Finding Your Ancestors Using Employment Records

 

You may never have thought of using employment records to find an ancestor or relative but there is a huge untapped reservoir of records out there around the world. The challenge is that employment records are only rarely classified as "genealogically significant" and they are largely ignored by the larger genealogical database/family tree websites. It is also unlikely that you will find these records online in digital format available to the public although there are exceptions. 

Let me use, for example, railroad records. There are about 700 different railroads that operate common carrier freight services in the United States. See Wikipedia: "List of common carrier freight railroads in the United States." Every state in the United States has at least one railroad including Hawaii. See Wikipedia: "List of Hawaii Railroads." Although the number of railroad employees has been declining over the years, some railroad records go back to the early 1800s. On February 28, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first U.S. railway chartered for commercial transport of passengers and freight. You might be interested to know about this collection of the B&O's records: Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Online Virtual Archive: "Preliminary Guide to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Records."

You can start becoming aware of your ancestors' occupations and employment by using the U.S. Federal Census. The 1850 census (column 7), 1860 census (column 7), 1870 census (column 7), and 1880 census (column 13) all indicate the person's occupation. Some of the censuses in England, Scotland, and Wales also show occupation. Another place to go for occupations is the vast collection of City Directories that are just now beginning to be generally available online. Here is an example from the collection on MyHeritage.com showing the occupation of one of my uncles, Rollin C Tanner. 

Here is a screenshot of the entry.

It turns out that there is extensive historical information available about this company. For example, there is a book entitled "The Tanner Companies" by L. Morris Richards and Carl C. Jacobson. This is full of history, biographies, and photographs and is 884 pages long. When you begin your search for your ancestors' occupation and continue with research into that occupation and the companies and entities that employed your ancestors, you may be amazed at the huge amount of information available. 

This is an area that requires real research skills. Using the example above from the City Directory, we have the name of the company and a search online turned up not only the history of the company but the location of the documents about the company in the Arizona Historical Foundation. 

http://www.ahfweb.org/collections_manuscripts_TV.htm

The best way to find these records is to keep looking. 

RootsTech Connect 2021 Announces First of Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers

RootsTech Connect 2021—the world’s largest family celebration event—announced its first wave of keynote speakers hailing from Australia, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. Speakers include New York Times bestselling author and international motivational speaker, Nick Vujicic; Lorena Ochoa of Mexico, a retired top female world golfer; Francesco Lotoro of Italy, musician, composer, and collector of music composed in captivity during the Holocaust; and Sharon Leslie Morgan, author, and genealogist dedicated to promoting healing by providing resources for African American genealogical research.

RootsTech Connect, February 25–27, 2021, is a free online conference to discover, share, and celebrate family and heritage connections.

Please see the RootsTech 2021 website for more information about the keynote speakers. Here is the link:

Keynote Speakers

You Can Read Handwritten Documents! -- It's not all about handwriting Post #3

 

"United States Census, 1790," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9YYG-TZ3?cc=1803959&wc=3XTM-1JC%3A1584070703%2C1584070750%2C1584071568 : 14 May 2015), Massachusetts > Barnstable > Barnstable > image 2 of 7; citing NARA microfilm publication M637, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

The image above illustrates some of the problems associated with trying to read handwritten documents. Although deciphering the script itself can be a challenge, often the real problems include damage to the original document, faded ink, improper conservation and preservation efforts, and physical deterioration of the document. This 1790 U.S. Federal Census Schedule from Barnstable, Massachusetts illustrates all of these problems. Here is an analysis of each problem.

This part of the image seems to show some sort of tape, possibly cellophane tape used to reinforce or repair the document. Most of these early efforts were misguided. The tape would discolor with age and as here, the image would be obscured and impossible to read. When the information in the document is completely missing, as in this and some of the additional examples I will show below, the information is just lost and usually unrecoverable. 

This part of the document shows physical damage with parts of the document missing. Again, this is not an issue that can be resolved. The information has been completely lost. The discolorization of the edges of the larger missing piece could be from a fire. 

This part of the document shows "bleed-through" from the following page. Because ink is a liquid, when you write on one side of the page and when the paper is porous, you will see the reverse image on the preceding page. The discoloration of this part of the page also appears to be from some kind of tape used to mend a tear caused by folding the paper. 

The bold number was added to the document at a later time. It is likely a page number in some compilation of the original documents. 

It is a given that the physical condition of the document and the preservation efforts or lack thereof will dramatically affect the researcher's ability to obtain information. This is something, like the passage of time, we can do nothing about now but it should be an incentive to adequately preserve and care for genealogically important documents. 

Finding the children of women in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Federal Census

 

Women in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Censuses

This video shows a new feature in the Goldie May genealogy research assistant. See their website:

https://www.goldiemay.com/

Goldie May is a browser extension that guides your family history research and offers helpful tips when you get stuck. It is featured in The Family History Guide.

https://www.thefhguide.com/project-4-goldie-may.html

You Can Read Handwritten Documents! -- First efforts Post #2

 

Note: You can usually click on an image to see an enlarged version. 

You will find that reading handwriting becomes more difficult as you go back in time. I decided to start with a response to a genealogical inquiry handwritten in 1936. There are three main types of handwriting: cursive, print, and D'Nealian. The letter above is an example of cursive. Here is a formal example of cursive handwriting. 

Here is a formal example of a style of print handwriting. 

Here is an example of D'Nealian handwriting.

From these examples, you can see that the reality of handwriting is usually far distant from the standards set by those who teach handwriting. As a genealogist, you will most likely find examples of handwriting on census documents. Beginning in the early 1900s, you will also find that typewritten documents begin to appear more regularly and by mid-century, typed documents dominate record-keeping but you are still confronted with handwritten entries on pre-printed forms. 

Calligraphy is the art of producing decorative handwriting. Here is an example of calligraphic art.

Although there are distinctive examples of the styles of handwriting, the real test is when you try to read actual documents. The following examples are taken from the 1800s before typewritten documents became commonly available.

This first example is from will file from Anne Arundel County, Maryland. It is a good example of excellent and easily readable handwriting. If you can read cursive at all, you should not have any trouble reading these will records. 

The next example is from the same will record when a new clerk took over the handwriting task. 

This example would be a little more challenging but still readable. Here is an increasing challenge from the same county, Anne Arundel County, Maryland in the 1880 U.S. Census. 

An additional challenge from this census document is the over-use of abbreviations. Here is a portion of the above census record.

If you have done any indexing for FamilySearch or any other website, you will know exactly why this example is a problem. As you examine these documents as a researcher, you really begin to appreciate those people who had legible handwriting. 

These are only examples. What is important to begin is to begin doing research in original handwritten records. A good exercise is also to transcribe handwritten letters and other documents from those records you discover in your research. If you look at the zoomed-in example above, here is what I would read from this record:

• Churchhill, Wm [William], Sarah E. Wm T
• James, Thos [Thomas], Loren H.
• Reevis or Reeves Saml. [Samuel] F., Katie A.

It will take further research in other census records to determine if this person was Reevis or Reeves. 

Here is the link to the first post in this series.

Part #1 https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2020/10/you-can-read-handwritten-documents-how.html

 

The Last Oak Leaf

 

Some years here in Utah Valley, very cold weather before the leaves all fall off the trees will freeze the leaves on the tree. However, this oak tree lost most of its leaves before the freeze. I am looking out the window at most of the trees with dead leaves and no color except brown or frozen green. It is disappointing to not have Fall colors and it is bothersome because the leaves keep falling off the trees until the middle of December. 

Finding Your Ancestors using Death and Cemetery Records -- Part Two: All is not lost

 

A missing person or missing body eventually does not mean that the person is still alive. See "Rule Two: Absence of an obituary or death record does not mean the person is still alive" of the Rules of Genealogy. Here is a short quote from that post. 

These Rules of Genealogy are not trivial statements. They have deep meaning. This particular rule, which I have called Rule Two, is a good example. It comes from a common circumstance where a genealogical researcher gets hung up looking for a particular document of a particular event to the exclusion of more general research. My conversation with such an individual goes something like this:

Me: How is your research going these days?
Researcher: I am looking for a death record (or any other type of record) for my Great-great-grandfather and I have been searching for that record for the past [fill in the blank] years without success.
Me: Do you think he is still alive?
Researcher: Oh, of course not!

Rule Two covers this situation. But the real implication of the rule goes well beyond the obvious facts. There are a lot of reasons why we may not be able to find a particular record. The most common is that you are looking in the wrong place. You may also be searching in the wrong time frame. The type of record you are looking for may not have been kept in the way you suppose at the time the event occurred. The record may have been lost, destroyed, or never created. And so forth and so on.

Basically, the most reliable evidence of death is the fact that more than 110 years have passed since the person's assumed or documented birth. The most reliable and commonly the most available records are marriage records. Some sources advise looking for death records first because they are the ones that are the most recent but this is an illusion and not entirely accurate. Any record of a person's life implies a birth and a death so, if you have a marriage record, you know the people named were born, and assuming a long time since the event, they both died. But we all depend on the vagaries of time and record creation and preservation for any records. Marriage records involve immediate real and personal property rights. Birth and death records may or may not ultimately affect property and so we look for marriage records first. 

Who wants to know that someone died? This is the real question. If a person is "famous" or "well known" in a certain community, it is almost certain that some record (newspaper, etc.) will mention the death. For the rest of us, we really do have to know where a death might have been recorded and this involves some historical research into the types of records that might still exist. Because we live in a time when national and local governments are "interested" in knowing about the birth and death of those who live in their jurisdictions, we often assume that this was always the case. In the more distant past, the only entities that had any interest at all in births and deaths were the churches. Before the churches became involved in record-keeping, only a limited number of people were recorded. For example, in China, some family lines have been preserved for about a thousand years because reverence for their ancestors was part of their religious practice. Quoting from a FamilySearch blog post entitled, "How to Find My Chinese Ancestors:"

By the mid-1600s, Chinese genealogy began to be recorded in manuscripts called Jiapu (家譜) and broader clan records known as Zupu or Zhupu (族譜). Nearly all families in the Han ethnic group and many families in minority ethnic groups created these genealogy manuscripts. Those who reverenced their ancestors as part of their religious practice considered it critical to maintain these records. While wealthier families had more resources to preserve and print Jiapu, poorer and rural Chinese clans kept them too. 

In European countries,  birth and death records were "sort-of" kept for those in the royalty and nobility. When I write "sort-of" I am suggesting that not all these records are strictly accurate. Many royal pedigrees were doctored to support a claim to the throne and not based on absolute descendancy. 

One of the more obvious record-keeping realities in the European countries is that the Church christening or baptism records were kept but birth dates were largely ignored. Hence, every European country (and by colonization all of the Americas) are dependent on the dates that the European churches, largely Catholic and Protestant, began keeping records of individual christening events. In England, as I have already written many times, that date 1538. Birth and death records before that time are largely confined to those individuals who had the money or political prestige to have other records of their deaths such as probate and land records. 

As genealogists, we usually work backward in time from the present to the past so most genealogical educational materials (books, posts, videos, etc.) address presently available birth and death records lumped together with marriage records and called "vital records." Hmm. Relying solely on vital records is a time trap because of the limited time periods in which these records have been systematically kept. Now we have the reason for this series and I will continue with a discussion of how to use records beginning with the most recent and working backward in time until they almost all disappear. 

Here is the link to Part One of this series:

Part 1: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2020/10/finding-your-ancestors-using-death-and.html