Your Town's History - A Treasure Hunt

I've lived in my small city for 17 years - longest I've been in one place in my entire life.  With all the rain we've been having, I decided I would spend time learning more about my town's history. Nothing like curling up on the couch during a storm with a good book!

A week ago, I visited my local historical society and spoke with the archivist.  She kindly loaned me two books.  One is sourced beautifully so it's led me to find more information.  It was written by a former historical society member whose career was in library science.  The other book was a commemorative of the city's 125th anniversary and was written by historians/archeologists noted in the state. The commemorative book begins with pre-colonization, the other book begins with the town's founding.

I discovered an online out of print book written by a local in the 1960's when he was in his 80's.  He personally knew many of the founders so his perspective is slightly different than those of the other authors.  There is one more book I'd like to locate that will give me a perspective from the immigrants who arrived here circa 1905.  Then I plan to peruse old newspaper articles for additional information.

I've learned several things...

1. There once were two Native American middens - one a kitchen midden that was leveled for home construction and the other, near downtown, was a gravesite that was desecrated by a noted Smithsonian archeologist who decided to have the middle sliced in half so he could quickly see the strata.  He discovered skulls and charred bones.  No one seems to know where those remains have been interred.  
2. The first burial in the city cemetery was that of a murder victim.  The shooter was never charged as it was determined to be accidental.  Um, sure.
3. Hamilton Disston was a fishing buddy of the then-governor and was allowed to purchase large tracts of land he selected because the state was insolvent.  He bid .25/acre and then, turned around and told those who were already land owners that they had to pay him $1.25/acre for the land they were on.  No one took this to court?  And we complain about tech billionaires today!  
4. My city had the first female physician and the first female pharmacist in the state.  
5. We had electricity early until we didn't.  The man who supplied it decided to relocate south and not telling anyone, dismantled his equipment and left town.  The residents woke up one morning to discover they had no electricity.  When someone checked they discovered he was gone so a small group of business leaders decided they would take over the building he vacated.  It had been the original ice house and to this day, is a power plant.  If you are a long time reader you know I frequently complain about power outages - now I understand that this is just part of the city's culture lol.

I'm glad I took this dive into my town's past.  Wearing my genealogical hat, I have a different lens which I analyze the information presented in what I'm reading.  It's also led me to question some of the conclusions that were drawn.  Now, when I drive around town I have a better understanding of why buildings were placed where they were and the people who once populated them.  

To get started, visit your local historical society or library.  Use the references provided in any books or pamphlets to lead you to additional information.  Definitely check out online resources but be wary, as they may be wrong!  I discovered last year that Wikipedia claims the location of a nearby city's first orphanage address to be wrong based on documents I found in a university archive.  Property records supported the archive information.  Like always, double and triple check your findings.  Drive or walk around, if possible, or use Google Maps to get a visual of what you discover.  

I've considered this a treasure hunt in my own backyard.  After being home for the past year plus, it's a wonderful way to reacclimate to your community.  

ReConnecting With Taboo Family

I had planned to not use Ancestry.com this week as I continue to update my RootsMagic synched tree but due to an unexpected family contact, that didn't happen. I needed to go on to check a relationship and add information to an individual that I hadn't researched before due to family silence.

If your family is like mine, you probably have encountered situations that lead to uncomfortable communication between relatives.  You might have had DNA results come back that show that someone isn't biologically related.  There may have been a nasty divorce, hurt over a probate or a disagreement over opinions. The falling out may have even been as a result of criminal conduct.  Regardless of the cause, going forward can be difficult, especially if it has been years since the initial disconnect.

I was faced with establishing a reconnection this week and I'd like to share how I handled it in case you find yourself in my position. 

Here's the background...back when I was in college I remember my future mother-in-law calling my now husband.  She was clearly upset as she relayed to him how an individual who had married into the family had been charged with several murders.  You read that right - more than 1 murder.  The final charge would be for 4 murders but there was a list of many more that would have occurred had the arrest not been made.  

Understandably, my husband's mother was shocked, sad, confused and angry.  This was done by someone she trusted, knew for years and there had been no indications that the individual was this dangerous.  Since my husband and I were living far from the crime, we didn't have access to news stories of the trial and subsequent conviction of two life sentences.  We didn't know that 20 years after the conviction, the perpetrator would request that state supreme court to grant a new trial, that the original lawyer would have written a semi-fictional book about the case because it was so bizarre and that the lawyer's son would feature the case in a podcast.  In other words, even though the crimes were committed nearly 50 years ago, it is still in the news in the area where they occurred.  Since we don't live in that area we had no knowledge of any of this until this week.

I don't know if my mother-in-law reached out to her blood relative to offer support during that difficult time.  It became a taboo subject on that side of the family so, when I began my online family tree in the 1990's, I didn't update that line.  Imagine my surprise this week when I received a message from a descendant of the murderer who was asking what my relationship to the family was.

Since this was not my relation, except through marriage, I immediately asked my husband how he wanted me to handle this - should I respond or not?  If it had been my family I would have messaged back as the writer was not responsible for a heinous crime and I would consider the person a victim, too.  But this wasn't my family so I felt that I needed to hear what my husband would want.  His parents are long deceased but had they been alive, I would have checked with them also.  

My husband had no preference and told me he respected however I wanted to handle it as he knows I would be professional.  I chose to respond, clarify the relationship and offered to update my tree if I had wrong info or if there was additional information to add.  I got a response a few hours later thanking me for the information and informing me of a family member who was now deceased.  I responded with condolences.

Interestingly, that deceased family member had relocated from the area where the murders occurred and lived a little over an hour away from us for nearly 10 years but had not reached out to us.  Perhaps they were embarrassed by what had happened or hurt that we had not reached out to them in their time of need.  I will never know.  

Although not in this case, what I do know is that it can be difficult to re-establish a connection and sometimes severance is the best (and safest) option.  I suspect, with the difficulties of the past year, people are re-evaluating relationships and becoming more aware of their mortality.  As the world slowly begins to reopen, I wouldn't be surprised if more relatives reunite.  This could be a wonderful time to move forward if that is in everyone's best interest. Be forewarned - this could be happening to you soon.

Resolving Genealogy Tech Issues

I abhor spending time on tech issues but that has been on my to-do list for awhile so I decided to spend this week taking care of needed updates. First on the agenda was to update my blog settings.  Typically, I just have to click a button and the settings are updated.  Last May, I got a popup that said I must update my PHP settings first.  I ignored it because I was spending 12 hours a day online and didn’t want to have to spend more time researching how to do that.  On Sunday, I decided I really had to figure it out. 

Trying to update PHP is a little like trying to find a genealogical document.  To put it simply, you just need to know where to look.  In actuality, it’s a whole lot more complicated.  I started by Googling and was directed to go to the cPanel.  Nowhere does it tell you where the cPanel resides.  One of my family members said it was on my hard drive, mistakenly thinking I was looking for the C Drive.  Another said I probably downloaded it somewhere on my hard drive from my Hosting company.  More Googling took me to YouTube but again, the videos do not tell you how to find the cDrive but do show you what to do when you find it.

This reminds me of desperately trying to locate an obit but you can’t find the newspaper. You know the time frame it should have been published but that particular issue is missing.  I decided to reach out to those in the know – I posted on a genealogical list serv.  Three folks quickly came to the rescue – they told me to go to my cPanel.  Umm, right, but where is the cPanel?  I was directed to contact my Hosting company.

The Hosting company was experiencing heavy contact volume so they recommended placing a ticket with my concern. About 4 hours later I got a response and ta da, it directed me to the same YouTube video that didn’t answer my question in the first place.

On Monday, I tried to chat with the company who was still experiencing high volume.  After a short wait I got a techie who sent me to the same YouTube video.  I was trying not to be rude but this was ridiculous.  I asked to be directed to the cPanel from the home page.  Instead, she took a pic of the page I should be on.  I told her my page did not look like her page and how did she get to her page.  Light bulb moment on her part – “Oh,” she responds – “you don’t know where to find the cPanel.  Click on Hosting and there it is.”  Two clicks later and I had the update done. 

Next I decided to tackle updating my Legacy Family Tree and RootsMagic tree to Ancestry.  I am embarrassed to admit it has been 2 years since I last did that.  The Legacy update took just a few minutes since there is no media.  I was dreading the RootsMagic as its been synching but the program makes you go into each person changed and update individually.  I toyed with the idea of just dumping what I had and starting fresh but I was worried that it would take up too much of my desk computer’s time and I wouldn’t be able to use it for anything else.  I also was concerned with power outages that might disrupt the synch and then, well, I’d be worse off than I was currently.  Years ago, I synched Ancestry to Family Tree Maker and then it just stopped working.  Each company blamed the other.  I never got it resolved and so I became a beta tester for RootsMagic when they were developing their synch. 

For those reason, I decided to just go for it – painstakingly checking every individual change.  Took me a few minutes to realize I needed to ADD all the new people first.  Wish there was a way to filter what the discrepancy is – new to RootsMagic? New to Ancestry? In RootsMagic but not Ancestry?  In Ancestry but not RootsMagic?  You can get in the zen by doing the same monotonous task over and over and it would really speed the process up.  Alas, that wasn’t the case so I spent all day Monday just adding new people from Ancestry to RootsMagic.  Tuesday I got throught the A surnames, I’m now up to G.  Every few minutes I have I update.  At this rate, it’ll be another week before I get everything where it needs to be. 

I have colleagues who have completely given up on the synching saying it is a waste of time.  I understand their time issue but I’m more worried about losing important info I saved to just Ancestry. 

Problem could be solved if I just saved everything in the first place to my hard drive but as I’ve mentioned, I’m awful with back ups and I’d hate to lose everything.  We’re supposed to be getting 3 full days of rain and I’m hoping so that not only will our drought end but that I have nothing else pressing to do but update RootsMagic.  Hope you’re upcoming week will be much more exciting!

 

Free African Americans During Slavery

Image courtesy of DK Find Out

I often wondered how 10% of Black Americans had obtained their freedom by 1860.  When I looked for manumission records I often found none.  Was I looking in the wrong places?  Did war/climate/insects/careless people destroy the records?  How could so many records just disappear?

I attended a recent NGS Conference session by Ric Murphy who finally gave me the answer - there were Black Americans who were "indentured" and not enslaved arriving as early at 1619.  This was certainly news to me as I never was taught that in history classes.  I've been to Jamestown and no one there ever mentioned that fact.  How did I miss this my entire life?!

The story is intriguing and much too long for a blog article.  Major players were the Roman Catholic Church, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and what is now the Netherlands.  Piracy and violation of international treaties resulted in the decision to indenture rather than enslave.  

I wish the book was offered in an electronic version as I'm trying to pair down my hard copies but it is not.  There is one one-star review on Amazon but the person who left their concerns is in error in some of the points made - the Native Americans and the colonists did not get along prior to the African's arrival and the majority of the white settlers had died due to famine because they feared hunting in the woods as Native Americans were hunting them.  There is strong evidence from a variety of sources outside of the US that those first arriving Africans did come from a well educated, multilingual area of Africa. Although we now know that Bermuda is not part of the Caribbean, early maps considered it as part of the Caribbean islands.  The author could have clarified that but I wouldn't avoid reading the book because he didn't.  

Put this book on your summer reading list - Ric Murphy. Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia. Charleston, SC:  The History Press, 2020.