Early Texans DNA Project at Texas State GS

TxSGS has formed the Early Texans DNA Project. The goals are to:

• Study the DNA of descendants of early settlers to discover information that can contribute to Texas history including
  
  • Determine which admixtures are found in living Texans today
    
  • Link those admixture results to early colonies or settlements
    
• Learn which segments of DNA are shared with other descendants of early settlers of Texas
  
• Facilitate applicants for TxSGS certificate programs – DNA matches support claims of descent from a common ancestor and can provide clues as to where to locate documentary evidence
  
• Many more exciting projects in the future
  

Descendants of settlers who arrived in Texas by 19 February 1846 are one focus of the Early Texans DNA Project. Descendants of those who arrived later are also invited to join the project to help us learn more about the DNA of our ancestors who came to Texas.

If you tested at Family Tree DNA please

• login to your account
  
• hover over "Projects" then click "Join a project"
  
• scroll down to "Search by Surname"
  
• change the "Equals" drop-down box to "Contains"
  
• in the search box enter txstategs
  
• click on "TXStateGS" under "Matching Projects" when the search results are displayed
  
• click on the "Join" button and follow any additional instructions displayed
  
• you can include additional information (TxSGS heritage certificate numbers or request for a form to provide the lineage if you do not already have a certificate) with the join request or e-mail it separately as described below
  

Lineage Information

To send the additional information via e-mail, contact dna@txsgs.org letting me know you wish to have your DNA analyzed as part of the Early Texans DNA Project. If you already have a TxSGS Heritage Certificate (Texas First Families, Gone to Texas Pioneer, West Texas Pioneer, Greer County Texas Pioneer, Descendants of Texas Rangers) please include the certificate type and number so I can access you lineage information.

If you do not have a heritage certificate, use this fillable PDF form for your lineage information. You will need similar proofs to what is required for the certificate programs, but do NOT SEND THE PROOF DOCUMENTS. There is no fee for the DNA Project at this time. The form can be e-mailed to dna@txsgs.org or mailed to Debbie Parker Wayne, PO Box 397, Cushing, TX 75760.

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If you took the autosomal test at 23andMe

23andMe instructions for the "new experience" in 2016 will be added at a later date. For pre- and early-2016 experience see this blog post with instructions on how to download your raw atDNA data. If you know how to download your raw data, do so, then follow the instructions on the GEDmatch website to upload that data to GEDmatch.

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If you took the autosomal test at AncestryDNA

1. Login to Ancestry.com
2. In the top navigation bar, click on "DNA" then "You DNA Results Summary"
3. On the right, click on "Settings"
   
   
4. Click on "Download Raw DNA Data"
   
   
   







5. Enter your Ancestry.com password and click that you understand the data files on your computer cannot be protected by Ancestry.







6. Click the "Confirm" button.







7. The next screen confirms to which e-mail address your raw data message is being sent.







8. Once the confirmation message arrives in that e-mail account, click on the "Confirm Data Download" button.
   
   
   







9. This opens a page on Ancestry (if you are not still logged in, you will need to enter the login information), click "Download raw DNA Data" button.
   







10. In the Windows "Save As" popup window, navigate to a folder where you want to save the file. Remember the name of this folder and the file as you will need them later. I have a folder where I save all of the DNA data for all of my family members. I name the file something like AncestryDNA_raw__dna-data_DATE_INITIALSofTestTaker.zip (AncestryDNA_raw__dna-data_20160603_DJP.zip) so I know whose DNA data it is and when I downloaded it.
    

This has saved your data on your computer from the Ancestry server. Now go to the section titled "Uploading to GEDmatch" to place the data on the server where others can compare to the data.

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Uploading to GEDmatch Be aware that once your data is on the GEDmatch server all other GEDmatch users will be able to see the data and compare it to their data. The only way we can use DNA for genealogy is by sharing the data. But if you are concerned about privacy you cn enter an alias as the name of the test-taker. If you are concerned about people seeing your e-mail address you may want to set up a Gmail address (or other e-mail address) you use only for genetic genealogy. Most of us use our real e-mail addresses, but some people prefer not to use their real names. You decide how much infomration you wish to share publicly. For the GEDmatch privacy policy see https://www.gedmatch.com/policy.php.

1. If you are not yet registered on GEDmatch, click "Not Registered, Click HERE" and follow the instructions to create your free account.
   
   
2. Login to the newly created account.
   
3. In the "File uploads" section and the "Raw DNA file uploads" sub-section, click on the "AncestryDNA.com."
   
4. In "Name of DNA Donor," insert name of the person who was tested. Enter an "Alias" if you prefer not to display the real name of the test-taker. Select the "Sex of donor" - the gender of the test-taker. Skip the mitochondrial haplogroup or Y haplogroup questions.
   
5. Click on "Yes" to allow your data to be used for comparisons.
   
6. Click on the "Choose File" link. Navigate to the folder where you saved the raw data file from Ancestry. Selected the filename (such as AncestryDNA_raw__dna-data_20160603_DJP.zip). Click "Upload." It takes up to several seconds for the file to be uploaded, depending on the speed of your connection. A new message is displayed as the file is processed.
   
7. DO NOT LEAVE THIS SCREEN until the processing is completed. The processing will likely take 30 minutes or so, depending on the load on the GEDmatch server. A message will tell you when this is complete. Chromosome numbers will change at the bottom of the screen as the data is processed.
   
   
8. Write down the kit number assigned (such as T123456 or A781234). This number is very important so we can find your DNA data to compare to others in the Parker FamGroup 1 project to learn more about our shared ancestry.
   
   
   

After uploaded your data to GEDmatch, please go back and follow the instructions above labelled "Lineage Information" to send us your lineage information for the test-taker back to the Texas settler.

Edited 9 September 2016: fixed link to PDF app and removed instructions to send proof documents with the app.

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To cite this blog post: Debbie Parker Wayne, "Early Texans DNA Project at Texas State GS," Deb's Delvings, 6 September 2016 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

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

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

History: JFK Assassination Memories

With red eyes brimming with tears, my fourth grade teacher at John Quincy Adams Elementary told us our parents were being called. Even a nine-year-old could sense this wasn't a time to cheer because we were getting out of school early. It was a simpler time when most middle-class kids still had someone at home who could pick them up early when the school called. When we could still play anywhere in the neighborhood and surrounding community without fear. Then she told us. The president had been shot. In our city. The city where we had been safe. Until now. November 1963, when shots were fired from the sixth floor window of the school book depository building, marked the beginning of a changing world.

Hobbes747, "The sixth floor window, blocked off by a glass box from the inside, is the second from the top on the far right."¹

After my aunt picked up me, my brother, and our cousins who had "working Moms" we went home and watched television. No one felt like playing hide-and-seek or tag or running through the nearby park pretending dinosaurs were chasing us or any of the outdoor games kids played before video games. I still remember seeing Walter Cronkite tearfully announce that President Kennedy had died. There was a new president, a Texan, Lyndon B. Johnson, sworn in with the sad, beautiful widow at his side, still wearing her pink, blood-stained suit.

Stoughton, "Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office, November 1963."²

The aunts had red eyes as they came by to get my cousins at the end of the day. The whole city seemed to be crying. Even the men had red eyes and sniffles. Then two days later there was the television coverage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the police station basement. It was a confusing time for kids and adults. Our world was changing before our eyes, seen in black and white on a 19 inch television with rabbit ears and vertical and horizontal hold knobs we had to constantly adjust to keep the picture stable.

In 1963 all of the Texans I knew were Democrats. And proud of it. I remember my grandmother telling me she always "votes the straight Democratic ticket just like my Daddy" had done. Texas is different now. The world is different now. I remember for years afterward feeling ashamed of saying I was from Dallas when I introduced myself to someone.³ Looking back, the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, seems to have heralded in some of the worst years in American history.⁴ Riots in American streets, snipers in university towers, more assassinations.⁵ While I am thankful for many of the advances we have made in our society in the last fifty years, there are some of those kinder, gentler, simpler ways that I miss.

This day, 22 November 1963, is my first memory of a political event. During the sixties and seventies we worried about how our world was changing and becoming more violent. Knowing that things eventually got better gives me hope that the current political problems will someday be resolved, too.

It is so important for all of us to write about our life memories and pass this to our descendants. Genealogists spend our time studying the history of individual lives, micro-history. We know how thrilling it would be to find a journal or diary written by one of our ancestors. Give that thrill to your descendants. Write once a day or once a week about some memory from your early life and collect those writings. Don't let your stories be lost while you concentrate on finding the stories from an earlier time. What would you like to know about your ancestors' lives? Write about those same things in your life. Someday you will be an ancestor and your story should not be forgotten.

Journal, photo taken by author, 19 November 2013.

For help finding ways to write and things to write about see:

Barrington, Judith. Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art. 2nd ed. Eighth Mountain Press, 2002; http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Memoir-Truth-Second-Edit/dp/0933377509/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384866741&sr=1-1&keywords=writing+a+memoir.

Croom, Emily. Unpuzzling Your Past: A Basic Guide to Genealogy, 4th ed. revised. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing, 2010; (http://www.amazon.com/Unpuzzling-Best-Selling-Genealogy-Expanded-Updated/dp/0806318546/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384866570&sr=1-2&keywords=croom+Unpuzzling+Your+Past.

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All URLs accessed 18 November 2013.
1. Hobbes747, "The sixth floor window, blocked off by a glass box from the inside, is the second from the top on the far right," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:6th_floor_window.jpg); image released into the public domain.
Cropped by Debbie Parker Wayne, 18 November 2013.
2. Cecil W. Stoughton, "Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office, November 1963," White House Press Office (WHPO), (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lyndon_B._Johnson_taking_the_oath_of_office,_November_1963.jpg). As the work of an employee of the Executive Office of the President of the United States taken as part of that person's official duties this image is in the public domain.
3. Memories of the author, Debbie Parker Wayne, who lived in Dallas from 1954 until many years after the assassination of Kennedy.
4. "Assassination of John F. Kennedy," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy).
5. All at Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia: "Counterculture of the 1960s," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s). "Charles Whitman," Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman). "Martin Luther King Jr.," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_luther_king). "Robert F. Kennedy," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kennedy).

© 2013, 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

1871 Gun Laws in Texas

In several Texas counties I have run across county court minutes and commissioner's court minutes where a man was being fined for carrying a gun in the 1870s. This surprised me as Texas has a reputation, even today, as a place where gun rights are supreme.

Even in 1871, when some Texas counties were still experiencing "incursions of hostile Indians," Texans passed a law prohibiting the carrying of firearms, as well as "dirk, dagger, slung shot [sic], sword cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife manufactured and sold for the purposes of offense and defense," in certain locations, including schools and churches. I suspect many of the men in the legislature at that time still needed a firearm to put food on the table, not just for target practice or to shoot snakes while they were jogging.

Here's the 1871 law:

An Act to regulate the keeping and bearing of deadly weapons.

Sec. 3. If any person shall go into any church or religious assembly, any school room, or other place where persons are assembled for amusement or for educational or scientific purposes, or into any circus, show, or public exhibition of any kind, or into a ball room, social party, or social gathering, or to any election precinct on the day or days of any election, where any portion of the people of this State are collected to vote at any election, or to any other place where people may be assembled to muster, or to perform any other public duty, (except as may be required or permitted by law,) or to any other public assembly, and shall have or carry about his person a pistol or other firearm, dirk, dagger, slung shot, sword cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife manufactured and sold for the purposes of offense and defense, unless an officer of the peace, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall, for the first offense, be punished by fine of not less than fifty, nor more than five hundred dollars, and shall forfeit to the county the weapon or weapons so found on his person; and for every subsequent offense may, in addition to such fine and forfeiture, be imprisoned in the county jail for a term not more than ninety days.

Sec. 4. This act shall not apply to, nor be enforced in any county of the State, which may be designated, in a proclamation of the Governor, as a frontier county. and liable to incursions of hostile Indians.¹

This blog has comments moderated to prevent spammers and wackos from using it as a platform. This post is not designed to generate a gun safety discussion here. But, in light of recent events in Connecticut, understanding our history may help us come to more reasonable conclusions on how things should be done today. Think about it.

Remembering those who lost their lives, those who lost loved ones, and those who responded to the horrific crime in Newtown.

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1. H. P. N. Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, 10 vols. (Austin: Gammel Book Co., 1898), 6:25-26, "An Act to regulate the keeping and bearing of deadly weapons," approved 12 April 1871, "General Laws of Texas, 1871; digital images, University of North Texas, The Portal to Texas History (http://texinfo.library.unt.edu/lawsoftexas/ : accessed 14 September 2005).

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "1871 Gun Laws in Texas," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 19 December 2012 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 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

Portal to Texas History News

I just got my current copy of Beyond the Bytes, digital newsletter of the Portal to Texas History at the University of North Texas (UNT). You can read the entire newsletter online.

Highlights include digitization of:

• the O. Henry Project in a collaboration of the Austin History Center, the Texas General Land Office, and the Texas State Preservation Board;
• Gillespie County Historical Society photographs;
• Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary records;
• addition of the Texas Jewish Post, Southern Mercury, and El Regidor to the newspaper archive collection; and
• Civil War Papers.

The newsletter includes links to subscribe and to join the Portal to Texas History on Facebook.

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

TSLAC Genealogy After Dark - January 20, 2012

The following announcement was received from Diana Houston, Assistant Director, Information Services, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC).

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission will host a Genealogy After Dark event on Friday, January 20, from 6:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m.

Registration is limited to 30 participants.

The State Library will close at 5:00 p.m. and open at 6:00 p.m. for Genealogy After Dark participants. The building will be locked at 7:00 p.m. and no participants will be admitted after that time.

Parking is usually available in the Capitol Visitors Parking Garage at 1201 San Jacinto, one block to the east of the Zavala Building. There is no charge for visitors who arrive after 5:00 p.m.

• 6:00 — Sign-in
• 6:15 — Countdown to April 2: Getting Ready for the 1940 Census Release! program
• 7:15 — Light refreshments
• 7:30 — Texas Family Heritage Research Center and the Reference and Information Center open for research; Orientation: Requesting and Using Materials in the Texas State Archives (required for anyone planning to use archival materials during the event)
• 7:45 — Texas State Archives open for research
• 9:45 — Microfilm and photocopy rooms close; Texas State Archives close
• 10:00 — Building secured

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at geninfo@tsl.state.tx.us or 512-463-5455.

I traveled to Austin from East Texas just to attend an earlier Genealogy After Dark program and highly recommend it. You have immediate access to enthusiastic archivists who are giving up their evening to assist you with your research and teach you about the records they preserve. Take advantage of this and tell your legislative representatives how important TSLAC is to historians and genealogists.

I couldn't locate the registration form online. Maybe they don't post it since the attendance is limited to 30. But you can call or contact them using the information above and find out if slots are still available.

You can find a list of their genealogical resources online here. Don't miss the old-fashioned card catalog in the Archives section if you attend. Many of the names in historic documents have been indexed in the card-catalog which is not available online. You may find an ancestor indexed in a document you never knew they were named in.

(Their new website is displayed off-center by Google chrome, but works. It displays properly in Firefox. I never use Internet explorer so can't tell you how it displays.)

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, 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

Save Texas History Symposium: Texas Revolution at 175

The Texas General Land Office (GLO) is hosting the second Save Texas History Symposium on October 1 at the AT&T Executive Education Center located at 1900 University Avenue, Austin, TX 78705. Speakers and activities include:

• Dr. Gene Smith—Manifest Destiny Comes to Texas
  
• James P. Bevill—Financing the Texas Revolution
  
• Dr. Stephen Hardin—Texians in Revolt
  
• Dr. Gregg Dimmick—The Mexican Retreat from San Jacinto
  
• Dr. Alwyn Barr—moderating a panel discussion: Untold Stories of the Texas Revolution: Not a Soldier's Tale
  
• break out sessions include VIP tours of the GLO or Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, surveying 101 at the University of Texas, Texas History Educator's workshop, and a genealogy workshop with presentations on DNA and Genealogical Research (Debbie Parker Wayne, Certified Genealogist) Genealogical Resources at the County Level (Christy Moilanen, Travis County Archivist), Genealogical Resources at the GLO (James Harkins, Director of Public Services, Texas GLO), and Genealogical Resources at the National Archives (Aaron Holt, National Archives and Records Administration - Southwest Branch)
  

See http://www.glo.texas.gov/save-texas-history/ for more information. There will be many interesting vendors in the exhibit hall. Don't miss it.

Full disclosure: I will receive an honorarium for speaking at this conference, but I also recommended it last year when I wasn't speaking.

© 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.

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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

Saving Private Ryan ... and Parker and Johnson and ...

"The fire is moving this way. You have 30 minutes to evacuate." What does a genealogist grab to take with you as you run out the door? Probably the same things a non-genealogist grabs.

Let me quickly assure my friends we are not in this position, at least not yet and hopefully not ever. But many Texans have been these last weeks, more will be in the coming weeks. Some have lost their homes, some have lost their lives. My heart aches as I listen to news reporters interview the newly homeless and grieving. Some of these live less than ten miles from our house. They just live south of the place where the fire started and we live north. Wind direction and velocity have a major impact on the path of a fire.

I've often watched news footage of wild fires in far away desert locations like Arizona and California and West Texas, worrying about those who live near the fire. Now it's happening here in the heavy pine forests of East Texas. Now it hits harder as I watch the smoke drifts lingering above the trees a few miles away. And the smell of smoke seeps in even where the fire doesn't.

The extended drought has left the forests so dry it doesn't take much to start a fire. I saw a cigarette butt in the road near my mailbox a few days ago. How can anyone be so stupid as to toss a cigarette butt out of a car window anytime, much less in these dangerous, dry conditions?

Some people, without understanding this rural environment, make suggestions on how to stop the fire. I saw one blog comment telling people just to water their lawns so the grass was less likely to catch fire. This isn't the big city. This is an area where we don't really have lawns; we have the same stuff growing in the "yard" as what grows in the pasture on the other side of the fence. We don't have city water coming up the street in a pipe; in our back yards we have wells with pumps. Some of those wells have already gone dry due to the drought. Its hard to truck in enough water from Kroger and Walmart to keep several acres from going up in flames if the fire moves toward it. And if you do pump that much water out of the ground you may be causing another neighbor's well to go dry so they have no drinking water.

So I watch the leaves falling from the trees looking like it is months further into autumn than it is now. I watch my beautiful Southern Magnolia start to look more like a weeping willow. I look at my bedding plants and think I may be starting all over next spring - or the next spring where rain finally falls.

What do I grab to take with me in case we do have to evacuate quickly? Well, yesterday I staged boxes with the irreplaceable photographs (including Ryan, Parker, Johnson, and Richards men who served in twentieth century wars), my grandmother's wedding rings, the rhinestone watch my father gave my mother on the day I was born (the one that hasn't kept time for over fifty years and is missing stones, but still makes my eyes water when I see it), and a few of my husband's favorite trinkets (because he won't think of anything except life-saving essentials). He did pack his medicines. My laptop and one backup disk are packed in my briefcase ready to grab. My phone and charger are in my purse along with cash and credit cards. Two suitcases are conveniently located so they can be filled with clothes if there is enough time, otherwise we can shop for clothes later. The car's gas tank is full. We know where we will meet if we get separated during an evacuation. I walk through the house with a camera taking photographs of possessions for the insurance claim, if that becomes necessary. (I did this about six years ago, but possessions have changed since then. We need new photos.)

What gets left behind? Have you ever stood and stared at your belongings and asked yourself, "what can be replaced and what can't? What can be loaded up in one or two trips to the car?" Some of my favorite photos get left behind because family members have copies. I stare at the shelves of books I love. Even if I had enough boxes to pack them up, they'd take way too much time to load. They are replaceable, even the treasured copy of Professional Genealogy with signatures of both Elizabeth Shown Mills and Helen F. M. Leary. There's just no way to justify packing and moving the dishes given me by my grandmother or my mother-in-law or the Christmas decorations the kids have made over the years.

I've been careful about scanning most of my research for the last four or five years so that is on my backup disk. But the file cabinets have lots of older stuff not digitized yet. Why hasn't that moved higher up in my priority list before now, along with scanning all the old photos and snapshots? Its been on my to-do someday list for years. It just moved closer to the top of the list.

I'm torn between thinking I am worrying for nothing if we don't have to evacuate and thinking how sorry I will be if the fire comes this way. I convince myself that as long as Jim and I get out with our lives the rest doesn't really matter. I've been hearing that all week now from those who made it out and were able to talk to the journalists.

The genealogical takeaway from this: you probably know what you should do to preserve your research and artifacts. Make yourself do it now. When it's too late, it's too late.

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Texas Genealogy Event, 21 October 2011

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) will host a Genealogy After Dark event on Friday, October 21, from 6:30 p.m. until 12:00 a.m. At the same time, the West Waco Library Genealogy Lock-In will be held. Attendees in Waco will have access to resources in the state library and those in Austin will have access to resources in Waco. The Lone Star Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) will be providing free consultations during the event. A test is now being performed to see if the professional genealogists in one location can offer consultations to attendees in the other location using tools like Skype. It should be an interesting event.

According to this Central Texas Genealogical Society page the event there will include "the traditional training and informational resources of past years. All the computers in the library will access the genealogical sites and there will be ample help from volunteers and staff for research all evening."

You can sign up for e-mail notifications from the Texas State Library at this page to learn about events even before the forms are posted on their website. I attended the Genealogy After Dark event in February and it was wonderful to have access to all of the library and archive resources with one-on-one help available from the librarians and archivists who stayed after hours just to serve the patrons.

For more information on the Lone Star Chapter of APG and chapter events such as the Ancestor Roadshow consultations see this page. The chapter provides the free consultations as a community outreach program to assist researchers in furthering genealogical research.

© 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

Educational Sources for Historical Context

You still hear some genealogists bragging about the number of names in their database. It happens less frequently now than a few years ago. Good genealogists are more interested in learning the life story of ancestors than in adding more names to a database with nothing more than birth, marriage, and death dates.

Good genealogists are historians. We focus on history in the micro. Instead of studying history's big picture and bigwigs we want to know about the activities of the little man or woman. What was daily life like for a poor farm family in rural East Texas? What was the work day like for those in the East Texas lumber industry and sawmills? How did a young man meet and marry a young woman who lived more than fifty miles away in the days before he could jump in his Chevy pickup and be at her house in less than an hour?

Knowing more about history in the macro can help us answer those questions. But what if we weren't interested in history all those years ago when we were in school? You might be surprised how the information schoolteachers use today can add life to our family history. In addition to providing fun for students the lesson plans and school field trips might lead to just the information we need to spice up a family narrative. Here are a few examples of places to find that information to bring your family story to life.

Living history museums not only offer exhibits, many demonstrate activities with hands-on participation. In Nacogdoches, Texas, Millard's Crossing offers tours of many period buildings. In addition to seeing the buildings and furnishings, the tourist washes laundry on a scrub board and runs it through a hand-powered wringer before pinning it up on a clothesline, uses a push plow to create a furrow in the soil and plant seeds, shells (not shucks) corn, and writes with a quill pen. Just comparing the trip up the stairs in an 1840s cabin to the stairs in a modern home can bring insight into the daily life of the woman cleaning that cabin or caring for a sick child in the upstairs bedroom.

Books written for the public or children often have photos and give a good overview of a scholarly topic. The Early Settler Life Series: Early Loggers and the Sawmill by Peter Adams (Toronto and New York: Crabtree Publishing Co., 1992) shows how the men worked in the forests and sawmills, how the fallen trees were moved through the forest and down the river, the importance of the support staff that kept the loggers fed, and how both families and single men lived in the logging camps. Historic Communities: Tools and Gadgets by Bobbie Kalman (Toronto and New York: Crabtree Publishing Co., 1992) illustrates tools used by the farmer, his wife, the doctor, the miller, and even the toys the children played with.

Lesson plans written to help teachers can help family historians, too. Government and private projects make this information freely available online, often through universities and state archives. The Texas State Library and Archives Commission has a new online project, Texas in Transition: Railroads, Oil, and the Rise of Urban Texas. In addition to links to historical facts, there are links to great maps.

Need an 1874 map of Texas railroads to see how that young man traveled to meet his future wife? See "Texas New Yorker's Railroad Map of Texas," published 1874; Texas State Archives Map Number 0945, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin; digital image, Texas State Archives Map Collection ( http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/railroad/beginnings/map0945-display.html : accessed 12 April 2011).

Need an 1891 map of Dallas to determine the distance between the homes of two ancestors? How about this one linked from the section about the growth of Dallas: Theodore Schauseil, cartographer, "Revised Edition of Murphy and Bolanz Official Map of the City of Dallas and Suburbs/1891" (Publisher: J.P. Murphy and Charles Bolanz, Real Estate Brokers and Investment Bankers, Dallas, 1891); Texas State Archives Map Number 2346, Texas State Library and Archives Commission; Texas State Archives Map Collection ( http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/cgibin/aris/maps/maplookup.php?mapnum=2346 : accessed 12 April 2011).

These are only a few of the resources to help understand the lives of our ancestors. Be creative when looking for information. It isn't just the scholarly publications by learned historians that can give you what you need to write a great story.

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Texas History: Myths, Facts, and a new TSLAC Digital Display

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) has a new digital display celebrating the 175th anniversary of Texas independence from Mexico. Having grown up in Texas I never knew other states celebrate the date of admission to the United States. The TSLAC Web page indicates "instead Texas celebrates March 2, 1836, the date that a band of American and Mexican rebels declared independence from the autocratic rule of a distant government." I grew up learning all of those great Alamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto heroism stories. (And it was always pronounced san juh-sin-toe with a definite "j" sound. It wasn't until I went to Arizona that I heard san huh-sin-toe.)

TSLAC displays images of "A Dozen Documents that Made a Difference" along with transcripts and explanations of the story surrounding the document. Sometimes the true story knocks down a great Texas myth. Read the story of the "Yellow Rose of Texas" in the link displaying the passport of Emily West.

The Texas history I am learning as an adult does not exactly match what I learned as a student in Texas history classes in the 1960s and 1970s. Texans sometimes have a hard time giving up the myths. The stories are compelling. But knowing our true history, warts and all, is better than believing an untruth. If you want to read about three Texas heroes with the good and the bad traits discussed check out Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis by William C. Davis (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998). Don't miss the 160 pages of endnotes and the 26 page bibliography. There are more derivative sources than an advanced genealogist would use, but there are lots of references to newspapers, diaries, manuscript collections, and deed books, too.

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Texas Marriage Laws, 1836 (Gammel 1:1041)

The land we call Texas was first settled by Native Americans, then was part of Spain, France, and Mexico, before becoming the Republic of Texas. During the Spanish and Mexican years Catholicism was the official religion. Only Catholic priests could lawfully perform weddings. Due to the shortage of priests, settlers often married by bond or contract until a priest was available to sanctify the union of a couple.¹

Shortly after declaring independence from Mexico, the Texians had to form a new government and enact new laws. The Spanish influence was still strong even though many of the Texians were Anglo. On 16 January 1836 the legislature passed an act setting up courts and defining duties of clerks and others.² Section 9 of this act authorized "judges, alcaldes, commissarios, and regular accredited ministers of the Gospel, of whatever denomination" to celebrate the rites of matrimony in front of three disinterested and reputable witnesses. The officiant and two or more of the witnesses were required to sign copies of the certificate. One copy of the certificate was to be given to the bride, the other to be filed with "the archives of the municipality"³ (the county clerk after the new government was up and running). Notice that the officiant could be a representative of the government or a minister of any religion. A Catholic priest was no longer required. Interestingly, Spanish terms were still used for some officials: an alcalde was a mayor or the chief administrator of a Spanish town, a commissario was probably a commissioner. (See any Spanish-English dictionary or use http://translate.google.com/.)

Women had more recognition under Spanish law than under English common law.⁴ This Texas law specifically states the bride should be given the certificate. I interpret this as recognition that a woman could be entrusted with a legal document and might be more than a covered woman or a feme covert, even if she was married. A comparison to laws in many other states must be done before a definitive statement can be made as to the uniqueness of this statement in the Texas law. But a quick search in the online version of Hening's Statutes at Large for Virginia gets no hits for the word bride, except as part of a place named St. Bride's. The 1784 Virginia law states that a minister or congregation clerk must transmit a marriage certificate to the county clerk to be recorded, how much the county clerk should be paid to record the marriage, and the penalties for an officiant not filing the record in a timely manner.⁵ The law makes no mention of who else should receive a copy of the certificate, much less whether the bride might be given a copy.

A later clause in the 1836 Texas act described here legalized those contract and bond marriages that were not considered legal under Spanish or Mexican law:

all marriages heretofore celebrated by bond or otherwise, under the heretofore existing laws, are, in like manner, declared and decreed to be valid; provided, that all officers who have attended to the same, shall, on application of either party, or the friend of either party, file the bond or other evidence of such marriage, with the archives and records of the courts.

This law also declared "the issue of the parties legitimate."⁶ The declaration of legitimacy would minimize questions of inheritance that might arise later if the children had not been declared legitimate.

If a couple followed the law and filed a record with the county to legitimize a bond or contract marriage then ceremonies performed prior to the formation of The Republic of Texas may be documented in early county records. Don't assume a marriage date prior to 1836 means no record is available and overlook this possibility. Remember that some counties originally covered a much larger area than the modern-day county covers. Be sure you determine the county boundaries at the time of the early Republic to determine where to look for an early marriage record.

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1.
Mark M. Carroll, Homesteads Ungovernable: Families, Sex, Race, and the Law in Frontier Texas, 1823–1860, 8th ed. (Austin, Texas: Univ. of Texas Press, 2001), xi.
2.
H. P. N. Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, 10 vols. (Austin: Gammel Book Co., 1898), 1:1039-1046, "An Ordinance and Decree for opening the several Courts of Justice, appointing Clerks, Prosecuting Attorneys, and defining their duties, &c.," 16 January 1836; digital images, University of North Texas, The Portal to Texas History (http://texinfo.library.unt.edu/lawsoftexas/ : accessed 1 January 2011).
3.
Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, 1:1041-1042.
4.
Jean A. Stuntz, Hers, His,and Theirs: Community Property Law in Spain and Early Texas (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2005), 29.
5.
Freddie L. Spradlin, trans. "Laws of Virginia, October 1784--9th of Commonwealth," p. 505, Hening's Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of the Laws of Virginia, Virginia GenWeb (http://vagenweb.org/hening/vol11-26.htm : accessed 1 January 2011).
6.
Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, 1:1042.

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