The English tried to capture and kill him before he escaped to Virginia prior to 1720. Never a friend of the English, Colonel William Anderson was a friend to a tall young surveyor who often stopped by his farm on the North Fork of the Potomac to stay for a few days, obtain supplies or just to say hello. As time went on this tall young man returned to visit William frequently while in service to the King battling the French and native Americans in the French and Indian War.

During the Revolutionary War, the same tall man stopped by for rest and supplies for his army. William Anderson called him George. His men called him General Washington.

William’s only surviving son, Thomas Anderson, had fought the French and Indians most of his life to protect his parents and neighbors on the very edge of the ‘civilization’ established by the white men of Europe. By the time of the Battle of Yorktown, he commanded a company under General Washington at the surrender of General Cornwallis.

The slow burn was evident in each of these men. The flash to fully engage in battle for the nebulous concept of self-government exploded in them when the relatively small skirmishes in Lexington and Concord occurred.

I’ve always been extremely grateful to those who fought for and established the Constitution and freedoms of this country. Little did I dream that many of my ancestors were actively involved in obtaining this inestimable gift.

After years of tracing my lineage I wanted to know more about these folks than names and dates. Finding and adding that ‘color’ to their bare facts exposed the personalities and environmental experiences of both my Revolutionary War Hero ancestors and my other ancestors who supported the war for self-governance in other non-combatant ways.

Their universe in my mind may still need to be refined, but it is closer to the truth now that I know them a little better through studying their lives.

I think we all have similar embers in our being. Embers that are easily inflamed against those who would take these hard won freedoms from us.

Technorati Tags: Revolutionary War,Genealogy Research Tips

Those Wacky Styles

2009-01-17T20:29:00.003-07:00

Looking through some old photos of wife and myself today, I laughed out loud a few times.

Wearing striped bell bottoms or Levi's that always look too short seemed to be the order of the day. Why did I wear my Levi's so short? Every photo showed three inches of socks showing between the bottom of my pants and my shoes. Why?

Yeah, they were shink-to-fits but couldn’t I just add enough length when purchasing them? I remember having ‘cheat’ grass sticking in my socks all of the time and grousing about it. Duh!

Why did my father buy his Levi's so long and then roll them up with several folds? Why were John Wayne’s pants so short in every movie of his that I’ve seen lately? No wonder he had to wear cowboy boots or else his legs would have been bare half way up his calf.

I kind of remember the ‘cool’ factor associated with bell bottoms. Mine weren’t too wild but my wife had more ‘flare’ in her taste of the style. Were we sane in the early 60’s? I think we were more sane than the more current “butt” showing styles that are so aberrant when measured against common sense, but wonder what we were thinking at the time.

Looking at old photos of my ancestors, apparently, insanity is a continuing condition in human clothing styles. I don’t know of any woman who would consider wearing the clothing of the 1800’s today. Women seem to always take the worst hit in the extremity of ‘style’.

The cartoon strip ‘Herman’ gets it right all too often. See the comparison below of Herman to the hat worn by my great grandaunt in 1900 Plymouth, Massachusetts. The color in the cartoon seems to be the only difference in the hat ugliness scale.

There are some great blogs and websites that will help you place approximate times on your old photos. When I mentioned the ‘60’s styles, you probably all had images of the era come to mind. As we look farther back in time, it is a little more difficult to assign the decade(s) associated with a ‘style’ because they are father away from our reference points.

However, using the style of dress to help establish a timeline for a family member is extremely useful in focusing the year range for our research. Click on this Link to see the Drew home where aunt Sally was standing. I can see her daughters and my 2nd great grandfather sitting on the porch watching the parade of men and ladies strolling by after attending the 4th of July holiday celebration in town.

We see long hot skirts and long sleeves for the women in that photo. Long jackets and a hat on the man. Were these folks nuts? Didn’t they melt as easily as I do on a hot 4th of July now? The styles locked in the period of the photo even without the date written on the back.

I use style comparisons on old photos all of the time when a date isn’t written on the back of the photo. The approximate date really helps in my research, especially if the photographers name and business location is listed at the bottom. With that information I can place my relatives in a general area in a fairly narrow range of years. From that information, I can search all the records in the area and hopefully find them.

There are great sites and blogs available to help us date photos from the dress styles seen in them. Do a quick Google search for terms such as “genealogy dress style dating” and learn from them. I’m sure you’ll find the effort rewarding in your research.

Technorati Tags: Dating Photographs,Dating Dress Styles,Genealogy Photos

Mad Dogs, Genealogists and Data Storage

2009-01-10T16:32:00.003-07:00

Whenever I run into topics and words that were common in the mid-1800’s but are all but meaningless today, I consult my copy of Austin’s Indispensable Handbook and General Educator. We love this old book. It was written by George L. Austin, M.D., who in 707 pages covered every topic the young ladies and wives of the day absolutely had to know if they were to be successful in their role in life.

Last night I read about ‘fits’ in dogs. Dr. Austin covered the topic with graphic descriptions that left me laughing out loud.

“Fits in a dog are often mistaken for hydrophobia, and that many a poor beast has been summarily and wrongfully slaughtered. … It is a very serious malady and its symptoms decidedly lunatic. ….. the animal kicks violently, exhibits strong rigidity, foams at the mouth and stares.”

“In this present dreamy condition he sees himself surrounded on every side by danger…… Staring at his feet he makes a bolt at someone’s leg who are only too anxious to jump aside and let the animal pass.”

“Hi! Hi! Mad dog! Mad dog! Boys bawl, men shout, women scream, stones are thrown and carters, secure in their vehicles, endeavor to club him as he dashes past”

Apparently this violence may all be avoided by “rubbing its nose with the syrup of buckthorn … energetically”.

My wife apparently didn’t appreciate my howls of laughter and yells of ‘Mad Dog!” at O’Dark Thirty in the middle of the night, however I did avoid having my nose energetically rubbed with the syrup of buckthorn.

I have heard cries of ‘Mad Genealogist’ or ‘Rabid Historian’ from time to time. I don’t remember staring at my feet before running off to the library or to a cemetery but it could have happened. I possibly have foamed at the mouth when I found the links that would knock down a ‘brick wall’ and may have frozen with ‘rigidity’ while digesting and analyzing a discovery that had been hidden from me for decades.

Our grandchildren were here with us for Christmas. As usual, I spent some time expounding on some recent ancestral finds, showing them to the kids who sat in ‘rapt’ attention. The ‘rapting’ probably came from my hand slapping the desk in excitement as I described these magic discoveries.

They probably watched for the kicking leg and especially for the foaming mouth as they kept one eye on their iPods or other handheld electronic marvels anticipating an especially expressive gesture by grandpa that may knock them out of their hands to the floor.

I’m sure the term “Mad Pa!” “Mad Pa!” went through their minds at times.

Fortunately, as time goes by they mature and in at least the minds of some of them, the love of family history turns on and they enjoy hearing about their ancestors, seeing old photos and maps and listening to the trials, travails and successes that chronicled their lives.

Our oldest granddaughter commented on her Scots ancestry (from both of her parents) and said that at the start of every school year, she shows her teachers my genealogy websites and blogs. The teachers use them to teach the class about not only history, but history as it applies to the family of someone in their class. Her sister joined us and said that she does the same thing and that her teachers use them too.

Hearing these comments, I stared at my feet, possibly went rigid and thought .... how am I going to get all of my research and copies of my photos and documents to them as they grow older, marry and react to the spark of love for family history that was passed on through my genes?

Turning my office chair to face them, my eyes wandered over the dozens of heavy three inch 3-ring binders that are full of family history documents, the hundreds of vital record and ancestral history books, the file cabinets full research that I’ve collected and indexed over a half century.

How am I going to insure that they have a copy of all this hard won information when they are ready to take up the quest?

It won’t be on paper in most cases. It will be digital. I’ve scanned over a terabyte of digitized images of the records, but that is only a tithe on the total needed. A hard drive isn’t going to hold everything in my files, let alone all of the information I intend to add in the coming years. Will a hard drive of any size even be a relevant media device in 5 years?

I’ve tried to be methodical in my file naming conventions, records storage and data backups, but the truth is, even I’m starting to find that I can’t find ‘stuff’ that I know I have. There is just too much information in my files. My ‘methodical’ naming conventions and file folder names and links have mutated over the years. Most of the document are listed in my Clooz database but will it be relevant in ten years? Will our grandchildren have the patience to navigate the folders and files to put the pieces together in an even more coherent collection?

I use Legacy as my primary genealogy program, but also have many others that I use daily. I back up my data in the native format of these programs and also as GEDCOM files. The GEDCOM’s strip out as much as two thirds of the information that Legacy allows me to add to my records in addition to the basic facts allowed by the GEDCOM standard.

The GEDCOM data format will survive at least until the oldest of our grandchildren gets started in family history research on their own, so they won’t lose the basic info. Hopefully, their parents will keep the data up to date and that will help keep the data intact.

How can I ensure that the information will get to them though? What media will I use to store it on?

One of our grandsons went from a simple hand held game received at Christmas two years ago to an Internet connected Game Boy this Christmas. A hundred fold increase in computing power and functionality in just a couple of years. What digital tools will he be using twenty years from now after he has finished college, is married and hopefully settled enough to at least restore grandpas old family history data?

Will our grandchildren and their families laugh at my ancestral writings and blog postings and deem them as being as arcane and antique as my enjoyment of the words in Dr. Austin’s book? When they read my words to their children, will they wake mom with chortles of the ‘Mad Dog’ equivalent in my writings? Probably so. I hope they laugh with delight. Loud and long. I hope they love the fact that their grandfather wrote all this stuff for them.

However it happens, their exceedingly important ancestral information needs to survive. I’ve left copies of it to be stored in the granite vaults and by the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, but that it is only a small portion of the total story. It lacks the color, the personality ‘flesh’ created by the photos and stories that turn the names and dates into real people.

I’ll keep backing up my data constantly and trying to stay current with technology so that hopefully the work isn’t lost over time.

When I was five, I wrote a story about a handheld flat panel ‘computer’ that included slots for baby blue semi-transparent holographic chips that contained immense amounts of data. No one could understand what I was talking about, but I knew. The images I saw in my mind then are still just as clear as they were fifty-five years ago. Maybe they’ll become a reality in time for me to pass on my data before I myself ‘pass on’.

What are your plans for ‘immortalizing’ your own hard work? I hope you are spending time thinking about it and doing ‘something’ in regard to backing up your data on a REGULAR basis. Don’t loose all your work by inaction. Do something.

The topic of data backup and forward compatibility is a constant theme in my mind. I’m concerned that I’m not doing enough to ensure that I’ve done all that I can to address the issue.

If you have a good “current” and / or a forward focused solution, let the rest of us know. If I get a copy, I’ll pass it or your link on for the benefit of the rest of us who are infected with the family history gene. Hopefully, we can all find a way of propagating our records to future generations.

Technorati Tags: Clooz,Data Storage,Legacy,Family Histories,Genealogy Research Tips