Genealogy and Local History Blog

Category: Genealogy

Genealogy

“A law which will give some measure of protection”: Genealogy and The Social Security Act of 1935

People throughout all of human history have faced uncertainties brought on by unemployment, illness, disability, death, and old age. These inevitable facets of life are said to be threats to one’s economic security. Family members and relatives have always felt some degree of responsibility to one another, and to the extent that the family had resources to draw upon, this was often a source of economic security, especially for the aged or infirm. Genealogists can benefit by knowing this history and then taking advantage of surviving records of “social insurance” generated by agencies outside of home and family. During the Great Depression, poverty among the elderly grew dramatically. The best estimates are that in 1934 over half of the elderly in America lacked sufficient income to be self-supporting. Despite this, state welfare pensions for the elderly were practically non-existent before 1930. A spurt of pension legislation was passed in the...

Genealogy / Local History

Law and Order (and A Little Disorder) in Early Grapevine

The first law enforcement In Texas, Constable Thomas Alley, was sworn in by Judge John Tumlinson on March 5, 1823. A second constable joined Alley a short time afterward. Three months later, Alley and his colleague stayed to protect the local colonies while ten other men (including Tumlinson) were sent out to protect the range and guard the frontier. These men later formed the Texas Rangers. The Constables and Rangers joined forces and became an active group of roughly two hundred men. When the original Texas constitution was adopted, the constable was the only law enforcement defined by the document. Sam Houston formally separated the two groups. The constable would be elected by the people in each local area, known as precincts. The Texas Rangers became officers of the Republic of Texas. Both groups would be commissioned and report directly to the governor. Today that still holds true. When Tarrant...

Genealogy / Local History

Charles Wall: Grapevine’s Indiana Jones

You may be familiar with the fictional move character Indiana Jones, played by actor Harrison Ford, who became involved in various, sometimes hair-raising adventures around the world. The small community of Grapevine, Texas can claim title to somewhat the same type of individual in the person of Charles “Charlie” Wall, who left home in the Pleasant Run Community about 1876 and returned in the mid-1890s. Few documents exist to provide evidence of Charlie’s travels; some evidence is anecdotal; some sources contradict each other, and some are plain incorrect. In fact, he refused to tell his story for twenty-five years afterward because he was certain that nobody would believe him. Nevertheless, Charlie’s story demonstrates how the evidence we have allows us to understand how an ordinary resident of a small Tarrant County community experienced a wider and wilder world during the late nineteenth century. Charles Wall was born in Madison Co.,...

Genealogy

“Round Up The Unusual Suspects”: Uncommon Sources of Genealogical Information

To paraphrase Captain Renault, played by Claude Rains in the classic 1942 film Casablanca, in today’s blog we’re taking a look at unusual sources as genealogical resources. Generally, these are resources we wouldn’t normally associate with genealogical research. This approach is particularly important for the historical periods before the start of standard sources, but isn’t limited to them. They may be in any form or format and may be found anywhere. What genealogist doesn’t get excited when confronted by an unusual source? He or she wants to extract everything from it that will advance the research. But just as it is with traditional sources, it’s worthwhile to question it and investigate the origin of an unusual source. Why was it created? How credible is it? It might be unusual but it still needs to be believable. What does it tell you about the ancestor? How does it make the family...

Genealogy

Ancestors in the City? Find Them (and More!) in City Directories

City directories were created for salesmen, merchants, and others interested in contacting residents of an area. They’re especially helpful for genealogical research in large cities, where a high percentage of the people were renters, new arrivals, or temporary residents. A directory may be the only source to list an ancestor if he or she was not registered to vote and did not own property. These publications are a gold mine for genealogists. They can tell you much more than simply where a family or an individual lived. Depending on the directory, and whether you follow a string of directories chronologically, you could find: The earliest known “city directory” was printed in New York in 1665. It included 255 names of households, mostly Dutch, and was arranged by the name of the street on which they lived. You can see it in the digitized book  The Memorial History of the City...

Genealogy / Local History

Genealogy and The Great Depression

(Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16629774) Oh, say, don’t you remember, they called me AlIt was Al all the timeSay, don’t you remember, I’m your palBuddy, can you spare a dime? Source: LyricFind – Songwriters: E. Y. Harburg / Jay Gorney – Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? lyrics © Songtrust Ave, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC US government responses to the Great Depression of the 1930s generated some unique resources for genealogists and family historians. Today we’re going to look into some genealogically valuable records generated as a result of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and see how they can be used to enhance family history research. We need to look for these records for two main reasons. First, the Depression was an all-encompassing event that changed family narratives. Second, how relatives responded to or weathered such a crisis formed an essential aspect of family history....

Genealogy / Local History

Ancestors Fall on Hard Times? Check Out the Poorhouses!

(Wythe Co. poor farm image credit: By Nyttend – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57704286) What is a poorhouse? Simply put, it’s a county- or town-run residence where paupers were supported at public expense. It was known by several names – almshouse/alms house, poorhouse/poor house, poor farm, county farm, county home, and workhouse. And it’s possible that an ancestor or other family member may have spent some time in one. American poorhouse resources are little-known or vastly underutilized. According to Linda Crannell, formerly known as “The Poorhouse Lady, “The poorhouse seems to remain so invisible to us today. This is despite the fact that the poorhouse was probably one of the most extensively publicly document institutions in 19th century America.” These institutions have not been places that genealogists would normally think to look for when dealing with “disappeared” ancestors. This blog will demonstrate the value of poorhouse research, availability of poorhouse...

Genealogy

Territorial Papers of the United States: A Genealogical Goldmine

The Territorial Papers of the United States are the best-known source of territorial records. The published twenty-eight-volume set of transcribed, indexed, and annotated documents pertaining to the administration of some of the territories of the US covers the Old Northwest, the Southeast, and Midwest: Before a state became state, it was a territory with an appointed territorial governor along a territorial legislature and other governmental offices. And where there is government, there is paperwork: listings of officials, petitions to the government, correspondence of the territorial governor, letters back and forth among governmental officials, slavery issues, Native American affairs, etc. Some History For years, these records were ignored and just housed in various agencies (Department of State, Library of Congress, the then-Department of War, etc.) until the 1911 publication of the Calendar of Papers in Washington Archives of the United States (to 1873) by David W. Parker. The preface to this work laments the...

Genealogy

The American State Papers

In today’s blog post we’ll look at the American State Papers (Papers). This collection consists of 38 physical volumes containing legislative and executive documents of Congress from 1789-1838. They include papers that cover the critical historical gap in the preservation of federal documents from the first presidency in 1789 to the printing of the first volume of the US Serial Set in 1817. The Serial Set picks up where the Papers leaves off and continues to this day. Luckily for genealogists, these historical document sets are freely available on the Library of Congress web site A Century of Lawmaking For a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873. Among the many items are the American State Papers (1789-1838) and the U.S. Serial Set (1817-1873). For more information, read this great article, “Those Elusive Early Americans: Public Lands and Claims in the American State Papers, 1789-1837.” The American State Papers...

Genealogy

Start Your Own Genealogical FAN Club!

The FAN club is a term coined by renowned genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills. “FAN” stands for “Friends, Associates, Neighbors”, and refers to researching the cluster of people who interacted with your ancestors. This principle is also called cluster or collateral genealogy. Researching people within this cluster can provide insights into your ancestors’ lives, as well as help answer thorny questions your direct research hasn’t been able to resolve (“I can’t find this guy ANYWHERE! Where the heck was he?” or “Which of the six John Smiths in this county is mine?” or “Who was Nathan Pyeatt’s (1787-1812) mother?”). The FAN club is a great tool for proving relationships, establishing identities, and busting through brick walls. Many printed and on-line resources contain case studies demonstrating how you can use records of friends, associates, and neighbors to obtain the answers you’re looking for. Some of the best case studies using the FAN...