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

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

NGS: Building New Bridges in the West

Genealogical conferences are often an interesting mix of genealogy and history. The upcoming National Genealogical Society 2013 Family History Conference will truly represent both sides of this equation. The conference theme of "Building New Bridges" symbolizes "the West as a timeless 'bridge' where cultures, nations, and technologies connect."¹

The conference committee, led by Stefani Evans, CG, went all out to provide a unique program. Yes, you'll find the traditional sessions we all need no matter where we do research. Thomas W. Jones on "Debunking Misleading Records." Elizabeth Shown Mills on "Information Overload? Effective Project Planning, Research, Data Management, and Analysis." Sharon Tate Moody on "Strategy for Research Success: How to Analyze Your Evidence and Plan Your Next Step." And more than I have space to name from many other names every genealogist will recognize.

Every conference has some sessions that focus on the regional history. Stefani and her team have gone above and beyond to provide unique topics and sessions not only pertinent for Nevada, but for anyone working in any of the states once colonized by Spain and Mexico and all western states. Stefani's ties to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas probably helped in bringing in so many well-known historians as speakers. I hope all of the genealogists at the conference let these speakers know how much we appreciate them sharing their knowledge with us.

One of sessions I consider must-see is "Interethnic Women and Marriage along Spanish Colonial Frontiers 1820–80" by Maria Raquel Casas on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. A few years ago I read her book on this topic.² Even though the book focuses on California most of the history and analysis can also be applied to Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and other Spanish-influenced states. I learned of many sources I hadn't heard of before when I read the footnotes and the twenty-six page bibliography. Check out her other publications on her CV.

Another must-see is Davis S. Tanenhaus on "Legal Histories of Families" on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. I first heard of Tanenhaus through the Legal History Blog and saw some interesting article titles associated with his name in law journals. His publications are listed on his CV and there are many titles that can help any genealogist understand her family's history.

There are a lot of blocks on the schedule where choosing one speaker means missing another must-see. I hope lots of these sessions will be recorded so I can listen to them when I get home. I make use of all my travel time by listening to recorded genealogy sessions. My phone and tablet only have a few songs, but are full of genealogy sessions from conferences over the years.

Stefani's team made an effort to bring in speakers and topics that are not widely available through webinars and online sources and new topics and new speakers. You really need to be in Vegas next week to get the full experience. I'm not a gambler. Most of my family never migrated west of Texas. But I expect to learn so much that will help me with my future research. I hope my brain doesn't turn to mush until after the conference because I am scheduled to do one of the last sessions on Saturday before the conference ends. This is my only complaint to the conference planning committee (said with an understanding smile).

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1. Diane L. Richard, "NGS Announces Plans for 2013 Family History Conference in Las Vegas," Upfront with NGS blog, posted 17 May 2012 (http://upfront.ngsgenealogy.org/2012/05/ngs-announces-plans-for-2013-family.html : accessed 1 May 2013).

2. Maria Raquel Casas, Married to a Daughter of the Land: Spanish-Mexican Women and Interethnic Marriage in California, 1820-1880 (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2007).

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "NGS: Building New Bridges in the West," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 1 May 2013 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).


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

NASA Pub: Earth as Art

WOW! Sometimes our tax dollars are used to add beauty to our lives.

This is not really a genealogy-related post except maybe peripherally. But it is a subject dear to my heart so ...

As beautiful as earth can be from land-bound eye level, it is even more fascinating when seen from above, especially high above. Years ago I would sit mesmerized watching the NASA channel as it broadcast the view from the window of the space shuttle. Even when I should have been doing something more productive, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the beautiful images on the screen and the game of trying to figure out where on earth this feature was. I haven't seen this series on the NASA channel recently. I wish NASA would reinstitute the feed of images from the space shuttle missions. For me, this is much better than most of the "reality" shows some of us watch.

There are beautiful images of earth from space illustrated and described in "Earth As Art" created by NASA.¹ I learned of this publication on the Free Technology for Teachers blog. This is a blog useful to every genealogist who writes (all of us, right?) or does presentations.

As beautiful as the NASA images are as art, don't skip over the descriptions which explain the colors and important features in each image. This image is a portion I cropped from an image of the Lena River Delta in Russia.² Compare it to the image of the Mississippi River Delta in the U.S. on pages 84–85 of the book.

The images might be useful as art on Powerpoint slides (faded as background images or cropped for a border decoration or as a bullet image) or for a presentation on interesting place names (like Lake Disappointment, Australia) or if you happen to have ancestral events in one of the locations depicted on the images shown (like the Mississippi River).

I'm not a lawyer. You should confirm status of the images before using them. But, in general, creations of the U.S. government are considered to be in the public domain. The book has no copyright statement included and does not indicate any restrictions on use. But be sure to properly cite the images to avoid plagiarism.

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1. Lawrence Freidl, et al., Earth as Art (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2012); electronic edition (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/703154main_earth_art-ebook.pdf : accessed 23 December 2012).

2.Cropped portion of "Lena River Delta, Russia," Lawrence Freidl, et al., Earth as Art (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2012), 76–77; electronic edition (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/703154main_earth_art-ebook.pdf : accessed 23 December 2012).

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "NASA Pub: Earth as Art," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 23 December 2012 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/ : accessed [date]).

© 2012, Debbie Parker Wayne, CG, 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

RIP: Neil Armstrong, Moonwalker

Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted last night, "Men Walk On Moon - The only positive event in the last 50 yrs for which everyone remembers where they were when it happened." (I don't tweet. I learned about this message from a Wall Street Journal blog post.)

I thought about that and realized he was right. All the other big events I remember were bad things. The assassination of Kennedy—the first political event I remember. Learning of the death of relatives. Hearing about and seeing terrorist attacks perpetrated by both foreign and American-born terrorists.

Why do we remember the bad things so vividly? Why don't the great things make connections in our minds? Most women have strong memories of childbirth. That is both a good event and a painful time so still fits the theory. As our grandmas pass down memories of family events, how many good things get lost to time? We lose some of the stories of disreputable ancestors when grandma purposefully doesn't tell them. But how many good stories had she forgotten?

Where's the time machine when we need it? Maybe a time machine is a dream. But the only possibility of ever seeing one depends on the kind of research done to explore space. Here's to the future Moonwalkers and Marswalkers that my genealogist descendant may research and that Neil Armstong will inspire.

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To cite this blog post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "RIP: Neil Armstrong, Moonwalker," Deb's Delvings Blog, posted 26 August 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

Finding History

Not only have I been pressed for time to blog myself, I haven't been able to keep up reading other's blogs recently. I took some time this morning to check out a few good ones.

Harold Henderson's Midwestern Microhistory has always been a favorite. His latest post on history book reviews is "History books of potential interest to genealogists."¹ If you click on "books" in his right navbar you can see all of his posts related to books. One of the great things about blog labels is that you can easily go back and find things posted years ago on a related topic.

I have learned of quite a few history books that focus on issues, large and small, important to family history and to the history of women from Harold's posts. Check out:

Harold Henderson, “She fought the law, and sometimes won,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 July 2009 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com/2009/07/she-fought-law-and-sometimes-won.html : accessed 8 May 2012).

Harold Henderson, “4 new books from Chicago,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 May 2009 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com/2009/05/4-new-books-from-chicago.html : accessed 8 May 2012).

Harold Henderson, “Learning about divorce,” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 January 2009 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com/2009/01/learning-about-divorce.html : accessed 8 May 2012).

You'll find what interests you if you follow the links on his blog.

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Notes:
1. Harold Henderson, “History books of potential interest to genealogists” Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 3 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com/2012/05/history-books-of-potential-interest-to.html : accessed 8 May 2012).

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To cite this post:
Debbie Parker Wayne, "Finding History," Deb's Delvings in Genealogy, blog, posted 8 May 2012 (http://debsdelvings.blogspot.com/2012/05/finding-history.html : accessed [access date]).

© 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

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

Slavery and the Law

Those specializing in African American genealogical research may be interested in the latest issue of the American Society for Legal History's Law and History Review, a special issue on "Law, Slavery, and Justice." Cambridge Journals Online provides access. Some publications on the site are freely available and some are behind a fee wall. The site allows short-term (48 hour) subscription access as well as full subscriptions for multiple publications. This issue of Law and History Review was freely available on November 15, 2011.

Here is the Table of Contents for Law and History Review, Volume 29, Issue 04:

• Law, Slavery, and Justice: A Special Issue, Introduction by David S. Tanenhaus
  
• Slavery and the Law in Atlantic Perspective: Jurisdiction, Jurisprudence, and Justice by Rebecca J. Scott
  
• Judges, Masters, Diviners: Slaves’ Experience of Criminal Justice in Colonial Suriname by Natalie Zemon Davis
  
• Prosecuting Torture: The Strategic Ethics of Slavery in Pre-Revolutionary Saint-Domingue (Haiti) by Malick W. Ghachem
  
• Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York by Martha S. Jones
  
• Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution by Rebecca J. Scott
  
• Resetting the Legal History of Slavery: Divination, Torture, Poisoning, Murder, Revolution, Emancipation, and Re-enslavement by Walter Johnson
  

Even though you may not find an ancestor's name in these article, the background history is invaluable. Many of the hundreds of footnotes have links to Google Books and/or Google Scholar for easy access to preview text and reviews.

Thanks to Legal History Blog for alerting me to this issue. I love the way the Internet and blogs make cross-discipline studies so much easier than when we had to travel to university libraries to find specialized journals. But all of the recommendations make my "to buy or read" list grow endlessly and never get any smaller.

© 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

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

Another Good Reason to be in Boston

In addition to the Boston University, Certificate Program in Genealogical Research, here's another great reason to appreciate living near Boston. The Boston Early American History Seminar is open to the public and free (unless you pay the reasonable fee of $25 to receive advance copies of the papers to be discussed and to support the buffet supper served after meetings). This forum for early American history has several sessions of particular interest to genealogists. Also notable is the interest of these professors in both history and genealogy.

6 December 2011, 5:15 p.m.
Abigail Chandler, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Ruth Wallis Herndon, Bowling Green State University
Panel Discussion on Colonial Family Law
Comment: Cornelia Hughes Dayton, University of Connecticut

Chandler's faculty page has bare details, but her thesis is online and looks very interesting:

• "At The Magistrate's Discretion: Sexual Crime And New England Law, 1637-1718"

Herndon's faculty page lists several interesting books and projects:

• Unwelcome Americans: Living on the Margin in Early New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)
• Children Bound to Labor: Pauper Apprenticeship in Early America (Cornell University Press, 2009), co-edited with John E. Murray
• "collaborating with Dr. Ella Wilcox Sekatau, medicine woman, ethnohistorian and genealogist of the Narragansett Tribe, on a project to re-tell New England history using both Euro-American and Narragansett sources"
• "Children of Misfortune: The Fates of Boston’s Poor Apprentices," a study that traces the lives of children bound out from the Boston almshouse in the eighteenth century

6 March 2012, 5:15 p.m.
Karin Wulf, College of William and Mary
Ancestry as Social Practice in Eighteenth-Century New England: The Origins of Early Republic Genealogical Vogue
Comment: Laurel Ulrich, Harvard University

Wulf's faculty page lists several interesting books and projects:

• Milcah Martha Moore’s Book: A Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America (Penn State, 1997), with Catherine Blecki
• The Diary of Hannah Callender, 1758-1788 (forthcoming), with Susan Klepp
• Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Cornell University Press, 2000)
• a study of the relationship between genealogical practices and political culture: “Lineage: The Politics and Poetics of Genealogy in British America, 1680-1820”

Thanks to Legal History Blog for a heads up on the seminar

© 2011, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved