Karen About Genealogy

The Family History Writing Challenge

2012-02-02T11:05:00.000-05:00

I have signed up for the Family History Writing Challenge. I have not committed to a word count, because I will be writing what I can when I can, as a busy college student with an honors thesis to get finished within the next five weeks!

Today I am going to talk about my grandma. She was not genealogically or biologically my grandmother, but my great-aunt. However, my mother was ain intra-family adoption. Her father, Benjamin Franklin Reed, died in a railroad accident in 1917, not long before my mother's first birthday. The Reed family ended up pretty much taking my mother and my aunt away from their mother and adopting them into the family. My aunt went to one great-uncle and his wife, and my mother to another.

But my grandma was my grandma. I never knew any of my grandparents, as three of them died before I was born, and the last one died when I was just four years old. My grandma, Mary LeSourd Reed, was a baseball fan. She loved to watch baseball on television on a lovely spring day or a warm summer day, and I would go over to her house, just around the block from ours, to visit. I got into the habit of watching baseball with her.

I formed an attachment to the Brooklyn Dodgers, possibly because of the superb pitching of Sandy Koufax and the great catching of Roy Campanella. The Yankees could have Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris (both of whom I did admire for the superior athletes they were); the Dodgers were my guys.

My grandma had a "curse" that we would chant when the opposing batter came up to bat. We would make clockwise circles with one haind, fingers extended, and chant, "Cat fuzz around that bat!" That was great fun, and a bit of "witchery" that we shared with no one else.

When my mom gave my grandma a Dachshund for Christmas one year, the dog, Peanuts, became part of the baseball audience with us. He would curl up beside the ottoman on which my grandma rested her feet, and remain, ever faithful and vigilant. He was not bothered by our occasional shouts at the game, or our practice of our "dark art." Talk of "cat fuzz" disturbed the dog not.

I still have a soft spot in my heart for baseball and the Dodgers, in spite of revelations about the economics of the game that make my blood boil, and other shortcomings which have come to light in recent years. But there's nothing like a good game on a spring day to cheer me up.
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What political animals lurk in your genealogy?

2012-01-26T11:58:00.000-05:00

I am sitting at an outside table at the food court at the student union at the University of North Florida. There is chaos on campus today because CNN, the Secret Service, local and campus police, and all sorts of subordinate supporting personnel are swarming all over the campus. Tonight, CNN's latest in their series of Republican presidential debates (a term that is used loosely these days) will be here. So it seems appropriate to discuss the search for the political animals lurking in our family trees.

None of my family, that I know of, has held political office of any sort since my eighth great-grandfather Samuel Packard was Surveyor of Highways and Collector of Minister's Rates (i.e., the tax man) in colonial Massachusetts in the mid-1600s. I guess we're not much in the way of political activism.

Knowing how one's ancestors swung politically can help to flesh out the full picture of their lives, especially if they did hold local, state, or national office. Politics informs our social views, and certainly today there are many ways in which peoples' political and religious views intersect. Economic status may not be a good indicator at times of one's political views. Sometimes, people's political views do not seem in concert with their real economic situation, but as the "John Dickinson" character in the Broadway play and movie 1776 said, "Most men would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor."

Do you have among your family's effects any political memorabilia? Campaign buttons, literature, an autograph of a famous person or any of the Presidents? My aunt graduated from Columbia University during the time Dwight D. Eisenhower was the university's president, before he became President of the United States. I have her diploma, and thus I have Eisenhower's signature. I have signatures of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, too, but they may have been machine signatures. I have more optimism that the Reagan signature is the real deal, as it was in a personal note.

Obituaries are good places to look for political affiliation. I have several ancestral obits which say what their political affiliation was. There also may be meeting notices mentioning your ancestor, or feature articles in the newspapers, which might indicate political affiliation.

'Tis the season for politics. If you, like me, are up to the gills with the nasty advertisements and the sniping, turn off the television, get down to the library or online, and take this opportunity to research your ancestors' political affiliations.
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Deja vu all over again

2012-01-20T15:04:00.000-05:00

I was walking across the UNF campus after having had lunch at the Boathouse, the eatery upstairs in the Student Union, when I spied a banner hanging from the second-floor walkway of the Brooks Health Sciences building. The banner, in very large black letters, said, "STOP THE WAR." I nearly stumbled, because suddenly I had the feeling that I had been transported back forty-seven years (oy! It has been that long!) to my time at Florida State University, the first time I went to college. That time, of course, the war we wanted stopped was in Vietnam. But it certainly did feel like deja vu all over again.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Not blacked out, but I support efforts to kill PIPA

2012-01-18T01:09:00.000-05:00

As usual, I was a day late and a dollar short with the "anti-SOPA/PIPA" strike on the internet. So I'm not blacked out.

However, I support the effort to block the passage of this ill-conceived legislation. Congress needs to do more research and get their heads on straight before they try to pass such laws. They need to be more focused. We do not need legislation that is so broad-brush that it contains the seeds of awful unintended consequences.

I am not just gassing off here. I do not sit on the sidelines griping. I am a producer of content, I have intellectual property under copyright, not only in this blog, but also in two books. I intend to write more books. So I'm on the front lines in this thing. But I agree with Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, who thinks this is bad legislation .

Congress needs to go back to the drawing board, do more research, and come up with a bill that will be more focused and more specific to get to the problem without opening the door for censorship and loss of our raucous, rough-and-tumble, open internet where we have a place to put our free speech rights to their widest use in a long time.

Perhaps it is time to elect younger people to the House and the Senate, people who have an understanding of the technology and of the world wide web.

"Tell the children about me."

2012-01-17T23:06:00.000-05:00

Barry Ewell sent me an e-mail announcing his blog, and I went to take a look. Er . . . give a listen. Many of his entries are in the form of brief podcasts which are well-written and well-presented. They are also informative or thought-provoking. The most affecting to me was his entry "Journey of a Genealogist: Tell the children about me."

In this entry he tells of his mother's passing and of a dream he later had. His mother tells him, in his dream, "Tell the children about me."

I think that is what all our ancestors are saying to us. I think we all hear them, and we heed their request.

Tell the children about all their ancestors so far discovered. And keep looking for more whose stories are waiting to be told.

And go give Barry's blog a listen.
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I hereby resolve not to resolve, resolutely

2012-01-01T15:02:00.000-05:00

I have not blogged for the past few weeks, firstly because of preparing for final exams, which were on 5 December. I did just fine, thanks.

Secondly, I haven't blogged because I've been a lazy bum. I've been relaxing (though also dealing with a rather indelicate acute medical problem). Christmas was lovely, with our daughters, son-in-law, and family friends -- two sisters who live not far away and who have spent Christmas with us for the past few years.

I have been catching up on blog reading today, and found quite a few talking about New Year's Resolutions. I do not make New Year's Resolutions. I feel they become too constraining, and I generally break them pretty quickly, anyway. Also, I have found during my life that goal-setting and plan-making generally go completely awry somewhere along the line. Life grabs me and sweeps me off in new, different, and unexpected directions.

As I get older -- I will be on Medicare in April, oh, joy -- I make fewer and fewer really long-range plans. Part of this is because I come from a family that is not known for long life. My grandparents all were gone by their mid to late 50s. My father died at 42, my mother at 63, and my brother at 54. So I have beat almost everyone so far. How long my luck will hold out is anyone's guess.

My other problem is that I hate routine. I despise schedules. I am ill-regimented and not all that well-organized, but being regimented and organized is a drag. Unfortunately, my husband and I are both of the packrattus accumulatus genus and species. At our age and generally indolent inclinations, this is unlikely to change.

But I do have a few plans: a book based on my research on St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period. Graduate school. Hunting down elusive relatives, such as generations of my Reed family from the early 1800s on back into the 1700s, or my husband's mysterious great-grandfather Samuel Henston Rhoades.

Stay tuned to see how that goes.

The REAL First Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T17:20:00.002-05:00

We here in northeast Florida have known a secret for a long time. That secret came out but with little notice in 1965 when Michael Gannon, Ph.D., wrote The Cross in the Sand, his history of St. Augustine, Florida. That secret has been taken up by newspaper reporters looking for a feature story and then by a fifth-grade teacher in St. Augustine, who in 2007 wrote a children's book about it.

The secret? The first Thanksgiving on the North American continent was not in Massachusetts. My cousin Bill West of West in New England may want to scalp me, but the first Thanksgiving was here in Florida on 8 September 1565, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded the oldest continuously-occupied North American settlement - St. Augustine, Florida.

The Spanish role in early American history is largely ignored in American History classes, even here in Florida. In the fourth grade, we had a slim green-backed book called La Florida which was our Florida history text. It was not very thorough, and probably not all that accurate, either. For one thing, it told us that Ponce de León discovered Florida in 1513 while looking for the Fountain of Youth.

Well, let us analyze that . . .

He did not discover Florida. The Spanish knew it was here, already, because they'd been nosing about in the neighborhood for some 21 years, and had already established themselves all around the Caribbean basin and the Gulf of Mexico. They just had not bothered to get off their ships and go take a look at it until León did.
1513? That may depend on whether one is using the modern Gregorian calendar or the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar would have been in force in 1513, as the Gregorian was not called for until 1582. In Spain, 1 January was selected as the beginning of the new year in 1556, years before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. But as of 1513, the new year may have begun on either 25 December or 25 March, depending on what the Catholic Church had felt like at the time (when most of Western Europe chose one or the other of those dates, during the Middle Ages). To today's calendars, it could have been 1512 or 1514.
He was not looking for the Fountain of Youth. He probably knew the legend, as most people in Europe were familiar with several legends, such as the voyage of St. Brendan in the 6th century, when he supposedly set sail to westward and found a land of bounty. Or there was a legend about seven caves, which, when transplanted to the New World, became seven fabulous cities of gold -- Cíbola. No, not the Fountain of Youth.

Ponce de León had already been governor of Puerto Rico, and had lost that post in a squabble with Diego Colón, son of Cristóbal Colón (whom we know as Christopher Columbus). He went back to Spain to think of another means to make his mark in the new lands. He obtained an asiento, or contract, from the king to be the adelantado, or head man with some really neat powers, of Bimini, part of the Bahamas. But navigation in those days was uncertain at best. They could calculate latitude with some certainty, maybe an error of plus or minus 5 degrees or so, and some did better than that. Longitude, however, was not at all accurately computed in those days, and it was not until about the middle of the nineteenth century, really, that they could get an accurate longitude because it was not until then that highly accurate seagoing chronometers (clocks) were available.

So what happened was that Ponce de León's navigator missed Bimini and hit Florida. So he decided to go ahead and take a look around.

Ponce de León -- yeah, that was his name.

So there is a definite need to bring the early Spanish role in American History to light, and one of those stories was that first giving of thanks for a safe voyage and landing in a strange and promising new world.

So whether you live in Florida, New England, or way out west, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

(But we did it first.)
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Thankful for . . .

2011-11-24T03:26:00.000-05:00

At the urging of Lisa Alzo, here is my list of things I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving.

1. That I'm still here, despite my deteriorating health! And along with this, I'm thankful for top-notch doctors taking care of me!

2. A functioning brain that is being well-exercised.

3. A husband I would readily nominate for best in the world, for giving me the chance to be all I can be. He's been supportive of all my hare-brained schemes, and even is suggesting more! (That's because I keep him entertained.)

4. Terrific daughters, a fine son-in-law, and a silly grandson.

5. Great and caring professors at one of the smallest great universities in the country.

6. St. Augustine, Florida, and all the people of the Second Spanish Period, with whom I have become fascinated.

7. An ability with words which has permitted me to write two books which have been given solidly good reviews.

8. Having had the opportunity to serve my country (in the Coast Guard).

9. A cozy little house with a state forest for a back yard.

10. The flexibility to have been able to deal with the changes in direction my life has taken.

11. All y'all, as we say in the South.
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The "Bull" Connor of His Age

2011-11-22T08:28:00.000-05:00

This post does not intend to advocate any particular political or social stance, but merely to comment on a similarity I have noticed between the "uprising" of the 1960s, which came out of the Civil Rights movement, and that phenomenon's direct descendant, the Occupy Wall Street movement. I am a historian-in-training, and this is intended merely as a comment on history. It is, however, history to which I have been a witness, at both times, though from a remote distance, through television and now through the internet. And, as a genealogist, I am keenly interested in the historical milieu in which my ancestors lived, as well as in commenting on the historical milieu in which I, now an "ancestor" myself to my daughters and grandson, have lived.

In the Civil Rights movement, there was an iconic figure: Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama. Connor became infamous for ordering police to use fire hoses to disperse peaceful black demonstrators, including children. The rest of the nation got a shocking look at what went on in the "Jim Crow" nation, as they saw on the television news reports helpless, peacefully assembled people whose skin happened to be dark tumbling down a city street, propelled by the powerful wash from a fire hose. It was a wake-up moment in which "Bull" Connor became a household name and a symbol of the violence, repression, and hate which blacks had suffered for centuries.

University of California, Davis, campus police officer Lt. John Pike has become the "Bull" Connor of his age for an unnecessary and arrogant act: pepper-spraying peaceful student demonstrators who had shown no overt act of violence. Pike is now also an iconic image, like "Bull" Connor. He is a symbol, unwittingly appearing as a bully, and, as the Occupy movement no doubt holds, a lackey of the corporate state. It is unlikely that he gave any conscious thought to what might be the consequences of his action in spraying those students. It is highly doubtful he had any notion of being compared to, much less becoming as iconic a figure as,"Bull" Connor.

In that moment, Lt. Pike lost control of his public image. A report on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" yesterday (21 November) illuminates just how completely that loss of control has been. The story discussed the "casually pepper-spraying cop" meme which has swept the internet. In this meme, a photograph of Lt. Pike using the pepper-spray has been "photoshopped" into classic paintings, including one showing him at the assembly of the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence, pepper-spraying the document.

The actions of "Bull" Connor have been credited (in the article linked above at Connor's full name) by a historian writing for the Alabama Department of Archives and History, as having led to the passage of the most sweeping Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It remains to be seen where the actions of Lt. John Pike may lead.
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Prezi: Presentation Software with Pizazz

2011-11-16T13:15:00.000-05:00

As I earn a partial living by public speaking on genealogical and historical topics, I have used PowerPoint for several years now. But in my time here at the University of North Florida -- where I am composing this blog entry between classes -- I have been introduced to a different presentation software. It's called Prezi, and it moves! Whereas PowerPoint is static, Prezi is dynamic.

Prezi moves. It zooms in and out, it rotates, it swings from one concept to another. You create your presentation on a single "canvas," rather than as a series of discrete slides, as on PowerPoint. Prezi is a lot like mind-mapping, and if you like mind-mapping, you probably will like Prezi. There are some tricks you need to know in order to use it efficiently and well. The website has tutorials to help you learn how to use it.

It does not have available a lot of nice background templates like PowerPoint does, but you can import PowerPoint slides as part of a Prezi presentation. It also does not have a very large color palette, nor does it have practical ways of drawing lines. There is basically only one line form, which is rather thick and clunky. Since Prezi is so dynamic, it would be great if there were a variety of lines which could be vectored to bend in different ways.

However, it is rather new, and I am sure that as it develops and as users provide feedback, those aspects will show much improvement.

Disclaimer: I have not been asked by Prezi or anyone connected with it, or anyone connected with the University of North Florida, to give this review. I have not been given nor promised any software, but obtained my copy of Prezi using the student license. The opinions in this review are mine alone. Prezi and PowerPoint are trademarks of their respective owners.
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Morning Tech Routine? What Morning Tech Routine?

2011-11-13T15:28:00.000-05:00

From Geniaus comes the question, "What's your morning tech routine?"

My answer: I do not do morning, and I despise routine!

I'm a night owl. It is very difficult for me to get up in the morning. (Raising right hand:) I am not now, nor have I ever been, a morning person!

I'm not a fan of routine, either, but there are some things I do on a fairly regular basis. I get up on the mornings I have classes, shower, eat breakfast and take my pills (a routine I refer to as "first breakfast" and "second breakfast"), get dressed, get my books, and go.

As I spend so much time in class or in the university library, I pretty much keep my cell phone turned off. I do not allow my life to be ruled by machines; I see the cell phone primarily as something with which I can communicate if an emergency should arise. But at least once during the class day, and sometimes twice, I do check for messages. At lunchtime, I call my husband.

I also take my lighter laptop to school with me, and in the library I will check on e-mail from my friends & family e-mail account, my "public" account, and my university e-mail. We are actually required to check our university e-mail at least once a day. I take care of any that is pressing, leaving the rest for when I get home. Then I get down to studying.

When I get home in the evening, I take care of the rest of my e-mail, do whatever studying I can, or if it's the end of the week, I play games.

On days I do not go to class, I sleep in. When I get up, I check e-mail, then get into whatever I need to be doing.

I do not use my cell phone at home. We live out in the country, and at our house, we do not get a signal!

And that's as close as I come to a routine.
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A Child's Questions About Death

2011-11-12T20:24:00.000-05:00

The other day, my husband sat with our 6-year-old grandson while Mommy went to pick up Daddy from work. Grandson asked grandpa about death. He asked if grandpa would die, and grandpa said that, yes, he would, someday, and that it is just another part of life. Grandson also asked if his mommy and daddy would die, and grandpa said, truthfully but kindly, that yes, they would, someday. Then grandson asked plaintively, "Who will take care of me?"

Grandpa answered that by the time any of this happens, grandson will have grown and learned to take care of himself and of others, too, as he will most likely have a family of his own; but that for right now, we are all here and we all will take care of him, and teach him how to take care of himself.

Grandson seemed satisfied with that, and the bottom line there was his worry about being cared for. He asked the questions quietly and without fear, but with a legitimate concern in mind. Grandpa answered truthfully and kindly. His curiosity and concern satisfied, grandson then turned back to the more usual concerns of childhood -- play.

Veteran's Day: Remembering

2011-11-11T18:03:00.000-05:00

Arden Packard

(1911-1954)

U.S. Navy

World War II

Arden Packard II

(1942-1996)

U.S. Marines

Vietnam

A Correction and a New Cousin

2011-11-10T07:54:00.001-05:00

Previously in this blog, I had mentioned a collateral relative on my mother's side, Merritt Wright Reed, and had lamented that he died in 2001. That date came from an assumption -- and this is a lesson in never assuming!

The source of that information was the listing at Mount Hope Cemetery in Logansport, Indiana, which states that Merritt Wright Reed was buried on 4 April 2001. Just because he was buried in 2001 does not mean he died in that year, I have found out to my chagrin. But, lesson learned.

Here is the story, from a newfound Reed cousin who related to me his investigation into the death of Merritt Wright Reed, his grandfather:

It seems that Merritt Wright Reed died 14 August 1949. He was cremated, but his remains were never claimed. My cousin went searching in 2001 and made this discovery when he contacted a successor to the funeral home which had handled the cremation and which had since gone out of business. This successor firm inherited the building of the old firm but not the records. They had a surprise for my cousin.

The ashes of Merritt Wright Reed were, and had been since 1949, in the basement! After being given this news, my cousin says, "Needless to say, it was a few minutes before I could catch my breath and continue the conversation." He could not take the ashes right then, but went home to research. He went to Mount Hope cemetery and discovered that the family plot of our mutual great-grandparents, Francis Harvey ("Frank") Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee, had an available spot. My cousin contracted for the burial, bought a marker, and went back to claim the ashes that had sat in a basement for over fifty years. Merritt Wright Reed finally had a resting place, in the bosom of his family.

That certainly is an astounding story! Thanks to my new cousin for the correction, and for a great family tale. It is a bit strange, but the factual statement is: Merritt Wright Reed, died 14 August 1949, buried 4 April 2001.

In a few minutes, I'll go get ready to get on the road. My husband and I are driving down to Orlando, about 2.5 hours from here, to meet this newfound cousin.
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Hallowe'en in the 1950s

2011-10-31T14:40:00.000-04:00

I was a child, and did my trick-or-treating, in an era when we did not lock our doors during the day nor our windows at night. Life was fairly secure, at least in the suburbs where we lived in Jacksonville, Florida. Crime was something that happened Somewhere Else.

Hallowe'en was a carefree time as well, when few parents felt the need to accompany their children over a certain age on their rounds. Everyone knew everyone else in the neighborhood, so there was little to no danger of harm coming to us from adulterated goodies in our trick-or-treat bags. The greatest danger was the stomach aches we got from eating too much of our booty at one sitting!

My brother and I would get ourselves up in home put-together costumes and we would each grab a pillowcase or a grocery bag and off we would go. Not very many of our group wore store-bought costumes. Some of us did our own -- a sheet for a ghost; a paper hat, ragged jeans, an ill-fitting shirt and a cardboard sword for a pirate. Other kids had stay-at-home moms with the time to sit at the sewing machine and make wonderfully inventive and unique costumes. Hardly anyone got themselves up as any celebrity. There were more werewolves, ghosts, pirates, vampires, Frankenstein monsters, zombies, and incarnations of the Headless Horseman than there were movie or sports stars.

Someone might host a party, but it would not be a substitute for trick-or-treating. I actually did not do badly at bobbing for apples. And there were few organized activities to take the place of trick-or-treating, nor did anybody get their knickers in a knot about children going about impersonating the dead -- or the undead. We knew what Hallowe'en was -- a modern expression of an age-old observance for the dead, a recognition of the factual existence of death as a part of life, not something to be avoided and denied. And those of us of certain denominations -- I was Episcopalian -- knew that the next day was All Saints' Day.

Not to say that bad things did not happen, but they were more on the order of the night when some big boy came running out of his hiding place in the bushes and stole my bag of candy. I was mad! My mother's counsel was to get another bag and continue where I left off, which I did. The boy was lucky that my brother was a bit ahead of me and did not see which way he went, or that boy would have got a beating. And the next year, I was eager to go trick-or-treating again. I just took precautions to be sure my bag would not be stolen that year!

Now, the situation is unfortunately different, but kids and their parents are generally coping well. Churches and towns have supervised activities for children for trick-or-treat. They still get up in costumes and have a good time, but trick-or-treat itself is a dying tradition. For the past couple years, nobody has come trick-or-treating down our street.

I'm glad we had the Hallowe'en we had.
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A True Vocation

2011-10-18T00:09:00.000-04:00

All my life, I have heard and read of people who had a true vocation, a calling to this or that field whether it be medicine or the priesthood or public service, among other fields. I have rattled around in life looking for mine. I was not ready when I went to Florida State University in 1965, after graduating from high school. I have always been an academic overachiever, but I went to university without a clear plan or a clear calling.

I have been a librarian, a nurse, a member of the armed forces. That latter was for a number of years the closest I have come to feeling that I had a calling I enjoyed the Coast Guard, and felt like I was part of something that made a difference. But after that was done, after arthritis took me out of active participation, I felt once again like I did not have a calling.

Another reason I was not ready out of high school to find my vocation was that I had been raised in a traditional family in the 1950s. Girls were not "supposed" to aspire to more than either being at home or being a secretary, a teacher, or a nurse. I broke one of those taboos many years into my adulthood by enlisting in the Coast Guard, and I also shattered my family's notion of the character of women in military service. However, what I had really been discouraged from pursuing was my desire to be a journalist. Girls just did not do that (never mind Nellie Bly or Margaret Bourke-White or Adela Rogers St. John). It was a long, long time before I was able to revive that dream.

My first attempt at actually being a writer was in fiction, since I had lost the dream of being a journalist. I was a member of a local writing group and an online writing group. I tried various genres and methods, having some short stories published in little magazines, but just not finding a fiction voice. Then I turned to non-fiction. After my first book, a history and critical review of a television series, I floundered for subjects, and then I found genealogy. After getting a genealogical education through the National Institute for Genealogical Studies in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, I then found a subject: a guide to sources for Florida's colonial, territorial, and state censuses. That book was published last year.

Work on that book led me to the University of North Florida, first to brush up on my high school Spanish from forty some-odd years before, and then one thing led to another, and I found myself on a path to a second bachelor's degree with a double major in history and Spanish. Now I am about to finish that up. I will graduate at the end of the 2012 spring term. And as I have blogged previously, I will be starting work on a master's degree in history in the fall.

This path has been something strange and wonderful. Associations, opportunities, nearly all my class work has in one way or another led me to study the history and families of St. Augustine, Florida, during the second Spanish period (1784-1821), or has contributed in some way to my investigation. I have become enchanted with the place and the people -- though some of them at times behaved in less-than-enchanting ways. But even rascals should have their stories told. All my education, including the genealogical education, seems to have led up to this area of study. I feel like I have been taken up by an inexorable current, and cannot escape from it. Nor do I want to.

I have found my vocation.
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Blog Action Day: Food in St. Augustine, 1784-1821

2011-10-16T14:20:00.000-04:00

This year's Blog Action Day has the theme of food. The focus is on any aspect of food, but the imptus behind it is the existence of hunger around the world. People blog about areas where there is hunger today, or how food is part of their culture. I am going to blog a little food history, and talk about the food situation in St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period, my academic area of study.

One of the sources we have that describes the native foods available to residents of East Florida in the late 17th and early 18th centuries is William Bartram's Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, generally referred to simply as Bartram's Travels. He describes the crops the Indians -- mainly the Seminoles, by that time -- grew, such as corn and pumpkins and beans. There were fruits such as melons and oranges (which the First Period Spanish had brought with them). He also describes the fresh- and salt-water fishes and shellfish available for harvest in northeastern Florida waters. And there is game in his food-roll: deer, squirrel, and other animals.

St. Augustine had all that, but it was not all abundance and feasting. There were times when St. Augustine faced some very real shortages, though there was not the general, every hardscrabble day starvation some authors in the past have portrayed. When St. Augustine was subject to siege during invasions such as the "Patriot War" of 1812, the citizens of the town and some from the outlying areas took refuge in the Castillo de San Marcos. There might be upwards of 1500-2000 civilians packed into the fortress, with food rationing the order of the day. There was a well in the fort, so the water supply was generally not affected by siege. During the 1812 siege, the black militia would sortie to forage for supplies, and were generally successful. Protecting one's family and town was a fine motivator, but for these individuals there was the added incentive of defending the fort to keep from being taken prisoner by the invaders from Georgia and South Carolina and taken back into U.S. territory and a life of slavery.

The critical shortages in St. Augustine at the time were cold hard cash, wheat, and salt meat. St. Augustine was not an area of vibrant economic growth, though again,the picture was not as dismal as some have painted it. But the town existed largely on credit, because cash was slow to come in. There were some wealthy individuals in and around the town, but mostly the town, and especially the garrison at the Castillo, existed on the situado, basically a government subsidy. There were times when the situado did not arrive. Governors had to get creative in order to keep the town's soldiers and government workers if not happy, at least pacified. Credit was one of the strategies the government and private citizens used a great deal. This is evident in the many I.O.U.s found in wills and administrations.

Spain had a mercantilist economic philosophy; that is, goods bought by the colonies had to be bought from Spain or Spanish ports and carried in Spanish ships. When the situation became urgent in St. Augustine, governors found ways around this policy, which was eventually relaxed to be in tune with the realities of the world. Part of this mercantilism, however, required that St. Augustine obtain its wheat from Mexico , via Cuba. It soon became apparent that this wheat was of inferior quality, often spoiled, and when the governor compared prices in Philadelphia and later New York, he found wheat much cheaper, and of superior quality, than what they were getting from Havana.

Many people supplemented their diets with kitchen gardens. Among the Menorcan population of the town, refugees from Andrew Turnbull's New Smyrna plantation, there were fishermen. The largest occupation group enumerated in the 1784 census is farmers. There were some large farming and ranching operations, as well, which grew produce and raised cattle. In sum, just as with any other frontier colony in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, St. Augustine had much the same relationship with food as many areas of the world today -- enough to get by, most of the time, with periods of definite lack which required emergency action.

The inexcusable thing is that today, in the 21st century, there are areas of the world which are several times worse off, on a day-to-day basis, than St. Augustine ever was at any time in its history.

Further reading:

Bartram, William. Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida. London: Reprinted for J. Johnson 1792.
Cusick, James G. The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003.
Griffin, Patricia C. Mullet on the Beach: the Minorcans of Florida, 1768-1788. Jacksonville: University of North Florida Press, 1991.
Landers, Jane. Black Society in Spanish Florida. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Landers, Jane, ed. Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida. Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2000.
Tanner, Helen Hornbeck. Zéspedes in East Florida, 1784-1790. Jacksonville: University of North Florida Press, 1989.
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Baa-baa Meme Sheep, redux: the Ancestors' Geneameme

2011-10-15T03:23:00.000-04:00

From Geniaus comes this Ancestors' Geneameme.

Here are the instructions:

Things I have already done or found: bold face type
Things I would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things I haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type

Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents
Can name over 50 direct ancestors
Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents
Have an ancestor who was married more than three times
Have an ancestor who was a bigamist
Met all four of my grandparents (No, they all died before I was born)
Met one or more of my great-grandparents (Ditto)
Named a child after an ancestor
Bear an ancestor's given name/s (well, middle name)
Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland (Most are from England)
Have an ancestor from Africa
Have an ancestor from Asia
Have an ancestor from Continental Europe (Switzerland)
Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer
Have an ancestor who had large land holdings
Have an ancestor who was a holy man - minister, priest, rabbi (circuit-riding Methodist preacher)
Have an ancestor who was a midwife
Have an ancestor who was an author
Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones
Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng
Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X
Have an ancestor with a forename beginnning with Z (Two: Zaccheus Packard, father and son)
Have an ancestor born on 25th December
Have an ancestor born on New Year's Day
Have blue blood in your family lines
Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth
Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century
Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier
Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents
Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X
Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university
Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence
Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime
Have shared an ancestor's story online or in a magazine
Have published a family history online or in print
Have visited an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries
Still have an ancestor's home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family (only the land)
Have a family bible from the 19th Century
Have a pre-19th century family bible

As you can see, I haven't done much, but some of these things are not attainable, of course, just from the circumstances of my family's history. My family were just plodders -- no authors, but there was one preacher. No big landowners, no royalty, and nothing left behind by way of writings or Bibles or any of it. Pretty dull, actually.

Except for the bigamist; that did liven things up some!
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Is cursive handwriting disappearing in the U.S.?

2011-10-14T10:05:00.000-04:00

James Tanner, of Genealogy's Star, one of my favorite blogs to read, has commented more than once on the trend in American public schools to drop the teaching of cursive handwriting. His latest posting, a humorous consideration of the subject, can be seen here . My reaction to his first posting on this subject was: "I'm a paleographer. I smell job security!"

Having been a registered nurse, I could also say that I wondered long ago if the teaching of it had already been dropped, for, judging from doctors' handwriting, it wasn't being taught well, if at all! But on a more serious note, I echo James's concern that future family historians will have a great deal of trouble reading and analyzing the documents passed down in their family from earlier times.

Other commenters mentioned the delights of cursive handwriting -- love notes, letters, little post-its. There is something so much more human about handwriting that electronic communication just cannot duplicate. Pixels are cold, handwritten letters are warm. And even though James's above-referenced current post on the subject is humorous, it points up the humanness of cursive -- the little uses to which we put it, which generate memories to be cherished -- and laughed over -- and passed along as part of an individual's and a family's history.

I suppose in the Great Cosmic Scheme of Things, the demise of cursive handwriting does not stack up as being of primary importance. But on a more individual, more intimate level, we will lose a bit of our human character if we let it go altogether, without some attempt to preserve it in some way.

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Today is Change a Light Day

2011-10-02T13:59:00.000-04:00

According to Thomas MacEntee's Geneabloggers calendar, today is Change a Light Day. In honor of that day, and because I need to get back to studying for a midterm exam tomorrow in Latin American cultures, I am reprising my posting titled:

HOW MANY GENEALOGISTS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW IN A LIGHTBULB?

Thirteen.

One to screw it in.

One to create the original document describing the event and all the participants in it, tracing the lineage of each one back seven generations.

One to write the source citation for the document, in accordance with Evidence Explained.

One to transcribe the document.

One to abstract the document.

One to index the document.

One to place the document in an archive.

One to write it up in a peer-reviewed journal.

One to write a subsequent article in the same journal, disputing the findings of the first author.

One to digitize the document and upload it to Ancestry.com, Footnote [now Fold3], and FamilySearch.org.

One to blog about the document, the event it describes, its creator, and the participants.

One to write a source guide to the document and all similar documents which describe this event or similar events, or which contain information about the participants in the event, and their families.

One to give a presentation about the event, the original source document, its creator, and the participants and their family lines at the Federation of Genealogy Societies conference.
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - What does Spokeo know about me?

2011-09-24T20:04:00.000-04:00

Saturday night once again, and time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. Here is tonight's "assignment:"

I'm always on the lookout for websites that can find living people. I read about Spokeo this week and thoguht that I would try it out.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Go to Spokeo - www.spokeo.com and put in your name (or any name).

2) See what Spokeo says about you. Is it accurate?

3) Share what you want to share with us in a blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook, or in a Stream post on Google Plus.

I entered my name as "Karen Rhodes" and found that in Florida alone, there are 90 Karen Rhodeses. I did not think there were that many of us! In the Jacksonville area, including Clay County, there are three listed.

However, the information Spokeo has for me is, in the main, incorrect.

The address (only partial) they have for me is for a place we have not lived for nearly 20 years. Both the street name and the town name are nearly 20 years out of date.. The family listing shows only one of our daughters, the younger one. It does correctly identify me as a female in my mid-60s, and as being caucasian.

I also searched on my name as "Karen Packard Rhodes," and under that name, they have nothing.

How do I feel about this? I think all this is none of their beeswax. I am not happy that they are making money off of the facts of my life. I should at least be getting a percentage! And if the above information is incorrect, how much of what else they have or think they have -- for which they want to charge me for access -- is also incorrect? Could any of that incorrect information damage me? If it did, how would I know and how would I be able to recover damages? Frankly, I do not like the whole setup.

What does Spokeo know about me? Not much. I would like to keep it that way.
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Undoubted doubts

2011-09-23T15:35:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I am taking notes from a book I am consulting for background information and perspectives on St. Augustine at the end of the First Spanish period (the decade or so leading up the the transfer of Florida to the British in 1763). The book is a Ph.D. dissertation, the title and author of which I will not divulge. I do not want to embarrass anyone, but there is something in it that bugs me.

The author has several places in which, in the absence of concrete evidence, she says something "undoubtedly" occurred. Now, this dissertation was finished in 1980. Standards have become more rigorous in the intervening years, in history and certainly in genealogy. But I think we need to stop from time to time and examine the assertions we make and the words we use to make them.

As I have developed as a genealogist and historian over the past four years at the University of North Florida, being exposed to the latest in historical research and writing, as well as to many works from prior decades and prior centuries, I have become more keenly aware of the requirements of clarity and logic in our writings. And beginning next fall, I will be using a good deal of the research I have done, as well as being involved in more and new research, in the writing of my master's thesis. I want to be sure that the statements I make in my master's thesis will be supportable.

Speculation is fine, as long as we are sure we label it as such rather than presenting it as something no longer open to debate. To say that something is "undoubtedly" the case is not proper labeling, to my mind, unless there is good, solid, incontrovertible evidence to back it up. However, the author of this dissertation does not adduce such evidence to her "undoubtable" statements. It would have been better in these cases to use words such as "possibly" or even "probably" rather than to be so final in her assessment. Even with speculation, we have to have something to base it on. What we are doing when we speculate, with some foundation, is saying that here is some circumstantial evidence which seems to indicate that a certain thing may have been true.

Of course, the other side of that coin is that it may not have been true, and we also have to acknowledge that.

Undoubtedly.
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The Tech-Savvy Genealogist Meme

2011-09-16T21:46:00.000-04:00

The list should be annotated in the following manner:
Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
Feel free to add extra comments in brackets after each item.

Which of these apply to you?

1. Own an Android or Windows tablet or an iPad [not likely to, either]
2. Use a tablet or iPad for genealogy related purposes [same]
3. Have used Skype to for genealogy purposes
4. Have used a camera to capture images in a library/archives/ancestor's home
5. Use a genealogy software program on your computer to manage your family tree
6. Have a Twitter account
7. Tweet daily [not daily, but frequently]
8. Have a genealogy blog [Um, obviously . . .]
9. Have more then one genealogy blog [Does being the official blogger for the Southern Genealogists Exchange Society count?]
10. Have lectured/presented to a genealogy group on a technology topic [One of my stock of lectures is on Facebook, Twitter, and blogging for genealogists]
11. Currently an active member of Genealogy Wise
12. Have a Facebook Account
13. Have connected with genealogists via Facebook
14. Maintain a genealogy related Facebook Page
15. Maintain a blog or website for a genealogy society [I do the blog]
16. Have submitted text corrections online to Ancestry, Trove or a similar site
17. Have registered a domain name
18. Post regularly to Google+ [using the term "regularly" loosely]
19. Have a blog listed on Geneabloggers
20. Have transcribed/indexed records for FamilySearch or a similar project
21. Own a Flip-Pal or hand-held scanner
22. Can code a webpage in .html [I'm rusty as a tin can in a swamp, but I can do it]
23. Own a smartphone [someday I will have to, but I prefer my phones stupid]
24. Have a personal subscription to one or more paid genealogy databases
25. Use a digital voice recorder to record genealogy lectures
26. Have contributed to a genealogy blog carnival
27. Use Chrome as a Browser [I do, but Firefox is my preferred]
28. Have participated in a genealogy webinar
29. Have taken a DNA test for genealogy purposes
30. Have a personal genealogy website [I'm very picky about this]
31. Have found mention of an ancestor in an online newspaper archive
32. Have tweeted during a genealogy lecture
33. Have scanned your hardcopy genealogy files
34. Use an RSS Reader to follow genealogy news and blogs
35. Have uploaded a gedcom file to a site like Geni, MyHeritage or Ancestry [probably won't, either]
36. Own a netbook [One of my FOUR computers!]
37. Use a computer/tablet/smartphone to take genealogy lecture notes
38. Have a profile on LinkedIn that mentions your genealogy habit
39. Have developed a genealogy software program, app or widget
40. Have listened to a genealogy podcast online
41. Have downloaded genealogy podcasts for later listening
42. Backup your files to a portable hard drive
43. Have a copy of your genealogy files stored offsite
44. Know about Rootstech
45. Have listened to a Blogtalk radio session about genealogy
46. Use Dropbox, SugarSync or other service to save documents in the cloud [I am NOT putting my business in the cloud!]
47. Schedule regular email backups
48. Have contriibuted to the Familysearch Wiki
49. Have scanned and tagged your genealogy photographs
50. Have published a genealogy book in an online/digital format [I prefer my books to be published in hard copy book format by a "traditional" publisher]

28 out of 50 is not bad for someone my age!
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Using Music in your Genealogy Research

2011-09-08T21:43:00.001-04:00

At the 2003 Federation of Genealogical Societies/Florida State Genealogical Society conference in Orlando, I attended a lecture by Katherine Scott Sturdevant which has heavily influenced the way I do my genealogy. Her lecture, “Don't Throw it Away! Artifacts in Family History Research and Writing,” was based on her book Bringing Your Family History to Life Through Social History. After the lecture, I immediately went to the dealers' room and bought the book, because Professor Sturdevant had lit a fire under me with her ideas.

The heart of the lecture was the preservation and analysis of family heirlooms, the artifacts of our ancestors' material culture. But there's more to it than that, as explained in her book. In her foreword to Sturdevant's book, Sharon deBartolo Carmack, CG, says, “Prior to the debut of social history – the history of ordinary folks in ordinary society – it was difficult for many genealogists like me to see a relationship between traditional history – politics and military campaigns – to their own families." (1) Social history helps us, as genealogists and family historians, bring our ancestors to life and to gain insight into who they were and why they did what they did.

Music is part of that social history, woven as it is into the fabric of human life almost from the beginning. I love to listen to all kinds of music while I'm doing research, and I tend to tailor my music to the era of the ancestor or ancestors I'm researching at the time. Thinking about this, I realized that this music is a key to the social and cultural atmosphere in which our ancestors lived.

One album I enjoy listening to when I'm working on Samuel Packard (ca1612-1684), my Puritan ancestor who emigrated from Suffolk, England to Hingham, Massachusetts in 1638, is called Ghoostly Psalmes, a collection of Anglo-American psalmody 1550-1800. (2) In the liner notes, Anne Heider observes:

Surely one of the most invigorating changes the Reformation brought about was the institution of congregational singing in the vernacular as a regular part of worship. . . The Puritans who left England to settle in America brought with them the tradition, already a half-century old, of congregational singing of plain tunes.

There, already, is an insight into the religious life of Samuel Packard. I know from my research that he was a Puritan; I also know now some of the songs he might have sung in church on Sunday, thanks to Ghoostly Psalmes. And I know that that music was part of a tradition, and that it had an important place in the life of the society in which Samuel lived.

Another facet of that life was the span thereof: “The unhealthiness of daily life may well be the most striking of the great divides between past and present,” writes Jack Larkin of the life expectancy from 1790 to 1840. (3) Women and children were particularly at risk: “Between 25 and 50 percent of all women died in childbirth or from childbed disease, and the infant mortality rate was comparable.” (4) This is borne out in a number of the hymns on Ghoostly Psalmes, such as “Brevity,” a one-verse song written by Abraham Wood (1752-1804):

Man, born of woman, like a flow'r,

Short-liv'd is seen to rise;

At morning blooms, at evening hour

He withers, falls, and dies.

My ancestor Richards Packard (1763-1840) may have been familiar with a hymn called “Chester,” published in Boston in 1778. Richards enlisted to fight on the Patriot side at the age of 17 in 1781. The hymn makes no bones about which side it is on:

Let tyrants shake their iron rod,

And slav'ry clank her galling chains,

We fear them not, we trust in God

New England's God for ever reigns.

Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton, too,

With Prescot and Cornwallis join'd,

Together plot our Overthrow,

In the Infernal league combin'd.

When God inspir'd us for the fight,

Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc'd,

Their ships were shattered in our sight,

Or swiftly driven from our coast.

Thus music directly reflects the social and often the political tenor of its times. This is reflected quite starkly in another album I like to listen to: the original soundtrack recording of Ken Burns's seminal documentary, The Civil War, (5) When I'm researching my own Civil War ancestors, Matthew Hale Packard (1822-1881), who served in two different units of New York cavalry, and Charles Reed (1840-1920), who served in Company F, 140^th Indiana Infantry, I listen to the more Yankee-oriented songs such as “The Battle Cry of Freedom” (“The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!”), “Hail, Columbia,” or “Marching Through Georgia.” That last one does irritate my husband, descendant of Southern soldier Daniel MacLeod Marshall (1836-1919), who served in R. F. Kolb's Battery (artillery), a CSA unit raised in Alabama. For him, I switch to “Dixie,” of course, or the plaintive “Lorena,” though that tune was (as Mr. Burns tells us) sung by soldiers of both sides, and banned on both sides by commanders concerned that their troops not be affected by it and rendered unfit for battle.

The period between the World Wars saw a musical renaissance, the burgeoning of jazz, and the rise of one of my favorite composers, George Gershwin. When I'm researching my maternal grandfather Perry Wilmer Reed (1886-1938) or my paternal grandfather Walter Heatherington Packard (1879-1937), or my parents Arden Packard (1911-1954) and Martha Shideler Reed (1916-1980), I listen to Gershwin on one of several albums I have of his music. One of my favorites is “Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra,” composed 1925 and tentatively titled “New York Concerto.” The piece reflects both the singular loneliness and the vibrant involvement we find in our big cities. It's a portrait of New York, and a portrait of America, reflecting the energy and optimism of the 1920s. Music can show us the spirit of an era; we can listen to the songs and instrumental pieces that moved our ancestors.

Bringing research on my parents forward into the 1940s, there is a lot of music to accompany that quest. The music of this time ranges from the silly “Cow-Cow Boogie” and “Hut Sut Song” to the poignant “Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover,” the latter reminding us of the many Londoners who sent their children into the countryside or even over the water to Canada or the United States to get them away from the devastation and the horror of the Blitz:

The shepherd will tend his sheep,

The valley will bloom again,

And Jimmy will go to sleep

In his own little room again.

And as my father was in the United States Navy during World War II as a Naval aviator and flight instructor, I listen to another of my favorite composers with one of my very favorite suites of music, Richard Rodgers's Victory at Sea. (5) Rodgers composed the suite for a television series of the same name which ran in the early 1950s (and much later on in syndication), which I remember watching as a child – and therefore this music touches my own past as well.

Take another look at your music collection, and see if you can't use it to get some insights into your own ancestors – and into yourself as well.

1. Sharon deBartolo Carmack, Foreword, in Katherine Scott Sturdevant, Bringing Your Family History to Life Using Social History. Cincinnati: Betterway Books, 2000, np.

2. Goostly Psalmes, His Majestie's Clerkes, Paul Hillier, director. Harmonia Mundi HMU 907128

3. Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840. New York: HarperPerennial, 1988, page 72.

4. Dale Taylor, The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Colonial America, From 1607-1783. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1997, page 79.

5. Original Soundtrack Recording: The Civil War (a Film by Ken Burns). Elektra Nonesuch, 9 79256-2.

6. Richard Rodgers, composer. Victory at Sea and More Victory at Sea. RCA Victor, 09026-60963-2, 09026-60964-2.

Hurricane Memories

2011-08-23T00:03:00.000-04:00

With the possibility of Hurricane Irene aiming at Florida, though recognizing that it is still early yet and she may change course, I am going to relate some family history regarding hurricanes.

My earliest memory of a hurricane is when my family lived in Jacksonville the first time, in 1951. We lived on the south side, on Peachtree Street. My memories of this hurricane are quite vague, as I was only three years old. But I do recall there was a lot of rain and wind and we stayed inside the house.

The next hurricane I experienced was Hurricane Dora in 1964. I was in my senior year in high school, and my mother and I were sharing a house with a nurse my mother worked with. There were several 60-foot-tall pine trees in the yard, and I remember looking out and seeing them swaying in the winds. The thought that they could snap and come down on the house was worrisome. Fortunately, they proved flexible enough to bend but not break.

There was some humor, though. At the height of the storm, when the wind was whipping through and the rain was falling in buckets, there was a commercial for an airline which had just begun serving Jacksonville's airport. The commercial startled me, then made me laugh out loud, when it began with the phrase, "There's something new in the air over Jacksonville." Timing is everything.

This was in September, just after the beginning of the school year. In those days, we didn't go back to school until after Labor Day. After the storm passed, I drove over to my high school to see if there had been any damage. Other than a few trees down on the grounds, there did not seem to be any real damage. We were out of school for a few days, though, because of the interruption of electric service to the area. One of my classmates later told me her family had been without electricity for two weeks.

When Hurricane David came across us in 1979 I was a registered nurse working at a hospital in downtown Jacksonville. I shared rides with another nurse, and that evening I was driving. I picked my co-worker up and we drove into town. With the winds at that time at 55 miles per hour, I decided not to go across the Mathews Bridge, which is very high and has a rather treacherous metal grille at the top. Instead I went through the southside and went over the Main Street Bridge. It has a grille, too, but it is much lower, and I thought the wind might be less. Later that night we were told that we would all be doing a double shift, as the storm had worsened and the hospital nursing supervisor had called the next shift and told them to stay home rather than get out in it. We had a "hot rack" room set up, where we could each take turns grabbing a nap during the 16-hour shift.

For a time in 1999, we thought Hurricane Floyd was coming at us. We boarded up the house, my husband having installed a system with which we could board up pretty quickly. But Floyd passed us by and hit North Carolina (which is what Irene may do, too). I discovered during our boarded-up period, a couple days and nights, that I sleep much better when it is pitch black dark, with no clock dials or moonlight or someone else's outside light filtering in. So now I use a sleep mask.

In 2004, we got brushed by a few storms, as Florida got smacked and smacked again. We suffered enough damage that we got payment from our insurance company to replace our roof, after it was all over. It wasn't until November that the insurance adjuster got to us to assess the damage, and the roofing companies in Florida were so busy, we did not get ours done until February. We called upon an established and well-known company in Jacksonville, recommended by friends who are very picky in such matters. They did a great job. I called that hurricane season the "Big Wind Tour" of 2004.

We have friends living in Lake Wales, and my husband got a big laugh when he saw a National Geographic cover with a satellite photo of Florida covered by the tracks of four of 2004's hurricanes -- all of them intersecting over Polk County, where Lake Wales is located. My husband scanned the photo, placed a target at the intersection with the words "you are here," and sent it for her to use as wallpaper on her computer.

That's what's called Florida humor.

So we sit and watch once more, and prepare. I bought more bottled water today, and tomorrow my husband and I are going to place new foam tape on the outside window sills preparatory to putting up the boards, if we need to. We have a Coleman stove, flashlights and battery-powered lanterns, radios, and other supplies. I'll make sure I have all my medications current, and we'll fill the cars' gas tanks. And with any luck, Irene will turn and head out to sea, not bothering Florida or North Carolina or any other part of the inhabited land masses.
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Using the I Ching for Genealogy

2011-08-20T17:10:00.000-04:00

Live, from Blogger, it's Saturday Night! Time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. Today's assignment:

1) The writer of the Nuts from the Family Tree blog wrote about her question for the I Ching ( Book of Changes) guru in Cluless No More. I thoguht that this might be a fun thing to do on Saturday night.

2) Go to http://IChingOnline.net and ask a question relating to your genealogy research. You can "throw the coins virtually" or "throw the coins by hand." You have to click the "throw" button six times, then click on "Read."

3) Report the question you asked and the answer you received, in the form of the Cast Hexagram (which explains the situation you are now in, or what has gone before), to your readers.

4) Does the answer make any sense to you? How do you interpret the answer?

4) Write your own blog post about this, or post a comment on Facebook or Google Plus, or write a comment on this blog post.

The question I asked relates to a few blog entries ago, that is, my search for Samuel Henston Rhoads. I found his marriage license, as I posted in my blog. But I wonder, what to I need to search in order to find why he dropped out of the family picture?

So my question to the I Ching is: What records to I need to consult to find out what happened to Samuel Henston Rhoads?

And the answer:

Cast Hexagram:

40 - Forty

Hsieh / Liberation

A Thunderous Cloudburst shatters the oppressive humidity:
The Superior Person knows the release in forgiveness, pardoning the faults of others and dealing gently with those who sin against him.

It pays to accept things as they are for now.
If there is nothing else to be gained, a return brings good fortune.
If there is something yet to be gained, act on it at once.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

The relief you experience here is not your own personal pardon, but the release of others from your rigid expectations.
Like a hot air balloon, you will rise to new heights as you cast the heavy sandbags of resentments and restrictions away from you.
Feel the lightness of being that results from forgiving others and accepting them as they are.
Free yourself of the endless vigil of policing the behavior of others.
See them for who they are, not what they can or can't do for you.

Well, okay -- I can go for a cloudburst shattering the humidity, since I live in one of the most humid states in the country -- Florida. That I'll go for.

The rest of the answer is a bit more nebulous. That second line about forgiving those who sin against one is interesting. I have been wondering if I need to look in court (criminal) or prison records. That may be some sort of "message" -- if I ran my genealogy that way, which I don't. But I will look for such records anyway, along with tax records, property records, other court (civil) records, death records and whatever else I can think of as possible leads.

As for Randy's suggestion of using the "Trigram Symbols" tab in the explanation window for a custom search, that was a complete strikeout. Ah, well. It's an interesting game, but for me, nothing more than that.

And a bit of genealogy fun with some humor.

Gathering family history

2011-08-19T14:18:00.000-04:00

The Southern Genealogists Exchange Society,to which I belong and am the official blogger thereof, is hosting a seminar on 10 September in which Patricia Charpentier will teach participants how to write their family history. I attended the last time Patricia was here, and it was an interesting, instructive, and fun day. I had already written down a few vignettes from my own memory of family events and happenings, but the seminar encouraged me to do more. Alas, I have not done much in that area for the past several years, being caught up in furthering my formal education.

I have several segments written down, though, and am glad I have been doing that. Remembering some events can often spark memories of other things as well. And these days, memory is just about all I have to go on, outside of the family documents I have been able to accumulate. I am in just about the last generation of our family. There are a couple aunts still alive, but other than that, most of the older generation in our family is gone.

Another approach we can take to recording family history is the interview. I have interviewed one of my aunts by e-mail, and that brought out some things I had not previously known, not only about her and my uncle, but also about my parents. Interviews can also be conducted in person, and recorded using a digital audio recorder. I bought one for myself while I was taking a course in oral history at the University of North Florida. It was fascinating, and a classmate and I interviewed some interesting people for our class project. A good digital audio recorder can be had for $60-$80.

There are references which tell us how to conduct oral interviews,. One of the best for the family historian is found in Emily Croom's Unpuzzling Your Past. She devotes an entire chapter to conducting interviews of relatives, with great information from which questions to ask and how to formulate more on your own to how to make your interviewee comfortable. Croom writes specifically for the genealogical interviewer. A more academic approach designed for professional historians is the text we used in the abovementioned class, Donald A. Ritchie's Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide. Ritchie goes into more detail on designing an oral history project and setting up the interview. He has extensive endnotes and his bibliography is divided into segments including such topics as oral history of women, oral history of the Great Depression, and oral history of the Second World War. These bibliographic entries alone can provide a family historian with background information for interviews and for their own family histories.

We are constantly being enjoined to "do it now," to interview older relatives. Take it from one who did not "do it now," who waited until it was too late -- Do It Now.
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The Geni Flap has Old Roots

2011-08-18T02:41:00.000-04:00

I'm going to talk about a little different genealogy tonight -- the genealogy of a concept that is under fire currently with the controversy over the Geni website. To nutshell it, Geni has two tiers of membership: free and pro. The PTB (Powers That Be) at Geni decided to "improve" the website -- by taking away some of the functions available to the free members. Geni users are also upset that anyone can, as more than one blogger put it, "hijack" their family trees, merging with them information that may or may not be properly sourced. Geni changed this term of use without notifying the users. People feel like this was sprung on them, like they were blindsided.

I am not a Geni user. I never signed up for it, and was only peripherally aware of its existence. But I have read with interest the blogs on the subject, and have discussed it some with my husband, a computer professional of long standing who, before turning pro, tinkered with computers (he was a software nerd rather than a hardware nerd) for many years before that. The Tandy 1000s, Commodore 64s, and VIC-20s in our garage can attest to that!

I see a long train of abuses that has for years been perpetrated on the computer consumer, especially the consumers of software, for decades, since the first commercially available programs -- be they apps or games -- came out. It all began, as I see it, with the "shrink-wrap license." This was an agreement that said that by opening the shrink wrap on a piece of software, the user agreed to whatever terms and conditions the company chose to put on it. This usually includes not reverse-engineering the program or making copies. Some of us old-line users were not happy with the "no copies" provision, though many of us acknowledged that the intent was to prevent unauthorized (that is, unpaid-for) distribution of someone's intellectual property. As a professional writer, I can understand that. However, what most of us wanted to do was make one copy to actually use, keeping the original safe, so that it would not be damaged, as these early programs came out on media that could be compromised mechanically or electrically (magnets, lightning strikes to the house), and we wanted to be able to use the program without risk of damage.

The main objection to the "shrink-wrap license," however, was that the conditions that one was agreeing to were INSIDE the package, and you could not read them and tell whether you wanted to agree with them or not unless you tore off the shrink-wrap and opened the package!

Catch-22.

So what is this agreement? It is a form of contract, but I do not think it is a good one. Now, mind, I am not a lawyer. As a government major at Florida State University in the 1960s, I did take three courses of Constitutional Law, one of which spent the entire semester on the contract clause (article 1, section 10). A contract, very simplistically, is an agreement reached between a willing seller and a willing buyer. Money may or may not change hands -- compensation is up to the parties to decide. But the idea is that the buyer and the seller both agree, not that the seller imposes conditions on the buyer, who may or may not be willing. It certainly also does not mean that the seller can hide the conditions of the contract behind a barrier, such as a shrink-wrapped package.

I was raised never to sign anything (agree to it, that is, whether actually signing my name to it or not) without reading it first. But how can you read something that is concealed in a package? What kind of agreement is it that is forced upon a person by the act of them tearing open a shrink-wrap?

By the same token, these days we have terms and conditions of use for websites, for example, in which the website owner or the company whose site it is tells us the terms of use, but states that they can change these terms at any time without notifying us of the changes. This is what is at stake in the Geni flap. Geni changed the conditions of use without notifying the customers who would be adversely affected. The implication is that we, the users or consumers, are burdened with having to go back from time to time and read the terms and conditions of each website we use to see if any of them have changed. Who has time for that? Who can keep track of all the terms and conditions of all the websites we use? Not me, for sure, and not most people. This, to me, constitutes an unreasonable burden.

These websites that we have memberships in all have our e-mail addresses. How hard is it to cobble together a notification and send it out to all those addresses? Most of these websites are all too keen to send us advertisements; is it really that much more difficult to send notifications of changes in the terms of use?

These companies have an obligation to inform the users of these changes, to provide for an informed consent to their contract. The customer, notified of the proposed changes, then has the information necessary for them to decide whether or not they wish to continue the contract. Any other arrangement fall far short of the intent of a contract -- to be an agreement between a willing seller and a willing, and properly informed, buyer.
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Social Network Overload?

2011-08-16T02:17:00.000-04:00

Social networking has blossomed with a vengeance -- and I intended to mix that metaphor with the beautiful and soothing image of a blossom and the harsh, violent image of vengeance. I feel both pleased and overwhelmed with social networking.

I started out on LiveJournal, and I do not know anyone who is actively using it nowadays. I have not touched my LiveJournal in a few years. Then I migrated to Facebook, and still visit that site fairly often. It is a place to keep up with my family, as several relatives -- an elderly aunt, my cousins, my nephew, among others -- are all on Facebook.

A classmate at the University of North Florida then invited me to join Hi5, which is popular in Latin American countries (he and I are both interested in Spanish colonial history, and he has moved on to a Ph.D. program in North Carolina). So I did that -- just for him. But I have not visited that account in ages.

Then came Twitter, with its instant, on-the-moment updates, which can easily get out of hand. I'm sure nobody would be interested in hearing that I am grabbing a slice at Mellow Mushroom as I zoom through a day. But Twitter has its uses, especially to professionals in their fields, for such things as announcing a new blog post or a new book, both of which I have found to be good uses for Twitter.

And you can follow some interesting people on Twitter, such as George Takei, Roger Ebert, or the Dalai Lama. Yes, the Dalai Lama tweets! Isn't this a great world?

Then just a few weeks ago, came the beta version of Google+, and everyone climbed aboard. I managed to get in, and have found it interesting. Just yesterday (Monday), I attended a webinar held by Paul Allen, Dan Lynch, and Mark Olsen, in which they discussed uses of Google+ for genealogy. Google+ is growing by leaps and bounds, as shown by statistics posted by Paul Allen showing that Google+ hit ten million users in 16 days, whereas Facebook and Twitter took a few years to reach that level. Allen kept saying that they had not even begun advertising and promoting Google+ yet, as it is still at the beta stage. They haven't "officially" advertised or promoted it yet, but somehow there got to be a big buzz about it. Clever.

Now I have had in the past couple months two invitations to join LinkedIn. I resisted at first, but finally caved in. One thing I immediately see in LinkedIn that I do not find so readily in Facebook or Google+ is how locally-oriented LinkedIn is. Everywhere there are groups and other features focused on the Jacksonville, Florida area (I live just outside of Jacksonville, in another county, outside a small unincorporated bump in the road). This has several advantages. I like that emphasis quite a bit.

But . . . This is an awful lot to keep track of! It gets a bit tedious, for instance, to post here in my blog, then I go to bit.ly, the URL shortener, to post the URL for the day's blog entry on Twitter. Now I also will be posting the link on Google+ and LinkedIn (and should even put it on Facebook -- I'd like for my family to read my blog).

When you are my age, and thereby a little slower, and have reading and papers and classes and more papers, that gets to taking up a fair chunk of time. So I'm waiting for the day when some bright kid designs and puts onto the web the METAsocial network site, where all the others -- one's blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ -- can be read and posted to all at once. Now, that will save some time!
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All Hail John Gorrie!

2011-08-06T14:20:00.001-04:00

Reading my blog feeds, I came across Karen Krugman's post at Genealogy Frame of Mind titled Heat and Ancestors (http://genealogyframeofmind.blogspot.com/2011/08/heat-ancestors.html -- see note at bottom). She's in Michigan talking about the heat. We here in Florida are particularly qualified to comment on heat, and Karen inspired me to do so.

Karen mentions the layers of clothing our ancestors wore, and I have seen photographs of how ladies in Florida dressed in the middle and late 19th century and early 20th century. If we were expected to dress that way nowadays, I would lead a rebellion that would make the Civil War look tame! I have often wondered how people survived the summer in Florida wearing so many clothes, and made out of heavy materials, not the light synthetics we have these days (though 100% cotton is still best for hot weather).

Karen also mentions her grandparents having a "wall unit here and there" for air conditioning, but not central air. In the 1950s, my widowed mother did not even have a window unit in the house, though my aunt and grandmother, who lived around the corner from us, did. We had an attic fan, an industrial fan installed in the ceiling in the hallway outside the bedrooms. It really did not do much to cool in the daytime when the temperature reached the 90s (F), but at least moving air was a benefit, especially if you were drinking ice water or iced tea. We drank a lot of that to keep cool. But at night, the attic fan did a great job of cooling. It required that we sleep with our windows open, because it operated by drawing air in through the windows and exhausting it out through the attic, but in those days there was little if any crime in our neighborhood. We thought nothing of leaving the windows open at night, or of leaving the house unlocked during the day.

In fact, my husband (whose family had window-unit air conditioning in their house in the '50s) and I did not have central air until after we were married. Our first house did not have it, nor the house we lived in while he was on active duty in St. Petersburg, FL. The house we built after we had come back to the Jacksonville area was the first to have a central air unit -- a heat pump, which is the most popular kind of air conditioning/heating in Florida. We have one in our present house, too, and in fact just had a new unit installed last year to replace the one which had kept going, like the Energizer Bunny, for 17 years.

Yes, we here in Florida have a soft spot in our hearts for the memory of Dr. John Gorrie, who developed the basic principle behind refrigeration and air conditioning. See more about this here at the website of the University of Florida. Gorrie is indeed "Our Hero," as the website characterizes him, as his work helps keep Florida cool. Thank you, John Gorrie!

(Note: I am sorry you have to cut and paste the link in the first paragraph; I tried for one solid hour to get a live link to work at that point in the paragraph, and Blogger stubbornly refused. I finally had to just give up.)

Happy Coast Guard Day!

2011-08-04T13:33:00.000-04:00

Today is the 221st anniversary of the founding of the United States Coast Guard. My husband and I both spent time in the Coast Guard. He entered Officer Candidate School at Yorktown, Virginia, after graduating from Florida State University. We married while he was in the Coast Guard on active duty. He was assigned to the Coast Guard Cutter Ingham out of Norfolk, Virginia. I was on contract to the Jacksonville Public Library, which had sponsored me for graduate school in library science under the Library Services and Construction Act.

Once we were a family unit again -- to which had been added our older daughter Marti -- we went to St. Petersburg, Florida, where he was assigned to the Group office. He had so much fun overseeing safety at regattas; being liaison with the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a civilian body which voluntarily provides a great deal of help to the Coast Guard; and taking other assignments as they came along. I saw how much he was enjoying it, I decided to join, too, an idea he enthusiastically supported.

That did not happen until we returned to Jacksonville after he had been released from active duty and transferred to the Coast Guard Reserve. I enlisted in the Reserve in February of 1976 as a yeoman third class. By the time I had to stand down because of the onset and progress of osteoarthritis, I was a lieutenant (junior grade). During my time in, I had had some fascinating and fun stints of active duty, as well.

It was not until fairly recently that I discovered my husband's genealogical link to the Coast Guard. During World War II, local people along the coasts of the United States could serve as temporary members of the Coast Guard, with such duties as patrolling the waterfront or the beaches. Among my husband's grandfather's papers and his father's papers, we found documents showing us that both his father and grandfather had been temporary Coast Guard personnel during the war. When he went into OCS, we thought he was the first in his family to serve in the Coast Guard. Turns out he is a third generation Coastie.

I do have a first on my side of our family -- I am the first woman in my family to serve in the U.S. armed forces, as well as the first in the Coast Guard.
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In for a penny, in for $14,000?

2011-08-02T23:25:00.000-04:00

Next spring, in April, I will graduate, with my second bachelor's degree, from the University of North Florida with a double major in history and Spanish. I am contemplating, with the enthusiastic support of my family, friends, and professors, applying to the graduate school at the University of North Florida, for a Master of Arts in history. I am just about decided I am going to do it, but I am also wanting to make very sure that I am doing it for reasons that are mine, and not to live up to the expectations of others.

With that in mind, I will soon be taking a little bit of a "retreat" at the home of friends who have eminent good sense, and cats to pet. The cats will offer their own wisdom, which I shall take into consideration as well.

Reasons to do it:

I am already doing original research into the family structure of St. Augustine, having begun that under a grant from the university for independent undergraduate research. Why not get another degree out of it, one which can open more doors?
As my major professor pointed out, the structure of a master's program can only help strengthen my work on that research.
The master's program may also open doors to sources I would otherwise not have access to, and provide contact with historians I might not otherwise have an opportunity to meet.
The credential of a master's degree may help me in getting published.

Reasons not to do it:

Money. But my husband has said we will find it.
My health. That is a bit of a sticking point, and I intend to talk to my doctor.
Three dreaded letters: GRE (the Graduate Record Examination). However, according to an e-mail from the Graduate School at UNF, since I already have a master's degree (Library science, Florida State University, 1970) and took the GRE for that, I do not have to take it again.

So that last negative comes off the list, leaving a puny two in contrast to the four very solid points on the plus side.

Another reason to do it is that my research into the family structure of St. Augustine is based not in history, strictly speaking, but in genealogy. Genealogy is slowly making its way into the academy. Of course, Brigham Young University has had a degree-granting program in the field -- the only one in the country -- for a long time. Now Boston University and other institutions are offering courses in genealogy. I hope that my project, and the future work I do with that master's degree in history, will make a contribution, however small, to genealogy's acceptance as an academic discipline.

That alone would be worth it to me to do the work and take the time that getting the master's degree will involve.

Further down the trail

2011-07-14T14:35:00.000-04:00

The other day I posted about my pursuit of Samuel Rhoades/Rhodes and Ida May Dewey. I mentioned the marriage record I expected to find. Today I made it to the Jacksonville Public Library and examined the LDS film I had ordered.

I found them. Samuel Henston Rhoads, as his name appears on the marriage record, and Ida May Dewey married on 5 September 1881, the ceremony conducted by a Justice of the Peace, Thomas Lambert. This took place in Pike County, Ohio, and is recorded in the Probate Court in Marriage Book Volume 4, page 36. There is not a lot of information in the record -- no parents' names, for example. The record does say that the groom was over 21 years of age and the bride over 18, and that they were no nearer in relation than second cousins, and that there was no impediment to the marriage.

It just does not seem to have lasted terribly long. I wish I could go to Ohio, because the answers to the riddles posed by Samuel Henston Rhoads probably are there. I'll still be working on running him down. Stay tuned.
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On the Trail of Samuel Rhoades/Rhodes

2011-07-12T04:53:00.000-04:00

There is a family legend in my husband's family about his grandfather, Andrew Lewis Rhodes. The tale goes that sometime in the late 1880s or early 1890s, Andrew and his brother Harley were placed in an orphanage by their mother, Ida M. (Dewey) Rhoades/Rhodes. The variations in the spelling of the surname are "explained" in this story, which relates that Andrew was not a good speller as a little boy, and he wrote his name "Rhodes" rather than "Rhoades" upon entering the orphanage. Why the boys were placed in the institution -- located somewhere around Chillicothe, Ohio -- is not revealed in the tale.

The bit about the name spelling seems a bit specious, for a couple of reasons. It is unlikely the child would have signed himself into the orphanage; his mother would have done that. I have no idea what sort of speller Ida was. The second reason this portion of the tale, at least, seems bogus is that in Andrew Lewis Rhodes's Railroad Retirement file, he spells his father's name as "Rhoades" on one document, and "Rhodes" on another. If he was a poor speller as a child, he did not lose the habit as an adult! His own name, however, he consistently signed as "Rhodes."

The photograph at right was found among Andrew Rhodes's effects. I found it in Andrew's wallet, which we had in a box of other items. On the back, Andrew identified the seated man as his father, Samuel. The man standing next to him, with his hand on Samuel's shoulder, is unidentified. To me, they appear a couple of rough-looking characters. I cannot determine what the light patch on the standing man's hat is, but I wonder if it was not a police badge or a Pinkerton badge. I have not been able to find out anything about the circumstances under which this photo was taken. Were they both cops or private security? Was the standing man a cop, and is that the hand of an arresting officer on Samuel's shoulder?

This could have a bearing on why the boys were placed in the orphanage. Ida Dewey Rhoades/Rhodes was apparently alone at that time, with no means of support, and put the boys in the orphanage so they could be cared for. She subsequently remarried, and Harley, at age 15, is with Ida and her second husband and their own three children, in the 1900 census. Andrew, who would have been 18 in 1900, has so far not been located in that census,

Andrew, in his Railroad Retirement file, lists his birthplace as Pike County, Ohio. In an earlier census, 1870, there is a Samuel Rhoades in the home of his father Levi Rhoades, and not far from this household is a Dewey family with a daughter, Ida M. My thought is that this is probably Andrew's parents as youngsters. I need to corroborate that, but have not yet found, for instance, a birth record for Andrew. It is the right county, however. I also am on the track o a marriage certificate for a Samuel H. Rhoades and Ida Mary [sic] Dewey, recorded in the Pike County records as microfilmed by the LDS church. The film is waiting for me at the Jacksonville Public Library, but I have not yet, due to illness, got a chance to view it. Again, it is the right county, and the right time frame.

Harley Rhoades died in Florida in 1947. I have found him and his wife in a couple of city directories, as well as seeing his death listed in the Florida death index. Andrew came to Florida as well, and married in Lakeland. Later, he came to Jacksonville in the course of his work as a Pullman conductor, and died there in 1966.

Though the trail is obscure, I feel that I am on the track of Samuel H. Rhoades/Rhodes, and will lay him to heel one of these days -- perhaps as the standing man in the photo did so long ago. That is a story I really want to uncover!
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Careers in Genealogy: My Own Humble Path

2011-04-19T18:50:00.000-04:00

I just read Amy Coffin's "We Tree" entry about careers in genealogy, and her take on the subject. Here's mine:

I have chosen to speak and write. I do not make much money at it because, due to my health, I cannot work at it full time. I do as much as I can, while getting the rest I need and while dealing with the occasional difficulties my health status tosses me. So I'm a part-timer.

I chose speaking and writing because I enjoy talking about the subject, yet I am also very much a loner. I enjoy solitude. I just love sitting in a library or archive, tracking down genealogical or historical facts. I also enjoy the process of writing -- taking all those facts and weaving them into a coherent whole. I very much enjoyed putting together my last book, Non-Federal Censuses of Florida, 1784-1945: A Guide to Sources. And now that the grant period is over, and all I need to do now is get an article written for the university's scholarly journal, the "project" concerning St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period is no longer the "project." It is the "book."

I write in a field that is not exactly known for blockbuster best-sellers, and I write about "niche" subjects within that small sphere. That is all right with me. I have made enough to further my education, picking up skills and knowledge which will make me more effective working on this particular book about St. Augustine, as well as further researches I plan on the colonial Spanish lineages and history of Florida. And I hope that by presenting this examination of the families of St. Augustine, using a genealogical as well as historical approach, under the auspices of a university grant, I will have made my little tiny contribution toward bringing genealogy to its rightful place in the academy as one of the social sciences. I agree with Amy, that great days are in store for genealogy. I think recognition as an academic discipline will be one of those great things.

I am fortunate in that my husband has a retirement which, while not allowing us to be in any way extravagant, allows us to be comfortable. I do not have to work to live. I speak and write on genealogical/historical subjects because I enjoy it and because I do want to make some contribution to the field. Each of us, doing our little bit and putting our one little brick into the walls, will help construct a fine edifice of genealogical knowledge.

Bill West's Civil War Genealogy Challenge

2011-04-11T23:34:00.000-04:00

Bill West, whose blog is West in New England, has offered a challenge for 12 April 2011, which is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. Have you noticed that on the television, they're repeating Ken Burns's "The Civil War," and programs about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln?

Bill asks us to blog about our Civil War ancestors. I have mentioned before my maternal great-great grandfather Charles Reed and my paternal great-great grandfather Matthew Hale Packard. Charles Reed served in a regiment of Indiana infantry, and Matthew Hale Packard in two different regiments of New York cavalry. By profession, Charles Reed was a nineteenth-century jack of all trades, having been a miller, a teacher, and an inventor. Matthew Hale Packard was a carpenter.

Having talked about their service before, tonight I'm going to talk about how the Civil War left them. Both suffered from afflictions common to soldiers during the Civil War, a war in which there were more casualties from disease than from combat. Charles Reed survived with chronic dysentery and all the afflictions that may accompany it, until 1920. He suffered pain and discomfort almost every day of that period of time. When he did die, it was in poverty and as a widow. His daughter Carrie Alice had taken care of him in his final years.

Matthew Hale Packard likewise suffered from chronic illnesses after the war. He did not last as long as Charles Reed, dying in 1881. Both of them were eventually left unable to work. Matthew Hale Packard's wife Emily Hoyt was able to earn a living as a milliner.

Aside from being the date of the start of the Civil War, April 12 is also the day the Russians launched Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961. It is also the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945. I try to find something positive in the day, because April 12 is also my birthday.
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Thank you, Leland Meitzler

2011-03-24T20:30:00.000-04:00

I got an e-mail today, the Genealogy Newsline from Leland K. Meitzler. I received this newsletter because I was a subscriber to Everton's Genealogical Helper when it, alas, ceased publication.

The Genealogy Newsline was full of all sorts of interesting items, one being a new search engine for genealogy, that I will try later and comment on here. Also listed were new record groups indexed, and some of them digitized, at the Family Search website. I decided to try to get through one brick wall, the place of death of my husband's great-granduncle, Richard Keys Russell. He and his wife, Bessie Monroe Marshall, are buried in Oaklawn Cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida, where some of my family and some of my husband's family are also buried. I have not yet had the time -- and we live several miles away from the cemetery, in another county -- to go get the record on the Russells from the cemetery.

I had not been able to find Richard Keys Russell in the Florida death records. There was certainly the possibliity that he did not die within Florida's borders. In searching for an alternate death place, it seemed prudent to begin with neighboring states. Georgia is as neighbor to Jacksonville's location in Florida as it gets.

Within another half-minute, after entering the name and the years 1928-1929 for the approximate year of death, I had the entry for the record. After signing in to the Family Search website, I had the death certificate coming out of my printer.

Thank you, Leland Meitzler!

New Lineage Society in Town

2011-01-20T02:43:00.000-05:00

I just saw on Up Front with NGS website that there is a new lineage society starting up: the Sons and Daughters of World War II Veterans. It is being initiated by the Admiral Nimitz Foundation and the Nimitz Educational Fund, both organizations which memorialize Admiral Chester A. Nimitz.

I will send in my application as soon as possible!

My father graduated from the Naval Academy in 1934. He was retired medically in February of 1941 but brought back to active duty in October of the same year. He served mainly as a flight instructor at Jacksonville (Florida) Naval Air Station.

I looked at the application form. I have all the documentation I need. What floors me is that there are spaces for four generations of lineal descendants!

Take a look to see if you would like to submit papers for this society: http://www.sonsanddaughtersofww2veterans.org/index.asp. When that page appears, there is a large button marked "Apply." Next to it in smaller print, it says "read instructions." Click that one, and find the information needed, including how to download a copy of the application, if you'd rather do it all by paper. You can also apply online, and they accept digitized copies (scans) of required documents.

There is a fee for applying. The fee is $125. Right now, they are emphasizing their "charter" status, which asks for an additional contribution of $100. It'll take me a few weeks, but that's what I'm going to do. It's the least I can do.

My husband and I are also charter supporters of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. That began about a year ago, and we ordered plaques with our parents' names on them as memorials in the museum. My father served, and my husband's father served a short stint in the Coast Guard and his mother worked in a local shipyard which built liberty ships.

As the poet said, "Lest we forget."
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52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History: New Year's Memories

2011-01-07T17:25:00.000-05:00

Amy Coffin over at We Tree is at it again. Last year, she had 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy, with lots of ways we can improve the quality of our research. This year, in her wisdom, she is providing ways for us to get our own stories. down. How much-needed that is, especially for me, since I'm neck-deep in the genealogy and history of the people who lived in St. Augustine, Florida, over 200 years ago!

Here is today's assignment: Week 1: Did your family have any New Year’s traditions? How was the New Year celebrated during your childhood? Have you kept these traditions in the present day?!

My family did not have many real New Year's traditions. One thing we enjoyed as kids was sparklers. My mother did not really allow any other fireworks. There were always stories she told and retold about kids getting a hand blown off or an eye put out. But we did have fun with the sparklers.

Today my husband and I do not really have much in the way of traditions, either, except for one: We stay home! We stay snug in our house, out of the way of the drunks on the highways! We might open a bottle of bubbly (usually San Sebastian Blanc de Fleur). We do less and less at New Year's Eve, though, as the years go by. New years don't impress us much anymore. We've seen so doggone many of them!

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Historical dates

2011-01-05T15:36:00.001-05:00

We see a date in a history book or on the web on some "official" website, and we think that this is probably accurate, the real deal, something we can trust and have confidence in.

Don't be too sure about that.

I am beginning to prepare for a talk I will give on my research into the family structure of St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period (1784-1820). The research I have done is extremely complex, and to sum it up in the 10 minutes I will have for my presentation is not possible. What I am planning to do is gather information about a particular day or particular week, depending on how much information there is for any day or week during that period, and present a picture of a typical day or week in St. Augustine sometime between 1784 and 1820. This will be a way to show the human, day-to-day side of the town, say some things about the family relationships and the world and town in which these relationships existed. It will be a bottom-up view of history rather than the traditional top-down view.

I have begun to gather this information, using a 3x5 index card -- yes, I am old school -- for each event on each date. Right now, I am looking at the file on the probate of the will and estate of James Ormond, for whom Ormond Beach, Florida was named. He settled in East Florida, near the former plantation of New Smyrna. He had a wife, Russell (yes, that was her name), neé Walker, and two sons, James Ormond II and Emanuel Walker Ormond. The probate file does not have a record in it which gives James Ormond's exact date of death. Hoping to find at least a tentative date which I might verify later in some other record, I went to the internet.

What I found there is a can of worms.

One website says he died in 1819. Another says 1817. However, the record I am using, his will and attendant documents which form the probate file, come from the East Florida Papers, a collection of original documents from East Florida (mainly St. Augustine) during the Second Spanish Period. The file starts off with a request from the widow Russell Ormond that the closed file on James Ormond's death be reopened, because she, with problems of health and distance, had not been able to come to St. Augustine soon after her husband died.

This request was received by the governor's scribe on 27 September 1809.

Where did the 1817 and 1819 years come from for his death? I do not know. Does someone have an original document with such a date on it? I do not know that, either. I hope I can find another original document which will have a more precise date.

In the meantime, when you come across historical dates in derivative sources, see if you can find an original source which will either corroborate or refute the derivative source's information. Do not just take it at face value.
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La Real Pragmatica de Casamiento (Royal Law of Marriage)

2010-12-21T03:01:00.000-05:00

In the past year of doing research on the family structure of St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period (1783-1821), I have come across a number of interesting details of which I had no hint when I started. The latest of these is something I found in the marriage license applications 1785-1803 in the East Florida Papers. They all mention something called the Real Pragmatica de Casamiento -- the Royal Law of Marriage. It was instituted by Carlos (Charles) III in 1776. I have not delved into it in detail, though I have found some sources on it. What I get from a cursory look at these is that the law was originally intended to be applied to the royal family, to be sure that there were no "unequal" marriages (no royals marrying commoners, that is). This was necesitated by the amorous and dissipated adventures of Crown Prince Luis de Borbón, son of Carlos III (Note 1) The Real Pragmatica found universal application to all subjects of the Spanish Crown, including those in the New World colonies, by 1778. (Note 2)

One provision of this law was that a person under the age of 25 (though I find it applied to older persons, as well, in St. Augustine) had to have the permission of his or her parents or other older relative in order to marry. (Note 3) This was often waived in the case of the colonies. The waiver was based on the fact that many of the people in St. Augustine had come by themselves, leaving family behind in Spain or Menorca or the Canary Islands or Cuba. In these cases, where the intended couple had no older relatives in close range, the governor of the colony would be the one granting the permission. (Note 4)

Usually in these cases also, the groom or bride would bring in witnesses to make sworn statements that they knew the individual had no older relatives in the area. These sworn statements, and the other documents in the file of each application, have revealed further information on these families. I found out that a couple of men who shared the same surname were indeed brothers. I found that a woman living in St. Augustine was the aunt of one applicant, and I have found the names of parents, which I had not known before. These documents are helping me make a little more progress in linking related people together.

The imposition of the Real Pragmatica on all Spanish subjects was a departure from what had been a less stringent attitude on the part of the Catholic Church, which up until the promulgation of the Real Pragmatica had pretty much been in charge of the marriage business. The church was not that concerned about status inequality in marriage, and in fact was in favor of free choice of marriage partner without requiring parental permission. That lax attitude was contravened by the Real Pragmatica. (Note 5)

Next: further provisions of the Real Pragmatica.

Notes:

Note 1: María Luz Alonso, "El consentimiento para matrimonio de los miembros de la Familia Real (Sobre la vigencia de la Pragmatica de Carlos III de 1776)," Cuadernos de la historia del derecho, No. 4, Servicio de Publicaciones, UCM, Madrid, 1997, 64.

Note 2: Christian Buschges, "Don Manuel Valdivieso y Carrión Protests the Marriage of his Daughter to Don Teodoro Jaramillo, a Person of Lesser Social Standing (Quito 1784-85)," in Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling, eds., Colonial Lives: Documents in Latin American History, 1550-1850. (Oxford University Press, 2000), excerpted on the website Women in World History, file:///G:/Personal%20Data/My%20Documents/UNF/HIS%204609%20DIS/Real%20Pragmatica%20de%20Casamiento/Quito%20lawsuit%20re%20Real%20Pragmatica.html (accessed 19 December 2010).

Note 3: "The Real Pragmatica of 1776 - What Does it Say?" on website Unequal Marriages in Spain: the Pragmatica, http://www.heraldica.org/topics/royalty/pragmatica.htm#pragm%E1tica (accessed 19 December 2010).

Note 4: See, for example, East Florida Papers, Matrimonial Licenses 1785-1803, Reel 132, Bundle R298R9.

Note 5: Buschges, "Don Manuel Valdivieso y Carrión Protests the Marriage of His Daughter . . ."
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A Little Cautionary Note

2010-11-30T16:42:00.000-05:00

We are coming to the end of a year, and barring the sun exploding, the beginning of another one. So it will once again be time when we will be writing the wrong year for a brief while. We all do it. It was more frequent back in the old days when we used to write checks to pay for stuff. But we still do it on calendars, homework, papers, memos, etc.

We genealogists need to be aware that it is not just us modern folk who do that.

I am transcribing yet more documents for my St. Augustine research project. This time I'm into marriage license applications in St. Augustine from 1785 to 1803. For one thing, I'm getting a real sense of just how much rigmarole people had to go through to get married in that place and time! They really must have been in love to put up with all that bureaucratic nonsense! I'll talk about that in another post.

Another thing I have found is that those who lived two hundred or more years ago were not immune from writing the wrong year. And they had to really be off the beam to do it, too, because they wrote so many documents, every day. The government scribe, Domingo Rodriguez de León, did nothing but that, day in and day out.

And on the cover sheet for the papers involved in the marriage license application for Antonio Palma, of Spain, and Margarita McFail, of Scotland, there is, big as life (in letters of a size comparable to about a 42 typeface today) the month and year that Domingo Rodriguez de León entered -- January 1785. (1)

Well, Domingo -- it was 1786. The first document in the package, wherein Antonio Palma pleads his case to be allowed to marry his dear Margarita, is dated January of 1785. Every other document in the package is dated January 1786. The latter is probably correct, just from the preponderance of appearances of 1786 as the year. The strange thing is that they did not get married until 4 December 1786. The reason: is that in 1784, 1785, and 1786, marriages were only performed in December. The parish had been reorganized, along with everything else in that time period of transition between English and Spanish rule, and the two new priests, Thomas Hassett and Michael O'Reilly, both Irish, were overwhelmed with organizaitonal matters. As baptisms and burials were performed when necessary, they decided to put marriages on the back burner. After 1786, marriages were conducted all year round, as requested. (2)

So be aware in looking at old documents that a date written in January may have the wrong year attached to it, and further verification would be a really good idea.

Notes--

1. Marriage license application, Antonio Palma and Margarita Macfail [sic], East Florida Papers, Matrimonial Licenses, Reel 142, Bundle 298R9, folio 12r.
2. Patricia Griffin, Mullet on the Beach: the Minorcans of Florida 1768-1788 (Jacksonville, University of North Florida Press, 1991). 171.
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Election Day 2010 -- Family History and General History

2010-11-02T12:22:00.000-04:00

Today's meme was suggested by Thomas MacEntee in his daily "Geneabloggers" e-mail. We are to talk about voting in our family, any traditions, or any ancestors who may have run for office.

The last ancestor I can point to who held public office would be my 8x-great-grandfather Samuel Packard, who emigrated to Hingham, Massachusetts (Plymouth Colony) in 1638 from Suffolk, England. He was, at various times, Collector of Ministers' Rates (tax collector, basically) and Surveyor of Highways. Most of the rest of us have kept a low profile, politically speaking.

I have made a point of voting in each election since I became eligible to vote in 1968 -- primaries, general elections, special elections, whatever. My husband had an unbroken streak until last spring's primary, when he ended up in the hospital on voting day, and had not taken advantage of early voting.

Early voting is what we have here in Florida, and I'm sure other places must have it, too. Polling places are established at various venues, usually the local public library or a school. The polling place is run exactly as the usual Tuesday-election-day polling place, under the direction of the county Supervisor of Elections. The early voting goes on for something like a week (maybe 2, not really sure) before the election. My younger daughter and I even voted on Sunday this week! The library itself was closed, but the meeting room was open, and set up just like the regular polling place. And the best sight of all was that we had to wait for a voting booth. There were at least 10 of them set up, and every one of them was full, with a line waiting. I hope this kept up all week. We need bigger voter turnouts.

So with voting going on even on the weekends, there's no excuse for anyone able to do so not doing so! And for the rest, absentee ballots are good, too. They just require a little planning.

Elections themselves, and the polling places, are quieter than in the past -- at least on election day. The run-up to the election is pretty doggone noisy these days, but the election itself is not. No more do party hacks and other malefactors ply voters with liquor, or attempt to bribe them to vote a certain way. (It's a secret ballot and always has been. How did these crooks know whether or not a voter was just taking their money and voting how they pleased?) Polling places are policed by the pollworkers, and poll-watchers can observe and report any shenanigans. Political signs have to be a certain distance from the polling place (50 feet in Florida; lots of near-sighted oldsters like me who can't see that far!) And no "electioneering" is allowed within that 50-foot perimeter. Nobody can accost you in the polling place and urge -- or threaten -- you to vote a certain way. That is a change from the early days of the Republic, and a good one.

Now if we could just get the screamers and thumpers on the extreme ends of the spectrum to dial it down a bit!

Blog Action Day: Water

2010-10-16T15:40:00.000-04:00

My connection of the clean water theme of Blog Action Day to genealogy is easy: My husband and I both served in the United States Coast Guard, which -- among its many and varied duties -- is responsible for enforcement of federal clean-water laws in federal waters. I had some connection to this in some small ways. As the officer in charge of a sub-unit of reserves who manned the Jacksonville, Florida, Marine Safety Office during the 1980s, I was in charge on my weekend of pollution response. There were a few small incidents of "a visible sheen on the water," the principal sign of pollution. It mainly came from factories along the St. Johns River or from the ships that called at the port of Jacksonville. We never had any serious pollution problems on my watch.

Currently I'm taking a class on the environmental history of the St. Johns River, for which we in the class will be taking oral history from people involved with the river in one way or another. I am not on a team that is looking into the varied sources of potential pollution to the river, or the history of that aspect of it. My subject is how artists have depicted the river over time, and how that depiction has changed. Or not. I have not yet encountered any visual arts representations of St. Johns River pollution. Though I have as yet found no artistic representations (paintings or art photographs), there are news photographs of such things as the periodic algae blooms the river is unfortunately subject to, and historical photographs of channels of the River or its tributaries choked with water hyacinths, which at one time constituted a hazard to or at least an obstacle to navigation. They are pretty much under control these days, though it is a continuing battle. The explsotive growth of the hyacinths through much of the twentieth century, and the problems they presented, is an object lesson in the hazards posed by invasive species here in Florida.

The algae problem is due to the introduction into the river of hypernutrients, via runoff from agricultural fields and residential properties. The nutrients spur the algae growth, which uses up the oxygen in the water. In consequence, fish and plants die.

These problems are not a direct threat to the population hereabouts, for very few areas get their drinking water from the River. They get it from the Flroidan aquifer, a large system of underground limestone caves. However, with the population growing, especially in the central part of the state, some municipalities south of us (which is actually upriver, not down, as the St. Johns flows north) have their eyes on diverting many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water from the river for their drinking water. This prospect alarms those of us living downriver (i.e., north), because of the real harm it could do to many aspects of life on the river, including commercial fishing and recreation, as well as the problems it would cause with salt-water intrusion into the river itself.

The problem is more severe in other parts of the world, where climate change, war, and other conditions have altered the availability of water in drastic ways, threatening populations with actual extinction. There are ways to conserve water, keep it pure, and provide for these peoples who need it so much. That is what this year's Blog Action Day is all about. Even in my own very small way, on a very local level, I've helped through my service in the Coast Guard. It is a problem we all need to be aware of.
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When it is Difficult to do Family History

2010-10-13T06:11:00.000-04:00

I am wondering about this subject because in the county where I live, tonight there is a little toddler who is someday going to find out, probably after he is grown, that his father was shot dead by his uncle. This happened Monday night, and the killer shot not only his own brother, but the brother's friend and his own parents. His parents survived and are now in the hospital; the other two did not. At this hour, that uncle is still on the loose. One of the places they think he is is in the state forest that our lot backs up to. Not an event that will lead one to sleep very soundly, and I'm not. So I am up wondering.

Black sheep can present a very thorny problem at times. They can present family history investigators with a dilemma: How does one record this black sheep whose actions still cause pain in the family? Or does one even bother? Would it not be better to just forget about that one?

While I can understand the motivation to sweep a really heinous black sheep under the rug, that is not the best policy. At the very least, one would record the basic genealogical information. If one does not want to go further than that, because of the pain this person has caused in the family, that is all right. That is what I tell my audiences when I give my talk on black sheep.

On the other hand, if one does want to find out about a black sheep one has found out existed, perhaps a hundred or so years ago, where does one look? Some state archives have prison records. I've blogged here about the prison records at the Florida State Archives. Like those in the Florida Archives, these records in other state archives are likely to be restricted in access. For more current information, including those presently incarcerated, the State of Florida's bureau of prisons has a website with all the information on it. Other states may have the same kind of information posted.

Newspapers are a great place to look for information about a black sheep. They make good copy. Likewise, you may find out about an infamous ancestor in a local history. And don't forget the censuses: prison populations are enumerated, too.

But tonight I wonder about that little baby, and what he is going to wonder about his father's fate, years from now.
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Mappy Monday: Property ownership? Why bother?

2010-10-04T12:24:00.000-04:00

That seems to have been the question my parents asked each other. Today's blog post comes from the Mappy Monday mene from the Ravenna (Michigan) Area Historical Society's blog.

My parents never owned a house. When they married, my father was in the Navy, undergoing flight training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, where my mother grew up. The peripatetic nature of military life, and their penchant for moving in civilian life, brought them to the decision, apparently, never to buy a house, but just to rent. Therefore, the avenue of tracing their exact whereabouts at any given time through county or municipal property records is not available to me.

I have used some city directories to find them, but that is chancy, as coverage is sometimes spotty. The variety of city directories of the nineteenth century got pared down in the twentieth. I have looked in many of the digitized directories online, and not found them.

Some tracking of their residences is in my father's Navy service record, which I obtained from the National Personnel Records Center. That has been a big help.

My own memory helps somewhat for the period during my cognizant life (from about four or five years of age onward), but sometimes an address is not to hand, even then. I remember our address when I was six and seven, when we lived in Tarzana, California. With that address, I have seen the house on the "street view" of Google Maps recently. Funny that I do not remember the house seeming as small as it appears on the street view photograph, nor do I remember the houses being as close together as they look in the photo. I guess everthing looks bigger when we ourselves are small.

The places where we lived in Pensacola, Florida, when I was four and five were rural in nature -- one of them being a working farm where we actually had crops of corn, watermelons, and blueberries. But they had rural-route or post-office box addresses, which I never did know. I only know them by the names attached to them by virtue of where they were located, but I have not been able to pinpoint them using Google Earth or Google Maps. I have found approximate locations where I think they were, but I cannot be sure. No correspondence addressed to my father or mother at those houses survives, and I have not found us in the city directories for Pensacola.

It is a little frustrating not to be able to go to county property records and find information about my parents, but I have used these other ways to glean a little more information, and once I finish my college degree, and the book I'm working on, I will get back to further searching for where they were all along the way.

I just wish they had stayed put a little longer!
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Talented Tuesday: Elizabeth Reed

2010-09-28T16:50:00.000-04:00

My aunt . . . well, let me back up here.

My mother was an intra-family adoption, as I've discussed here before. So Elizabeth Reed, my mother's adoptive sister, was really her cousin, and my second cousin. But I always called her my aunt, and she was instrumental in raising me. So I'm going to continue to be "genealogically incorrect" in this post.

Elizabeth Reed was a registered nurse whose specialty was public health. She never married. She was a large woman, and never was successful at losing weight. But she was a character. She spent a lot of time on the lecture circuit, mostly within the state of Florida, where she was Director of Health Information for the State Board of Health (now the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services). And along with her serious speechifying about health and wellness, she would entertain her audiences with monologues.

The art of the monologue ranges from Robert Benchley to Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. Elizabeth Reed's monologues told a story, or presented a slice of life with a comedic twist.

She would present the natural history of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as sung by a little girl at a recital, a honky-tonk singer, an operatic diva, and other variations on the theme. All of the variations were hilarious, and delivered with great gusto. Another of her monologues showed a hospital volunteer "cheering up" a patient by discussing the competence of the surgeon who operated on him, dietary restrictions, the sounds and smells endemic to hospitals, and other joys. She had a stock of monologues, and not a one was written down. They were all stored in her memory. She told me one day that she had tried to write one of them down, and it looked so dreadful on paper that she never tried to commit one to writing again.

Unfortunately, she died before the arrival of home videotape, and the usual home-movie 8mm that we had did not have sound. I would give a lot to have these monologues on videotape.

Not all of them were comedic, though the majority of them were. She surprised me one day when she appeared at my high school in 1964. The school's speech and drama teacher, Sabina Meyer, arranged for my aunt to perform a monologue for the speech and drama classes. My classmates were skeptical, and were making jokes about the whole prospect of a monologue performance -- and my aunt's size -- which were getting me angry. But then she started the monologue, which was a surprise to me in that it was not a comedy, it was drama, and it was one which I had never before seen.

The story was an old grandmother who had made the arduous overland crossing to the American West in a covered wagon, and had lost a child "on the plains of Kansas" counseling her teenage granddaughter about life and relationships. Before my aunt was one-third the way into the monologue, the joking and chatter had stopped and you could have heard a pin drop. There were even some tears glistening in the girls' eyes. After the performance, the kids couldn't wait to tell me how much they had thought of the monologue, and that my aunt was great.

Well, I knew that.

One modest individual in a small city in the middle of the Twentieth Century with a talent that could make people laugh or cry. That was my aunt, Elizabeth Reed.

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The picture becomes clearer

2010-09-21T13:11:00.000-04:00

I've been working in the baptismal records of St. Augustine during the early part of the second Spanish period (Volume I, 1784-1792) in the transcriptions available at the St. Augustine Historical Society research library. It is much easier to use these transcriptions, at least from 1784 into the fall of 1788, because the entries during that period were made in Latin, and I do not read Latin. It was in 1788 that Bishop Cirilo de Barcelona made his visita (inspection tour) of St. Augustine and he decreed that henceforth entries should be made in Spanish. He cites errors and other unacceptable conditions in the records, and prescribes a form which is preserved in the baptismal record.

I have also just finished transcribing from the original the 1786 census of St. Augustine taken by Father Thomas Hassett, the priest at St. Augustine. It is not a complete census, as Hassett himself points out in his introductory comment. He purposefully left out the government officials and the troops stationed at the Castillo de San Marcos. Spanish censuses frequently left out military personnel. For one thing, they were probably considered transient, even though other records I have examined show many of them participating in the daily life of the town.

These documents, along with marriage records, form the basis for reconstructing the family structure of the town, and I am beginning to see patterns of relationship. Another aspect found in the baptismal records is the godparent relationship, which I've mentioned previously.

It is necessary to bear in mind that with these Spanish censuses, however, the one consistent aspect of them is their inconsistency. There were no prescribed formats and no preprinted forms. Not all entries have all the information. For example, it is traditional in Spanish records (as it is in French records) for a woman, married or not, to be recorded by her maiden name. This is a boon to family historians researching their female lines. Most of the entries in the census and baptism records have the women by their maiden names, but not all of them. Then, too, it is careless to assume that because the woman's surname is the same as her husband's, that it is not her maiden name. Non-first cousins could marry, and sometimes did. It is also possible that, even in a town as small as St. Augustine, you could have two unrelated individuals with the same surname.

More information is necessary in these events, and the marriage records are the best source for that.

They're next.
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Answering a Comment: More on SmartDraw

2010-09-16T23:58:00.000-04:00

Today in my comments to be moderated, I found this from Ben Sayer:

Hi, Karen. Thanks for sharing news of this tool's application to genealogy.

What would you say are the reasons one might use SmartDraw instead of the capabilities of their existing genealogy software to create diagrams?

Why are computer fillable forms the "holy grail" for you?

I find the forms in genealogy programs to be rigid; they cannot be edited, or if they can, it isn't easy for me. SmartDraw forms can be edited, modified, changed around. And easily, too! Besides, which -- heresy of heresies -- for my St. Augustine project, I'm not using a program, I'm using paper forms. I am an old-school scholar who responds best to paper.

My St. Augustine project has specialized needs: for instance, I needed a form which would show a godparent and all the children he or she had been godparent to, with their parents. I didn't find anything I thought suitable in a genealogy program, but was able to create one in SmartDraw in a very short time with very little effort.

As for why computer-fillable forms have been my holy grail: my handwriting is horrible! That is one of the chief reasons. For another, I have arthritis, and it is impossible for me to write small enough for some forms -- that's another complaint I have about forms in general, that often they do not have enough room for what I need to enter into a particular blank. With SmartDraw, if I feel that a blank or an area in a form is not large enough, I can change that. And with some of these Spanish names, I need LARGE blanks on the forms!

Thanks for your comments, Ben; gave me fodder enough for another blog post! And thank you for reading my blog.

I know where I was 39 Years Ago Today!

2010-09-16T23:37:00.000-04:00

I was in the hospital, having given birth to our older daughter! Happy birthday, kiddo!

The picture shown here is one I had done at what was then (December, 1971) Jacksonville's premiere department store, Cohen Brothers. When I went downtown to pick up the prints, the manager asked me if it would be all right if they displayed a very large (something like 2 ft. x 3 ft.) poster-sized print in their department, on the wall. I said it would be all right -- especially when they told me that when they were ready to change the display, they would give us the poster-sized portrait! So my beautiful baby was highly visible to the elite of Jacksonville for a while.

Software for Genealogists: SmartDraw

2010-09-16T01:12:00.000-04:00

Someone on a forum I participate in recommended the program SmartDraw when we were talking about creating genograms, which are used particularly by health professionals in plotting family health histories. Genograms can have other applications, and I thought they might be useful in my research project.

I downloaded the trial version of SmartDraw and discovered that in addition to genograms, there are family group sheets, pedigree sheets, individual record sheets, and various forms for genealogists to track their research progress, such as correspondence record sheets. The beauty of these forms is that they are all computer-fillable! This has been a holy grail of mine for a long time.

With SmartDraw you can modify each of their pre-stored forms to fit your own situation. You can also create your own templates, as I did in creating the form I am using for tracking compadrazgo -- the godparent relationship -- in the population of St. Augustine, FL, during the Second Spanish Period. What I am finding there is leading me to investigate the importance of the patrón in St. Augustine society.

SmartDraw also has maps. Lots and lots of maps. And again, you can modify the maps to fit your needs. I may try my hand at creating some meaningful maps, especially if I can import formats from scanned images.

I was disappointed to discover that SmartDraw's timelines are completely business-oriented, and I am having a difficult time modifying that particular template. I will have to try more experiments when I have a little more time. But overall, I am very pleased with the usefulness of SmartDraw, its flexibility and its ease of use in connection with my project. I anticipate further uses later on, as well, when I am finally able to get back to doing my own family's genealogy once again!

Required disclaimer: I was not given the copy of SmartDraw; I paid for it with my own money. I was not asked by anyone connected with SmartDraw or with any other entity to write this review. Views expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Neither I nor any member of my family is employed by the company which created and sells SmartDraw, nor do we have any other connection with them.
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The records do not always give us what we want

2010-09-13T00:46:00.000-04:00

I have recently had an inquiry concerning a Spanish marriage record from the middle of the 1800s. The individual who sent me the copy of the record wanted to know why the prospective groom's grandparents were not mentioned in the record, to see if the page she sent me revealed any information on that score.

Alas, it did not. It often happens in these records that there is a variation -- sometimes a wide variation -- in the amount of information provided. You would think, for instance, that a will would name any heirs to an estate, or that an inquiry into an intestacy would reveal the names of heirs. Not always. I had one probate case -- in fact, it was the one I have discussed here before, of the doctor who committed suicide in St. Augustine in 1809. The rather lengthy packet of documents mentions, more than once, the doctor's two daughters. Nowhere in the documents are their names revealed.

And in the marriage record in question, there is no information as to why the groom's grandparents were not named, nor would there be. It is often the luck of the draw in how much information we find in a particular document.

I am currently dealing with baptism records in my research into the families of St. Augustine, FL, during the Second Spanish Period, and I find a tremendous variation in the amount of information provided. Some records list not only the parents and godparents, but both sets of grandparents as well. Some reocrds list the profession of the father or the godfather, and sometimes both. Others are mute on the subject.

One tactic I intend to employ, once I get all the transcriptions done, is to see whether it was one particular priest who entered the more complete information into the records. That may or may not have been the case, but it has my curiosity up. It could very well be that one of the priests was more prone to gather more information than the other one was. It could also be that parents just did not reveal a great deal of information about the family.

We just have to understand that we may not always find what we want to find in the documents.
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Reports of my demise . . .

2010-08-31T03:30:00.000-04:00

. . . are grossly exaggerated. I apologize for not posting for quite a while, but it's been a madhouse.

Various family things have occurred, including a stay in the hospital for my husband. He's home now and doing fine.

Classes started last week, and I missed the first day because of the abovementioned unscheduled stay. But I'm getting back into it, and of course, I have a lot of reading to do.

Then there's my research project. I haven't got as far as I wanted, but I have a few items that I think might make for a promising journal article and presentation, which I am required to do as part of the package. I probably will not be terribly active blogging this term, and I regret that. Priorities must be set.

I will try to keep the blog going but it will be minimal at least until Christmas. Then I hope I can be more active at it after the first of the year.

In the meantime, let me recommend that you stretch your mind with Michael John Neill's Daily Genealogy Transcriber . He invites everyone to try their hand at interpreting the day's sample. (Shucks -- he beat me to the idea!)

My Favorite Star Trek Episode

2010-08-07T12:55:00.001-04:00

What does Star Trek have to do with Genealogy? In the case of this one episode, everything.

I have a number of "favorite" Star Trek episodes, really, from many of the offshoots of that many-branched series (almost like a family tree, in fact). One of these, like many of the best episodes of that saga, is completely without bang-bang shoot-'em-up. It is a thoughtful episode, and it is about genealogy. The episode is from the Voyager series, which many fans did not like, but which I am very fond of. After all, we finally got the female captain that Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, envisioned at the beginning, more than forty years ago.

The episode is called "11:59," and in it, Captain Kathryn Janeway, not having to fend off this or that hostile alien race at the moment, explores a family legend. Like most of us, she finds that the legend is not exactly what it is cracked up to be. Briefly, the legend concerns her ancestor Shannon O'Donnell, at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. She was an astronaut, so the legend goes, and an engineer. She helped build a fantastic early twenty-first-century structure called The Millennium Gate, in a small town in Indiana. Janeway finds that the legend has flaws, and discovers the most important part of it, which apparently had been downplayed in the telling: the small town in Indiana, where Shannon O'Donnell did actually end up, was home to a fellow named Janeway, whom she eventually married, and thereby began the branch of the family tree from which the captain emerged.

In pursuing the legend, Captain Janeway uses the methods of genealogy, searching court records, vital records, newspaper records, censuses, and other familiar documents and sources. All of these are stored digitally in the ships computer, loaded with all the knowledge of earth from earliest times to their own twenty-third century, a great mobile internet "wayback machine." The rest of the crew gets caught up in the search, giving the captain advice, helping her search the records and history. First Officer (the series' name for what we in our own century would call the executive officer), Chakotay offers a tongue-in-cheek version of their own situation, as a future family legend might tell it.

In the end, the captain, though slightly disappointed to find the legend was somewhat less glamorous than she had been told as a child by her Aunt Martha, apparently the keeper of the family history, reconciles herself to the facts. Neelix, a crewmember, even finds a photograph of Shannon O'Donnell Janeway, late in life, with her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren arrayed around her. It is a great genealogical story,and to the uninitiated viewer, would have been a wonderful introduction to the fun of genealogy.. Many people over the last nearly fifty years have mentioned how watching Star Trek as children influenced their career choices later in life. I wonder if anyone has been influenced to pursue their family history by the episode "11:59?"
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Wisdom Wednesday: What Would My Mother Think of This?

2010-07-28T11:51:00.000-04:00

My mother used to say, "Fools' names and fools' faces appear in public places." This was usually said to assuage my feelings of unpopularity -- at least by being obscure (relatively speaking), I was not a fool with my name and face in public all the time. Then there was Emily Dickinson:

I'm nobody. Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Well, look at us today. All over the internet, blogging, commenting, being listed here, there, and everywhere. What would my mother think? Emily, I believe, would just shake her head, draw her drapes, and write a poem about all of us who go skittering about the Web, croaking our names to the admiring bog.
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What's in a Name? Or: Clues are where you find them

2010-07-15T16:32:00.000-04:00

One problem genealogists run into, of course, is names. Spellings, variants, two people with the same name -- these occur across cultures and across the decades and centuries. It is no different in St. Augustine from 1783 to 1821.

One potential problem is one I was unaware might even exist until, in connection with my research on the project, I read Patricia Griffin's Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans in Florida, 1768-1788 which is the story of the in-migration of several hundred residents of the Balearic island of Minorca, in the Mediterranean just off the coast of the Spanish autonomous region of Cataluña, to work the indigo plantation of Dr. Andrew Turnbull during the British Period (1763-1783). Griffin mentions one woman who married a fellow named Matias Pons. Next page she renders the husband's name as Marcial Pons. I have come across both names in my research, but did not have any idea that there might be a problem. Were these two different people that the woman was married to (serially, we hope!)? Or was this one person known by two different names? I will have to do further research to resolve that one. Either possibility could be the case; it was not unusual in colonial times, either in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine or in my own ancestral Massachusetts colonies, for a bachelor-man to marry the widow of his deceased brother, nor is it that unusual for a man to be known by two different names. My own great-great grandfather Matthew Hale Packard was known by his first name in some areas, and by his middle name in others. In the case of Matias/Marcial Pons, I found a valuable clue in one of my derivative sources.

Another problem is the perennial one of two people, usually men, with the same name. I have my two fellows named Diego Hernandez and my two others named Bernardo Segui, among others. These do happen to be father and son, in both cases, but that is not always so. In the English colonies, Sr. and Jr. often did not carry any indication of family relationship at all, but were just a way to distinguish between an older man and a younger man of the same name in the same town. The case is (to over use a word) the same in Spanish St. Augustine, where we find "el mayor" (the older) and "el joven" (the younger) used whether or not there was any familial relationship. There are instances when I do not know whether it was "el mayor" or "el joven" unless there is some clue somewhere in the sources.

Some of the clues are overt, as in the case of tax collector Fernando de la Maza Arredondo and his son of the same name. The elder had to be away on city business, and his son took over doing the quarterly town accounts, which he was courteous enough to sign "Fernando de la Maze Arredondo, el joven," and sometimes added a phrase indicating that he was temporarily doing the job in his father's absence. Other clues are not so overt, and I have learned the value of not skipping over the most mundane parts of the documents I am using from the East Florida Papers. In one testamentary proceeding, that concerning the legal consequences of the passing of one Juan Lauren (or Jean Laurent, in his native French language)., there is the problem of which man of the same name is the one mentioned in the document. Lauren died intestate, and his effects were sold at public auction. One of the purchasers at the auction was Bernardo Segui -- but which one is not indicated in the recording of the sale. It is only in the mundane attestations made by the scribe that he duly notified Señor Segui to come pay for the stuff he bought and haul it away that the answer appears. These are the boring little notations that the scribe dutifully made, one after the other after the other, to indicate that he crossed all his t's and dotted all his i's, where I end up with my eyes crossed. The notification in this case is attested to have been sent to Bernardo Segui el joven. This time, reading all the "doy fes," as I call them because they all end with the phrase "doy fe" (I give faith, or I attest), paid off.

Finally, there is the problem of the multi-cultural nature of the St. Augustine colony and some of the quirks of naming that show up from other languages and cultures. A case in point is the Irishman John McIntosh, grandfather of the troublemaker John Houston McIntosh of the "Patriot War" of 1812-1813 in Spanish East Florida in which Americans tried to invade Florida and take it over with the intent to hand it over to the United States. John McIntosh the elder was known as John McIntosh, Mor or John Mor McIntosh, "mor" being a Gaelic naming convention meaning "the great" or "the elder." One writer rendered the name as John Mohr McIntosh, as if it were a middle name. It likely was not, but rather this Gaelic naming convention. I would not have known about that had I not also added to my reading list Charles E. Bennett's Florida's "French" Revolution, about an earlier coup attempt to grab Florida for the U.S.

We all know about the problems that can crop up with names. We also need to be aware that clues about these name problems may turn up in the darnedest places!
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Nothing to do with Genealogy, but . . .

2010-07-14T02:56:00.001-04:00

. . . It's intriguing, all the same.

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I participate in a private mailing list of people I've known in cyberspace for over 30 years, some of whom I've actually met face to face, and from whom I've experienced kindness and true friendship. One of them took this little test. So I thought I would, too. I entered three paragraphs from my blog a couple weeks ago about the doctor in St. Augustine who committed suicide in the first decade of the 19th century.

And the badge above is what I got. So I write like Vonnegut, eh? Well, well.
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Tom MacEntee's "What Do I Do" Meme

2010-07-09T17:17:00.001-04:00

Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers, found at http://www.geneabloggers.com, has come up with a "meme" which can be found at http://www.geneabloggers.com/meme, asking what technology we use to do our genealogy and other stuff. Here's mine . . .

But first, you may ask why I didn't use HTML to just put live links in the last paragraph. I am not doing that because Blogger's HTML editor is very bad, and is driving me to dangerously high blood pressure. I know enough to be able to troubleshoot my own HTML, and I am doing it right. Blogger's HTML editor is just bad.

Done with the rant (and that is a very short version); now to the "meme."

* Hardware:

1. Desktop computer put together by my husband, running Windows XP Professional.
2. HP Dv6000t laptop running same.
3. Asus Eee PC running Linux.

* External storage:
1. Several 1-2 gigabyte USB drives.
2. 1 130 gigabyte portable hard drive (made to Department of Defense specifications for durability -- I could run over it with my car and it would be unharmed).

* Online storage:
No. I do not do this. I will not put my work, the product of my effort and time and knowledge, into "the cloud." I don't trust it. So . . . I'm a dinosaur.

* Backup:
1. HandyBackup

* Firewall:
1. hardware firewall installed at the cable
2. ZoneAlarm

* Virus protection:
1. Symantec

* Spyware:
1. AdAware
2. MalwareBytes

* File cleaner:
None yet, but shopping

* Printer:
HP Deskjet F4280, which I am very unhappy with because of unnecessary things it does! My next printer is likely to be a Kodak!

* Phone:
1. Landline
2. Nokia Communicator 9300 (I think)

* Mobile media:
1. I just do not want to mess with this! I really don't care. I have enough patience to wait until I get home.

* Music player:
1. Cowon iAudio 7

* Car audio:
1. The radio and CD player that came with it

* eBook Reader:
I don't. I don't want to. I like my eyes too much, and I like the feel of real books, thank you. The readers are too expensive, and they can break or fail. Books don't break.

* Browser:
Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. I avoid IE whenever possible.

* Blog:
Here it is, right here.

* RSS:
Google Reader, or Feed Demon.

* FTP:
Not very much. My husband gave me something-or-other, I don't know what it's called.

* Text editor:
Programmer's File Editor, which you cannot find any more.

* Graphics:
Only in the games I play. Oh, well, I do use Paint Shop Pro 7.

* Screen capture:
I use Paint Shop Pro 7

* Social media:
Facebook
Twitter

* Social bookmarking:
Huh?

* Social profile:
I'm not very. I try to release as little personal information into the wild as possible.

* URL shortener:
bit.ly

* Office suite:
Microsoft Office (grudgingly); OpenOffice.org (they could make some components better)

* E-mail:
Mozilla Thunderbird, though I find something wrong with all of them.

* Calendar:
No. Just can't make 'em work for me. (Well, we have a paper calendar that we use)

* Accounting:
TurboTax when the time comes every year. Other than that, paper files in the file cabinet. (Hey, at least we're not using a shoebox!)

* PDF generator:
OpenOffice.org does it just fine for me, and in fact Microsoft Office 2007 will, too.

* Genealogy database:
The Master Genealogist. I tried Family Tree Maker 2010, but it just wasn't there for me.

* Genealogy tools:
Pen, paper, forms, reference books.

* Other tech stuff:
I do a lot of transcription of Spanish documents from past centuries, and I find a little program called Transcript (about which I've blogged before) to be super for the task! I love it!
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How many genealogists . . .

2010-07-05T06:57:00.000-04:00

My husband and I get into some silly discussions sometimes, letting our minds run free and make all sorts of associations and come up with all sorts of stuff. On the trip back from Tampa on Saturday, after my presentation for the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa, I came up with this bit of silliness:

HOW MANY GENEALOGISTS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW IN A LIGHTBULB?

Thirteen.

One to screw it in.

One to create the original document describing the event and all the participants in it, tracing the lineage of each one back seven generations.

One to write the source citation for the document, in accordance with Evidence Explained.

One to transcribe the document.

One to abstract the document.

One to index the document.

One to place the document in an archive.

One to write it up in a peer-reviewed journal.

One to write a subsequent article in the same journal, disputing the findings of the first author.

One to digitize the document and upload it to Ancestry.com, Footnote, and FamilySearch.org.

One to blog about the document, the event it describes, its creator, and the participants.

One to write a source guide to the document and all similar documents which describe this event or similar events, or which contain information about the participants in the event, and their families.

One to give a presentation about the event, the original source document, its creator, and the participants and their family lines at the Federation of Genealogy Societies conference.
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3 July: Paleography and Praise

2010-07-03T12:37:00.000-04:00

Blogging from the John F. Germany Public Library in Tampa, Florida:

3 July is my day for paleography, it seems. Last year on this date, 3 July 2009, I was speaking at the national convention of the Sons of the American Revolution in Atlanta, on the subject: "Paleography: Interpreting Old Handwriting, Spanish and English."

Today I gave that same presentation to the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa. Wonder where I'll be talking about paleography next July 3?

The presentation went well and was well-received. This one of my favorite talks to give (the other one being "Our Black Sheep Ancestors: How to Approach Them"). I had some new examples, which worked very well.

That's the paleography; now the praise.

One of the members of the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa is George G. Morgan, author of a number of books on genealogy, leader of guided tours to Britain for genealogical research, columnist on Ancstry.com, and one of the "Genealogy Guys" podcast. He introduced himself and told me, "I love your book on the Florida censuses." He told me how he has told a number of libraries they need the book.

I consider that high praise, and a good review.
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52 Weeks to Better Genealogy: Google Books

2010-07-01T23:04:00.000-04:00

From Amy Coffin, this week's 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy challenge is:

Take a stroll through Google Books. Most of us have probably used Google Books in our genealogy research, but have you really taken the time to explore what’s there? Look at the magazines and featured books. Check out the subjects offered. By taking the focus off research for a bit, your mind is open to see other ways this tool can be used. Bloggers can discuss any interesting items they found on Google Books during this exercise.

The chief benefit in my mind of Google Books is providing the text of classic works in all fields, those which are now in the public domain. I will not go into the recent lawsuit concerning the posting by Google of excerpts from books which are not in the public domain (one of which is mine, and I'm of two minds about that). But the contribution Google Books has made to history, genealogy, and a host of other research fields in posting these old -- some of them VERY old -- books is nearly unparalleled.

I hope you have read my entries on the documents in the East Florida Papers concerning the death by suicide of a doctor in St. Augustine in 1810. There is an inventory in the file of his clothing, personal effects, and the small bit of furniture he owned. There is also a separate inventory of his books. There are books on diseases of the tropics, books on surgery, and books called "materia medica," descriptions of disease symptoms and treatments of the day (there are modern materia medica works, as well).

Among the materia medica works is one by Boerhave and one by Cullen, both published in the mid to late 1700s. These books are on Google books. The Boerhave is in Latin, so is a bit of a rough go. The Cullen is in English. Seeing the actual texts has an immediacy that just cannot be beat. Here they are, two of the titles the doctor had in his collection in St. Augustine. Others that were in his collection may have copies in Google Books, as well, but I don't have time right now to go look extensively.

Just seeing those two books for myself is a pleasure.
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Why Do Genealogy?

2010-06-27T04:29:00.001-04:00

After having my own Saturday night genealogy fun with the aforementioned spam, here is the real deal: Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings Saturday Night Genealogy Fun meme. Tonight's instructions:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Think about the question: "Why do I pursue genealogy and family history research?"

2) Tell us about it on your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook

I do it for curiosity. I do it because I like a puzzle. I do it because I like detective work. I do it because I am a born research nerd. I do it because I'm a history buff. I do it because I wanted to know more about the father I hardly knew because he died just after I turned 7 years old. I do it because I wanted to know about the grandparents I never met. I do it because it is fun investigating family stories and finding the facts behind them -- if there are any!

That's why I do it. How about you?
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Somebody does not read very well . . .

2010-06-27T04:12:00.000-04:00

I got the following in my in-box this weekend:

"Subject: hey there, nice blog =) [sic]

"Hi there blogger!

"Just visited your "Karen About Genealogy" blog and I was super impressed by its design and content. We just opened up our community Lookville for beta testing. It's a place for people to have discussions, share tips, and ask questions about fashion. Currently, memberships are by invitation only and I would love to have you on it! Please accept this invitation if you're interested: [URL redacted]

And we would love to hear your feedback.

"Ciao!"

The e-mail was signed, but I am redacting that, too.

Other than laughing myself silly, I have only one comment: No, dears, you would NOT love to hear MY feedback!

More on the Case of the Doctor's Suicide

2010-06-19T20:51:00.000-04:00

I am continuing to transcribe the investigatory documents concerning the case of the doctor who committed suicide in St. Augustine in 1810. The file contains 82 pages, consisting in testimony of witnesses to the event, evidentiary submissions, and an inventory and sale of the decedent's personal effects, as well as papers concerning the disposition of the proceeds of the estate (the doctor seems to have died intestate; I'll determine that, of course, as I go through the documents). It is going to take several days to transcribe this one.

Further developments, however, do paint a sad picture indeed. The doctor's wife had died fourteen years previously, and apparently he was devoted to her, for he had told his friends that he was miserable without her. Their two daughters were in Ireland, by that time probably grown young ladies, and according to the documents in the case, were well taken care of. These are the heirs in Ireland mentioned in the first few pages of the file, which I referred to in yesterday's post. They were residing in Dublin.

In one document, a witness to the event, another doctor, is asked by the investigator if there were not any signs that the doctor was suicidal, with an eye to the question of could it have been prevented? I wish that investigator were around here in the early years of the 21st Century, for he would find that we do not have much more in the way of an answer to that question than he did in 1810. Yes, there are signs, as there were in the case of this unfortunate doctor, and the witness says as much. But as we see these days, those signs are not always given proper priority, not acted upon. Is it that we are not any better at it than they were in 1810 or that it is just difficult to know? And how much of a role did denial play then, as it plays now? And the idea that one just "toughs it out" when life gets rough with us. Certainly men in St. Augustine in 1810 were expected to soldier on in the face of all difficulties and despairs. It is a legacy that bears on the earlier question of why we do not always pick up on the signs given by one who may be contemplating suicide.

The implications of suicide in our genealogy are stark indeed. It is still a subject people do not like to discuss, though in today's atmosphere of letting it all hang out, and quite frequently on national television, there is more talk of it than previously. It is painful for those who remain, bringing self-blame, despair, and fear. One can only wonder how this doctor's daughters reacted and felt, and how the news was treated in their families, back in Dublin. It is no less a difficulty and a tragedy today than it was then, when a very lonely man just wanted to be reunited with the dear wife who had left him too early.
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Of overdoses, laudanum, and history

2010-06-18T10:38:00.000-04:00

In my transcriptions of wills from St. Augustine, Florida, between 1783 and 1821, I have encountered one that is quite sad. The individual in question was an Irishman living in Spanish St. Augustine (of which there were quite a few) in 1810, who had apparently been depressed or, as the investigatory documents state, "disaffected with life," having indicated as much to several of his friends the day before he took an overdose of two ounces of laudanum -- four times the amount needed for a fatal dose.

Was this suicide or an accidental overdose? Indications are that it was suicide. The above-mentioned disaffection with life is one factor. Another factor is that the individual was a doctor, familiar with the properties of laudanum, a tincture of opium. Certainly he would have known that two ounces was more than enough to kill him. Four times over.

Apparently his relatives were not with him in St. Augustine, for the documents refer to heirs being "absent in their native country" of Ireland. Was loneliness a factor? Had he suffered reverses of some sort? Was he terminally ill? I have only transcribed part of the file, so I do not know yet if there is further information.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, laudanum was available over the counter, and was taken for a variety of ills. Narcotics generally were freely available, even as an ingredient in soft drinks. Coca-Cola is so named because it originally contained cocaine. As the dangers of addiction, accidental and deliberate overdose, inability to function fully, and other dangers (including use as instruments of murder) became known, these substances were brought under control.

In our investigations of family history -- our own or someone else's -- we need to be aware of so many bits of history. Medical history is only one of these. Online sources for medical information include Wikipedia (for a general overview and possibly some sources to check), The Merck Manuals, and Antiquus Morbus. The Merck Manuals provide modern information on such aspects as dosage and side effects of medications, and signs, symptoms, and treatment of diseases. Antiquus Morbus is useful for finding what an archaic term for a particular disease refers to in modern terms.

We genealogists are special historians. Not only do we see the large trends of history which influenced the lives of our ancestors, we see the human factor as well, including one unfortunate doctor in St. Augustine in 1810, who so sadly felt that life was no longer worth living.
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Sometimes the Source Comes to You

2010-06-08T01:50:00.001-04:00

I enjoy serendipity when it strikes, and it seems to strike more often for those who are primed for it. Case in point:

Today I received in the mail my copy of El Escribano, the annual journal of the St. Augustine (Florida) Historical Society. In it is an article taking a different look at the manumission of Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, an African woman who married the white planter Zephaniah Kingsley. Kingsley was one of the "nuevos pobladores" (new settlers) whose arrival was recorded in a pair of ledger books contained in legajo (bundle) 743 of the Papeles de Cuba at the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, which I transcribed during my research there in May, 2008. Kingsley is one of the more prominent figures in my study of the family structure of St. Augustine and the possible influence family relationships had on the history of St. Augustine (or that the history may have had on family relationships). Anna has long been considered by historians to have been Kingsley's slave.

In this case. the author of the article makes the argument that Kingsley never considered Anna a slave, but that the manumission papers which exist were a sham forced upon the couple by the increasingly unpleasant tenor of race relations in Spanish East Florida as the acquisition of the province by the United States loomed. The author maintains that Kingsley executed the paper in order to protect Anna and their three mulatto children. It is an effective case.

What has this article given me? Family information on Kingsley, his wife, and their children, for one thing, with enough data to allow me to search more specifically for records to back up the information in the article, at least to some extent. References, for another, which I can examine for the information they contain, and to mine their bibliographies and source notes for other sources.

And it all just fell into my lap -- or was placed in my mailbox. Be open to all things in your research, and grab the serendipitious bit when it comes your way.
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Accredited Online Colleges Blog Advertisement E-Mail

2010-05-28T13:19:00.001-04:00

Or: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, and spam," to quote Monty Python.

Like Bill West, of West in New England, I also received a spam mail from an outfit calling itself Accredited Online Colleges. The e-mail read:

>We at Accreditedonlinecolleges.com recently came across your blog and were excited to share with you an article. "50 Places to Find Your Family History Online” was recently published on our blog at [link deleted] and we hoped that you would be interested in featuring or mentioning it in one of your posts. Please let us know if you have any concern."

>Unlike Bill, who has more self-restraint than I have, I did click the link because I am curious. Dangerous, perhaps, but I have this thing about wanting to check stuff out. (My husband is a certified computer security pro, so we have firewalls and other stuff out the yang on our computers, so I feel reasonably protected.) I have a lot of concerns. Sorry, guys, but you're not going to be terribly happy with what I have to say.

First off, they "came across [my] blog," no doubt, by sending out a 'bot looking for genealogy blogs, the authors of which -- like Bill and me -- would become targets for their advertisement e-mail. Their unsolicited commercial e-mail. Their spam.

Their list is divided into sections. The sites they mentioned in the first section, "General," included some of the best-known such as RootsWeb and Ancestry.com. However, their blurbs were too short, carried little real information, and did not do the reader the service of distinguishing between paid sites and free sites.

The next section, "Search," included FamilySearch.org -- twice. These directed the user to two different interfaces for the same website. That's not quite cricket, lads. Now you're really down to 49. This section also included some "gathering" sites -- use our site to find other sites that you could probably find on your own and that if you've been doing online genealogy any time at all you probably know about already, anyway. Not terribly useful to the more experienced genealogical researcher, and not really the best thing to which to send the novice.

Much of the rest of the list included a lot of these types of sites, some of which I would not trust any farther than I could throw Microsoft's offices. (Hint: That's not very doggone far.) At many of these sites, the trap is that you get to enter your information for the search, and will have returned to you nothing but index information. If you want the actual document, or more detailed information, you will have to pay for it. I'd be rather wary of giving some of these folks my credit card information.

These sites say that they will get you documents. Nope. They get you index information, nothing more. Unless, of course, you wish to pay for it (which is reasonable, but you can pay for it by contacting the vital records office of the pertinent state or county or town yourself, and you will learn more genealogical methodology in the process)

As we go further down this list, we find RootsWeb is also listed twice. Now you're down to 48 and this is getting close to false advertising (50 sites? Nope).

Another trick they use is to direct searchers to a part of a government website, such as eVetRecs on the National Archives and Records Administration website. Again, the blurb that Accredited Online Colleges' blogger posted is too brief and does not give enough information -- such as the fact that eVetRecs can only be used by a veteran himself or herself, or the veteran's legal heirs, to order military records. Other orders must be placed using the paper forms provided by NARA.

Another recommended site could give a novice the wrong impression. They refer the user to the site Make Your Coat of Arms, which proclaims that anyone can "easily create and print out on your printer your unique family or personal coat of arms (or family crest) based on your family ancestry or on the values that are important to you and your family today." Now, this is not to dissuade anyone from going to the site and having fun creating something that is perhaps meaningful or even just silly fun, but no one should take this seriously, because an actual historical coat of arms can only be bestowed by the recognized arms-granting body of a country which recognizes coats of arms as rewards for particular gallantry and service to that country. The United States is NOT one of those countries.

Oh, yes, they got to my orthography button by referring to Interment.net as Internment. Sorry -- interment is what we do to our dead; internment is what the U.S. Government did to its Japanese-American population during World War II.

There are a number of other, more reliable, sources of information about where to go to begin your genealogy searches, or to continue them. One place to start is with Cyndi's List, which is not mentioned. Another good starting place or refresher for the experienced is RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Your Family Tree, which is not mentioned on the Accredited Online College blog's list, either.

Another good place, of course, to find good information on beginning or continuing genealogical research is to read genealogy blogs! Thank you for reading mine.

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy: State Archive

2010-05-25T09:05:00.000-04:00

This week's 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy challenge:

Examine the website of your state or provincial archives. Take some time to push all the buttons and click all the links. What did you find?

I have done research before at the Florida State Library and Archive. The physical location is the R. A. Gray Building at 500 South Bronough (pronounced BRU-no) Street, Tallahassee, Florida. The State Library is on the second floor and the State Archive is on the first floor.

On the website, my favorite part is the Florida Memory Project. At this site, a researcher can find digitized documents from the Archive's collection, including Spanish land grants and Confederate Veterans' pensions. Other exhibits have photographs and moving pictures of Florida's history. My husband's great-grandfather's Confederate pension is digitized in the collection online, and it is beautiful. My compliments to the State Archive for digitizing in color!

Another service is the Florida Electronic Library, which provides access to the library collections of public and academic libraries across the state. It is not always up-to-date, but it is current enough to serve the purposes of most users.

It is time for me to plan another research trip to the State Archive, in connection with my current research project on St. Augustine. I have already consulted the Archive's online catalog, so I know which record groups and series I will be examining. The search function at this online catalog is not terribly robust (but then, neither is the search function at the General Archive of the Indies in Seville). I have to do some digging and get creative sometimes with my search terms, but I can usually find what I need. And if I don't find it in the online catalog, when I get to the Archive, the very knowledgeable and helpful staff will assist me in finding what I need.

Florida was one of the last states to institute a state archive, but the staff at our State Archive has done a great job!
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The Gold Mine

2010-05-21T10:04:00.000-04:00

Working on my St. Augustine community family history project, I have just finished transcribing some documents from a probate file for a couple who were quite advanced in age for their time (circa 1809; the gentleman was some 90 years old) in which there appear the sort of documents we genealogists consider gold.

Because the couple apparently died intestate and there was a wrangle among heirs, the file contains copies of birth and baptism documents, marriage documents, and death records from the parish church. It is a gold mine, as now I know the names of the children (from more than one marriage; apparently the last wife was number three), the names of the parents of the husband and the wife, the wife's date of birth, their date and place of marriage, along with the name of the officiating priest and the witnesses, and their dates and places of death.

In those days, "copies" meant handwritten transcriptions, attested by sworn statements to have been true and faithful copies of the original, along with the location of the original in the records (page number and other information).

And I'm not finished yet. It is possible that I should be glad this couple died intestate, for if there had been a will, there probably would not have been a need for all these other documents to establish relationships.
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Sentimental Sunday: A Yeoman's Birthday

2010-05-16T15:01:00.000-04:00

Here I am on my birthday, 12 April 1981. I was a Yeoman Second Class in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. As I have my uniform on, it was a drill weekend. The location is at my father-in-law's house in Jacksonville, FL, where my husband had been busy all day baking and decorating that cake, which bears the insignia of a Yeoman First Class. That day, at drill, I received my letter of advancement to YN1, and I had called my husband that morning with the news. It was a nice birthday present. The cake was a nice surprise, too, and my husband did it all by himself!
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One Year!

2010-05-16T14:44:00.000-04:00

Today is my first "Blogiversary" -- a year ago, I started my genealogy blog. As many other fairly new bloggers have stated, I wasn't sure I could do this, not sure I had that much to say. See for yourself if I have!

This next year, I hope to have more to say, especially about the lineages of St. Augustine, Florida, as I continue my research project.

I've been so pleased to be part of this phenomenon of genealogy blogging. There are so many great blogs out there on the subject, covering all aspects of our favorite pursuit. I want to give a special thank you to Thomas MacEntee, who runs Geneabloggers. Without him, I would not be here running my mouth! He does a terrific job leading the way for so many of us.

Congratulations to those bloggers chosen as Heritage 100 top blogs! That's a great achievement for all of you!

Now to the beginning of another year of blogging.
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Armed Forces Day: A Family History

2010-05-15T15:42:00.001-04:00

Today is Armed Forces Day, so I am going to talk about ancestors and other relatives who have served in the military forces of the United States.

On my father's side, I can trace back to a Revolutionary War ancestor, Richards Packard. He enlisted in Massachusetts at the age of 17, in 1780, and serve two enlistments. We don't have any War of 1812 ancestors in this line, because in around 1796, Richards Packard headed up to Canada, not because of any change of heart after the war, but because in Canada, in Quebec, the government was giving land away without much worry about who they were giving it to! He found farmland to his liking, and settled in the area of present-day Georgeville. His movements after the Revolution had a northward trend, from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, up into Northern Vermont, and then into Canada. I guess he was more picky about his land than about the winter climate!

My great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard "retro-migrated" back to the U.S. in around 1850, settling first in Chautauqua County, New York. He is enumerated there in the federal 1850 and 1860 censuses and in the 1855 New York state census. He was still in New York in the 1860s, and there enlisted in a cavalry regiment for the Civil War. On the other side of the family, another great-great grandfather, Charles Reed, served in an Indiana infantry regiment. Both men suffered more from illness than from combat action, neither having been wounded, but both feeling effects of disease. Both received pensions based on disability; Matthew Hale Packard didn't benefit from his for long, for he died in 1881. Charles Reed lived, in poverty, until 1920.

I don't have any record of anyone in World War I. My maternal grandfather Perry Reed was a railroad freight agent, and therefore in an occupation of national security importance, so he wasn't drafted. My paternal grandfather ran a dairy; I don't know if he had any particular deferment; I haven't looked for the draft registration status of either one of these yet. Just haven't had time.

My father, Arden Packard, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1929, right out of high school. A year later, he took a competitive exam and won entrance to the U.S. Naval Academy (the way serving sailors got in). He graduated from the Academy in 1934, served on aircraft carriers, and finally got to indulge a passion of his childhood and youth -- he entered flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in 1937. It was in Pensacola that he met my mother. He was medically retired in about 1939; in 1941 -- several months before Pearl Harbor -- he was called back to active duty. He was restricted to limited flying because of his medical condition, but became a flight instructor. Despite the limitations on his flying, he was rated in one fitness report among the top 5% of Naval aviators!

My brother, Arden Packard II ("Ned"), enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1960, after he graduated from high school. I can imagine what our father, who died in 1954, would have thought of that. Daddy taught his dog, Smoky (registered name Ceiling Zero) a couple tricks which indicated his opinion. He would set two identical bowls of dog food down, calling one "Navy chow" and the other "Marine chow." Smoky went for the "Navy chow" every time. He would say to the dog, "Smoky, which would you rather be -- a dead dog or a Marine?" The dog would roll over on her back, all four legs in the air.

When I was a little girl back in the 1950s, I was unconventional. Alas, I grew up in an all-too-conventional family. When I expressed a desire to go into the Navy, my mother and brother were aghast and absolutely prohibited it. "Nice" girls didn't do such things. When my husband and I got married, he was in the Coast Guard. I saw what fun he was having -- he really did enjoy it -- and said I wanted to share in the fun. "Sure," he said. His confidence in me (and in my sense of honor and self-respect) enabled me to do what I had been blocked from doing earlier on. I enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve 3 February 1976 as a yeoman third class, becoming the first woman in my family to serve in the military. When I had to stand down in 1991 because I had developed arthritis, I was a lieutenant (junior grade). I had been selected for lieutenant, but did not get to advance.

Happy Armed Forces day to all serving members and to all veterans!
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The Value of a UPS

2010-05-13T09:55:00.001-04:00

Sorry, United Parcel Service, I'm not talking about you today, though I have had good service from you over the years. I'm talking about that OTHER UPS -- the uninterrupted power source, a peripheral for your computer which is essentially a battery backup. It comes on immediately when it senses that the elecrtic power is going off, and gives you time, if not to keep working, then to save your work quickly and shut down.

I live in a rural area in northeast Florida served by an electric cooperative. We get good service, on the whole, from Clay Electruc Co-op, but occasionally, and for some reason more often during the summer, we are subject to very short blackouts. The electricity will pop off suddenly and unexpectedly, and then quickly come back on.

It is brief, but it is enough to trip a computer off. And just a few minutes ago, I had just finished a particularly difficult transcription from a probate file for a resident of St. Augustine who died in about 1809, which constituted a half hour or more of work for one page. I was just finishing adding the source citation and was just about to save the file, and the electricity tripped off. It rapidly came back on, but it was enough that my work was gone.

Not only do we have these little blackouts, we are in Florida, the lightning capital of the world, where we also have frequent afternoon thunderstorms in the summer.

For one thing, I suppose I should save every 10 minutes or so. For another, I asked my husband to buy me a UPS. He sees the value in it, for he has one for himself. I just hadn't asked for my own before, but just a few minutes ago, my need for one was made quite clear!

All of us who use computers in our genealogical investigations and who live in areas where the electricity is subject to frequent interruption should have a UPS.

Speak!

2010-04-28T12:04:00.003-04:00

Following the lead of Elyse's Genealogy Blog, I'll present my two speaking engagements for the month of May. Go check out Elyse's schedule, and if you're in her area, please take the opportunity to hear her.

I'll be speaking at 6:30 pm on 10 May at the headquarters library of the Clay County (Florida) Libraries at Fleming Island. The library has asked me to talk about my recent book on the Florida colonial, territorial and state censuses.

On 24 May at 2:30 in the afternoon, I'll be talking to the Sweetwater Genealogy Club at the Sweetwater Community in Jacksonville, Florida, about "Navigating the National Archives Website," showing them some guideposts for getting around that huge and very complex website that is chock full of information. If they have wi-fi there at their meeting hall, I will "go live" on the NARA website and show them around that way. If not, then I will update my PowerPoint on the subject.
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That which was lost . . .

2010-04-19T00:51:00.003-04:00

. . . now is found.

For months, nigh onto a year, I have been fretting over a copy of a document and a copy of a newspaper article, both pertaining to my great-great grandmother's divorce from my great-great grandfather. They seemed to have got lost from the binder in which I have other documents from the same time period, which I received from a cousin. I could not for the life of me find these documents, and I was getting very upset.

However, one good thing came of this apparent loss. I designed a "document tracking form," a blank copy of which now resides at the front of each of the binders in which I have family information. On the form, each time I remove a document from the binder for examination, I enter the Clooz ID number, the title or nature of the document, the subject person, the document's permanent location, the date it was removed from its binder, why the document was removed from the binder, and its temporary resting place. The form remains in the binder while the document is in use, and does not come out of the binder until the document is returned to its proper place in that binder.

Peace of mind sometimes has a price. This time, however, I did not have to pay that price, in the end. A few weeks ago, I dragged out an old plastic file tub, which has hanging files in it, and which I had used to store some documents and other items before I put everything into binders. I needed the tub to store files I am accumulating for my study of the family structure of St. Augustine, FL, from 1783 to 1821. I found not only the divorce document and article, I also found some photos I had been trying to find for the past several years!

I guess the moral of that story is: Put all your stuff in one place! And do it in a timely fashion!

I am very glad I found those items, but I think the step I took to devise my "document tracking form" was a great step, too, and I have used that form most faithfully!
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Six Degrees of Separation

2010-04-03T22:54:00.003-04:00

One thing that will probably help me blog through a busy April, when I do have time, will be the blogging memes that appear in various places, such as Genea-musing's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, from Randy Seaver. Tonight's task:

1) Find an ancestral line that atretches back to the time of the US Revolutionary War (1775-1783), about 230 years. Define your person-to-person connection (the person actually met the next person on the list) back to a historical figure from that time.

2) Tell us about it on your blog, in a note or comment on Facebook, or in a comment on this post.

My father was Arden Packard (1911-1954). He died when I was seven years old, but I do remember him.

His father was Walter Hetherington Packard (1879-1937) is shown along with his wife, Elizabeth Jane Reynolds (1879-1939) in a photograph with my father in about 1930 0r 1931.

Walter H. Packard's father was Oscar Merry Packard (ca. 1848-ca. 1930) who is enumerated in the 1930 U.S. census living with Walter H. Packard's family.

Oscar Packard's father was Matthew Hale Packard (1822-1881), with whom Oscar is enumerated in the 1850 U.S. Census and the 1855 New York census living in Chautauqua County, New York.

Matthew Packard's father was John Allen Packard, shown in Canadian records with his family, including Matthew, in Stanstead County, Quebec, Canada.

John Packard's father was Richards Packard, who served in a Massachusetts regiment, and whose cousin, though the line of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, was John Adams.

Though I cannot be absolutely sure that Richards Packard ever met his cousin John face-to-face, it is possible. And there was some familial resemblance -- both men were short in stature!
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The Delinquent Blogger

2010-04-03T22:37:00.003-04:00

I regret that I have neglected my blog of late, but it is the last month of the term at university. I have one paper done, another monster of a paper due in rough draft next week, a take-home exam in Spanish, and my ongoing St. Augustine project.

It is also time to do taxes, which I should have done before this, but there it is. Ah, well.

I've even been so wrapped up in my academic pursuits that I've missed the last three episodes of "Who Do You Think You Are?" But I can catch up with that on Hulu.

After the term is over, I'll still be fairly busy. I have two speaking engagements lined up for the month of May, and another in July. I've even had an inquiry about a gig next year! Also, fairly soon now, our genealogical society will be offering a many-part course for beginning family historians -- though the education chair isn't sure about HOW many parts there will be yet. I'll be teaching some of the classes in that series.

So I may not be here on the blog as much as I would like for the month of April, but I'll be back in May, much more often.
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Ambivalent in the 21st Century

2010-03-28T16:54:00.003-04:00

Just recently, my book, Non-Federal Censuses of Florida, 1784-1945: A Guide to Sources, came out in a Kindle edition from Amazon.com (through an arrangement my publisher, McFarland, has with Amazon). I am ambivalent about this.

On the one hand, it is the current trend and, I suppose, the wave of the future. E-books are here to stay, I know. And I am getting the same royalty rate on Kindle sales, just not the same amount, of course, because the Kindle edition costs less than the print edition. Of course, the Kindle reader itself is not exactly inexpensive, which has an effect on the dissemination of the electronic texts made for it. As the technology develops, as with other electronic innovations we have seen over the past few decades, the price will come down as they become both more common and more sophisticated. E-books do have the advantage of not requiring bookshelf space.

On the other, I am an old-school sort of person who prefers the feel and versatility of a print book. I would not read a Kindle or any other e-book in the bathtub, for instance (though I rarely read in the tub because I prefer showers). I cannot really mark in an e-book (though there are, I know, provisions for making some sort of notes and comments in them) like I can in a print book. As a historian, I read a lot of histories and related works, and I like to argue with my texts by making marginal comments. Print books are not at the whim of ever-changing technology and the problem of "platform creep." And print books are easier on my old eyes.

I also remain unconvinced that e-books are piracy-proof (though, come down to it, print ones are not completely piracy-proof, either). I suppose it is a toss-up, and I have to say I am in favor of whatever method will result in sales of my works, of course!
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Place Names

2010-03-23T01:09:00.005-04:00

In my transcriptions of the 1783 Spanish census of St. Augustine, Florida, I'm learning a good bit about the place names around St. Augustine and around Jacksonville, where I grew up. One of these fascinating tidbits is that a watercourse known today as Julington Creek, in southern Duval County, was originally Julian Anton (or in some entries, Julia Anton) Creek. Now I want to find out who Julian (or Julia) Anton was.

There are other names which have intrigued me. There are three or four references I have found to a geographical feature called Public Point. I checked the St. Johns River charts and have found no such place today. The name may have been changed. Or the feature may have been eradicated when the Army Corps of Engineers, early in the 20th century, dredged a new, straighter channel for the St. Johns River, creating Blount Island, which is now a commercial port facility (at which I served in the Coast Guard as project officer to supervise a massive military hazardous-cargo loading evolution).

We have lots of small creeks branching off of the St. Johns River. Let me give you some point of reference. The St. Johns River varies from about half a mile wide to three to five miles wide in some places along its course. It is the only navigable river in the western hemisphere that flows north. What we call a creek around here, many people in other parts of the country call a river.

My husband, a Jacksonville native, and I, who moved here when I was 7 years old (a long time ago) grew up knowing about Pottsburg Creek and Pablo Creek and Six Mile Creek. All of these names appear on this 1783 census. Other geographical names we grew up with also turn out to be a lot older than we thought -- St. Johns Bluff, Talbot Island, Doctor's Lake, Fort George Island. There are others which we knew to be very old, dating from the time of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who founded St. Augustine in 1565. One of these is Matanzas, name of a river and a stretch of beach where Menéndez dispatched two crews of Frenchmen, including Jean Ribault.

And one place name I have already talked about. That is the swamp known today as Twelve Mile Swamp.

What place names are in your local area, or in the area where your ancestors lived? Is there any significance to these place names? Are they the same today as they were then? Take a look at your records which might mention place names, and see if you can track down their origins. Then check nautical charts, if these are waterways you are looking at, old maps (see if your library or genealogical society has some), and Google Earth.
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The 2010 Census: Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!

2010-03-17T08:12:00.005-04:00

As genealogical sources go, the 2010 census will not go down in history as one of the most stellar. It calls for very sketchy information: name, sex, relationship to head of household, age, birth date, whether of a Hispanic ethnicity, race, and whether the person stays elsewhere from time to time. On that last question, I told our younger daughter, who lives with us, that I had to answer that question "No" for her because Walt Disney World is not listed!

The 2010 census falls far short of such as 1880, 1900, and 1930, for example. These censuses gathered such genealogically valuable information as the individual's birthplace and the individual's parents' birthplaces, occupation, whether the individual rented or owned his or her home, and marital status.

2010 does not even ask occupation or marital status! Unbelievable.

On the other hand, we of the late 20th and early 21st centuries live the most well-documented lives in the history of genealogical records. The crux of the matter here is preserving our home collections of such records. Whether these records will, in their official locations, be accessible to the genealogical investigator in the future, and to what extent, could be a problem. I have already had a terrible experience trying to access church records, at the church I attended in my childhood and my teenage years, where I was pretty much treated like a potential identity thief. That was a heartbreaking experience for me.

Apparently, censuses of the future will not play as important a role in genealogy as those of the past have. That's too bad. While it is true that the purpose of the census is not genealogy, there are also other disciplines -- demography, economic history, sociology -- which will suffer from the paucity of information in the 2010 census.

Anyone who wants their story told, wants their past preserved, and hopes their descendants will be interested in keeping the family history had better hang onto employment records, church records, and all pertinent documents in their hands.
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First review (I just HAVE to BRAG!)

2010-03-13T21:02:00.004-05:00

The first review of my new book, Non Federal Censuses of Florida, 1784-1945: A Guide to Sources, was published in the (Jacksonville) FloridaTimes-Union 28 February 2010. I had the paper, but had not made use of it yet (that use being to cut out grocery coupons!). The online version of the review is here.

I like it. The reviewer calls it a "must-have" book. Problem is, books issued by my publisher, McFarland, usually don't appear in book stores, as they sell through the jobbers that service public and academic libraries, and do direct-order through their website. Maybe I should contact the local Barnes & Noble and see if they want to arrange a signing?

In other news, I made a presentation this morning for my genealogical society, the Southern Genealogists Exchange Society, to a small class (N=10) of my talk which I call "Bare Bones: Getting Started in Your Genealogy." It's a stepping stone to the six-week-long class the Education Chair is planning (and in which I probably will be teaching some of the units) to be announced later this year. When asked whether "Who Do You Think You Are" influenced their attendance at the class, only one raised her hand. WDYTYA is a great thing to have on TV, but the interest is already there for a lot of folks, apparently. And that, too, is a good thing.
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Women's History Month: Working Girl

2010-03-12T00:19:00.004-05:00

Today's installment of the Fearless Females theme from Lisa Alzo is "Working Girl."

My mother worked right out of high school, during the Depression, in Pensacola, Florida, as a secretary. She did not say who she worked for. She did not work during marriage to my father, but when he died in 1954, she had to go back to work. Having been out of the workforce for so long, she first had to go to secretarial school, and then to work. She was able to go to school while handling all the responsibilities of a mortgage and three children because she received a pension as a Navy widow. It was only after my father died that my mother had a house of her own. All during their marriage, they always rented their homes, never buying any.

She worked first for a lumber company in Jacksonville, Florida. Later, she decided she wanted a specialty, so she took courses to become a medical secretary. She worked at Baptist Hospital in Jacksonville (now Baptist Medical Center) from the time it was built in 1955 into the mid-1960s, when she changed to working for doctors in private practice. She enjoyed being a medical secretary, and I think part of it was that medical folks have such a pawky sense of humor!

She was the secretary in the surgery department at Baptist, and wore scrubs during work hours, as was required of everyone who worked in that area. One evening, after she had changed back into her own clothes and was walking down the corridor to the elevators, one of the surgeons saw her, and exclaimed, "Why, Martha! I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on!" She thought that was terrifically funny.
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Carnival of Genealogical Societies: The Southern Genealogist's Exchange Society

2010-03-07T01:11:00.003-05:00

The Southern Genealogist's Exchange Society, located in Jacksonville, Florida, has been going strong since the mid-1960s. It was founded by Aurora Shaw, CG. The Society concentrates mainly on southern genealogy, but the society library holds volumes on genealogy in all 50 states and many foreign countries.

One strong point for the society has been its yearly seminars. Our spring seminars have had good success and have included as speakers professional genealogists such as "The Genealogy Guys" podcast's George G. Morgan, guests from Ancestry.com, and local speakers, some of whom come from the society's own membership. The society has also worked with the Jacksonville Public Library's genealogy department in putting on programs.

Not only have I learned a great deal from many of these seminars, I have also benefited in that this is where I have launched my own genealogical speaking endeavor. Now I am getting engagements where I am actually paid money! I don't think that would be happening if I had not started out making presentations to the SGES at meetings and seminars. As time goes by, and I develop more topics for my presentations, I expect that I will head more into the direction of being paid, and paid more as I become more proficient, and more widely known.

You never know what opportunities might open up when you join your local genealogical society.

Women's History Month: How Did They Meet?

2010-03-06T01:02:00.006-05:00

I'm a little late with this, because I wanted to post my reaction to WDYTYA earlier; don't miss it, just before this entry.

The March 5 entry for Lisa Alzo's "Fearless Females" meme for this month is:

March 5 — How did they meet? You’ve documented marriages, now, go back a bit. Do you know the story of how your parents met? Your grandparents?

My mother told me a rather romantic story, eminently demonstrative of her own resourcefulness and determination, about how she and my father met. She grew up in Pensacola, home of the Pensacola Naval Air Station, which in turn is home to one of the Navy's flight schools. She and her friends would date officers, and one night at the Officer's Club at Pensacola Naval Air Station, she spied a young officer who had not long before reported aboard for flight training. She fixed her gaze on his handsome face and said to her companions, "That's the man I'm going to marry."

She was right. That's my father, Arden Packard, in the photo at left, above. This was his wedding picture, and I have this one and the one of my mother, Martha Shideler Reed, at right, framed, sitting on a bookcase. These look very much like they come from the 1930s, which they do. They were married 16 July 1937.

The story ends rather sadly, as they were only together for 16 years, as my father died 25 April 1954. My mother did not remarry.
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WDYTYA: The first installment

2010-03-05T20:59:00.003-05:00

When I was living in a scholarship house at Florida State University back in the mid-1960s, one of the other girls in the house would say that something had her "surprised and pleased."

Tonight's debut episode of Who Do You Think You Are? has me "surprised and pleased." They have done it the way I wish Henry Louis Gates had done it! They stuck with one person through the hour, the person herself -- Sarah Jessica Parker -- did actual travel on the trail of her ancestors, from New Jersey to Cincinnati, Ohio, to Eldorado, California, to Salem, Massachusetts. They had real genealogists and real librarians and real historians showing a little bit of the process (you cannot show the entire process in one television hour) of research, and they had Ms. Parker making the acutal discoveries in some instances, rather than just sitting at a table and being handed a book. Sorry, Dr. Gates -- I think WDYTYA has it right.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether this level will continue, but I think it has a good chance. As my husband observed, they "de-celebritied" the thing pretty quickly, taking the right tack and concentrating on the search for ancestors. I still would like to see them use plain people, too, but for a show using a celebrity, this one was well and intelligently done.

I would like to see more emphasis on the correct use of records and the correct citation of sources, but that's pretty dull stuff for the TV audience, I guess. (I also wish that every census sheet had the gorgeous handwriting of that 1850 Eldorado census!). They did rather gloss over the establishment of connection between her ancestors John E. and John S. Hodge, but again, they just can't show the entire process in a television hour.

I am, indeed, surprised and pleased.
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Women's History Month: Marriage Records

2010-03-04T23:15:00.009-05:00

Today's instruction from Lisa Alzo at The Accidental Genealogist is:

March 4 — Do you have marriage records for your grandparents or great-grandparents? Write a post about where they were married and when. Any family stories about the wedding day? Post a photo too if you have one.

I have a marriage record for my maternal great-grandparents and my paternal great-grandparents, and for my maternal grandparents, but not for my paternal grandparents -- just haven't got round to that one yet.

My maternal great-grandparents were Francis Harvey "Frank" Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee. The marriage was announced on page 1 of the Monticello (Indiana) Herald, Thursday, September 18, 1884: "Married, at the residence of the bride's mother, on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 1884, at 12:30 p.m., by Rev. L. J. Natzger of Logansport, Mr. Frank Reed, of Portland, Ind., to Miss Flora McKee, of this place. The ceremony was witnessed by a number of friends and relatives and the happy couple were the recipients of many handsome and appropriate gifts. They left on the afternoon train for Logansport, their future residence, bearing with them the well wishes of many friends in this locality."

On the marriage certificate itself, the minister signed his name as Lyn Naftzger, so the newspaper had it misspelled, but one can hardly blame the poor copywriter!

I do not have a wedding picture, but I have a picture of the two of them many years later. They look like typical reticent midwesterners!

My maternal grandparents, Benjamin Franklin Reed, also called "Frank," and Ruth Nave, were married 23 November 1913 in the county courthouse at South Bend, Indiana. He was a railroad switchman and she was a telephone operator. I have no photographs of them at all.

My paternal great-grandparents, Oscar Merry Packard and Sarah Augusta Hetherington, were married 17 August 1871 in Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois. I have no photographs of either of them.

I do know that my paternal grandparents were married sometime around the turn of the 20th century in southern California. My great-grandfather had brought his young family to southern California sometime in the 1890s, and it was a good place for him to be in the next 30 years, as he was a real estate salesman and developer. I do not know if my grandfather, Walter Hetherington Packard, had followed his father's footsteps originally, but later on he was supervisor of a local dairy. My grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Reynolds, is shown in a photograph in 1897, taken by a Los Angeles studio, and has signed her name "Bessie Reynolds" on the back. I do not have a photo of their wedding day, either. The only photo I have of my grandparents together is this photo, later in life, with their son Arden, who was visiting home on leave from the United States Naval Academy, probably 1932 or 1933. Arden Packard was my father.

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Women's History Month: Names and naming

2010-03-03T20:55:00.002-05:00

Here's today's Women's History instruction:

March 3 — Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree.

First name, no. My mother told me that she was going to name me Barbara -- which is not a name which appears in the family -- but she changed her mind when she read something in a magazine and came across the name Karen, and liked it. It is probably a good thing she did change her mind, because I know several Barbaras, including one of my best friends. I have two great close friends, Amanda and Barbara, and if my mother had not changed her mind, introducing ourselves might have sounded like a routine out of the old Newhart television show: "Hi, I'm Amanda and this is my friend Barbara and this is my other friend Barbara."

There have been several Elizabeths in the family, including the maternal progenitress of my paternal line, Elizabeth who married Samuel Packard in around 1635 or so, her surname being so far unknown. Elizabeth, in fact, seems to be the most common female name in the family on both sides. My great-great grandmothers include Florence Elizabeth McKee and Elizabeth Jane Reynolds.

One of my favorite given names comes from the old Puritan line of my father's, the name being Freelove Packard. I don't think it meant to the Puritans what we think of when we hear that name, especially those of us who came of age in the 1960s!
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Welcome my Daughter to the Blogosphere

2010-03-02T23:01:00.002-05:00

My older daughter has opened her blog, Marti, Not Martha. She's not a geneablogger, though she does threaten to talk about the family (wink). She's a geek, a techie, and a crafter. She does beautiful needlework. I'd be pleased if you'd take a minute to stop by and welcome her to the blogoverse.
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Women's History Month: Picture

2010-03-02T08:00:00.006-05:00

Today's instruction from The Accidental Genealogist, Lisa Alzo, is:

March 2 - Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo?

Unfortunately, I have no life photos of my great-great grandmother, Sarah Ann Sunderland McKee Rogers. Sarah married my great-great grandfather Nelson Reed McKee 14 April 1859 in Monticello, White County, Indiana. In 1879, after twenty years of marriage, Nelson McKee took off one night, never to return, as I have related in an earlier blog post. This photo was taken by my cousin Connie, who lives in Wisconsin, and is descended from Nelson Reed McKee and his second wife.

Sarah was faced with whatever financial accommodation she had to make, such as selling Nelson's jewelry and watchmaking business and paying whatever debts may have remained from it, and with raising three children by herself, my 16-year-old great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth and her 14-year-old and 9-year-old brothers. Eventually, Sarah was granted a divorce from Nelson, in absentia, and she remarried on 29 October 1884, to Luke Rogers.

In an essay she wrote not long before her death in 1943, my great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth McKee relates that, not quite 17 years old, she became a schoolteacher in a classic rural one-room schoolhouse, to help support the family. I cannot imagine any 16-year-old girl today (or boy, either, for that matter) becoming a schoolteacher!

Sarah was a strong woman, because her life and times required her to be so. She did what she had to do, as did her daughter, to provide for her children. I just wish I had a life photo of her.
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Women's History Month: My Aunt Elizabeth

2010-03-01T23:48:00.003-05:00

We are now in March, which is Women's History Month, and Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist (what a great blog name!) has given us 31 days of prompts to blog on. Today's (I'm beginning this entry at 11:48 on 1 March) is:

March 1 — Do you have a favorite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check.

I have blogged about my favorite female ancestor before: my aunt Elizabeth Reed. She helped raise me, helping her sister, my widowed mother. I was the youngest, and "Sissy," as we all called her, took me under her wing. She was also my godmother, and took her duties seriously. I'm not sure, but she may have been the one who caused me to be baptized in the Episcopal Church. She was Episcopalian. My father, a direct descendant of Massachusetts Puritans, was a Congregationalist, and my mother was a Presbyterian.

She took me to church each Sunday, got me to join the choir, which I did not care for at first, but came to enjoy very much when I got into high school and my best friend's family joined the church, and my friend joined the choir. She also encouraged me to join the youth group, Episcopal Young Churchmen, which I eventually served as treasurer and represented one year at the diocese-wide meeting of the House of Episcopal Young Churchmen. I had a lot of friends in the group.

"Sissy" had a great sense of humor, and relied on it to cope with her own difficulties in life, chief among them being a lifelong battle, from early childhood, with obesity. She was a gifted public speaker, who leavened and livened her speechmaking as Director of Health Information for the State of Florida in the 1950s and 1960s, with humorous monologues which she committed all to memory. She had crowds laughing in the aisles and was in demand at local meetings in Jacksonville and around the state.

What I would like to know more about is her sojourn in Brazil during World War II, when she was apparently sent by the Public Health Service to work with some nurses there. I have a newspaper article from the local paper in which she spoke of her trip. Other records I need to search out include her passport, from the National Archives (Records of the State Department), records which might exist from the Public Health Service regarding activities during World War II, and records at the state level from the Board of Health, where she worked (now the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services).

"Sissy" died in 1967, when I was away at college at Florida State University. I have always wished she could have been around long enough to meet my daughters, one of whom is her namesake. She would have loved them, and they would have loved her. She was such fun!
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The Games are Over

2010-03-01T22:48:00.003-05:00

The Winter Games are over -- those in Vancouver (and I congratulate the Canadian hockey team on a game well-played and for bringing such joy to Canadians everywhere -- and I'm part Canadian, myself!) and those right here in the genealogical blogosphere -- the Geneabloggers Winter Games. Even though I'm neck-deep in Spanish Colonial Florida these days, I did manage to return to the 21st century enough to get one Gold Medal (in the category "Back up your data!") and three Bronze ("Go back and cite your sources!", "Organize your research!", and "Reach out and perform genealogical acts of kindness!"). Not too shabby, and I look forward to the next games!
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Census Problems: Dos Semillas or Doce Millas?

2010-02-28T04:10:00.005-05:00

In working with the St. Augustine, Florida, Spanish colonial census if 1783, I have come across problems similar to those we encounter in more modern censuses. First among these is that we do not know who the informant was for any entry in that census. And there are also problems such as one I have encountered, that is: What did the respondent say vs. what did the enumerator hear? This is one way we come up with some of the creative spellings of names and places in the censuses.

In this particular instance, there was a woman named Honoria Clarke who lived in an area which is named in the census as "dos semillas" -- two seeds. However, this place-name is also found as "doce millas" -- twelve miles. It is quite likely that Honoria Clarke, being a "Doña," or a lady of quality, would not have been the individual responding to the census enumerator. Doña Honoria was actually British, this census having been taken right after Spain re-acquired control of Florida after it had been in British hands for twenty years (1763-1783). So the respondent was probably a servant or even a slave, and most likely a fluent Spanish-speaker, and they tend to speak quite rapidly.

The property of Doña Honoria is stated as being between three and four miles northwest of St. Augustine. We must remember that in those days, a "mile" was probably not the 5280-foot statute mile we use today. And mapmaking was not nearly as accurate as it is today, either. Something like five miles, today, northwest of St. Augustine is an area known as Twelve Mile Swamp. I have a suspicion that it is this area in which Doña Honoria's property was located. And if the respondent in this case was a fluent Spanish-speaker, he or she could have said "doce millas" and the enumerator could not be blamed for hearing "dos semillas."

On the other hand, there is also the possibility that the area was indeed, in those days, known as Two Seeds, and the homophone phenomenon occurred, leaving us with "doce millas" -- Twelve Miles. I have to seek out a contemporary map to see if that area is labeled, and as what. Place names can undergo curious metamorphoses.

Such an instance happened in St. Augustine. Early on, there was a street named Calle de la Marina. That has been rendered in one source I examined for my book on the censuses of Florida as "Street of the Marine." Such a word-by-word translation is not a refined piece of work. Today, the street is known, translated with proper regard to usage in the language being translated to as well as from, as Marine Street. This, however, is a misnomer. The Spanish word for "Marine," as we Americans and the British call a certain military member type, is spelled exactly the same way -- marine -- and is pronounced "mah-REE-nay." The word "Marina" is pronounced in Spanish pretty much as in English, where it has come to mean an area for mooring recreational boats. But in Spanish, "Marina" is the word for NAVY. I suspect a faulty translation during the British Period for this error. What today is called Marine Street in St. Augustine should be Navy Street.

Disclaimer: My father was in the Navy. He taught his dog a trick. He would ask the dog, Smoky, "What would you rather be? A dead dog or a Marine?" and the dog would roll over with all four legs in the air.
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Geneabloggers Winter Games: Final Score, not so hot

2010-02-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

So my final tally for the Geneabloggers Winter Games is:

20 documents organized, 10 source citations created, one act of genealogical kindness performed, and my data backed up!

Not so great, but this is a very busy time, and I have to watch that I don't get too run down because I have a habit of overdoing.

I think next time I'll be able to do more!

It was fun, and thanks to Thomas MacEntee for doing all he does for us!
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Why I'm Not Excited about WDYTYA

2010-02-21T23:47:00.001-05:00

Will everyone forgive me for being a wet blanket and not being awfully excited about Who Do You Think You Are? I am happy to see another genealogy program on the air, and yes, I have been watching Henry Louis Gates on PBS. But I'm not as excited as others seem to be, from all the buzz, because I have to admit that I am just about up to the gills with celebrities. Yes, Dr. Gates is using celebrities on his show, too. It is interesting to see, for example, that the genealogy of Yo-Yo Ma goes back so far and to hear the story of how courageously his kinfolk in China hid an extremely valuable family record from the ignorant depredations of the "Cultural Revolution." WDYTYA is airing on a commercial station instead of PBS, which leads me to wonder just what the production values are going to be like. One thing that worries me is that in all the announcements about it, I haven't seen the name of a genealogist yet. At least Henry Louis Gates has earned his stripes in the field. It is possible that I've missed something, so if there have been announcements that particular well-known genealogists are affiliated with the show, please let me know. it might help to assuage my fears.

Okay, it's nice that people will watch the show because everyone in the world seems to be more interested in celebrities than I am. But I think it would just be so much more interesting if they were talking to and investigating the lineages of plain people. Plain people finding out interesting things about themselves and about artifacts or family documents and the people behind them is why I like Antiques Roadshow and History Detectives, and I think is part of the reason for the success of these shows. I think it would be so much more interesting to see plain people -- who probably have thought "Who would be interested in my dull story?" -- finding out just how fascinating it is to learn who their ancestors were, even if there's not a famous person or royal bloodline among 'em. How much more motivating would this be? Watching the celebrities find out about their lineages may be nice, but plain people might watch them and say, "Well, they're celebrities. Of course they're going to have interesting stories. But not me." Seeing other plain people find out about how their ancestors came across the Atlantic or the Pacific, or up from Latin America, how they dealt with situations such as wars and depressions and strikes and discrimination would, I think, be much more heartening to other plain people, who might say, "Wow. That guy's a working stiff like me, and look at his story! I wonder if there's something that interesting in my family history."

I'll watch WDYTYA, of course, to see how the whole subject of genealogy is handled. I'll be holding my breath. I know how commercial television handles history. I do hope they get the details right, because it will grate on me if they don't. I'm also generally not impressed with the ability of network TV to present a subject intelligently these days, and in recent months, too, I've seen reason to have very unsettled feelings about the judgment of NBC executives!

My genealogy society is hoping that the show will cause the phone to ring at our headquarters, so in conjunction with our meeting next month, I will be presenting, in another room from the main meeting, my presentation called "Bare Bones: Getting Started in Your Genealogy." I'm happy to do this, and will be happy if WDYTYA brings people into the door of the society. We've been doing some exciting things in the past few years, and we hope more people will want to become part of that.
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52 Weeks to Better Genealogy: Google Maps

2010-02-21T06:08:00.005-05:00

For this week's segment of 52 Weeks . . . Google Maps!

Play with Google Maps. This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, parking lot or field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses into Google Maps, don't forget to use Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you right where your ancestors once stood. If you've used this tool before, take some time to play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links, and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.

I have used Google maps some. In fact, I am on Google Maps! Type in Calle Rodrigo de Triana 20, Seville, Spain, and pan around without moving forward or back, until you see someone wearing a striped blue-and-white shirt and brown pants with white shoes standing just outside an apartment building. My face is fuzzed out, bless Google's lawyered-up hearts, but that is me when I was in Seville to do research at the General Archive of the Indies!

I just looked up some addresses in my ancestry -- the house where my grandparents lived when my mother was born. The house is still there. I tried looking up another address, where my mother's grandparents lived in Logansport, Indiana, but apparently Google hasn't got there yet because it would not shift to a street view. Too bad.

I also saw that the house where my great-great grandparents lived in Bloomington, Illinois, is probably still standing, too! Wow. My great-great grandfather died in 1881. That's a long time, and I certainly do not expect the house I'm living in now, built in 1992, to be around for that long. They just don't build 'em like they used to!

One thing we do have to keep in mind is that house numbers may change over the course of time. The houses where my husband's parents and grandparents lived, right next door to each other, changed house numbering in the early 20th century. Apparently the house numbers on the street where my mother's family lived when she was born changed, too.

I prefer to play with Google Earth, however. There I get a real perspective of where everything is -- and where everyone was -- on the planet. I have "pins" stuck all over the planet on Google Earth, from ancestral stomping grounds in Suffolk, England, to Seville to mark my sojourn there, to places all over the U.S. where my family has lived at one time or another, from Massachusetts to California, and even up into Canada for a three-generation interval. I can draw lines on Google Earth, too. That's nice for marking migration routes. But as for migration routes, what I would really like is a huge wall map on which to plot those. What I need in our tiny house is a huge wall to display it!

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: A-HA!

2010-02-20T22:03:00.003-05:00

Once again it is time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. So here are tonight's instructions:

1) Think of any number of genealogy events or moments that make you have a genealogy happy dance, an ah-ha moment, or a genea-gasm.

2) Tell us about them in a blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook.

I didn't know until I was 10 years old and my cousin told me, that her mother and my mother, sisters, had been intra-family adoptions. Their father died in a railroad accident in 1917, when my mother, the youngest of three, was not quite a year old. They were adopted by uncles and their wives. I've told the story before here, so in a nutshell I'll just say that I never knew my mother's biological mother, my grandmother Ruth Nave. She lived a sad life, according to my aunt, had at least one other marriage if not two, and her last husband's surname was White. The other thing my aunt told me, about 30 years ago now, was that Ruth Nave died in 1951.

So one day I was at home not feeling very well, and I was messing about on the Internet and I decided to go hunting for grandma. I was at the website of the city of Logansport, Indiana, where my grandfather grew up. I remembered something about a Mount Hope Cemetery, so I went looking at the cemetery's website, which was linked from the Logansport website. There I found my great-grandparents in their family plot, and an apparent grandson that I had not known about buried there, too. I also found my grandfather, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed, whose tombstone was marked B. F. Reed. He was not buried in the Reed family plot, however, but with his in-laws, Teter Nave and his wife Lizzie. Odd, I thought, because the Reed family had made the funeral arrangements and held the funeral from their home, according to my grandfather's obituary. Either they had acceeded to a wish from their not-terribly-favored daughter-in-law, or this was their way of saying to their son, of whose wife they did not approve (according to my aunt), "You made your bed, now you lie in it!"

But where was my grandmother? The tombstone marking my grandfather's grave also had my grandmother's name on it, as "Ruth, his wife." Her birth year, 1892, was on the stone, but the other date was missing. Was she not buried there? She had married again -- had she and her subsequent husband even stayed in Logansport? I couldn't search all the listings, because there were some 80.000 interments in that cemetery. So, feeling dejected, I closed the browser and was going to get up from the computer until I remembered what my aunt had told me: She had a husband whose surname was White, and died in 1951.

So I went to the index listing at the cemetery website, and there she was -- Ruth White, died 1951. And she was indeed buried there in the Nave family plot, right next to my grandfather, her first husband. Mr, White, then, must have been an understanding fellow. I later obtained a transcription of her death certificate from the Cass County (where Logansport is located) Health Department, and the informant on the certificate was Harold White.

Well, that was an A-HA moment, for sure, finding the grandmother I never knew and never would know, except to know where someday I need to visit her and let her know that her granddaughter thinks of her from time to time.
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Geneabloggers Winter Games: Jammed Up

2010-02-19T01:12:00.002-05:00

I've had much to do in the last few days, but I did manage Tuesday to do a backup with my copy of HandyBackup. Not much else, but I hope to do more this weekend as a study break. Tomorrow I will be spending the day in the public library buried in the East Florida Papers and other references for my grant project.

So the tally now is 20 documents organized, 10 source citations created, one act of genealogical kindness performed, and my data backed up!
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Geneabloggers Winter Games: Workout!

2010-02-14T22:17:00.007-05:00

I feel like I've done a real physical Olympic competition!

First of all, yesterday, an opportunity to perform a genealogical act of kindness dropped into my lap. An individual who had seen my post about Asking the Right Question sent me an e-mail in which he said he was looking for a photo of the historian I discussed, who turns out to have boarded in his great-grandma's house in 1920! What a small world! I said I did not have a photo, but I gave him the contact information for a special library collection which holds many of his manuscripts, and may just have such a photo.

Today I organized 20 hard documents into their proper binders, in archival document sleeves. These ranged from my father-in-law's original World War II draft registration and draft classification (he was 4-F), and a 1945 Florida state census sheet to notes, official letters, funeral documents, and tombstone transcriptions. I keep binders by individual or by married couple. I also keep binders by family surname for those dribs and drabs I accumulate on a variety of people, but which are not of such volume that they need their own binder yet. But someday I know I will have to have another bookcase.

I also created at least 10 source citations, and decided that I am not going to migrate from The Master Genealogist to Family Tree Maker 2010 after all. Yes, FTM 2010 is using Elizabeth Shown Mills's sourcing templates, but it is using them too rigidly, and does not take into account original documents privately held in my own collection -- such as the aforementioned draft registration and classification cards. The template for "National Government documents," I think it was called, demanded to have me select from among National Archives or Library of Congress or other government agencies as repositories, with no way to put in that I am the repository for these documents! The Master Genealogist is still much more flexible and forgiving on that score, and was very happy to have me say that these documents are part of the "Rhodes Private Papers." No problem.

So the tally so far: 20 hard-copy documents organized, 10 source citations created, and one act of genealogical kindness performed.

Tomorrow is a class day, and I will be on campus all day, but I hope tomorrow night at the very least to backup my data to my portable hard drive with HandyBackup.
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52 weeks to Better Genealogy: Online Databases

2010-02-14T01:38:00.003-05:00

This week's challenge, posted by Amy Coffin at We Tree , is:

Online databases at your public library: Search your library's web site and see if your card grants you access to online databases. Libraries (even small ones) often have wonderful online tools including genealogy databases, historical newspapers and more! Take some time to play with these little perks that come with a library card. You just may get some help in your own genealogy research and gain some free research tools to boot. If you don't know how to access online library databases or you're not sure if your branch has them, ask a librarian for guidance. If you have a blog, discuss which databases (if any) to which your library subscribes.

I have four library cards -- my home Clay County (Florida) Public Libraries, Jacksonville Public Libraries, Alachua County Libraries (Gainesville), and the University of North Florida. Since I use the Jacksonville and Clay County libraries most, I'll just talk about them.

Clay County is a small but fast-growing county, and the Clay County Library system has come a long, long way in the 30 years we have lived here. They have access to a number of online databases which I might find useful including, for my Florida colonial lineages work, a database of Spanish-language Latin American journals in the social sciences. Other relevant databases include Academic One File for peer-reviewed journal articles in a number of fields, Civil War: Sources in U.S. History online, an electronic books database which covers "all electronic books available online that were catalogued by OCLC member libraries," and the FloridaCat Group Catalog in which I found a wonderful article on how the fisheries of St. Augustine have changed from the 15th century through the 21st, which will add a great social-history note to my research on St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period! So right now the Clay County library electronic resources has benefited me! Clay County library's website also has Heritage Quest, which patrons can use at home.

Jacksonville is just north of here, and I often go to the main library there. I used to work for the Jax library, so I have a soft spot for them. They have a huge Genealogy department which is supplemented by the Florida Collection. They have the library edition of Ancestry.com, as well as ArchiveGrid, which describes archival collections in libraries, archives, historical societies and museums across the globe. These two databases are in-library use only. I hadn't known about ArchiveGrid, but I will give it a test drive the next time I go to the Jax library. Among the history entries they have Daily Life in America (social history), History Resource Center: U.S. and History Resource Center: World, and Popular Culture Universe (covers from the 1920s onward), among others. The resources in this category of History, and in the Latino American category, are slim and do not include original sources or peer-reviewed journals, but rather seem to come from derivative compilations and encyclopedia entries. So, other than access to ArchiveGrid, I think I'll go for my journal article access to the University of North Florida website, where I can access a very large selection of peer-reviewed journal articles.

But it's good to know what is there, and I am looking forward to testing ArchiveGrid, and am rather pleased to see that Clay County's little library system provides me with more access to peer-reviewed journal articles than the large Jacksonville library system!
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Geneabloggers Winter Games!

2010-02-13T23:54:00.003-05:00

Okay, in the midst of everything else I'm up to my eyeballs in, I've decided to compete in Thomas MacEntee's Geneabloggers Winter Games , scheduled to coincide with the Winter Olympics in Vancouver (provided they can find some snow!) over the course of the next two weeks.

I have designed my flag, which you see there on the right. The flag shows the American flag on top, with the flag of the United Kingdom and a smaller flag of Switzerland, which means that I am an American with mainly British ancestry, and a smattering of Swiss ancestry on my mother's side.

There are six categories of competition, and I will be competing to one extent or another in all six. I am not by any stretch of insanity going to try to do all the tasks under each category -- I have books to read and 18th and 19th century Spanish documents to transcribe and journal articles to copy and read and my classes and two days a week with the five-year-old grandson! But I'm going to try to do some of the tasks in each category, as a way of advancing some of my own personal genealogy work which has gone neglected with all the other stuff I get involved in!

The categories are:

Go Back and Cite Your Sources!
I have recently transitioned from The Master Genealogist
to Family Tree Maker 2010, and need to be sure that all
my sources transferred intact, as well, and surely there
are other documents I need to make citations for.

Back Up Your Data!
I won a copy of HandyBackup in a Geneabloggers Data
Backup Day contest, and I will be using that to back up
all my data, not just genealogy, onto the portable hard
drive my husband bought me.

Organize Your Research
I have a drawerful of items that need to be cataloged,
sourced, and placed into binders. I also have some more
photos to put into my heritage scrapbook that I have
been working on. Time to get some of that done, and
these tasks will make a good study break.

Expand Your Knowledge
I'm always in favor of that!

Write, write, write!
That's what I do for a living, so I will be doing some of
it for the Games.

Reach Out & Perform Genealogical Acts of Kindness
I'll do what I can in this department with the time
available.

So let the games begin!