Texas Form Book: Decipher those difficult words

In many of my presentations and as a reply to mail list postings I have provided a reference to a Texas Civil Form Book. A recent posting on a mail list for professional genealogists reminded me I never made this available in a blog post where it might be more easily found.

Several years ago I attended a BCG Education Fund Putting Skills to Work workshop presented by Barbara Vines Little titled “Working with Documents: From Discovery to What Comes Next.” During that workshop, I learned that most states have a "form book" used by clerks and lawyers when drawing up documents. These form books provide templates and example wording that can be followed to properly draw up a legal document for a specific situation. In many cases, the laws define the required wording that must be included to create a legally-binding document or a specific type of document. The form books include that wording. While not every clerk copied the exact wording used in a form book unless it was required by law, many clerks did.

These forms can often help us decipher a faded word or words written by a clerk with poor penmanship. It also helps explain why so many documents contain the same boilerplate text. Several Texas form books (and other useful resources for research in Texas) are freely available on the Internet Archive. One form book is:

J. W. (Jonas William) Moffett, Texas Civil Form Book, with Forms of Pleadings, Removal of Causes from State to Federal Courts, The Forms and Law of Bankruptcy of 1898 and Amendments Approved February 5, 1903, and Court Rules of Texas (El Paso: Gammel Publishing, 1907); online archive, Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/texascivilformbo00moffiala).

The story of how I learned of this resource shows how we can all learn new things at any time. After more than twenty years of research and a decade of attendance at conferences and institutes, I had never heard of form books before Barbara mentioned it as an aside in her document analysis workshop. You never know when or where a critical piece of information about a resource will pop up.

And many thanks to the BCG Education Fund for continuing to provide workshops to teach us essential skills. There are only a few seats left in this year's workshop. See http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/2016/02/build-firm-foundation-transcribe.html for more information and for a registration link.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "Texas Form Book: Decipher those difficult words," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 7 April 2016 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2016, Debbie Parker Wayne, Certified Genealogist®, All Rights Reserved

MyHeritage: Free access to WWI records for a limited time

Here is a chance to check out some of the records on MyHeritage.com free through the end of July. MyHeritage.com offers some unique records and tools on their site.

Through the end of July 2014 you can get free access to World War I records. This is to commemorate 100 years since the war started in 1914.

For more information check out the MyHeritage blog post, "Search WWI military records for free!" Collections include:

• Silver War Badge Recipients, 1914–1918
  
• British Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914–1919
  
• The National Roll of the Great War, 1914–1918
  
• Tennessee WWI Veterans
  
• Ireland's Memorial Records, 1914–1918
  
• Royal Navy and Royal Marine Casualties, 1914–1919
  
• De Ruvigny's Roll Of Honour 1914–1924
  
• Distinguished Conduct Medal Citations 1914–1920
  
• British Officers Taken as Prisoners of War, 1914–1918
  
• British Military Officers
  
• Victoria Cross Recipients, 1854–2006
  

Enjoy this free access. Take some time to explore other offerings on MyHeritage.com. For eaxmple, check out Randy Seaver's post on "Smart Matching in MyHeritage" at http://www.geneamusings.com/2011/06/smart-matching-in-myheritage.html for one of the great features offered. You may find the site is useful to your research and decide to subscribe.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "MyHeritage: Free access to WWI records for a limited time," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 13 July 2014 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2014, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, CGL, All Rights Reserved

Digital Catalog for Appeals to the British Privy Council from the American Colonies

17 June 2014 update: I got a message from Mary Sarah Bilder, Professor of Law, Lee Distinguished Scholar, Boston College Law School, letting me know the correct title of this collection should have used the word Colonies, which I originally added in brackets, instead of Plantations. I made this correction in the post title. Professor Bilder included a link to an interesting article on an appeal related to the Phillips-Woodbridge duel in the June 2014 "Object of the Month" posted at the Massachusetts Historical Society: http://www.masshist.org/object-of-the-month. This background adds to what we can learn in the papers filed for the appeal.

Many sources used by historians are also useful to genealogists studying our family history.

Are you looking for the name of the wife of Thomas Parker who was in Virginia by April 1699? Have you considered court records in England? Thomas Starke of London appealed a ruling of the court in Virginia to the British Privy Council. Records of that appeal give us the name of Thomas Parker's wife Francillia who is executrix for Joseph Goodricke.¹ If this case is from a burned Virginia county this information could be extremely useful to a descendant of Francillia Parker. We'd also be interested in the relationship between Francillia and Goodricke in case this could lead us to her maiden name.

The Legal History Blog posted about one of these new sources in "An Annotated Digital Catalogue to Appeals to the Privy Council". The post tells us over 800 cases were appealed to the British Privy Council from the colonies and about one-third of those cases came from what is now the U.S.²

Annotations added to the original papers (such as the legal briefs) link to other useful resources. In some cases only the register books have been found; in some cases the register books and the briefs filed for the appeal still exist. Links take you to digital images of the record books. Where the briefs are not available the entries in the record books may not give details of the case, but just state whether the original ruling was upheld or not. Some cases have pages and pages of briefs filed by both sides in the case.

The advice to students on how to use these resources will also be helpful to genealogists; definitions of the papers and processes help us understand the British legal system.

I can't wait to spend more time in this source.

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1. Starke v Parker, Appeals to the Privy Council, Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, Virginia, Report No. 13_1699_00; digital index and images, Ames Foundation, Harvard Law (http://amesfoundation.law.harvard.edu/ColonialAppeals/index_new.php?report_no=13_1699_00 : accessed 16 June 2014). Images from the National Archives, London, England, may be used only for purposes of research, private study, or education; reproduction permission was granted for the Harvard website. Copyright laws in England are different than those in the U.S. Be sure you understand the laws applied to this source before using it.

2. Dan Ernst, "An Annotated Digital Catalogue to Appeals to the Privy Council," Legal History Blog, posted 12 June 2014 (http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/: accessed 16 June 2014).

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "Digital Catalog for Appeals to the British Privy Council from the American Colonies," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 16 June 2014, updated 17 June 2014 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2014, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, CGL, All Rights Reserved

MyHeritage offers free access to military records May 23-26

This Friday through Monday, May 23-26, MyHeritage will offer free access to U.S. military records in honor of our Memorial Day. MyHeritage is a subscription site offering access to record images and databases, family trees, and many other things useful to researchers. One of those useful features is a SmartMatch service. Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings discusses the feature here http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/05/looking-for-cousins-in-myheritage-smart.html and in many other posts you can find by searching his website for "myheritage."

Here is the announcement from MyHeritage:

In honor of Memorial Day, MyHeritage is offering FREE access to millions of US military records, which will be available to search from May 23 to May 26.

Military records are valuable resources that provide insight into the lives of those who have served in the armed forces, as well as their families. With these records, users can learn about their ancestors and honor their memory and service to their country.

Please see our special search page for the military collections that will be free over the Memorial Day weekend: www.myheritage.com/memorialday

The link is already live, but the collections will be free starting on Friday, May 23.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "MyHeritage offers free access to military records May 23-26," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 19 May 2014 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2014, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, CGL, All Rights Reserved

Lucky Researchers in Texas: McLennan County

Some areas are better to research in than others. Some counties have no clue as to the value of the history in the older documents, some understand but are unable to get government to allocate the necessary funds to preserve those records, and some understand and have been able to convince their government to preserve the records properly. McLennan County, Texas, is one of those good places to do research.

Most genealogists know about the West Waco Library Genealogy Center. The library has a large collection of books and microfilm for all locations. Extensive holdings cover McLennan County and surrounding counties in Central Texas, microfilm of Waco newspapers dating as early as 1898, about every known city directory published for Waco, abstracts of many church and school records, and much more. The library and the Central Texas Genealogical Society (CTGS) work closely together. CTGS members have abstracted and published many records of interest to researchers in this area.

Then there’s the library at Baylor University with several interesting special collections. The Baylor Law Library serves the general public as well as the students, faculty, and attorneys. It is a Federal Depository for Government Documents. And don’t forget the Armstrong Research Center at the Texas Ranger Museum.

But one of the jewels every researcher should know of and support is the McLennan County Archives.

The Archives is open Monday through Friday from 8:30a.m. to 4:30p.m. You must be buzzed in at the front door and escorted into the archives so it is a good idea to call the phone number on the website and let them know you are coming and what you wish to see. Parking is free and right in front of the entrance. Some research requests can be handled over the phone, but you’ll really want to visit in person if you can. The staff is knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful.

Stacks of McLennan County Archives, Waco, Texas,
photographed by Debbie Parker Wayne on 12 July 2013.

The Archives holds the original records of the County Clerk, District Clerk, Tax Assessor/Collector, Office of Elections, and Justices of the Peace. District Court records must be requested through the office of the clerk and will be viewed at the District Clerk’s office. Other records can be viewed at the Archives. There are also many maps and a large collection of Waco city directories.

Most of us have used tax records on microfilm. We usually spend a lot of time scrolling up and down to find an entry of interest. Then we scroll side to side counting the lines to be sure we extract all of a person’s entry from a tax listing that spans two pages. Here you can view the original tax records and see both pages at the same time in a bound book. After spending so much time with 18^th century hand-written records it seems a little strange to see typed tax lists for later years like the 1930s. But the printed records, handwritten or typed, are so much easier to use than microfilm.

McLennan County, Texas, 1938 Tax Assessors List,
McLennan County Archives, Waco, Texas,
photographed by Debbie Parker Wayne on 12 July 2013.

In addition to the tax listings sorted by the name of the taxpayer, there are books where the data is organized according to the land being taxed, Assessor Abstracts. Instead of searching through decades of deed indexes looking for familiar names you may be able to find when a land owner bought or sold a piece of property using these records.

There are so many kinds of records we all need to learn more about to make us better researchers. Seeing the original records instead of microfilmed copies is priceless. I wish every county where I do research had a county archives department.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "Lucky Researchers in Texas: McLennan County," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 26 September 2013 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2013, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, CGL, All Rights Reserved

Michael Hait's U.S. Census Pathfinder

Michael Hait has a new free e-book that will be useful to every genealogist:

United States Federal Census Pathfinder

He includes clickable links to general information on the census and specific information on each U.S. census through 1940, extraction forms, educational articles, and more. Thanks, Michael, for a great resource.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "Michael Hait's U.S. Census Pathfinder," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 23 December 2012 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

14 Jan 2013: Typographical error corrected.

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, All Rights Reserved

Understanding Historical Spanish Documents in the U.S.

Need help understanding Spanish language documents in your historical research?

In recent years I've compiled quite a collection of books and articles related to the law, using laws for genealogical research, and interpreting historical documents. I'm reviewing my collection and updating my notes in preparation for the "Statutes and Story: Laws and Social History in Family Research" workshop next week at the Angelina College Genealogy Conference. One of those books in my collection is a must have for any genealogist working in the areas of the U.S. once claimed by Spain and Mexico. Whether studying the laws or anything else in any locale where Spain once ruled this book is useful:

J. Villasana Haggard, Handbook for Translators of Spanish Historical Documents (Austin: University of Texas, 1941).

Haggard describes his reason for compiling the book. It is one that I suspect leads to many of our most useful how-to books: he needed to do something and couldn't find a book already published that explained how to do it well. So he compiled one, with help from his colleagues who were also subject matter experts. He made notes during a decade or more of work and then documented what he learned to help others. He points out that even an expert in a language needs to know more when translating historical documents. He had the same problems genealogists encounter during research: different paleography, faded ink, crumbling paper, long sentences with no punctuation, and understanding the different way of looking at things hundreds of years ago.¹

Especially important is Haggard's statement:

One must not mistake verbatim translations, paraphrases, imitations, parodies, or any other thinly veiled approximation for the serious work of translation. A verbatim version of an original cannot properly be called a translation, for a translation should be first and foremost a faithful rendition of the substance as well as the form of the original.²

A good reminder that we shouldn't rely heavily on machine "translations" of our historical documents. We need additional analysis by someone knowledgeable both with the history of an area, the culture, and the language.

Haggard planned to update the handbook and publish a later edition.³ I haven't been able to find one. If anyone knows of a later version please let me know. This 1941 version is obviously typed on a typewriter and may look quaint to modern eyes. But the information is invaluable. Twenty pages of bibliography. Nine pages showing letter forms used in different centuries. Many document samples with translations. Symbols and abbreviations used. A short history of the development of language and writing in Spain. And so much more including a procedure that starts with reading the document twice before anything else is done.

By the way, even though Google is my go-to source for a lot of things, when looking for electronic copies of books I don't go first to Google Books. The PDF files on Google Books do not allow searching within the text after the PDF is downloaded to my computer. The citation below leads to a searchable PDF version at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Many other sites also provide searchable versions. I download the PDF from Google Books only when I can't find any other option. Yes, I know I can find tools to make the PDF searchable. But if someone else has already done so, I see no need to repeat their work.

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1. J. Villasana Haggard, Handbook for Translators of Spanish Historical Documents (Austin: University of Texas, 1941), iv-v; Digitized Books, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (http://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/oca/Books2008-09/handbookfortrans00hagg/ : accessed 30 January 2009).
2. Ibid., 1.
3. Ibid., iii.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "Understanding Historical Spanish Documents in the U.S.," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 12 July 2012 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, All Rights Reserved

News - Portal to Texas History

Check out this issue of Beyond the Bytes, the newsletter of the "Portal to Texas History" project at the University of North Texas. You can subscribe to the newsletter via e-mail or connect with them on Facebook.

Hot news this month includes:

• The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History contributed a selection of its Moses and Stephen F. Austin papers.
  
• The National Museum of the Pacific war added transcribed interviews of Texas veterans' experiences in World War II.
  
• Newspapers added to the Texas Digital Newspaper Program include The Texas Posten Swedish-language newspaper (1896–1902), The (Galveston) Representative—first Texas newspaper with an African American editor (1871–1873), and The El Paso Morning Times (1913–1918). Search in Swedish and Spanish are supported where appropriate.
  
• War Department Field Manuals, Technical Manuals, posters, and newsmaps.
  
• The Digital Frontiers conference focusing on digital resources for research, teaching, and learning (genealogists are invited as well as historians, librarians, educators, students, and technologists)—September 21-22.
  

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, All Rights Reserved

1940 census presentation and indexing startup

Monday night I gave a presentation on accessing and using the 1940 census to a local society - Angelina County Genealogical Society in Lufkin, Texas. As part of the discussion I encourage everyone to help with the community indexing project sponsored by the U.S. National Archives, FamilySearch, Archives.com, ProQuest, and FindMyPast.com. See https://the1940census.com/ for information on the project and these sponsoring companies.

For those who are interested in indexing, there are videos to explain the process. Go to the website, hover over "Getting Started," then click on the popup for "Video Training." These videos will walk you through the account signup and getting started process:

1. Download FamilySearch Indexing software - This video guide will walk you through downloading the Indexing software.

2. Create a FamilySearch Account - This video guide will show you how to create a FamilySearch Account, which is needed to index.

3. How to Index the 1940 Census - This video guide will provide you with an overview of how to index the 1940 US Census. This video is recommended for all indexing volunteers.

4. Associate yourself with a Group (Society) - This video guide will show you how to associate yourself with a group when you first log in.

I joined the Texas State Genealogical Society indexing project so my work gets counted for Texas. I always select the 1940 Texas census project to work on when I start the indexing program. There are lots of indexing projects for things other than the 1940 census and you have to view the entire list and scroll down to find 1940 census for Texas.

While searching online I found another useful set of step-by-step instructions written for a Buncombe County, North Carolina group. These instructions are also helpful in a general way, but some items are specific to the project this group is working.

Texas is 27% indexed. We need more indexers so we can search the census sooner instead of only being able to browse.

By the way, on my 1940 U.S. Census Tips and Finding Aids page I include all of the links to documents and websites discussed in my 1940 census presentation. You can use the links and save a lot of typing of URLs.

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, All Rights Reserved

Advocacy and Collaboration article at MINDS@UW

I stumbled across a "new to me" useful archive at the University of Wisconsin today. The MINDS@UW site has archived many interesting articles, some with ideas pertinent to the current records access issues facing genealogists.

Check out "Genealogists and Records: Preservation, Advocacy, and Politics" by Aprille Cooke McKay in Archival Issues, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2002. She discusses advocacy and collaboration by genealogists and archivists while acknowledging the sometimes adversarial relationship between the two groups. We all need to work to eliminate the adversarial and encourage the collaborative aspects of the relationship.

Many of us are reaching out on Facebook and genealogy mail lists for help in Saving the SSDI. How many of us have contacted the state archivists and librarians that we have helped when states are considering cutting their budgets?

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, All Rights Reserved

Save SSDI and Stop ID Theft NOW!

How would you feel if the government restricted your access to records that name your ancestors? How far would you have progressed in your genealogical research without access to birth, death, and marriage records? What if you lost access to those and other records used to establish kinship links and our family histories? Even worse, what if your relative was unidentified and unclaimed in a coroner's office far from home and those trying to identify the deceased lost access to the very records that would allow them to find you? Or your military serviceman's body could only be identified if a living family member can be found to provide a reference DNA sample for comparison?

Several years ago a group of genealogical organizations formed an advocacy committee — RPAC — Records Preservation and Access Committee. The group has been much more visible in the last few months and is leading the charge to preserve access to records we use every day. An important blog entry on recent efforts can be found at http://www.fgs.org/rpac/2012/02/07/rpac-launches-stop-identity-theft-now-petition/. The main RPAC website is at http://www.fgs.org/rpac/.

As many genealogists now know, the U.S. House of Representatives, Ways and Means Committee, held a hearing on February 2nd to consider closing access to the Social Security Death Index (SSDI, based on the Death Master File / DMF). Only those in favor of closing the records were allowed to speak at the hearing. See http://www.ntis.gov/products/ssa-dmf.aspx for more information on the DMF and SSDI.

Many of us believe our elected officials are trying to enact legislation to make Americans feel better and safer, but that will actually have the opposite effect. Some of those violated by identity theft believe their social security numbers (SSN) were stolen from online SSDI databases. Ironically, the DMF /SSDI was created to prevent SSNs of deceased persons from being used fraudulently. And in this computerized age, how can the government justify ignoring data they spend so many of our tax dollars collecting? Legislators on both sides of the aisle are pushing to close records. But how can we allow the party that scorns government regulation to champion so many actions that regulate those who aren't able to make million dollar donations?

How can you help?

Understand the issue by reading the RPAC Talking Points on Why Genealogists Need the
Social Security Death Index (SSDI) at http://www.fgs.org/rpac/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/talking-points-on-why-genealogists-need-social-security-death-index-final.pdf.

Sign the online petition at http://wh.gov/khE. Step-by-step instructions for creating an account on whitehouse.gov and for ensuring your petition signature is counted can be found at http://fgs.org/pdf/rpac_petition.pdf.

FAX a letter to your congresspersons and senators. FAXing is better than writing; postal deliveries to the capital are delayed due to screening after anthrax-laced letters were sent via mail shortly after 9-11. Sample letter suggestions can be found at http://www.iajgs.org/pramc/Latest_Alert.doc. Legislators can often be persuaded by letters and FAXes that indicate constituents can support a bill if certain specified changes are implemented. This can sometimes be better than a bald statement that you are against a bill.

Find your senator at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. Most senators have their Washington, D.C., FAX number on their senate page. Often the Web page for a senator is http://_surname_.senate.gov, for example, hutchinson.senate.gov for Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Find your congress-person at http://www.house.gov/. Often the Web page for a congressman is http://_surname_.house.gov, for example, gohmert.house.gov for Texas Representative Louis Gohmert.

Don't they deserve to hear from you after all the robocalls you have received from them during the dinner hour?

The DMF / SSDI is only ONE of the record sets facing restrictive access regulations. Access to social security SS-5 information and vital records in many states are under attack by those who do not understand these records are not contributing significantly to identity theft. If we enforced the laws already on the books and made proper use of the information available now, we wouldn't need "feel good" laws that sound good but don't accomplish the intended goal.

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, All Rights Reserved

Courthouse Love - or Not

Many genealogists say they love old courthouses. See Betty Lou Malesky's "Genealogy Today: My romance with courthouses" article in the Green Valley (Arizona) News. Or Nancy Hendrickson's "Courthouse Genealogy" post on her Ancestor News blog.

Am I the only one who hates visiting the sweltering (or freezing, it's always one or the other), moldy, dusty, dirty, crowded (almost every Texas courthouse is crowded with researchers looking for the owners of mineral rights), sometimes unorganized storage places we relegate our most historical documents to?

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE the records. I LOVE the information I get from those records. I LOVE analyzing the information and correlating it with other information to solve kinship problems. I'm learning to love writing it all up, trying to achieve a "soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion"¹ that others can agree with. Or straighten me out if they think I am wrong.

I'm grateful courthouses still exist and allow me to access the records that have never been microfilmed or digitized. That is how I found proof of a marriage between my third-great-grandparents in my Parker line even though the marriage records were lost in a courthouse fire in 1874² and they never appeared together on a census record where a relationship was directly stated. The Commissioner's Court records, unfilmed, undigitized, unindexed, requiring a page-by-page reading of old, faded handwriting, allowed me to find proof of a marriage (details to be documented in a forthcoming publication).

Many new researchers only know about records available online. Good researchers soon learn about records they can borrow on microfilm. Better researchers learn about records only available locally in courthouses, libraries, and archives. I HAVE to go to the courthouse and local facilities because I know information I need is only available there. But I don't love it.

I understand the thrill of holding the actual piece of paper my ancestor held in her hands when she signed it. I understand the thrill of finding evidence supporting a conclusion for which there is no document explicitly stating the relationship. But I also remember the lady who told me she spent months and months being treated for a fungal infection she got in her hands and forearms while she was going through some moldy, old documents in a Catholic archive in Mexico. Ugh.

Preserving our history and heritage is important. We shouldn't have to search for it in dungeons or dig it out of dumpsters after a court clerk's office has decided all those old documents aren't needed anymore.³ And it shouldn't require exposure to fungal infections or sneezing attacks to learn about our history.

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1. Christine Rose, Genealogical Proof Standard: Building a Solid Case, 3d ed. (San Jose, California: CR Publications, 2009), 3.

See also: Christine Rose, Courthouse Research for Family Historians: Your Guide to Genealogical Treasures (San Jose, California: CR Publications, 2004).

2. Imogene Kinard Kennedy and J. Leon Kennedy, Genealogical Records in Texas, (Baltimore, Maryland: Clearfield/GPC, 1987), 136; record destruction confirmed during my own visits to the county clerk's office between 2005 and 2010.

3. Erin, McKeon, "200-year-old documents come to light," (Nacogdoches, Texas) Daily Sentinel, 5 March 2010, p. 1A; DailySentinel.com (http://dailysentinel.com/news/article_b160f492-2808-11df-9f63-001cc4c03286.html : subscription required for access, 10 January 2011).

Disclosure: Links in the citations above go to Heritage Books. I have no vested interest in Heritage Books and receive no favors or compensation for providing these links. I like to support those in the genealogical community whenever I can. Craig R. Scott, CG, owner of Heritage Books, is a friend who publishes new genealogical book titles and sells books in addition to those he publishes.

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, All Rights Reserved

Henry Everett Johnson (1871-1923) - East Texas Road Builder?

Yesterday I wrote about the online exhibit on the construction of Texas highways at Texas State Library and Archives Commission. I mentioned my great-great-grandfather who built roads according to family stories my grandmother told me in the early 1990s.

... my grandmother told me her grandfather built roads in East Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and that he died while working on a road in Arkansas when a snake spooked his horse. Grandpa fell and was killed, perhaps from a broken neck, when the horse reared in panic. My grandmother was only seven when this happened so I am not sure how much she remembered or how often her memory may have been refreshed by discussions at family gatherings after she grew up. Her memories of getting soaked while traveling from Dallas to Smackover, Arkansas, in an open-top vehicle in a rain storm in August 1923 seemed pretty vivid.

I have an old 1910–1923 photograph of this great-great-grandfather with family and crew members standing in a wet, muddy, grassless area surrounded by trees. This looks like it could be a road building crew of the time or maybe they are just pulling felled trees to the railroad line for transport. It's hard to tell from the image.

The crewmen are each holding a team with yokes around their necks and ropes and chains leading to the ground where there are large squared-off timbers—maybe to grade a dirt road. I'd love to hear from anyone who knows the history of road building or logging who can identify what these rigs may have been used for. The squared off timber argues they are not pulling felled trees for transport.

Here's a closeup of great-great-grandpa Henry Everett Johnson (1871–1923) and his wife Emma Eugenia Ryan Johnson (1868–1950) cropped from the image above. It is so strange to see I am several years older than the 52 years of age Henry was when he died. We tend to think of our ancestors as being older than us and often forget they were once children themselves.

Henry's life span dates are documented on his tall Woodsmen of the World headstone at Ryan Chapel near Diboll, Angelina County, Texas. Emma's are documented on her Texas death certificate, number 6051 (1950), available from the Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Austin, and now in several places online. Emma is buried next to Henry, but the only marker on her grave is a small, flat stone barely big enough for the initials "E. J." inscribed on it. If you visit the cemetery when the grass is high or when there is snow you'll miss her stone.

Emma is not named in the compiled list of persons buried in the cemetery; the list only includes those with names on stones. Maybe her tiny stone with initials was missed when the cemetery was surveyed or the compilers didn't list stones with initials only. Somehow cemetery records were lost or not carefully kept and when the cemetery association was formed in the 1960s apparently no one knew she was buried there. One of my remote cousins was active in the cemetery association for many years and she did not know where Emma was buried in the cemetery the cousin spent much of her life preserving.

The photograph of what I think is the road crew is in my possession since I saved it from the trash bin. After my grandmother's death my Mom and her sisters started to throw away about 200 of my grandmother's photos they couldn't identify.


Lessons learned:

1. Talk more about the family history to your relatives while they are still here on this earth. Once they are gone you can't get answer to your questions.
2. Tell everyone to ALWAYS give you any photos instead of throwing them out without you seeing them. In addition to the road crew photo I rescued, I have identified over half of the people in the other 200 photos my Mom and aunts were going to trash. Several were images of my great-grandmother as a child and other treasures.
3. Pay attention to every small detail in those old photos. They tell you things.
4. Just because someone isn't listed in the cemetery book or you can't find a headstone doesn't mean they aren't buried there. Look in all seasons and right after the cemetery has been mowed. Who knew "reasonably exhaustive" research might mean visiting the cemetery in winter when the grass is dead and there's no snow on the ground?
5. Consider the entire life of your ancestor—the childhood, the teenage years, young adulthood, and the middle and later years. Grandma and Grandpa weren't always the white-haired elders we most remember. What was their life like when they were young?
   

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

History of Highway Construction in Texas - TSLAC Exhibit

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) has a new online exhibit. One of many freely offered on their website.

"Put the Money Under the Rubber: The Texas Highway Department Transforms Texas 1917-1968" is a new online history exhibit from the Texas State Library and Archives. Historians have called the construction of the Texas highway system one of the greatest building projects in world history. Now history lovers, engineering buffs, and travelers alike can discover this epic story with TSLAC's extensive new online exhibit. Dozens of vintage photographs and documents from TSLAC's collection of Texas Highway Department project files tell the story of Texas's journey from frontier backwater to transportation power player.

The exhibit has interesting photographs from rural areas and small towns as well as big cities. It also has biographies of the state engineers and a lot of history. One page has a great Dallas map and indicates:

In developing this 1943 map, planners used a ratio of one car for every three Dallas residents, creating a plan to accommodate between 190,000 and 222,000 vehicles by 1970. The actual number proved to be closer to 367,000. Also note the estimated "possible limits of future urbanization."

Having lived in Dallas for my first thirty years and visited almost every year thereafter, I can tell you that by the early 1960s Dallas had exceeded the estimated possible limit of future urbanization. By 1970 urbanization would have been off the map (no pun intended, but I'll take it). I can estimate where my childhood homes were situated using the roads and waterways illustrated on the map even though residential streets are not shown.

My original interest in this exhibit (and in other road building history and records) was because my grandmother told me her grandfather built roads in East Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and that he died while working on a road in Arkansas when a snake spooked his horse. Grandpa fell and was killed, perhaps from a broken neck, when the horse reared in panic. My grandmother was only seven when this happened so I am not sure how much she remembered or how often her memory may have been refreshed by discussions at family gatherings after she grew up. Her memories of getting soaked while traveling from Dallas to Smackover, Arkansas, in an open-top vehicle in a rain storm in August 1923 seemed pretty vivid.

One of my back-burner to-dos is to find out more about who this grandpa worked for and try to find records about this work. Many of the family members worked for timber companies in this piney woods area of East Texas where they lived most of the time. I've never known if Grandpa built roads for the timber companies or for county or state governments or maybe even other companies.

I am thankful for all of the historical and genealogical societies, archives, university and public libraries, GenWeb volunteers, and other good people who place information and records online freely available to all. Think of this the next time your state government is cutting the budget for the groups that support historical preservation. Some of my reasons to be thankful:

1. While viewing the exhibit I received clues of several sets of records I can now search.
2. While viewing the exhibit I learned general history and background information that helps me understand my family history better.
3. Viewing something like this exhibit with your older relatives at a holiday gathering may generate some wonderful family stories. When I saw a photo of the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike it reminded me of my uncle who would speed down the road then pull over and wait. When the toll booth clocked his arrival time they could not tell he had driven well in excess of the speed limit between the toll booths. We were always told you could get ticketed for speeding based on the timestamps at the beginning and ending toll booths. I'm not sure if that was true, but obviously my uncle believed it was. I wonder when we'll discover the gene that makes some people incapable of driving at the posted speeds?

Thanks to TSLAC I have more interesting reminiscences to add to my family narrative before I forget again and I have potentially productive record sets to add to my to-do list.


Update 20 Dec 2011: See "Henry Everett Johnson (1871-1923) - East Texas Road Builder?" for more on Grandpa Henry and photos of what I think is his road crew.

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Enhancing Genealogy with Teacher Resources

A lot of websites designed to help history teachers are also useful to genealogists who want to add social context to the story of their ancestor. Richard Byrne added a new post titled "9 Sources for Historical Images, Documents, Videos, and Audio" to his Free Technology for Teachers blog. Techie genealogists are probably familiar with some of these sites. He mentions a few of my favorites:

• Yale University's Avalon Project—documenting laws from ancient BCE times to the 21^st century—and with a chronology of American history through the included documents
  
  
• The Commons on Flickr—where I have found some great copyright-free images to use in my Powerpoint presentations (check out some of the dance images to represent the genealogy happy dance)
  
  
• Google Books—where I can find full text copies of old legal reporters and digests (descriptions of cases your ancestors may have been involved in)
  

Check out "9 Sources for Historical Images, Documents, Videos, and Audio" and see if he has a site you haven't used yet.

What other great history sites have you used that are not on his list?

I often use the East Texas Research Center at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. A list of their collections and digital exhibits is here.


© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

More Information Freely Available Online - JSTOR Early Journal Content

I used to read because I enjoyed it. Anya Seton, Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Herman Wouk, Ken Follett, Nelson DeMille—teenage favorites and some I learned to love later in life.

As I became more obsessed with genealogy and family history my favorite authors became David McCullough, David Hackett Fischer, Jean A. Stuntz, Lawrence Friedman, and pretty much anyone published by Heritage Books or Genealogical Publishing.

Then I discovered the information in scholarly journals—often focused on a specific location where my ancestors had lived or on a topic directly related to some event in an ancestor's life. These are the details needed to add "meat to the bones" of my family tree. When I learned I could access JSTOR through the Houston Public Library system I spent hoursperusing what was available and wishing there were more hours in the day to study.

JSTOR provides access to scholarly journals through universities and institutions like large libraries. This is great if you are attending classes at a school that provides access or have access through a local library. As Google began to index the content of journals in JSTOR it could be a frustrating experience to see a link to an article that contained exactly the information you needed, only to find out it was behind a pay wall and you couldn't read the article. Some of those frustrations will disappear now.

JSTOR recently announced open access to material in their collection that is out of copyright. There are some terms and conditions for use so check the full text in the FAQ and the documents it links to.

PDF files listing the included journals by title and by discipline are available. These are just a few of the journals anyone can now access by going to jstor.org and clicking on the link for "Early Journal Content":

• The Journal of African American History — 1916–1922
  
• The Illustrated Wood Worker — 1879–1879
  
• California History — 1922–1922
  
• Indiana Magazine of History — 1905–1922
  
• The Georgia Historical Quarterly — 1917–1922
  
• The Journal of American History — 1914–1922
  
• The South Carolina Historical Magazine — 1900–1922
  
• The Southwestern Historical Quarterly — 1897–1922
  
• The William and Mary Quarterly — 1892–1922
  
• The Hispanic American Historical Review — 1918–1922
  
• California Law Review — 1912–1922
  
• Columbia Law Review — 1901–1922
  
• Harvard Law Review — 1887–1922
  
• Virginia Law Review — 1913–1922
  
• The Journal of Religion — 1882–1922
  

For more information see this Chronicle.com article by Jennifer Howard and the announcement from JSTOR.

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

9/11 Memorials Remind Us of Earlier Records of Memories

Like many Americans, I spent too much time yesterday watching TV memorials of 9/11. Even though I know what is about to happen, it is hard to pull myself away from the video. No matter how many times I see it, there is an involuntary, rushing intake of breath when I see the towers begin to fall.

Last night I saw, what was to me, a new take on the events of 9/11: a documentary with candid video taken of firefighters in the months leading up to, during, and after the horrific events of 9/11. Seeing the unscripted stories of those caught up in monumental history gives more personal meaning to the feelings we have from that day. If you didn't see 9/11: Ten Years Later on CBS last night, check out the citation below for links to view the documentary.¹

Films like this and audio recordings can be a great boon to future genealogists, providing personal details about an ancestor's life, thoughts, and physical characteristics. Most of us are more easily moved by images and sound than by words on paper. Remember how you felt when watching the Ken Burns Civil War series on PBS? I wondered if there are other historical images and documentaries out there that might be useful to genealogists. A few internet searches with terms like "historic documentaries" turned up some interesting possibilities. Even if your ancestor wasn't interviewed I'll bet you can find an interview of someone with similar experiences you can draw on to speculate about your ancestor's life.

Archive.org is one of my favorite sites for finding old books. It also has audio and video items I've never explored. Their blog post Then and Now has links to some videos made during the Depression, the Great Depression in the 1920s and 1930s, not the current one. Browsing the "Ephemeral Films collection" I found Shaping San Francisco with footage from 1906, 1917, 1934, and more modern times. The "Vintage Educational Films" include And So They Lived showing the strong family bonds of "poorly educated mountain people" of the Appalachians, Valley Town - A Study of Machines and Men showing workers in the 1920s and 1930s mill towns being displaced by automation, and Wildcat "follows two Oklahoma wildcatters" in Garfield County. There are others on the site.

The East Texas Research Center (ETRC) at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) in Nacodgoches has as oral history collection covering East Texas and the effects of world-wide events on those in the area. Many of these interviews were made by Dr. Bobby H. Johnson, a well-known Texas historian and former professor at SFASU. The ETRC is digitizing the interviews and adding them to the Digital Archives as time allows. Many of the interviews cover life in the lumber industry and oil fields of Texas.

The Panola College (Carthage, Texas) Oral Histories collection includes interviews about living through the Great Depression and the first two World Wars as well as local history and family reminiscences. Death customs, home brew, sharecropping, flour sack clothes, and working for the WPA and the CCC are described. Some of the interviews are online as MP3 files and are "[f]ree for use by anyone for any purpose without restriction." Many interviews of elderly African Americans in East Texas are included as PDF transcripts, not audio files. The usage rights are stated as "[c]opying and or printing of this publication is allowed for non-commercial use as long as acknowledgement or due credit is provided for its use." Be sure you check the rights and use the information appropriately.

Baylor University, Institute for Oral History has transcribed and made PDFs available for many of the 1,800 oral history interviews in the collection. You can browse or search the collection by subject, category, or project. Subjects are the traditional ones used by libraries to catalog items. Categories include Family Life and Community History, Texas Baptist Project, Waco Tornado 1953, and more. Projects include African American Women, German Texans Between World Wars, South Texas Children's Home, Texas Cotton Farmers, and more. Apparently you can only access the PDF files directly if you are in the Baylor Library or have a login to their system. But there is a request form that can be submitted to request access to the PDF transcripts. It isn't clear if they consider family history an acceptable use or if they restrict access to academic scholars.

Historic Video Archives has a collection of "Vintage and Historic Documentaries – Too Original or Unique to Classify." They have color newsreels with science, technology and new products of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s; black-and-white newsreels from 1929 through 1959; a 1926 silent film on sight-seeing in Newark, New Jersey; and more. Even if your ancestors aren't shown in the film, the information may show how your ancestors were living. Especially intriguing to a Southerner is a film that is said to include home movies from the 1920s and 1930s with scenes from Asheville, North Carolina; Athens, Georgia; Nanctucket, Massachusetts; with scenes of picking cotton and a chain gang. I'm tempted to order this just to see whose home movies these are.

TexasHistory.com has a video called Pioneer Life in Texas: A Recreation showing "family life in a log cabin to farming, plowing, blacksmithing, hunting and working with cattle." A two-volume set is titled The Home front: Life in Texas During the Civil War. The marketing blurb indicates the documentary, "features historical re-enactments, present-day footage of historical sites, as well as thousands of pictures, paintings, maps, drawings, documents and graphics from archives across the state. Key analysis of events and insight are provided by the top Civil War experts in Texas: Ralph Wooster, Jerry Don Thompson, Mike Campbell, Charles Spurlin, Danny Sessums and Robert Schaadt, among others."

A search in your own area will likely turn up treasures at local universities and historical societies. Don't overlook these resources.

---

1.
de Niro, Robert, host. 9/11: Ten Years Later. Jules Naudet, Gédéon Naudet, James Hanlon, executive producers and directors. N.p.: Goldfish Pictures, Inc., 2011. Broadcast on CBS Television, September 11, 2011. Available on iTunes (http://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/9-11-the-filmmakers-commemorative/id461900937) and CBS.com (http://www.cbs.com/shows/ten_years_later/): both accessed 12 September 2011.


© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Texas Tax Rolls - Online Access

Don't you love tax records? Don't you love it when original records are available online? Don't you think you should contribute to the genealogical community by making it easier to find those original records?

Why do I love tax records so much? Taxes were collected every year. Where they still exist, the story of your ancestor's life becomes much more defined than by the facts collected every ten years on a census. Farmers who didn't meet the criteria to be recorded on an agricultural census will probably be listed in the tax rolls. If a courthouse fire burned the deed records, the tax roll may indicate how much land your ancestor owned and its general location. If there's no cemetery or death record for your ancestor, an approximate date of death can sometimes be calculated based on what is and what isn't found in the tax rolls. These are only a few of the ways tax records contribute to understanding our ancestors.

The Texas State Genealogical Society (TSGS) is partnering with FamilySearch to index the "Texas County Tax Rolls, 1837–1910." TSGS's own Scott Fitzgerald is administering the project for FamilySearch Indexing. Project information is available at this shortened URL http://tinyurl.com/3b4ksdr which links to this full URL https://indexing.familysearch.org/projtab/viewProject.jsf?url=USTexas-CountyTaxRolls1837-1910PartA/ProjectHelp1.html. There's even a YouTube video on this project at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm-BHjS1Pg0.

Many of the more than four million images in this project are already available in a browse mode. Browse by going to http://familysearch.org/. Scroll down to "Browse by Location" and click on "USA, Canada, and Mexico." Scroll down to "Texas County Tax Rolls, 1846–1910" and click on "Browse." (Different years are displayed in the two links.) You'll see a list of counties for which the images are online. If the county or page of interest isn't available yet, check back. It is amazing how many new images have been added within the last three weeks.

It's easy to contribute to the project by indexing a few pages each week (or each day). You can sign up as an indexer at http://indexing.familysearch.org/. I did my first batch in less than an hour and this included pages with faded ink that was difficult to read. A small investment of time now will reap big rewards later.

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

1860 Map of U.S. Slave States

The Map Room is one of my favorite blogs. Mapping American Slavery is a recent post with a link to a very detailed map of the American slave states showing slave and free populations and an article by Susan Schulten. Schulten states the map was even included in a portrait of Lincoln with his cabinet. The image of the portrait in her article is interactive—be sure to move your mouse over the image. I had not heard of Schulten before, but now her book The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2002) is on my wish list.

This map (almost 30MB in size) can be extremely useful to genealogists and historians researching the southern states.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

From Deep Web to Deep Dust

Genealogical research has been revolutionized by the Web. We may look for the same records as before we had the internet, but many records are so much easier to access today. Search engines help locate information we might have never located in pre-internet days. Search engines read a Web page and follow the hyperlinks to other pages, indexing along the way. But there is also a side of the Web that is hidden to search engines—the invisible or Deep Web.

A lot of the best genealogical information is behind the wall of the Deep Web. Searches don't turn up most records on Ancestry.com, Footnote.com, GenealogyBank.com, or your county clerk's office because those records are hidden behind a wall. The information on those sites is usually stored in a database with pages created dynamically, on the fly. Those dynamic pages don't exist so can't be indexed by search engines without some intervention.

Newbie genealogists often start with Web research, finding the RootsWeb and personal pages that are indexed by search engines. Some of these pages may have source citations, but most don't. The publicity associated with "Who Do You Think You Are?" may bring the newbie quickly to Ancestry.com and other subscription sites. A lot of bad information may be copied into a database and files before the newbie learns to be more discerning about "genealogical research" as opposed to "name collection."

The experienced researcher spends more time on the original record images than in the unsourced trees and quickly learns to use the database indexes as clues to find the original records. Texas researchers soon learn about TexShare databases—available through most Texas libraries by obtaining a library card. With a login from the library the TexShare databases can also be accessed from home. Some of these same databases are also available in other states—check with local librarians.

But that still leaves the vast majority of the Web hidden from a researcher. There are some tools to help in finding useful items in the Deep Web and more of them are available every day. You might not realize you already use some of these tools. Google Scholar searches some sites that are usually hidden. Learn more about Deep Web Searching at:

The Deep Web

100 Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web

10 Search Engines to Explore the Invisible web

Don't get too complacent about the Deep Web, though. The vast majority of the records needed by genealogists aren't anywhere at all on the Web, deep or not. Most of them haven't even been microfilmed yet. Those records are sitting on the dusty shelves of court clerks, archivists, and librarians. Most of the problems we see as brick walls are solvable with that information that may be harder to access but does exist.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved