Some Favorite Genealogy Websites

I have been absent from my blog. I started teaching my Advanced African American Genealogy course at Howard County Community College, and I’ve spent the last few weeks revamping my class from last semester. I’m always excited about the class and meeting my students. So I haven’t had alot of time to post lately, but I plan to remedy that this weekend. For now, I thought I’d share some of my most favorite, coolest websites in the world. Well, maybe that’s a little strong, but these are some that I tend to go back to again & again:

• Rootsweb Books We Own: Ask someone to do a lookup for you. And when you purchase books, do lookups for others. I am registered for several books and I do it all the time. LOVE THIS.
• Historical Census Browser: Great site for adding statistics to your family history write-up. Wanna know how many freed blacks there were in Montgomery County, MD in 1860? You can find that here. How many slaveowners in 1850? Yep, that too.
• Jackson-Davis Collection of African-American Educational Photographs: Some hidden jewels–pictures of black schools in the South. Maybe your ancestor’s school?
• Railroad Maps Collection: A great collection of maps from the Library of Congress. Understand what railways ran through your ancestor’s area…may give you some clues to migration.
• Library of Virginia Chancery Court Index and IMAGES: Online original records. Court records. It simply gets no better than this (all counties are not completed yet).
• Homecoming: The Story of Black Farmers: That’s what most of our ancestors were. This site has an incredible amount of information and resources.
• Census Maps: When were those counties formed anyway?
• The Geography of Slavery in Virginia: Runaway slave ads from VA (mostly 18th century). Heartwrenching.
• Slave Letter Collection at Duke University: No words required.
• The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Breaking the Silence: One of the best online timeline/overview of the slave trade I’ve ever read.

Hope you find some little nuggets above that you find interesting. If you know of a great website you’ve utilized for your genealogy research (besides the major ones we all know: Library of Congress, Cyndi’s list, NARA, Ancestry, Footnote, all the newspaper ones, etc.) please do share in the comments here.

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Ancestors: What Were Their Lives Like?

I find myself thinking about this question a lot when it comes to my family history. It has never for me been about “gathering names” or seeing how far back I can go. I have always grappled with trying to recreate my ancestor’s lives, trying to understand the forces of history they lived through and what drove them. What connects my life to theirs? What’s different? Those issues endlessly fascinate me. I think those are the things that inform us and have the potential to ever so slightly turn the lens of life that we see ourselves and our own lives through. I know who am I and where I am as a young woman today (well maybe not so young anymore) because each branch of family–so different, shaped by vastly different lives—collectively moved the ball forward for me to have greater opportunities.  And I embrace all of that.

I’m always trying to encourage people to take a break from researching long enough to actually write up your research. I know it’s hard and trust me, I have a few lines I still need to write up. But thinking about the details about what their lives were like can provide the meat to make your write-up interesting. No one will read a list of names and dates with much interest, but if you can make it come alive (and you don’t have to be Toni Morrison) you can get some serious credibility with the family. Here are some ideas and questions to ask as you ponder what their lives were like:

• Many of our ancestors were farmers. What crops did they grow? What kinds of animals did they have? Check the agricultural census. How did that shape their lives? Growing tobacco is very different from corn or wheat. Read up on it or do some research at this cool website on agriculture. Were they sharecroppers or landowners?
• Some of our ancestors were professionals, such as teachers and ministers, some were business owners. I found out all manner of detail on my great-grandfather who was a Methodist minister through the journals at Drew University, which is the archives for the Methodist church.
• What was going on in the nation politically, socially, and economically that shaped their lives ? Of course most of us know the enormous role that race played. What was the news of the day? What about locally? Blackpast is one of my favorite sites for researching African American history timelines. I found out long after my paternal grandmother died that there was a lynching in her town of Salisbury, MD while she lived there in the 1930s…I would have liked to ask her about that experience.
• What kinds of technology impacted their lives? My mother remembers the exact year her family got a television set. My maternal grandmother recalled life before refrigerators, which is still hard for me to imagine. But then I tell younger people that we didn’t have the internet or email when I was in college, they look at me like I’m 100 years old!
• What games did they play as kids? What did they do for fun? My grandmother talked about going to shows/parties at school (which somehow would never have occurred to me in rural Tennessee) but also about spending lots of time socially at church. Her father told the children folktales that she remembered very fondly, scary stories at that.
• If they got to go, what did their schoolhouse look like? What subjects were taught and how long did they go for? Did many people in the community get to go to school, or was that something only a lucky few got to do? I found a picture of my grandmothers Tennessee schoolhouse (which burned down in the 1940s) in “Negro School Records” at the State Archives…she would have enjoyed seeing that.
• What music did they listen to? Did they have a radio? (you can find that data on the 1930 census) What movies did they watch?
• What kinds of food did they eat regularly? This link talks about foods the enslaved ate. My great-uncle who grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, recalled the fresh crabs they caught and the oyster fritters and other seafood treats.

I could go on and on…this is just a small sampling of the multitude of thoughts that go through my head when I am trying to recreate my ancestors’ lives. What questions do you ask yourself when wondering what their lives were like?

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Slavery and Justice at Brown University

Brown University released a report back in 2006 entitled “Slavery and Justice.” I just read it and found it well worth the time–I encourage you to read it. A steering committee was formed at Brown whose purpose was twofold:

Our primary task was to examine the University’s historical entanglement with slavery and the slave trade and to report our findings openly and truthfully. But we were also asked to reflect on the meaning of this history in
the present, on the complex historical, political,
legal, and moral questions posed by any present day
confrontation with past injustice.

The little tiny state of Rhode Island (believe it or not) had a central role in the slave trade and the Brown brothers, for whom the school is named after, all played roles in the institution. The report goes into great detail using the school’s archives.

Image Source: http://answersinhistory.wordpress.com/2007/01/25/slavery-in-america-part-iii/

It provides a good overview of slavery in New England, and the website includes a database of all the historical documents used in the report. The report ends with several recommendations for the University in terms of moving forward, and the school responded by endorsing a set of initiatives based on the report. Earlier this year, they recommended building a memorial to acknowledge the slaves ties of the University.

I think this is a good thing. Too many institutions today want to forget their historical ties to slavery when the exact opposite is what should be happening: acknowledging the truth and continuing to educate the public. This is true moral leadership and I applaud Brown. The report stops short of offering apologies, but this was a bold and courageous move.

We are still, as a society, struggling with the effects of slavery–all of us. I hope other universities and institutions take heed.

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University Theses and Dissertations: Hidden Treasures

I enjoy sharing resources I love with other genealogists. Today I want to share the possibilities for genealogical research that are buried in theses and dissertations.

When I am reading a historical book or article, I tend to notice the footnotes first. I’m looking to see if there are any resources for that subject or location that I have missed, and in general I’m just curious as to what sources the author is using. Think about it: Ph. D students are master researchers. Their resulting theses and dissertations can be a boon for genealogical research. Other than pointing the way to missed or hidden resources, I like the fact that many of them give social context to understanding the lives and times my ancestors lived in. After all, one of my biggest passions is trying to encourage us all to step away from digging awhile in order to actually write up a narrative on your family lineages (fully sourced of course). Once we’ve gotten the names/dates/places, many of us are stuck about how to craft an interesting story. Theses and dissertations are just one more way to find that kind of information.

The great news is that the Internet now provides instant access to many of these documents, particularly for the last 5 years or so. In fact, many universities now mandate that these works be submitted electronically. Here are just a few examples of some of these websites:

• University of Maryland
• University of Virginia
• DukeUniversity
• University of Tennessee
• RiceUniversity

Even better, is the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations which compiles a listing from many schools.

As an example of using this type of resource, let me walk through the University of Maryland (UM) link shown first above. The homepage tells you that there is a link containing theses and dissertations from 1997, but that link is restricted to only University of Maryland staff, students & faculty. However, their “DRUM” database is publicly accessible and contains full text downloadable documents dating from 2003. So we click on that link.

Then, I like to find the link that allows me to browse by department or category—for the UM site, that’s available from the link on the left that says “Browse by Communities and Collections.” I do this because remember, a college has all kinds of theses and dissertations (engineering school, divinity school, etc.), but I’m primarily interested in ones done by the History Department or perhaps those in Sociology, or even Political Science. Those are typically in the College of Arts and Humanities. Once the list pulls up, I click on “History Theses and Dissertations” and it allows me to do a search.

I search for keywords like slave, slavery, African-American, blacks, etc. but I also search for the county or city I’m interested in, and anything else I can think of. Be creative. Part of my family research is in Maryland so I’m generally interested in the experience of blacks throughout the state, and in a few counties specifically. Look at some of the documents I found at the UM site using some of these search terms:

• “‘There Slavery Cannot Dwell’: Agriculture and Labor in Northern Maryland, 1790-1860″, by Max L. Grivno (this one actually has very detailed information about slavery in Frederick and Washington counties)
• “A Tradition of Struggle: Preserving Sites of Significance to African American History in Prince George’s County, Maryland, 1969-2007“, by Courtney Elizabeth Michael (this was especially interesting to me since I grew up in PG County)
• “Capital Constructions: Race and the Reimagining of Washington, D.C.’s Local History in the Twentieth Century”, by Megan Elizabeth Harris

Look at these titles from Pennsylvania State University:

• “Black East St. Louis: Politics and Economy in a Border City, 1860-1945”, by Charles L. Lumpkins
• “On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820-1870″, by David Grant Smith

Isn’t this wonderful? And get this: most are available immediately as downloadable PDF documents!

If you haven’t tried this research avenue yet, give it a shot. A couple of things to remember:

• Check elite ivy-league schools, large state schools and smaller local colleges, but don’t forget Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) which may have a higher proportion of theses and dissertations with emphasis on African-American history

• Many sites won’t allow full access to all theses & dissertations; portions may be restricted, but ALL should be available in hardcopy at that institution if you live nearby and really want to take a look. Also, I found that some universities seem to have third-party relationships with Proquest/UMI Databases to handle this function, and some of those I couldn’t access.

• Think in broad terms. We want to understand our ancestors lives from the 1700s (and before, if possible) right up until today, so a dissertation about the lives of blacks in your city in the 1960s is going to be just as meaningful from a story-telling perspective as an article about freed blacks in the 1850s in your city.

• Although I recommend starting in the History department, don’t think good information can’t be found in other departments. At the University of TN, I found one called :“The Health Status of Early 20th Century Blacks from Providence Baptist Church Cemetery in Shelby County, Tennessee”by Rebecca J. Wilson. She was getting her Masters in Anthropology!

• I’m sure I don’t need to state the obvious, but of course, be mindful of plagiarism and copyright issues as you utilize information found in theses and dissertations.

• I always like to send the authors a brief email if possible letting them know how useful their theses or dissertation was for me.

• Remember, many of the dissertations are easily 500 pages, so don’t plan on printing them out unless you have plenty of paper! I typically will zero in on the Abstract and any sections that are especially relevant, including of course the footnotes.

I’d love to hear back from you if you found something useful using this process. Good luck!

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Out of the Darkness: Found Hannah Barnes Headstone!

I posted a few weeks ago about finding my ancestor Hannah listed in a cemetery online. A wonderful genealogist who lives in the area not only took a photo of it and posted it online, but he took photos of everything there he could see! That’s one of the reasons I love genealogy. Here is Hannah’s headstone, alongside her husband John Bradley:

John and Hannah Bradley

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A “Don’t Miss” Website

I’m always on the lookout for great websites I can utilize in my genealogy research. I found this one several months ago and I’ve started sharing it with all my genealogy friends. It is truly INCREDIBLE. It’s Cornell University’s Guide to African American Documentary Sources. Go diggin’ around in these and you’re bound to find something. It hasn’t been updated in awhile, but there are lots of jewels here. Send me an email if you found something useful.

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Cemetery Surfin’

Last week, I had an abject lesson in the importance of periodically surfing the Internet for new genealogical information. My mother’s parents were born in Hardin County, TN. I’ve gotten to know most of the family lines and I ‘m glad to say I’ve got cousins there I can visit every few years or so.

I had interviewed a cousin there years ago, before her passing, and she shared lots of information about our Barnes family line. She mentioned her grandmother, and my gggrandmother, Hannah Barnes, was probably buried in a place called Norwood Cemetery.

For the longest time, no one there I knew could remember exactly where Norwood was. Besides, the general vicinity was overgrown, in private hands presumably, and unreachable by any access road. My hopes had pretty much died over the years of ever finding it, although I found references to it in the newspaper of the time, and also a few deeds. This would have been right around the turn of the century.

So a few nights ago I’m searching online for who knows what, and I come across a link to Hardin County, TN Cemeteries that I have looked at many times before. This link has been up forever.

But, it was updated last year.

Lo, and behold, I find Norwood Cemetery! And a wonderful transcription of all 14 headstones, including (insert drumroll here) Hannah Bradley (she had remarried). I was in my house in my pajamas and I just screamed at the computer. Finally, proof that she was buried there, finally proof that the mythical Norwood was real. Finally, exact dates for her birth and death. Her husband is right beside her. There was even a note that Norwood is not a publicly accessible cemetery and that one would need to guide to get to it.

WOW. Of course now, I want a picture of it. Now, I’ll try to get a guide the next time I go.

But ever so often, give yourself an hour or two to just surf the ‘Net, even those sites you have already looked at a million times. You never know what you might find there today.;)

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