Census Manual

Censuses provide the framework for much of the family history research that we do. Every once in a while, it is useful to consult the actual instructions that were given to enumerators for that particular census year. The University of Minnesota has posted them online to the eternal gratification of all genealogists. Of course, we all know that not every enumerator followed the instructions to the letter, but I’ve also found that what we think was meant by a census question is not always that simple. As a good example, let’s look at how the instructions for defining “black” (colored, negro, etc.) evolved over time:

In 1860 and 1870, a blank space under Color implied “White”:

Color.– Under heading 6, entitled “Color,” in all cases where the person is white leave the space blank; in all cases where the person is black without admixture insert the letter “B”; if a mulatto, or of mixed blood, write “M”;if an Indian, write “Ind.” It is very desirable to have these directions carefully observed.

By 1880 that was no longer the case:

Color–It must not be assumed that, where nothing is written in this column, “white” is to be understood. The column is always to be filled. Be particularly careful in reporting the class mulatto. The word is here generic, and includes quadroons, octoroons, and all persons having any perceptible trace of African blood. Important scientific results depend upon the correct determination of this class in schedules 1 and 5.

(What scientific results depended on this?)

 By 1900, there was no “Mulatto” category anymore:

Color- Write “W” for white; “B” for black (negro or of negro descent); “Ch” for Chinese; “JP” for Japanese, and “In” for Indian, as the case may be.

 By 1910, “Mulatto” was back, with a new definition for “black”:

Color or race.-Write “W” for white; “B” for black; “Mu” for mulatto; “Ch” for Chinese; “Jp” for Japanese; “In” for Indian. For all persons not falling within one of these classes, write “Ot” (for other), and write on the left-hand margin of the schedule the race of the person so indicated. For census purposes, the term “black” (B) includes all persons who are evidently full-blooded negroes, while the term “mulatto” (Mu) includes all other persons having some proportion or perceptible trace of negro blood.

By 1920, there was a slew of other color/race choices:

Color or race.-Write “W” for white, “B” for black; “Mu” for mulatto; “In” for Indian; “Ch” for Chinese; “Jp” for Japanese; “Fil” for Filipino; “Hin” for Hindu; “Kor” for Korean. for all persons not falling within one of these classes, write “Ot” (for other), and write on the left-hand margin of the schedule the race of the person so indicated. For census purposes the term “black” (B) includes all Negroes of full blood, while the term “mulatto” (Mu) includes all Negroes having some proportion of white blood.

 For both 1930 and 1940, the new word “Negro” got detailed (although with conflicting guidelines), and notice the ‘Other Mixed Races’:

Color or race.-Write “W” for white, “B” for black; “Mus” for mulatto; “In” for Indian; “Ch” for Chinese; “Jp” for Japanese; “Fil” for Filipino; “Hin” for Hindu; “Kor” for Korean. For a person of any other race, write the race in full. Negroes.-A person of mixed white and Negro blood should be returned as a Negro, no matter how small the percentage of Negro blood. Both black and mulatto persons are to be returned as Negroes, without distinction. A person of mixed Indian and Negro blood should be returned a Negro, unless the Indian blood predominates and the status as an Indian is generally accepted in the community.

Other mixed races.-Any mixture of white and nonwhite should be reported according to the nonwhite parent. Mixtures of colored races should be reported according to the race of the father, except Negro-Indian (see par. 151).

 This nation’s preoccupation with color, especially when that color was black, is evident. It is also apparent that centuries of miscegenation had forever changed what the definition of that would include.

 Take a look at some of the enumerator instructions and tell me what surprises you. I got a real kick out of how detailed the instructions were for Occupation, as well as this note about getting information on certain classes of people in 1880:

The law requires a return in the case of each blind, deaf and dumb, insane or idiotic, or crippled person. It not infrequently happens that fathers and mothers, especially the latter, are disposed to conceal, or even deny, the existence of such infirmities on the part of children. In such cases, if the fact is personally known to the enumerator, or shall be ascertained by inquiry from neighbors, it should be entered on the schedules equally as if obtained from the head of the family.

Elizabeth Shown-Mills, on her Evidence Explained website, has an excellent QuickLesson about the importance of knowing census instructions.

It is a rule of thumb in good genealogy practice to pull every record related to an ancestor, to perform “exhaustive research” in the language of the Genealogical Proof Standard. This discovery illustrates the value of that principal. This discovery was made even sweeter by the fact that it was so unexpected.

My search for my great-grandmother Matilda’s roots has gone full steam ahead this year and last. Matilda married four times but only appears on the census with one husband, and she gets married in at least three different cities so cracking that case was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done in my family research. I found her marriage dates in online indexes and databases so, as part of my due diligence, I began the necessary task of ordering the actual marriage records and death records of her husbands from the proper state and county offices. As the records came in, I scanned them and put them in the proper folders. I wasn’t expecting to find anything new.

From Matilda’s death certificate, “VINEY NEELY” was listed as her mother, no name of father.

From Matilda’s first marriage record, her surname is given as “MATILDA MEELY.”  Neither of those names enabled me to find Matilda as a child in her parent’s household in 1880. I had her back to the 1900 census, but she was already on husband number two. I also checked “VIRGINIA NEELY” thinking Viney might be short for that. Those nicknames will get you every time.

A few weeks ago, I received a copy of Matilda’s marriage record from Philadelphia to husband number three, Peter Vickers. Now keep in mind, only her first husband is my actual ancestor. To my surprise, the record included a copy of the marriage application, and Philadelphia, at that time, was one of the places that asked people the names of their parents, where they were from, and whether they were alive. It’s hard to read, but her father’s name was given as “CHARLES” (no surname) and her mother’s name was “LAVINA NELLIE” (Viney was short for Lavina!):

Matilda’s Parents

Now that I had the correct names of her parents, I finally, 15 years later, was able to locate Matilda NEELY living  in Taylor County, Florida with her father “CHARLES NEELY” on the 1880 census! His wife’s name in 1880 is shown as “NETTA” (maybe another wife? or is Lavina’s name just mangled?) and there is MATILDA, 8 years old, right where she should be. Charles Nealy is also in the county in 1870 before Matilda’s birth, but the mother’s name is a closer match and shown as “NELVINA”:

1870 Charles Neely

1880 Charles Nealy

This was so exciting!!!! I have siblings for Matilda I can now go on a crazy manhunt to find and I can also start the tough work of uncovering the likely enslaved roots of Charles and Lavina. I guess I have just added another 10 years of research to my life;)

If this doesn’t illustrate why we need to pull every marriage record, even those for other spouses, I don’t know what would. The names are all over the place, but THIS IS HER. Another branch back on my tree;)

P.S.—Now I want to know if I am related to the Neelys on the cooking show, so I can get some discount barbeque!

The upheaval and violence surrounding the civil war does not always make that task easy. Formerly enslaved blacks varied in the reasons for their surnames and after the war there was still a fluidity about surnames. Families can be found in 1870 with one surname and in 1880 with an entirely different surname. Spelling, we all quickly learn, was subjective at best.

Still, the best tool we have to find the ever-important slaveowner is to find the family in 1870. Patience Prather had been enslaved by William Blunt in Montgomery County, MD. In 1870, she was reunited with her husband Tobias, and just two houses away was the William Blunt household:

1870 Patience

It is not uncommon to see several people of differing surnames living together in 1870. Always be curious about others living in the household–researching them can often lead to finding other family members. Remember that former slaves formed kinship ties with fellow enslaved people. This is one of the mechanisms they used to survive in a system where at any moment blood-family members could be sold, never to be seen again.

Elisha Riggs, also in Montgomery County, MD, owned the following slaves along with others:

Tobias Powell
Mary Powell
Candace Boone
Mahala Boone
Anne Boone
Mary Boone
Arianna Boone
Henrietta Boone

Look at the household of Tobias in 1870, living in Washington D.C.:

Tobias Powell

These people had been enslaved together and those ties continued.

Of course, the 1870 census can also cause us to stumble when we forget that no relationships are given in that census year. Relationships are suggested; the census above suggests Tobias and Mary were married and had children Lizzie, Lavinia and Willie. But we have to verify that relationshiop with other records.

There are some lines that may not yield success for various reasons. Some families did live their immediate areas–some were driven out by white violence, others in search of work or family that had been sold. Others stayed where they had been enslaved, but the slavewner may have died or left the area. Some had been forced to move with slaveowners trying to refugee their slaves during the war.

For those who can’t find their family in 1870 on the census, try to get as close to that timeframe as possible. Be sure to check land and court records, and several Southern states had tax and voting records that survive. I found a North Carolina man who was missing on the 1870 census in a 1867 tax record.

The 1870 census remains, for those researching African-Americans, the most critical census of all. But it’s a brick wall that can, with diligent research, come crashing down.

Postscript: I just discovered that my good friend Michael Hait blogged about this exact topic in 2009. Check out his post. Great minds think alike!!!

Mattie was born in 1921 in rural southwestern Tennessee, and she had 7 siblings who survived to adulthood. Her parents worked hard to provide a good life for their family. Her father sharecropped, worked on steamboats and eventually landed what would have been considered a good government job at the Oak Ridge, TN plant, site of the infamous Manhattan Project. Her mother, Effie, was a caring homemaker. My grandmother was the only one of my grandparents I was fortunate to have interviewed and she shared wonderful memories of her childhood. Those interviews, especially looking back today, were a real gift: you don’t think of your grandparents as having once been children themselves. She talked about her father telling the kids ghost stories at nighttime, about attending camp meeting at church, and how although her older siblings picked cotton, she never did. She was proud of that.;) She explained how families wouldn’t have meat for the winter unless they had a hog to kill, and hog-killing was a big celebration in Tennessee that brought the whole community together.

My grandmother finished about 2 years at Tennessee State University, which was quite an opportunity for her generation. She would go on to marry my grandfather, Luther Holt and move to Dayton, Ohio. True to the patterns of the Great Migration, three of her siblings and eventually her mother Effie were all brought to Dayton to live, many working in the Delco factories of the GM plant. Whatever its shortcomings, in Dayton my mother and aunt were able to grow up free of the legalized segregation that was the experience of most African-Americans during this era.

In Ohio, trailblazer that she was, Mattie earned her real estate license and excelled at this male dominated occupation that required charisma, intellect and tenaciousness. I remember thinking my grandmother was a glamorous celebrity because she had an endless array of fur coats, wigs, jewelry and fabulous clothes for me to play in. She fiercely protected and loved her daughters, and she and my grandfather were able to provide all of their girls with college educations. She had a gleaming black Cadillac (her sister had a silver one) and I would ride around with her to collect rent from various properties she owned–I felt so important! She was a businesswoman way back even then. I’ve heard that she enabled many blacks at that time to buy their first homes and also connected them with a Jewish friend of hers who owned a store and would let them to buy furniture and appliances on credit. That may seem like a small thing, but it was a necessary step on the march towards blacks living the American Dream.

Mattie Holt

We all called her “Mama”, grandchildren as well. She was smart and funny and loved to keep up with the news and issues of the day–I have this memory of her always listening to the Joe “The Black Eagle” Madison show, on the AM dial here in Maryland. She enjoyed politics. She had a confidence and independence that allowed her to live life on her own terms no matter what “society” thought about it–very ahead of where women were in those days. I’m pretty sure I inherited this trait. She wore the most outrageous wigs in every color and mini-skirts, bikinis–her clothing was entirely out of sync with typical more conservative older women from the South! Everyone you’d interview today will still remember Mattie Holt and her clothes. I think for her it really was an expression of her truest self.

She divorced after 20-some odd years of marriage, a rare thing for a woman of her era to do. And went happily about her life. She and my grandfather later in life became very good friends and she was buried beside him. That kind of bravery and courageousness left a powerful impact on my consciousness as I grew into a young woman. Today, of her three youngest grandchildren, one is in college and the other two will be graduating high school soon. My son Sebastian would have been her first great grandchild. She left a long trail of love in this family and we remember all the gifts she left us. I hope she is looking down with a smile.

 Mama, I am missing you & thinking about you on your 92nd birthday~

Your granddaughter Robyn

November 2012

It’s that time again! I will be teaching my “Advanced African-American Genealogy Class” at Howard Community College in Columbia, MD. The class is 4 weeks, one night a week (Tuesday) May 21-June 11 from 7-9pm, and I hope those in the local DC/MD Metro area will consider coming.

The class is geared for those who have gone past census and vital records, and perhaps are at a stalemate in their research. In the class I cover:

Evidence Analysis
Source Citation
Land and Probate Records
Slave Research
Inferential and Cluster Research

The class is $79 and you can register online here under the Non-Credit link. The class code is XE-131-6655. Directiosn to the Gateway Campus building can also be found on the HCC website. Please register soon–they cancel the class if they don’t get enough students before the class is scheduled. We have a great time in the class and I enjoy teaching it.

On another exciting note, I recently got to meet the wonderful Isabel Wilkerson, author of one of my favorite books, The Warmth of Other Suns. I told her–and this is true–I am her NUMBER ONE fan! She gave a lively talk to a room of about 400 people, and I stood in line until 10pm to get my books signed! She was gracious and kind and took her time to speak with everyone. If you still haven’t read the book that everyone is raving about, RUN and get it. Both the story and her writing of the story combine for a glorious read. I’m trying to learn how to write like that!

With Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns

My ancestor Martha Simpson was the wife of Levi Prather. I’ve been working hard in past years trying to unravel the complicated slave relationships in the Prather family of Montgomery County, Maryland. Finding Levi’s slaveowner was hard work, so I hadn’t focused much on Martha yet. Just recently, I’d started thinking perhaps Martha was freed before 1864 (Maryland’s state constitution in that year freed its slaves).

I’d been able to locate a sister of Martha’s (Leanna) and a brother (James) as freedpeople in 1860, so it was logical to think that Martha perhaps had been freed as well. But there was a better reason for my suspicion: we are fortunate to have a few pages of the Prather family bible, noting exact dates births and deaths of some of the Simpson family:

Bible Page

When I started to really analyze these pages, it occurred to me that it would be unlikely that enslaved people would have known exact birthdates dating from the 1840s. So, I did a search for Martha Simpson in 1860, and voila, that name pulled up living in a white Warfield family—but in neighboring Howard County instead of Montgomery County:

1860 Martha

The Howard County location surprised me, although it shouldn’t have. We are always supposed to examine neighboring counties. I still wasn’t sure this was MY Martha, even though the age matched. But here is yet another example of how use of the clustering technique can be helpful (i.e., looking for groups of people associated with your ancestors). I knew from studying Martha and Levi’s 1870 census neighborhood in Montgomery Cty that they lived right smack dab in the middle of a bunch of black people with the surname–can you guess?– Warfield. So Martha living with a family of that surname made me feel like I was onto something. I decided to see if Martha was there in 1850, and Oh My Goodness. There they were, Martha and several of the siblings listed in my bible page—nice and neat and living as freedpeople in Howard County in 1850! Even better—they are with (presumably) their mother Louisa. The actual image is bad, so I will transcribe the entry:

Louisa Simpson, 33
Harriet L [Leanna], 11
Mary E, 9
James W, 7
Joseph W, 5
Martha J, 4
Minta L, 3 [?]

I have just found another ancestor and extended my tree with the name of ‘Louisa.’ This was an odd case in that I knew the name of the father–Perry Simpson–and it was in fact the mother’s name who had been lost to history. He may have been still enslaved in 1850, and perhaps that is why his name is not shown in the household.

Chills ran up my spine when I saw this census record for another reason: I live in Howard County! To think that my ancestors lived near where I live now over 150 years ago is just earth-shattering for me. But wait—it gets better. Howard County was formally organized relatively late—1851—from Anne Arundel County. Both Anne Arundel and Howard County have some combination of freedom certificates, manumission and chattel records available on the Archives of Maryland website. Just, WOW. It almost gets no better than that.

Doing an online search of these records, I discovered a manumission from one Ann Dorsey dated August 1816, of the following enslaved people:

Lyd, age 30
Harriot, age 11
William, 10
Mary, 7
Belinda, 5
Eliza, age 3
**Louisa, 18 months

Witnesses to this transaction were Gustavus Warfield and Humphrey Dorsey. It is possible the “Louisa” in this list, who is a baby, could be the same Louisa found in the 1850 census who is the mother of my Martha Simpson. Of course, I’ve got alot of work to do onsite in repositories before I can conclude that because we all know nothing thorough can be done online. My first task is to figure out which Ann Dorsey this was, since this was a large, prominent Maryland family and there were Anns all over the place. For right now, I suspect it was the Ann whose maiden name was —Warfield.

I have also gathered that this enslaved community likely had roots in many of the “first families” of Anne Arundel and Howard County: Dorsey, Worthington, Simpson, Warfield, Chase, Hall, etc. Many former slaves with those surnames are living in the community near my Prathers in Montgomery County in the 1870s. I was also fortunate to find at GoogleBooks a downloadable copy of The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties” written by Joshua Dorsey Warfield in 1905. There is a phenomenal amount of information in this book, and I’m just beginning to sift through it.

This is such a rewarding and absolutely thrilling discovery. I haven’t been speechless in a long time. Martha was here–right under my nose the whole time.

Martha Simpson Prather

This one shows the African-American enslaved population in the original 13 colonies and its rapid change in the late 17th and early 18th century. Not surprisingly, Virginia and Maryland had the highest numbers:

Slavery in the Colonies

The next map reminds us that as this conquest was occurring, whites were bringing slaves they already owned and buying slaves via the domestic slave trade. With the official close of the African Slave Trade in 1808, enslaved families were torn apart as they were sold south and west, many of these people who were by now 2nd or 3rd generation American born. One shows relative numbers while the next shows the transportation routes used–notice that states in green had net gains while states in red had net losses in numbers of slaves:

Domestic Slave Trade

Domestic Trade Routes

We often focus on the southern states with regard to slavery and forget that it was in the Chesapeake that slavery was born in North America. It was old and tired there by the time of the rise of cotton and the newfound wealth that would later happen in the deeper South in the mid-1800s. It’s a point worth remembering: southern and western slave states and territories were filled primarily with slaves bought or sold from the Chesapeake.

Other maps of interest include this one illustrating concentrations of freed blacks:

Freed Blacks

And I really enjoyed seeing these maps of African Kingdoms:

African Kingdoms

And Africa before European domination:

Islamic Africa

Notice how almost the entire northern hemisphere is Islamic, which is what was shown in the TV series Roots with Kunte Kinta.

Lately, I’ve been reading books by Frank Snowden, Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke and others to gain a better understanding of Mother Africa herself. None of this information is taught in US schools.

I think it’s important for us as we research our ancestors, to place them into the broader context of these migratory experiences. As I mentioned above, many of our ancestors who in 1865 were living in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, etc. had their roots in Virginia or Maryland–we can see that by the 1870 census birthdates in many cases. We should also understand that the Domestic Slave Trade, which transported over 1 million people deeper South and west wrought devastating seperation of families as much as the African Slave Trade had a century earlier.

Check out the website and (if you can pull yourself away) let me know what you think.

PS: I also want to give you all a heads up that NARA has released a new Freedmens Bureau finding aid that is probably the most detailed I’ve seen, and also mention the roll-out some months ago of the online genealogy magazine, The In-Depth Genealogist. It’s got good articles and a sleek appearance. Take a look at them both.

Daniel Garrard will

My 4th great-grandfather Mason was willed to first Daniel’s wife then to his son William. Finding this record made me sadder than usual. I think it was the realization that Mason served 3 generations (so far)  of this family—first through Daniel and then to his son and grandson. I don’t know the name of Mason’s mother and father, but perhaps they were enslaved by this family as well.  Daniel’s inventory is typical of one of the biggest brick walls we hit while researching slaves; there are no family groupings:

Slave Inventory

We can only hint at approximate ages according to value. At $500 and the highest value, Cyrus and Mason are probably teenagers or in their early 20s. Jane at $400 and the highest valuation for the women, is probably in prime childbearing years. I want to believe that Jane perhaps is the mother of Cyrus and Mason, and that at least in going to Daniel’s son William there was some attempt to keep her with some of her children. But I have no evidence for that other than heartfelt desire. I see these wills and the breaking up of enslaved families becomes real; so tangible. I think deeply about these people’s lives. I look at the list of names continually, hoping to see an inkling of connection. It does appear that Daniel’s children are left land where their father Daniel lived, so hopefully the slaves were all at least nearby and able to see one another.

I also discovered that this was a famous family, as Daniel’s brother James was the 2nd Governor of Kentucky from 1796-1804. He was involved in some of the early political conventions to create the state of Kentucky and interestingly enough, was anti-slavery. He tried unsuccessfully to get gradual emancipation written into Kentucky’s constitution. This family’s prominence helps me in that the Garrards are a very well documented family.

Because of that, I easily found Daniel Garrard’s father, Col. William Garrard of Stafford County, VA (yes, maybe not all, but many roads do lead to Virginia). He served in the Revolutionary War, and left a will written 7 September 1787. In it he bequeathed 24 slaves to his children and grandchildren. Of particular interest is his bequest to his son Robert:

“the following negroes Doll, Troy and Mason with their increase.”

Now, the 26 year time span means this is not my Mason, but I wonder if it was his father? Mason is not a common name. I’ll now include that Stafford County location in my crosshairs for further examination. I would love to discover Garrard family bibles or papers that further describe the slaves relationships, but I know that’s probably fantasy land talk. I’m happy to have gotten back this far, although  seeing bits and pieces of the reality of enslaved life continues to be a permanent thorn in my soul.

Mary Garrett

My great-grandmother Mary Garrett married John Wesley Holt and they settled in Hardin County, TN and raised a large family. Mary was from neighboring Decatur County, and her mother’s death certificate (whose name was also Mary) indentified her parents as Mason and Rachel Garrett (thus, my Mary’s grandparents).

Mason and Rachel Garrett were easily found on the 1870 and 1880 Decatur County census but the usual strategies for locating their former slaveowner did not work. I noted Mason’s birthplace of Kentucky and his wife’s in South Carolina, as well as the fact that Mason and Rachel both were quite old by 1870. His 70-year old age in that year placed his birthdate around 1800, but other documents provide evidence that he was older than that and likely born in the late 1700s.

1870 Mason and Rachel Garrett

In 2010, I lucked upon a court case that included testimony from Mason and Rachel. I say luck (or perhaps the spirits guiding?) because I was not looking for them in Hardin County, since they resided in Decatur, and because the title of the court case was “NC Davis vs John A. Smith, et al” which would not have garnered even a partial glance. It was luck because an index had been created that named every person in the chancery court records, which is where I first saw their names.

There were over 100 pages of court papers in that file with documents from at least 3 states. The court case was absolutely crucial to my research on this family; it described in detail Mason and Rachel’s lives on the property called Bath Springs and the circumstances of its various owners.

The documents named Mason and Rachel’s former owner as Thomas Jeff Johnson who had died about 1854. The slaves were then owned by his brother, William Johnson, who was killed by “guerillas” in Decatur County in 1863 or 64 during the Civil War. That explained why I could not find any owner in 1870.

There was also the jewel of testimony stating that Thomas Johnson got the slaves from his wife and stepfather. The file included a copy of Thomas Johnson’s will and inventory which was probated 20 March 1854. In it, he named his slaves: Mason, 80, Rachel, 49, Alexander, 22, Mary, 18, Franklin, 16, George, 14, Anna, 5 and William, 12.

Recently, I have peeled back another layer of this onion. Researching family trees at Ancestry.com gave me a prospective family for Thomas Jeff Johnson. He married a woman named Sarah Garrard, whose family was from Kentucky. Now that KY birthplace made sense.  I discovered a book (thank you Google Books) that had been recently published entitled, “James Welborn of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky and His Descendants,” by Gail Jackson Miller. I was able to get copies of the pages that described Sarah’s family and thankfully, they were beautifully footnoted so I could follow where the author got her information. I knew this had to be the genesis of my family—so “Garrett” really started out as “Garrard.” I ordered microfilm reels from the Family History Center and dug in.

If Thomas Johnson’s slaves came from his wife Sarah, it made sense to start the search for Mason and Rachel with William W. Garrard, Sarah’s father, who was from Muhlenberg County, KY. William migrated to Lauderdale County, AL where his family resided for some years. Later, William moved to Hardin County, TN where he died sometime before 1851. His estate inventory, unfortunately, has not been found. However, Ms. Jackson’s footnote led me to something even more valuable: a June 1838 mortgage in Alabama on slaves by William W. Garrard:

6/1838-William W. Garrard to secure a debt to Arnett and Dillahunty, the following slaves: Rachel (black), and her children Daniel, Andrew, Clayton, and an infant, Mason, age 45, and his wife Rachel, age 30, and her children Lucy, Alexander, Mary & Franklin, and boy Cyrus, age 45, and girl Harriett

This was valuable because it included the important phrases, “…and her children” as well as “and his wife,” providing relationships for enslaved people that are almost impossible to find. Even at age 45, Cyrus is still called a “boy.”

When William Garrard came to Hardin County, he generated more deed records– two in 1850 again naming his slaves. After his death, tracts of land were sold in order to pay some of his debts, and it appears some of those slaves were sold as well:

5/8/1850-Power of Attorney to Telemachus Jones to recover slaves in possession of Harrison Stephens of Hardin County… they were purchased from Thomas Lassiter as trustee of William W. Garrard: Rachel, 22 and her son Clayton, Yellow Rachel, abt 22 and her children Alexander, 5, Mary, 8, Franklin, 3, Ellen and Lucy.

5/13/1850-Telemachus Jones of Hardin County, attorney for Henry Dillahunty of Lawrence County, paid $3000 for Alexander, 15, Franklin, 13, Clayton, 13, George, son of yellow Rachel, 9, William, son of yellow Rachel, 7, Joseph, son of black Rachel, 7, yellow Rachel abt 32 and her child Anna, black Rachel, abt. 32 and her child Felix, Mary, 18, Lucy, 22, and Ellen, 12

Notice one Rachel is described as “black” and the other as “yellow” Rachel. Dillahunty was the party to the mortgage in 1838 which means I’ve got to research him thoroughly as well. But these three deeds together effectively identify the children of both Rachels. Also notice the widely varying ages for both Rachels and their children, especially on these last two deeds which are both dated in 1850. By the 1870 census, several of these names are not found living in or near Mason and Rachel’s household, which implies some of their children may well have been sold or died by that time. Part of their family may still be in Lauderdale County, AL. I did however, find the “other” Rachel living in Decatur County in 1870 with the surname “Choat.”

Rachel “Choat”

I’m going to search every deed transaction William Garrard made, and along with probate, census and tax records, and I hope to paint a clearer picture of Mason and Rachel and their family while they moved from Kentucky through Alabama and finally to Tennessee.  Some members of their family also show birthplaces in Alabama on the census, which again, matches the path of their slaveowner’s movement. Always notice and use those census birthplaces when you see that they are different. I recently gave two lectures on using land records, and this blog post illustrates one way they can be used effectively for slave research.

Stay tuned for more on the Garrard family. I’m hot on their trail!

My dad attended Howard University and for awhile wrote a column in the school paper, The Hilltop. It’s pretty cool to read his columns and get a peek into the twenty-something mind that would later become my daddy. He was also the school photographer, his lifelong love of photography starting in high school in Jacksonville, Florida (Shameless plug: see some of his gorgeous pictures at his website):

Howard Today

My Daddy

My grandmother saved lots of cool memorabilia about her sons. Among the papers were my dad’s high school baccalaureate (try to spell that):

1960

Also, here are a few more great items from my Tennessee branch. This appears to be a daily work log, of picking cotton, probably in the 1930′s or 1940′s. The whole community is involved:

Work Log

Postcards surprised me with how well-traveled my ancestors were:

Postcard

Postcard Back

This 1925 document shows that George Holt was well read, subscribing to a popular Tennessee state paper, The Weekly Commercial Appeal:

Newspaper

This amazing clip shows part of a log kept in the year 1885, and provides an interesting peep at how much things cost and what kinds of things our ancestors purchased (as well as how important store credit and accounts were):

Store Account

My maternal great-grandfather, Walter Springer, was given this award while working at the Wolf Creek Ordnance Plant in Milan, TN. This plant was apart of the whole military buildup before and during World War II that gave many of our African-American ancestors factory jobs making decent wages (while they still experienced discrimination and usually had the worst factory jobs):

Walter Springer

Always be on the lookout for these unique treasures and what stories they tell about your family.