New Book: Proving Up: Domesticating Land in U.S. History

Like most genealogists my "to read" list grows faster than my "have read" list. My husband's only flaw is that he is not independently wealthy allowing me to buy every book I want. Of course, if I could buy all the books I want I'd also need a bigger house.

For years I focused on how-to books to learn the discipline of genealogical research. Then I started focusing more on historical essays trying to understand why my ancestors did certain things and what their life was like. I just read a review by Michelle Mart of a book by Lisi Krall titled Proving Up: Domesticating Land in U.S. History. The review made me add this book to my read soon list:

The mythic power of western land has long dominated narratives of American history. Lisi Krall seeks to challenge this myth, untangling the narratives into their component parts of philosophy, economic systems, political decision making, and spiritual awe. Her slim volume, Proving Up: Domesticating Land in U.S. History, successfully argues that the frontier myth was constructed foremost from a capitalist imperative superimposed on material circumstances. (See more of the review here.)

The SUNY Press page for the book has a button that allows you to download the introduction and another button to preview some pages of the book. The hardcover is pricy for a genealogist's budget, but there is a link to "Direct Text" that allows a PDF to be downloaded. I haven't used "Direct Text" before. The link indicates you have online access to the book for 180 days for about 1/3 the price of the hardcover. A paperback version can be pre-ordered for almost the same price as the PDF. I'd much rather have a PDF version, but not if I can only access it for 180 days.

While trying to determine if the PDF file is locked after 180 days I found this 2008 article from The Exchange Online: The Newsletter of the Association of American University Presses. This article seems to indicate the 180 day limit is for online access, but that you can download a PDF that might not have a time limit. I definitely need to learn more about this before I order a "Direct Text" book.

It would be great if all of the university presses made PDF versions of books available. Many of the books published by university presses offer exactly the kind of historical information a good genealogist needs to better understand family history. In addition to dollars, shelf space also limits how many books I can own. Electronic books solve the space issue.

If you have experience with a "Direct Text" book and know whether or not the PDF file is locked after 180 days please leave a comment so we will all know. I'm all for electronic books and saving trees but not so big on tying myself to one e-book reader. I prefer an open format such as PDF that I can read on my computer or any reader I decide to buy in the future.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

1860 Map of U.S. Slave States

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

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

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

From Deep Web to Deep Dust

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

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

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

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

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

The Deep Web

100 Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web

10 Search Engines to Explore the Invisible web

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

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Old and New: Time Marches On

Last week a scene in West Texas brought rushing thoughts about the link between old and new—technologies, families, traditions. Two months is a long time between blog posts. In my defense, these last two months have been packed with genealogical volunteer commitments, three conferences in three consecutive weekends, and some well-earned time off to visit family during the holidays. That family visit started with a 1,000 mile trip from the piney woods of East Texas to the Sonoran desert of Arizona. A drive through West Texas is usually a long, mindless trek without much to look at. I appreciate the stark beauty of the plains, but 400 miles of it with few breaks can allow the mind of even a true plains lover to wander.

Approaching Abilene we started seeing many more modern windmills than on our last trip four years ago. The towering windmills with long, swooping arms have a graceful beauty I find soothing. No new technology comes without drawbacks, but the windmills appeal to me. I bet lots of citizens complained about electrical poles and wires being erected across our lands back in the early nineteenth century as some do today about the windmills. If it helps us use less oil it can't be all bad.

We stopped and I took a few photos of the windmills. A few miles further down the interstate I saw an image that made me suck in my breath. My patient husband got off the interstate and drove several miles on the service road so I could take another photo. The framing isn't as exquisite as the view from the interstate was, but I wasn't willing to risk death for the perfect photo.

Old and new, side by side, sharing the wide open spaces. Of course, the image doesn't show the true size of the modern windmills which are much farther away than the old-fashioned windmill is. My husband's store of patience isn't enough to drive around the backroads for hours looking for the perfect photo, but I'll settle for this.

The old and new were evident in our holiday celebration, too. Daughters cooked all the dishes. I wasn't allowed in the kitchen. The dressing wasn't from my grandmother's recipe or even my mother-in-law's oyster dressing I learned to love as an adult. New traditions and dishes were introduced. When my last maternal aunt died a few years ago I bemoaned the fact I was now the family matriarch. Now I'm thinking that may not be all bad. Of course, by the time the dinner was done my daughter who hosted the dinner was exhausted so she did let me and my other daughter clean the kitchen. Too bad that matriarch thing didn't carry through the cleaning part of the day.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Save Texas History Symposium: Discovering Spanish and Mexican Texas

The Texas General Land Office (GLO) is hosting the first Save Texas History Symposium on 6 November at the GLO office in Austin. Three speakers will discuss the history of Spanish and Mexican Texas. The announcement states:

Drs. Frank de la Teja, Light Cummins and Felix Almaraz Jr., will lead attendees through the cultural crossroads of early Texas and how the convergence of three unique cultures came together in Texas. Attendees will also be able to go on VIP tours of the GLO or Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, research the family tree, or survey the Texas Capitol through a hands-on, 19th Century frontier surveying exercise. Attendees also have the option of printing their own map and creating paper from everyday material.

See http://www.glo.state.tx.us/OC/savetxhist/symposium2010.html for more information. Registration is limited. I know many genealogists will be disappointed this event conflicts with the Texas State Genealogical Society (TSGS) Fiftieth Anniversary Conference in Waco. See http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txsgs/TXSGS-New/Pages/Conference.htm for more information on the TSGS conference.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

November Conferences and Seminars in East and Central Texas

There are many good conferences and seminars planned for the coming weeks. Last chance for a genealogy education "fix" before the holiday season.

On November 5 and 6 the Texas State Genealogical Society Conference is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the society. The conference will be held in Waco. The featured speaker on Saturday is Barbara Vines Little, a Certified Genealogist^SM renowned for her knowledge of Virginia research. In addition to speaking about research in Virginia, she will give pointers on locating women and on census research including the non-population census schedules: agricultural, manufacturing, slave, and social data. Teri Flack will be speaking on Texas research on Friday morning. Friday afternoon will be devoted to roundtable discussions and society management topics. See http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txsgs/ for more information.

In addition to the educational sessions, the Association of Professional Genealogists, Lone Star Chapter, offers attendees a free 15-minute consultation. The consultations are offered during breaks so no one misses the great speakers. A professional genealogist will review one specific genealogical question and offer suggestions for research that may provide an answer. See http://lonestarapg.com/roadshow_forms.htm for more information.

One week later on November 12 and 13 the East Texas Genealogical Society is presenting a seminar in Tyler with Certified Genealogist^SM J. Mark Lowe as the featured speaker. He will be speaking on research techniques, researching rural ancestors, and finding manuscripts in Kentucky and Tennessee. Lowe is as well-known for Kentucky and Tennessee research as Little is for Virginia research. See http://www.etgs.org/meetings/etgsmtg11.html for more information.

These speakers are knowledgeable, entertaining, and not to be missed. I hope to see you all there.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Texas General Land Office - W.D. Twichell Survey Records

The Texas General Land Office (TXGLO) just announced a new acquisition on H-NET. The introductory paragraph is:

Beginning more than 120 years ago, Willis Day Twichell surveyed tens of millions of acres of public and private lands in West Texas. He laid out more than 40 towns and provided surveying work in 165 of 254 counties in Texas. The lands he surveyed included the boundary between Texas and New Mexico, gave rise to the legendary XIT Ranch, funded the building of the State Capitol, helped build railroads and fund public education in Texas, and were integral to the exploration of oil and gas in West Texas throughout the 20th century. ... read more ...

TXGLO hopes to have the papers processed and available to researchers in the facility early in 2011 and online by early 2012. The correspondence covers work done beyond Texas borders in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico.

The Texas General Land Office Archives and Records division is one of the best archival facilities you'll ever work with. Knowledgeable and helpful archivists, prompt response times, and access to some of the most interesting records in early Texas history. You may learn much more about your ancestor than what is contained in the land grant files. There are records from the Court of Claims and other government entities investigating land claims to prevent fraudulent claims.

The TXGLO recently redesigned their website at http://www.glo.texas.gov/what-we-do/history-and-archives/index.html. In addition to a great new look, I found some new information since my last visit. The "Our Collections" link takes you to the online search form and to pages explaining the land grant process in Texas in great detail. If you have ancestors who moved to Texas or who fought for Texas and may have received a land grant, don't miss this site. More than two million maps are available online in PDF format.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Proof Reading: It's Never Enough

I recently finished an essay for a big project. Several times during the months I worked on the essay, I printed it and carefully proof read. I know I find more errors in print than on a computer screen. At the end, I let the essay sit for a week then proof read it again. As expected, I found more errors and corrected them. I read the narrative out loud and corrected more errors.

I submitted the essay thinking I had done due diligence on proof reading. Of course, days after submission I found more errors in the essay. Not just typos, but I left the name of the state off of a census citation. One citation used the name of the city where a person lived at the time of death instead of the name of the state capitol where the death record is archived. There were other errors I don't want to admit to in public.

I need more proof reading tricks. Letting someone else read an essay is a great way to find typos and sentences that need to be reworded. Because my essay was essentially a test, I could not ask one of my friends to proof read it for me. I learned one week is not enough cooling-off time for a project I have been working on intensely for months and years. I need to let the essay sit longer before the final reading. Next time I will read the citations out loud as well as the narrative. Another proof reading tip is to read your essay backwards. My mind balks at reading backwards. I think I am going to have to practice this.

If you need a demonstration of how your mind "fills in" what it wants to see check out eChalk optical illusions. Scroll down to "Jumbled Words" and click on it. You may be surprised at how your mind works as you read the paragraph. This is a great demonstration of why proof reading is so important.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Results: Glasses in the Cupboard Rim Up or Down

Asking an open-ended question of genealogists always brings out some wonderful family stories. My recent question about storage of drinking glasses caused several of us to spend some time with fond memories of moms and grandmothers. A few of us were spurred to phone home. Some of us commented on differences between mothers and daughters and others on how we do things like mom without knowing why. I enjoyed all of the responses. Thank you.

I heard someone state once that rim-side down glass storage was a result of the Dust Bowl in the U.S. I could see how those in the Dust Bowl might start storing glasses rim-side down, but there had to be other reasons in other areas. So I asked. Here are the survey results on whether glasses are stored rim-side up or down and why in different locales.

One responder had two family lines in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. One family stored glasses rim-side up and the other family stored them down. This story emphasizes the conclusion supported by the other responses. Even if the Dust Bowl caused some families to store their glasses rim-side down, dust and bugs exist everywhere. And there are other reasons that might cause a homemaker to choose one storage plan over another.

Thirty families are represented in this informal, unscientific survey. Twenty-six store glasses rim-side down, two rim-side up, two alternate glasses up and down.

Of those who store glasses rim-side down, eight blamed bugs and critters. Most of those were located on the east coast (New York, Maryland), the south (Kentucky, Georgia, Texas, unspecified), Hawaii, and multiple areas for a family who made frequent moves to different Army posts. Three responders from New York and central Canada blamed both critters and dust. Five responders from Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, and New England blamed dust. Four families placed the glasses upside down to dry completely. Four did not specify. One person pointed out it is easier to dry dust off the outside of a glass than to clean the inside if you have big hands. Another pointed out that stability often determines how we stack and store dishes. (A very interesting analysis I would bet comes from someone with an engineering frame of mind. Thanks.)

No reason was given for the rim-side up storage in Pennsylvania although other families in the same area stored rim-side down. Dust covered all the dishes no matter how they were stored in Oklahoma and Kansas. Maybe if you had to wash the dishes again before use it didn't matter much which way they were stored.

Both homemakers who alternate glasses up and down do it to save space.

I also learned something new. One family stored everyday glasses rim-side down. When crystal glasses were purchased the manufacturer recommended they be stored rim-side up to prevent the fragile glass from chipping. Interestingly, several responders mentioned they or their daughters don't follow mom's methods.

Thank you all for sharing your stories.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved

Wisdom Wednesday: Glasses in the Cupboard Rim Up or Down

So, this is my first blog theme post and I'm probably bending the rules. I am going to share Big Mama's wisdom, but also ask if others were taught this same habit. Big Mama was my mother's mother. Grandma, Granny, Meema, and Nana were names already used for other grandmothers in the family by the time Big Mama's first grandchild (me) came along. But I digress.

One of Big Mama's cardinal rules was that glasses and cups were placed rim-side down in the cabinets. I never thought of questioning this. It was just the way things were done. When I met my husband I had to teach him proper dish placement. His mother had not taught him this kitchen imperative.

A few years ago I heard a presentation about the Dust Bowl. The speaker said the habit of placing dishes upside down in the cupboard came about during those years when dirt and dust blew in through every little crack and settled into everything in the house. She didn't explain why only glasses and cups were placed upside down. The image of teetering stacks of upside down plates and bowls seems to clearly indicate why this rule didn't apply to those dishes. And she didn't have a source for linking this habit to the Dust Bowl other than her family lore. We all know how dependable that can be.

My husband's family was in Buffalo, New York, at the time of the Dust Bowl. My family, practicing this rule, was in Texas during the Dust Bowl years, but not the panhandle area where the Dust Bowl hit hardest. In the East Texas piney woods the rim-down habit could have easily been instituted due to bugs or plain old dust — unrelated to the wind whipping over the plains that had been stripped of the grasses that kept the soil from becoming airborne dust.

This is much too small a group to make a sweeping generalization. If you reply to this blog post, please tell me whether your family is of the rim-down or rim-up variety and where they lived during the 1930s. If I get enough responses maybe we can figure out where this habit comes from.

By the way, I devoured Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Boston: Mariner / Houghton Mifflin, 2006). Even though he did not answer my critical social history dish storage question, his book is a great read. He interviewed many survivors of the Dust Bowl. His book includes the personal stories as well as the government policies that contributed to this American disaster.

© 2010, Debbie Parker Wayne, All Rights Reserved