The Family Tree Problem Solver: Tried-And-True Tactics for Tracing Elusive Ancestors (5 page)

The Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky listed all the officers that were in Hiram's regiment in the War of 1812. Perhaps I could find them on the 1810 Kentucky census. One out of the six appeared in Bourbon County; the other five were enumerated in Harrison County.

And there I found the parents, William and Ellen Phillips. Every record one could hope for was there: the father's will naming all of his children, the land distribution, the powers of attorney from Missouri — things we genealogists dream we'll find. One of the questions that had frustrated earlier researchers was why the father, William Phillips, was not on the 1810 Kentucky census. From the land records, we learn that he apparently was moving that year. The other blind spot for earlier researchers was that supposed “genealogical” records showed that the family was in Bourbon and Scott counties, when the parents actually resided nearby, and did not appear in the records the descendants searched (see
Figure 1-6
).

The answer to identifying John Y., Hiram, and Warner Phillips was broadening the search to include a set of individuals not related to the family, but associated with the family and community at a crucial time.
It was by following the steps and asking the questions detailed above that solutions were found to difficult problems. Now that we have a basic structure for problem solving, let's turn to some of the specific puzzles we genealogists encounter in our research.

Figure 1-6
Kentucky counties, 1803.

¹
Franklin County, Missouri, Deed Book B:404.

²
Franklin County, Missouri, Deed Book D:448.

³
Franklin County, Missouri, Deed Book D:448, 449.

⁴
United States Land Sales in Missouri, Vol. 5:372. Family History Library film 984767.

⁵
Crawford County, Missouri, Marriage Book 1:30.

⁶
Greene County, Missouri, Tax Assessors' List 1833–1834–1835–1843
(Springfield, Mo.: Ozarks Genealogical Society, 1988), p.2.

⁷
Maxine Dunaway,
183() Tax Assessment Book for Polk County, Missouri
(Springfield, Mo.) Maxine Dunaway, ca. 1984, p.3. Bureau of Land Management, Springfield Land Office, Tract Book 14:198.

⁸
Crawford County, Missouri, 1830 census, p.180, household of Ledwell D. Blanon.

⁹
Hopkins County, Kentucky, Marriage Licenses 1821–1826, unpaginated; also Marriage Books 2:10.

¹⁰
Polk County, Missouri, Probate Book A:5.

¹¹
Minutes of the Board of Land Commissioners, Fannin County, Texas
, p.50, copied at the General Land Office by Gifford White. Typescript at the Family History Library, Salt Lake City.

¹²
Boone County, Missouri, Will Book B:840.

¹³
Boone County, Missouri, probate file 771.

¹⁴
Hiram Phillips, War of 1812 Bounty Land Warrant 27904-80-55. National Archives Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

¹⁵
Virginia Easley DeMarce entry on the AncestryWorld Tree Project: Boone County, Missouri.

¹⁶
Ibid.

¹⁷
Will of Jane Hudleston, Boone County, Missouri, Will Book B:798-9. The will was proved 9 February 1849.

¹⁸
Floyd Strader,
Tombstone Inscription of Boone County, Missouri
, 1981.

¹⁹
James M. Wood, “Settlement of Columbia, Mo.,”
Missouri Historical Review
3 (April 1900):187.

T
he civil registration of births, deaths, and marriages did not begin on a statewide level in the United States until relatively modern times. Most began in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Even when they did officially begin, the laws and practices were determined at the state rather than federal level. Thus, there is tremendous variation from state-to-state when they began, the consistency with which they were kept, and the enforcement of the laws. Generally, we can't expect complete registration until the first quarter of the twentieth century.

For complete information on when states began regularly keeping birth, death, and marriage registrations, and where those records can be found, see
The Family Tree Sourcebook
(Cincinnati: Family Tree Books, 2010). Internet users can check
www.vitalrec.com
or
www.cyndislist.com/usvital.htm
for similar information.

Vital records in most areas of this country were originally kept as part of the public health movement of the late nineteenth century, and can first be found in the mortality schedules that accompanied federal population reports. Attempts were made to gather information about types, causes, prevalence, and duration of disease.

From their inception, New England towns kept vital registration, and even though compliance was far from complete these records are immensely helpful. However, in this chapter we are speaking of the statewide civil vital registration which first began in Massachusetts in 1841, but was not instituted in many other locales until much later. Usually states began recording marriages before births and deaths. Kentucky and Ohio began recording marriages at the county level in the 1780s and early 1800s, while Pennsylvania did not begin the statewide civil recording of marriages until 1883, and South Carolina not until 1911. So, before you begin research in a particular state, be sure to determine when civil registration began. Those records are easily attainable and an important part of your research.

When no vital records are available, what is the genealogical researcher to do?
This chapter is designed to provide you with a multitude of alternate resources that can help you discover the dates that you seek. There is no guarantee you will find the birth, marriage, and death records for your ancestor in any of these sources, but when you do, the search is very rewarding. The first half of the chapter will focus on substitutes for vital registration. The majority of these records will be found for the nineteenth century, although it is possible to locate them for earlier time periods. The distinguishing feature is that these are more or less accurate substitutes for the dates of birth, death, and marriage that we lack. In the second half of the chapter, I will discuss what to do when researching earlier time periods on the frontier or in other places where no exact dates can be found and the researcher must estimate the date needed. We'll focus on what to do when we don't have a date of birth, death, or marriage, and how we can document that the event actually occurred and reasonably estimate when.

When working with vital records, we must always be concerned about the accuracy of retroactively dated events, whether they be from civil registration, Bible records, tombstones, or stone tablets engraved by Aunt Tillie. Nothing is the gospel truth and these dates can't be stated with absolute certainty. They depend upon both the memory and the recording accuracy of human beings, and thus they are always susceptible to error. The dean of American genealogy, Donald Lines Jacobus, related a story of his professional work and difficulty with a client in an article that originally appeared in
The American Genealogist
.
¹
A girl named Anna was born in 1764, some four months after the marriage of her parents. The birth and marriage were recorded in the town records, and the baptisms and marriage were written in the church records. All were in complete harmony.

However, Mr. Jacobus was hired to trace this ancestry by a “very pious lady” who would be disturbed to find an out-of-wedlock conception on her family tree. In the course of time, the lady noticed the discrepancy between the marriage and birth dates and wrote Jacobus, telling him that he had made an error and that her ancestress Anna was born in 1765. He replied it was not his error and cited his sources. She was not satisfied. She sent him a copy of Anna's tombstone, on which the date of death and her age in years, months, and days appeared. When figured back this agreed perfectly with the year 1765, instead of 1764. Not to be outdone, Jacobus photocopied the town records. In reply, the client sent a photocopy of a Bible record made by Anna's son in which he had entered the birth dates of both parents, and which showed Anna's birth correctly according to day and month in 1765. At this point, Jacobus gave up the struggle. He accepted that the moral of the story is that we often lack dates for birth and marriage, but that is not how genealogy is derived. We should try to be accurate, but proving the line of descent is what's important. Jacobus stated the point clearly: Does it really matter if Anna was born in 1764 or 1765, since her father acknowledged paternity by marrying her mother?

Nevertheless, we all hope to find dates of birth, death, and marriage, for this is the foundation on which we build our genealogy. The first place to look for these important dates is within the family: Bibles, letters, journals, notes on the backs of photographs, obituary notices, marriage certificates, funeral cards, family histories, engraved jewelry, etc. Do not overlook the possibility that an obscure notation or reference tucked away where it doesn't belong could be the only reference to a date you need. Just use caution and be sure to carefully inspect any gem found in family sources. A postcard is the only reference my husband's family has been able to locate specifying the death date of Justus Cobb, his second great-grandfather, even though the county in which he died has been combed for additional information (see
Figure 2-1
). His tombstone reads only “Father,” with no dates.

Diaries and journals can reveal important information. If you can find those still within your family you are indeed fortunate, but don't neglect the diaries and journals of neighbors, local physicians, ministers, and “busybodies.” New England families were particularly good at keeping those important diaries. For example, Samuel Sewall of Boston kept a diary faithfully from 1674 to 1729. Fortunately, it has been published.
²
He recorded the only death date I have been able to find for my husband's ancestor, Captain Daniel Henchman, who died in 1685.

Monday, Oct. 19th
About Nine aclock [
sic
] at night News comes to Town of Capt. Henchman's Death at Worcester last Thursday; buried on Friday. Very few at His Funeral, his own Servants, a white and black, carried him to, and put him in his Grave. His Wife and children following and no more, but one or two more.

Although New England kept excellent vital records in the colonial period, death dates are the least likely to be complete — especially for children. In researching my Robinson family history in Massachusetts, I located this reference to the death of a cousin in 1745 that was not recorded in the Westborough vital records. It was taken from the annotated published diary of the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman.
³
10 December 1745: At the Funeral of Mr. Seth Rice's Daughter. Just out of interest, I compared a number of deaths at random that were recorded in Ebenezer Parkman's diary against the vital records of Westborough. I found that only 33 percent of those recorded by Parkman were also in the vital records. Thus, it behooves a researcher to learn the identity of the local minister and learn whether his diary has been preserved. Some diaries and journals are extant from the 1630s.
Four excellent sources for locating them are:

1.
Arksey, Laura, Nancy Pries, and Marcia Reed.
American Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of Published American Diaries and Journals
. 2 vols. Vol. 1: 1492–1844. Vol. 2: 1845–1980. (Gale Research, Book Tower, Detroit, Mich. 48266, no date.)

2.
Forbes, Harriet.
New England Diaries 1602–1800
. (Topsfield, Mass.: published by the author, no date.) Available at the Family History Library.

3.
Matthews, William.
American Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of American Diaries Written Prior to the Year 1861
. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945.) Diaries are listed alphabetically under the year the first diary entry occurs.

Figure 2-1
Postcard announcing Justus Cobb's death.

4.
Matthews, William.
American Diaries in Manuscript 1580–1954
. (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1974.) Over 6,000 items of published and unpublished diaries from 350 libraries.

The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) also contains many references to diaries and can be found in print at most large and university libraries. It is a gold mine of information on various unpublished works and where they are available. It is also available online through a subscription service, Archives USA, to which many libraries subscribe.

The next most common substitute for a birth or death record is the date recorded on the tombstone. When you use such dates as corroboration, be sure you indicate that the source is the tombstone. The individual who was buried there probably did not order the tombstone, nor did he supervise the carving.

There is a common sequence for purchasing a tombstone and a number of things can go wrong in the process.

• The memory of the individual ordering the stone may not be accurate.
  

• That individual may not transmit the information accurately.
  

• The individual receiving the information from the purchaser may not record it accurately.
  

• The individual producing the stone may not accurately carve the information transmitted to him.
  

• The stone may not be preserved well enough to allow an accurate reading. Watch out for this problem particularly when you are reading a transcription of the dates rather than looking at the stone itself.
  

Figure 2-2
Picture of Fleener tombstone.

A tombstone I found clearly reads, “Sarah S. dau. of W. & S.A. Fleener born Aug. 24, 1885, died Aug. 5, 1867” (see
Figure 2-2
).

As it is obvious the stone is wrong, the genealogist must analyze what the dates
should
be and try to find other records that support or contradict those guesses. Perhaps the birth date is wrong and should be 1865. Perhaps the death date should be 1887. Perhaps the birth and death dates were reversed, and Sarah was born in 1867 and died in 1885. What other records could help us to determine which date is correct? The census is our first stop and here, we luck out. Sarah does not appear on the 1870 census with her parents and there is a space between Lydia, age seven, and William, age two. It fits that the birth year could have been 1865 and Sarah did not live to be in the 1870 census.

The records maintained in many churches are another common alternative for both birth and death records. It seems that clergymen were more prone to record baptisms than births, probably to ensure that the newborn babe would be prepared for heaven if premature death should occur. Churches that have particularly good vital registration records include Quaker, Lutheran, Dutch Reformed, Catholic, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian congregations. A tremendous array of religious denominations and sects exist in the United States and their records are usually more difficult to locate here than they may be in European countries, where only one or two denominations are common.
The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy
edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, rev. ed (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, Inc., 1997) provides some suggestions on where to begin your search for the records of specific denominations.
Too often we assume these records don't exist because they have not been published or microfilmed.