Fi.fa. Fo Fum!

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Part Latin, Part French. All Confusing. The language of the law includes abbreviations!

Back roughly a kazillion years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a baby genealogist, I discovered that my legal education didn’t do a whole lot to prepare me for the task of reading (gasp) court records.

Old court records, to be precise.

The ones written at a time — thankfully long gone by the time I got to law school — when everybody tended to speak a language that most folks think lawyers dreamed up to keep non-lawyers from understanding what they were doing. I’ve got news for you: even most lawyers never understood it either.

And if it was bad to have to go look up obscure words and phrases from the court records in a law dictionary (just what the heck is a writ of quo warranto1 anyway???), it was worse when the court clerk who was writing the records resorted to even more obscure abbreviations.

Fi.fa.? Sci.fa.? Ca.sa.? What the –???

Fortunately, most of the abbreviations from our old records can be found in some edition of Black’s Law Dictionary, though not necessarily the oldest one. And to save us all some frustration, here are the most common ones you’ll see most often (and, so, most annoyingly):

     • B.F. = bonum factum, a good or proper act, deed, or decree.2

     • Ca. resp. = capias ad respondendum, a judicial writ used to begin an action and which directed the sheriff to take the defendant and keep him, so that he would be in court to answer the plaintiff’s claim.3

     • Ca. sa. = capias ad satisfaciendum, a judicial writ which directed the sheriff to take the defendant and keep him, so that he would be in court to satisfy damages or a debt against him.4

     • C.A.V. = curia advisari vult, the court will be advised, will consider, will deliberate.5

     • cert. = certiorari, a cvommon law writ from a higher court to a lower court to produce the record of a case.6

     • C.T.A. = cum testamento annexo, with the will annexed.7

     • D.B.E. = de bene esse, in anticipation of (used for proceedings such as a deposition or statement taken in case of future need).8

     • D.B.N. = de bonis non administratis, of the goods not administered, used in connection with an estate not fully settled.9

     • Et al. = et alii, and others.10

     • Et seq. = et sequentia, and the following.11

     • Et ux. = et uxor, and wife.12

     • Fi. fa. = fieri facias, a writ directing the sheriff to levy on goods and chattels of a judgmnent debtor.13

     • H.A. = hoc anno, this year.14

     • H.T. = hoc titulo, this title.15

     • Hab. Corp. = habeas corpus, a variety of writs intended to ensure the presence of a party before a court or judge.16

     • Hab. fa. or hab. fa. pos. = habere facias possessionem, the court process used to place a party in actual possession of land.17

     • Hab. fa. seis. = habere facias seisinam, the court process used to cause a successful party to have seisin of lands recovered.18

     • Imp. = imparlance (legal French, not Latin!), time to answer a pleading by the other side in a court case, so effectively a continuance to another day.19

     • L.S. = locus sigilli, the place of the seal.20

     • N.A. = sed non allocatur, the disagreement of the court with the arguments of counsel.21

     • N.B. = nulla bona, no goods were found, marked on a fieri facias when nothing was found by the sheriff to satisfy a debt.22

     • N.P. or Ni.Pri. = nisi prius, jury trial or a court in which a jury trial court be held.23

     • P.P. = propria persona, in his own person.24

     • Q.t. = qui tam, action brought by an informer under a statute setting a penalty for violation, and allowing a reward to the informer for bringing the action.25

     • Q. warr. = quo warranto, writ used to inquire into the right of a person to hold an office, franchise or other entitlement.26

     • Re. fa. lo. = recordari facias loquelam, a writ to remove a case from equity courts to the law courts.27

     • Sci. fa. = scire facias, writ based on the record, today an order to show cause.28

     • sc. or ss. = scilicet, to wit, that is to say, words used in introduction.29

     • vac. = vacatur, a rule or order vacating a proceeding.30

SOURCES

  1. A writ that was used to inquire into the right of a person to hold an office, franchise or other entitlement. Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 986, “quo warranto.” ↩
  2. Ibid., 112, “B.F.” ↩
  3. Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed. (St. Paul, Minn., 1979), 188, “capias ad respondendum.” ↩
  4. Ibid., 188-189, “capias ad satisfaciendum.” ↩
  5. Black, A Dictionary of Law, 162, “C.A.V.” ↩
  6. Ibid., 187-188, “certiorari.” ↩
  7. Ibid., 162, “C.T.A.,” and 308, “cum testamento annexo.” ↩
  8. Ibid., 315, “D.B.E.,” and 321, “de bene esse.” ↩
  9. Ibid., 315, “D.B.N.,” and 321, “de bonis non administratis.” ↩
  10. Ibid., 438, “et al.” ↩
  11. Ibid., 439, “et seq.” ↩
  12. Ibid., 439, “et ux.” ↩
  13. Ibid., 489, “Fi. Fa.”, and 491, “fieri facias.” ↩
  14. Ibid., 554, “H.A.” ↩
  15. Ibid., 554, “hoc titulo.” ↩
  16. Ibid., 554, “habeas corpus.” ↩
  17. Ibid., 555, “habere facias possessionem.” ↩
  18. Ibid., 555, “habere facias seisinam.” ↩
  19. Ibid., 593, “imparlance.” ↩
  20. Ibid., 682, L.S. ↩
  21. Ibid., 1074, “sed non allocatur.” ↩
  22. Ibid., 793, “N.B.” ↩
  23. Ibid., 798, “N.P.,” and 816, “nisi prius.” ↩
  24. Ibid., 863, “P.P.” ↩
  25. Ibid., 970, “q.t.”, and 983, “qui tam.” ↩
  26. Ibid., 986, “quo warranto.” ↩
  27. Ibid., 996, “re. fa. lo.”, and 1004-1005, “recordari facias loquelam.” ↩
  28. Ibid., 1065, “sci. fa.”, and 1065-1066, “scire facias.” ↩
  29. Ibid., 1063, “SC.”, and 1117, “ss.” ↩
  30. Ibid., 1209, “vacatur.” ↩
Posted in Legal definitions | 2 Comments

America’s first POW camps

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Tracing an ancestor in America’s first prisoner of war camps

Reader Fran Jackson is looking for any information or legal documents that might exist about a sixth great grandfather who served time and was later released and settled in Albemarle County, Virginia.

His crime?

Fighting on the losing side in the Revolutionary War.

The answer may not be quite what Fran is hoping for… but at least this time nobody can blame the Yankees for burning these court records!

In June of 1777, a massive British force under the command of General John Burgoyne set out from Canada, aiming to control all of upstate New York and isolate American forces in New England. When he began, Burgoyne had a force of more than 7,000 combined British, Hessian and Native American troops — larger than any force in the field from the American side. But a series of setbacks allowed the Americans to pour forces into the area, and led to Burgoyne’s troops being trapped and surrounded near Saratoga, New York, by an American army more than twice the size under the command of General Horatio Gates. By October of 1777, it was clear that the British position was untenable.1

Burgoyne Surrender, 1777

Faced with no real choice, Burgoyne chose to negotiate with Gates, and he managed to eke out what should have been a really good deal for his outnumbered troops. He got Gates to agree to a “treaty of convention” rather than an unconditional surrender. Under the terms of the treaty, his men would be marched to Boston and put on ships for England in return for their promise never to take up arms or return to America again. On 6 October 1777, Burgoyne led nearly 6,000 troops out to what he thought would be a short captivity before their return to England.2

It didn’t work out that way. The first thing that happened was a fellow by the name of George Washington practically had kittens. He knew perfectly well that shipping those troops back to England would simply result in having other troops shipped back into the fight, maybe even on the same ships. So, he wrote, it was “not our interest to expedite the passage of the prisoners to England. … (P)olicy and a regard to our own Interest, are strongly opposed to our adopting or pursuing any measures to facilitate their embarkation and passage Home.”3

The Continental Congress wasn’t any happier about the deal. They started out with a demand that every last man in the British force be particularly described (to prevent them from coming back to the fight as soon as they reached England). To say that annoyed the British is an understatement. Burgoyne and his officers objected to the taking of descriptive lists “and would not use their authority to pass the army before the note-takers and personal-description-makers of congress … after some demur, the natural effect of proud and honourable feeling, Burgoyne waived the objection, and his army was described, man by man, with all the minuteness of a French commissary of police, or of a framer of passports in the most rigid and suspicious of despotisms.”4

In the fight over whether the British would allow the descriptive lists, the Continental Congress scrapped the whole deal.5 And what that meant for the men captured at Saratoga was a long and arduous captivity in New England, Virginia and Pennsylvania in what were among the very first prisoner of war camps ever built on American soil.

Fran’s sixth great grandfather was among those men, called the “Convention Army,” captured at Saratoga and imprisoned for years. He was likely held at first in camps near Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the Convention Army spent roughly the first year of their captivity.6 In the winter of 1778, however, the prisoners were moved — 700 miles from Massachusetts to new facilities just outside of Charlottesville, in Albemarle County, Virginia.7

The Convention Army arrived at their prison camp in Albemarle County in January 1779, and the troops were held there until British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis threatened to overcome American forces in Virginia in 1781. The men were then moved to camps in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with the British troops ending up at Camp Security in York County, Pennsylvania. They were joined there in 1782 by other prisoners captured at Yorktown and finally released at the end of the war in 1783.8

Throughout the years of their captivity, the Continental Congress had no way to pay for food and supplies for these prisoners. Often the barracks were constructed hastily and then rebuilt and added to by the prisoners themselves, and the camps had land and supplies to grow their own food. In addition, there are tantalizing hints in some of the writings that more than a few of these prisoners were paroled out to American farmers to work on American farms, replacing the manpower taken off into American armies.9

So… what records are we looking for here, and where might they be?

Let’s start with what Fran knows. Her ancestor was imprisoned at the camp near Charlottesville, in Albemarle County, Virginia, and settled there after the war. If specific court records were ever created in Albemarle County with respect to her ancestor or other individual prisoners during the years between the prison camp’s start in 1779 and the time the men were marched out of Virginia in 1781, Fran can “thank” her ancestor’s compatriots for the fact that those records no longer exist.

In early June, 1781, a British force under the command of Col. Banastre Tarleton set out from the main body of Cornwallis’ troops, intending to strike at Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature, then holed up in Charlottesville. The force stopped for the night in Louisa County, where their plans were overhead by one Jack Jouett, called the Paul Revere of Virginia,10 who snuck out of town and rode one or more horses into the ground getting the warning to Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly at Charlottesville.11

Although Jefferson and most of the Assembly members escaped Tarleton, the records of the Albemarle County Court were not so lucky: “Down in Charlottesville, the British were raiding the town, burning goods and seizing firearms. … Also, invaluable county legal records were destroyed, … burned on the Courthouse green.”12

Ouch. No records of paroles or indentures or anything else that might have been recorded in the court documents survived those bonfires.

Fortunately, most of the Albemarle County records generally and the court records after 1783 do exist at the Library of Virginia,13 and interlibrary loan of microfilm is an easy matter.14 Since Fran’s ancestor settled in the county, it’s entirely likely that he will appear in the county records that do exist — he may have taken an oath of allegiance or sought naturalization in the county court; he may have married or bought land or left a will; he would surely have paid taxes.

Even if he didn’t, and no Albemarle records can be found, Fran surely won’t let that stop her from doing the general research to put this man into his proper perspective. Even if it isn’t possible to find records about this particular person and his particular experience, it’s almost always possible to find records about people who had similar experiences in the same time and same place to help give context to an ancestor’s life.

First off, the bulk of the records on the Convention Army are most likely at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in Record Group 360, Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1765 – 1821. There are published indices to some of those records (the Papers of the Continental Congress, compiled 1774 – 1789), that a good library should have.15 In Fran’s shoes, I’d definitely be hunting for the descriptive lists made of Burgoyne’s men, if they still exist — what a joy it would be to find an ancestor’s name and description on those lists!

There are also papers of General Horatio Gates, 1760-1804, held by the Manuscripts and Archives Division at the New York Public Library.16 Among the 1.5 linear feet of holdings at the Library are Gates’ correspondence and his orderly books for the period of his engagement with Burgoyne and his troops.

Don’t overlook papers by Burgoyne. Ronald Gephart’s bibliography of works as to Revolutionary America17 should also be in a nearby good library and lists a handful of diaries and orderly books that might be useful, including Burgoyne’s orderly book, edited by E. B. O’Callaghan in 1860 as part of the New York State Archives Documents series.

What a fun question… We want to know what you find, Fran!

SOURCES

  1. New World Encyclopedia contributors, “Battle of Saratoga,” New World Encyclopedia (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Battle_of_Saratoga?oldid=956130 : accessed 20 Feb 5 2012). ↩
  2. Ibid. And see “Articles of Convention Between Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and Major General Gates,” October 16, 1777; Yale Law School Avalon Project (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/statech.asp : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  3. Letter, George Washington to William Heath, November 13, 1777; “The George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799,” American Memory Project, Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  4. George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England During the Reign of George the Third (London : Charles Knight & Co., 1841), 348-349; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  5. New World Encyclopedia, “Battle of Saratoga.” ↩
  6. Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), “Convention Army” rev. 8 Jan 2012. ↩
  7. Ibid. And see also the wonderfully detailed and documented blog entries by Tim Abbott in his Walking the Berkshires blog about this amazing journey: “Documenting Burgoyne’s Convention Army on the March Through Connecticut,” Part I, posted 18 May 2011; “Documenting the Route of Prisoners from Burgoyne’s Army Between Saratoga and Boston in 1777,” Part II, posted 18 May 2011; “Escorting the Convention Army Through Connecticut in 1778,” Part III, posted 20 May 2011; and “Personal Observations from the Convention Troops on the March Through Connecticut,” Part IV, posted 22 May 2011). ↩
  8. Friends of Camp Security, “A Revolutionary War Prison Camp 1781-1783” (http://www.campsecurity.com/index.html : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  9. See e.g. Robert C. Doyle, “Prisoners of Independence,” The Enemy in Our Hands : America’s Treatment of Prisoners of War from the Revolution to the War on Terror (Lexington : University of Kentucky Press, 2010), 11-31. ↩
  10. Jennie Thornley Grayson, Jack Jouett of Albemarle, the Paul Revere of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va. : DAR Jack Jouett Chapter, 1922); digital images, Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  11. John Maass, “To Disturb the Assembly: Tarleton’s Charlottesville Raid and the British Invasion of Virginia, 1781,” Virginia Cavalcade, Autumn 2000; online reprint, A Student of History (http://fusilier.wordpress.com/banastre-tarleton-article-2000/ : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  12. Stephen Meriwether Long, “British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and the American Revolution: Drama on the Plantations of Charlottesville,” The Meriwether Society, Inc. (http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~meriweth/ : accessed 20 Feb 2012). And see “Burned Record Counties (VA-NOTES)”, Library of Virginia (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/ : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  13. See generally ibid., “Albemarle County Microfilm.” ↩
  14. See ibid., “Interlibrary Loan.” ↩
  15. John P. Butler, compiler, Index, Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 5 vol. (Washington, D.C. : U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1978), or ibid., reprint edition (Buffalo, N.Y. : W.S. Hein, 1982). ↩
  16. See New York Public Library, description of Horatio Gates papers, 1760-1804 (http://www.nypl.org/archives/2265 : accessed 20 Feb 2012). ↩
  17. Ronald Gephart, Revolutionary America, 1763-1789: A Bibliography (Washington, D.C. : General Printing Office, 1984). ↩
Posted in General, Resources | Leave a comment

Protecting our own copyrights

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

No, really, honestly, the fact that it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean you can copy it.

Adult bald eagle fishing

Copyrighted or not?

One of the biggest legal issues we genealogists confront on a day-to-day basis is the issue of copyright protection. I have a few questions in the queue that I’m working on as to what can’t and can’t be done while respecting another’s copyright, but there’s one aspect of this issue I think we tend to overlook:

As genealogists, we also have our own individual intellectual property rights — our own copyrights in our own work (in our writing and in the photos we take) — that we can and should protect as well.

Think, for example, of archives of published articles such as those recently posted by Elizabeth Shown Mills on her wonderful new website Historic Pathways. Think about the careful proof arguments that we work on and write up and post for others to learn from and comment on. And think about things like photographs we take to illustrate our research — or even just for our own enjoyment.

I thoroughly annoyed some dude earlier this month with my response to a comment he posted to a personal blog I have. I had posted there the image you see here, a photo I took on a trip to Alaska last year. He wrote:

Am writing to request permission to use one of your pictures in my personal profile on facebook … I have made some modifications to the original image. I hope you will approve. Thank you for sharing …

Not so fast, kimosabe.

Let’s start with a few basic facts:

     • 1. The instant I took that picture, I owned the copyright.1

     • 2. My copyright has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office (with the rest of the images I took that day, see the gallery here). But it didn’t have to be.2

     • 3. This copy of the photo has my copyright statement, but it doesn’t have to have one.3

     • 4. My copyright lasts not only for my lifetime, but for 70 years after I die.4

So what does my copyright mean? Pure and simple, I have the exclusive right to say what can and can’t be done with that photograph. There are exceptions, with the big one being fair use.5 Trust me on this one: snagging 100% of somebody else’s photo for your own website or web account ain’t fair use.

And so where did the dude go wrong? Ah, let me count the ways.

First, he didn’t get my permission to use the image. In fact, what he was asking for wasn’t permission. It was forgiveness. He had already taken the image without asking, changed it to suit his preferences, and posted it (turns out not only on Facebook but on his Twitter page as well).

Second, he had changed the image. Period. The Copyright Office makes this clear: “Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work.”6

Third, he assumed that my “sharing” the picture on my personal blog was also “sharing” the right to use it. Nope. Remember: the image is mine. I can use it. But nobody else can unless I say so.

Fourth, he assumed that because he said where he got the picture, he wasn’t violating my copyright. Nope again. All he did by saying where he got it was not pass it off as his own work. Saying “I copied this from you” is still copying it, and that violates the rights of the copyright holder.

Fifth, he gave me no reason for saying yes to him. I don’t know this dude. I have no clue who he is or what he does for a living or what use he might make of the sites where the photo would be or what he might or might not post on those pages. Maybe I would have been willing to have my photo associated with that… and maybe not.7

And sixth, I must confess, he annoyed me. He didn’t ask for permission in advance, he changed the image (hey! what was wrong with it as it was, darn it?) and he got snotty when I said he couldn’t use it. (Asking “did you ask the eagle for permission before you photographed it?” is not the way to win friends and influence people.) I had to threaten to get Facebook involved to get him to remove the image from his pages.

All that being said, I do appreciate the fact that he asked at all. But I was and am uncomfortable in having my work (and my name) associated with people I don’t know and whose personal, political, moral or other positions may well be antithetical to my own.

Taking a hard line on copyright isn’t an easy position for a genealogist to take. As a group, we are and we should be sharers. But there’s a difference between sharing facts (which, by the way, can’t be copyrighted anyway8) and having what we’ve done stolen. When we do important work of our own, we have the right to keep control of that work, and it’s important to draw the line and say no.

So… got that, dude? Next time, go take your own pictures.

SOURCES

  1. U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Basics (http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf : accessed 19 Feb 2012) at 2 (“Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work.”). ↩
  2. Ibid., at 3 (“No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright.”). ↩
  3. Ibid., at 4 (“The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, although it is often beneficial.”). ↩
  4. Ibid., at 4 (“A work that was created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death.”). ↩
  5. See generally U.S. Copyright Office, Fair Use (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html : accessed 19 Feb 2012). ↩
  6. “How much do I have to change in order to claim copyright in someone else’s work?,” Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright, U.S. Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/ : accessed 19 Feb 2012). ↩
  7. I have given permission to folks who asked to use an image exactly twice. The photos were of the 9/11 Tribute of Lights in New York City. One permission went to a municipal memorial committee for its program, the other to Yale University for a similar purpose. ↩
  8. “What does copyright protect?,” Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright, U.S. Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/ : accessed 19 Feb 2012). ↩
Posted in General | 10 Comments

DNA, Family and the 1940 Census

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Here I go again. The DNA junkie with another family mystery.

Countdown to 1940 Census

What do DNA, my family and the 1940 census have in common?

I can only hope that what they end up having in common is help in solving a mystery.

My brother and I have both done autosomal DNA testing. At Family Tree DNA, that’s the Family Finder test. (I’ve also done it at 23andMe where it’s called the Relative Finder.) Autosomal DNA testing is the kind that works across gender lines so you don’t have to find a direct male line from father to son to son (YDNA or Y-DNA) or a direct female line from mother to daughter to daughter (mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

He and I only share one parent — he descends from our father’s first marriage; I descend from the second — and, as far as we can tell, our mothers had no ancestors in common other than, roughly, give or take a few generations, Adam and Eve.

So we know darned good and well that anybody we both match is somewhere on our father’s side of the family. And one of our recent matches poses a humdinger of a question.

Let’s called our match John Doe. His autosomal DNA results show that he matches my brother as a 3rd to 5th cousin, and likely 4th cousin. He matches me as a 4th to distant cousin. He was born in Chicago in the 1930s. That’s the city where my grandparents settled1 after they emigrated from Germany in 1925.2 John’s parents weren’t married. As a young man, he was told only that his father was European and that he was a car mechanic there in the Windy City.

And oh boy… do John and I ever want to find out just who in my father’s family turns out to be John’s father! John, of course, hopes to close the book on this central mystery of his life. Me, I just think it’d be too much fun to find out about yet another womanizing scoundrel in the family.3

The genetic relationship isn’t close enough for the culprit to be my father, who wasn’t nearly old enough or smooth enough to pass for a car mechanic around the time John was conceived anyway. Think skinny baby-faced junior high schooler here. It isn’t close enough for my grandfather either. And I do realize that because of the way recombination affects the way DNA is passed from generation to generation, this match could end up being farther back, even much farther back, than estimated.

But oh man… there was a whole passel of cousins from this German family rattling around Chicago at the time who might have, could have, maybe were…

Cousins A and B, brothers to each other, are my prime candidates.4 A child of theirs would be a third cousin to my brother and me. Both would have been in their 20s at the time, and I know they were living in Chicago then. The hitch is that I can’t find this family at all on the 1930 census so I don’t know what either of them might have done for a living then (and they may still have been in school in 1930).

Cousins C and D, brothers to each other, and Cousin E were all first cousins to my father. A child of theirs would be a second cousin to my brother and me. So they’re less likely than A and B, but not out of the realm of possibility. C and D were the oldest of all of these cousins, in their late 20s or early 30s and living in Chicago. Neither held a skilled job in the 1930 census and either of them could easily have gone for skilled training as the Depression deepened and so been a mechanic by the time of John’s birth. E — like A and B — would have been in his 20s, and though I can find his family on the 1930 census, he wasn’t listed as holding a job.

So… 42 days to go to the 1940 census.5 I’m feverishly hunting around in Stephen P. Morse’s fabulous One-Step utilities to get the 1940 enumeration districts for the candidates’ families and reading through the materials that the National Archives has posted about 1940 census records.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that the 1940 census is some years removed from John’s birth. And yeah, yeah, I know it’s possible any one of these families, maybe even all of ’em, could have been missed in that census. And yeah, I know that somebody who was looking for some fun on the side might have lied about what he did for a living. I even know that maybe this match’s father won’t turn out to be any of my candidates but will be a more distant relative.

I’m not looking for absolute proof here. Just for one of these five men to show up on that census as a car mechanic. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

SOURCES

  1. See 1930 U.S. census, Cook County, Chicago, Illinois, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 16-598, p. 18B (penned), dwelling 155, family 386, Hugo E. Geissler household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication T626, roll 441. ↩
  2. See Manifest, S.S. George Washington, Jan-Feb 1925, p. 59 (stamped), lines 4-6, Geissler family; “New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957,” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication T715, roll 3605. ↩
  3. See “Friedrike, how COULD you?,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 7 Jan 2012. ↩
  4. You’re not really looking for a citation here, are you? C’mon, folks! We’re talking out of wedlock stuff here! ↩
  5. Federal law restricts access to the census for 72 years. See 92 Stat. 915; Public Law 95-416; October 5, 1978 (http://www.census.gov/history/pdf/NARA_Legislation.pdf : accessed 18 Feb 2012). ↩
Posted in DNA | 14 Comments

Rules of my road

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

The rules of my road.

Saturdays are usually my day for chatting about my family and the issues I’m having in my own research. But it occurs to me that I’ve been remiss in explaining some of the limits on what I’m up to here at The Legal Genealogist. You know, the little things, like making sure I don’t get sued and the furniture isn’t trashed in a brawl.

So here are the rules of my road.

I’m not your lawyer.

I have a law degree. But I’m not your lawyer. I’m not even in active practice as a lawyer any more. I’m not licensed in your state, and I’m not giving legal advice online. We don’t have an attorney-client relationship, so anything I say can be held against you. If you get sued because of something I say here, I won’t represent you. I won’t even testify for you. I will, however, be enormously amused.

Seriously, this blog is general commentary on lots of things, including general commentary on the law. If you’re looking for more than general commentary on the law, you need to consult a lawyer in your home state. If you think this is more than general commentary on the law, you need to consult a mental health professional.

I could be wrong.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m (gasp) human. Which means, at any given time, on any given matter, I could be wrong. If I’m wrong about a fact, I’d like to know it. (I was delighted when Donn Devine told me about early Delaware statutes I hadn’t been aware of.) So tell me when you know more than I do or I’ve just plain goofed. As to everything else, don’t buy what I say uncritically; check the sources I cite and make your own decisions. You may well come to a different conclusion.

No advertising.

It appears that people selling (probably counterfeit) Coach bags and (undoubtedly overpriced) sports jerseys think that the comments area on genealogy blogs should be their personal playgrounds. Uh uh. Not here. And especially not the dolt who thought this lifelong New York Giants fan would be happy with a comment touting Tom Brady jerseys. Well, maybe… depending on whether I could dictate what was on the jersey…

No politics.

It appears that the extreme fringes of the political spectrum have people sitting out there, trolling every single nook and cranny of the Internet, looking for places where they can pop up and spew their conspiracy theories. “Obama wants to close the SSDI because he wants to hide his birth certificate!” “Romney is a Mormon and Mormons do genealogy so genealogy is a Republican plot!”

Bleah. A pox on all your houses. If you haven’t got anything substantive to say about genealogy, it ain’t going live here. And if it sneaks by me at first, it’ll get deleted when I spot it.

No flaming.

Play nice. We’re not all ever going to agree with each other on everything. But disagreeing doesn’t have to be disagreeable. So no personal attacks, ever.

How the World Sees Genealogists (Image used with permission of Jim Owston)

Posted in General | 2 Comments

To Leland, for natural love and affection

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Was he or wasn’t he…? The curious case of the Fraziers of Virginia.

Reader Wendy Mathias has an intriguing ancestor who poses an interesting question. This particular character — and character he was!1 — was known at times as Leland Shiflett and at other times as Leland Frazier. Wendy knows his mother was Lucy Shiflett and that Lucy married John Frazier several years after Leland was born. The theory is that John Frazier was Leland’s father.

One key clue is the fact that, in November of 1844, John Frazier executed a deed in Greene County, Virginia, for roughly 200 acres of land. The deed recited that it was “for and in consideration of the natural love and affection which he has and bears for … Leland Frazier, Lively Morris, Burton Shifflet, John H. Frazier, Michael Frazier, William Frazier, Shadrick Frazier, Susan Frazier and Mery W. Frazier and of one dollar of lawful money of this commonwealth.”2 Lively Morris and Burton Shiflett were sons-in-law. All of the Fraziers except Leland were legitimate.

So Wendy needs to know what the phrase “natural love and affection” means in this deed. In particular, she asks: “Does that expression indicate Leland was IN FACT his son or simply that he CLAIMS him as a son? How much importance is attached to that expression?”

You’ll forgive me, I hope, for starting out by saying that when it comes to paternity, there’s only so much the law can tell us. I mean, seriously, the only way any of us are going to know whether Leland was in fact John’s son is to do Y-DNA testing on documented male descendants of both. And even then we could have an undocumented, um, “paternity event”…

Reading Eagle, 3 Mar 1916

But putting aside the question of just how much mama was playin’ around here, the phrase — considered “antique” by 1916, as this Reading (Pa.) Eagle clipping shows3 — was very important … but by itself isn’t enough to answer the question.

Let’s start with the whole notion of property. Then as now, land was the big ticket item in somebody’s life. Owning land made you wealthy. If you fell into debt, the first thing the creditors came after was your land. After all, you couldn’t run away with the land or use it up or spend it before your creditors could get their hands on it. And just as creditors wanted to get their hands on the debtor’s land, the debtor wanted to protect his land from his creditors.

In steps the Law of Property. Capital letters. One entire volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law of England was devoted to the law as it related to property4 — particurly real property, or land.5

And then as now, protecting debtors wasn’t a big priority in the law. Protecting creditors was important, as was stopping people from doing foolish things with land, so the law made it hard to give land away. Oh, you could do it, but your creditors could come right along behind you and get the law courts to turn the land over to them.

So to make sure that a land deal was the real thing, and not a ploy to defraud creditors, the law required that, to be legally sufficient to transfer ownership of land, a deed had to be supported by what was called consideration. A deed without any consideration had no effect at all.6

Under the law, there were two kinds of consideration. A valuable consideration was something like money — actual cash or something with a cash value. The exception was that marriage was treated as valuable consideration.7 Alternatively, a good consideration “is such as that of blood, or of natural love and affection, when a man grants an estate to a near relation; being founded on motives of generosity, prudence, and natural duty …”8

So why did deeds like the one by John Frazier list both natural love and affection and some token sum of money, like the one dollar here? Because where the deed had only good consideration, it was “considered as merely voluntary, and … frequently set aside in favour of creditors…”9 Putting in both a valuable consideration (some money) and a good consideration (natural love and affection) was simply hedging your bets.

So what kind of “natural love and affection” was enough to make a deed valid? That’s a little murky. It’s defined as the kind of affection that “naturally subsists between near relatives, as a father and child, brother and sister, husband and wife.”10 A dictionary definition of a relative includes folks related by blood or affinity, and since that includes a relationship between a husband and a blood relative of the wife (and vice versa),11 that could include a stepson.

But there is an extremely telling suggestion in the arguments of the attorneys in the case of Beverley v. Lawson’s Heirs in 1812 that the law of property wasn’t as broad as the dictionary definition of relative. There, the attorneys for one side said, a deed made for consideration of natural love and affection was merely for an “adopted” son who “does not appear to have been related by blood to the donor. The consideration is therefore insufficient to pass a title.” Since that wasn’t the main issue, the Virginia Supreme Court never commented on it. But the attorneys for the other side didn’t disagree on the point that an adopted son wouldn’t qualify. All they said was that the issue of the relationship hadn’t been raised in the trial court and “had it been made in the Court below, we might have proved that, in fact, he was a near relation.”12

Now an adopted son might be treated differently from a stepson, and I’ve personally seen a gift of personal property to a stepson where the bill of sale said it was for natural love and affection. But given the fact that both sets of lawyers here seem to agree that, to be good enough for a deed, “natural love and affection” was limited to kin by blood, it sure looks like land was in a category all by itself. So John’s giving land to Leland supports a conclusion that he had been — or was being — acknowledged by John. The fact that John included the two sons-in-law and they themselves weren’t “near relations” doesn’t change the analysis. Naming them was nothing more than giving the benefit of the land to the daughters — kin by blood — without actually giving land to (gasp) women. In an intact marriage, at that time, That Simply Was Not Done.13

So what have we got here? We have three things that support a conclusion that John thought Leland was his son. First, he used the name Frazier for Leland. No “also known as” reference. No use of the mother’s name. Second, John didn’t differentiate between Leland and the other legitimate children in any way. Those two in combination suggest the third point: John didn’t expect the other children to raise any objections to giving Leland an equal share.

Had he not been acknowledged by John, then even the slightest falling out between Leland and any of the others could have ended up in court with everybody fighting over whether there really was “natural love and affection.” Unless John had a really warped sense of humor, he wouldn’t have set out to create a deed that could so easily end up in a legal dogfight.

What unanswered questions do we have?

First and foremost, what happened to this land? This was a bit of an oddball deed. It didn’t simply transfer the land in equal shares to the children. John also had a $55 debt, with one son and one son-in-law as security. He wrote the deed so that each of the kids had to pay a share of the debt before getting his share of the land. So… did Leland pay his share? Did he actually get any of this land?

Secondly, did any of the others ever contest any land Leland did get? The court records should tell the story on that and — fortunately — Greene County isn’t one of Virginia’s burned counties.14

But remember: even if Leland got land without a fight, there’s still a chance that he got it only because the rest of his mother’s children loved him, whether he was the son of their father or not. And there’s a chance that every last one of them believed he was John’s son — whether he was or not. The language in the deed is evidence that John treated him as his son, but by itself can’t prove he was John’s son.

Bottom line: if you really want to know if Leland was in fact John’s son, you’re gonna need at least two Y-DNA test kits. I can put you in touch with a great testing company…

SOURCES

  1. See Wendy’s wonderful article “Thriller Thursday: All In the Family,” Jollett etc., posted 9 Feb 2012 (http://jollettetc.blogspot.com/2012/02/thriller-thursday-all-in-family.html : accessed 16 Feb 2012). ↩
  2. Greene County, Virginia, Deed Book 2: 403, Frazier to Frazier et al.; Greene County microfilm reel 1; Library of Virginia, Richmond. Transcription by Wendy Mathias. ↩
  3. “Antique Phrasing in Deed at City Hall,” Reading (Pa.) Eagle, 3 March 1916, p. 1, col. 7; digital image, Google News (http://news.google.com : accessed 16 Feb 2012). ↩
  4. Edward Christian, editor, Blackstone’s Commentaries on The Laws of England, Book II: Of the Rights of Things, 15th ed. (London : A. Strahan, 1809); digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=9r1CAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader : accessed 15 Feb 2012). ↩
  5. Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 997, “real property.” ↩
  6. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law of England, Book II: 296-297. ↩
  7. Black, A Dictionary of Law, 255, “consideration.” ↩
  8. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law of England, Book II: 297. ↩
  9. Ibid. ↩
  10. Black, A Dictionary of Law, 801, “natural affection.” ↩
  11. Ibid., 49, “affinity.” See also ibid., 1016, “relative.” And see John Bouvier, “A Law Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America and of the Several States of the American Union,” rev. 6th ed. (1856); HTML reprint, The Constitution Society (http://www.constitution.org/bouv/bouvier.htm : accessed 16 Feb 2012), “relative.” ↩
  12. Beverley v. Lawson’s Heirs, 17 Va. 317 (1812). ↩
  13. See generally Richard Chused, “Married Women’s Property Law: 1800-1850,” 71 Georgetown L.J. (1983): 1359-1425. ↩
  14. See “Greene County Microfilm,” Library of Virginia (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/local/results_all.asp?CountyID=VA109 : accessed 16 Feb 2012). See also “Burned Record Counties (VA-NOTES)”, Library of Virginia (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/va22_burnedco.htm : accessed 16 Feb 2012). ↩
Posted in Legal definitions | 3 Comments

The Legal Genealogist on Geneabloggers Radio

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Tune in to tonight’s program!

Tonight’s Geneabloggers Radio program, guest hosted by Myrt of DearMyrtle, is a terrific presentation: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor: 19th Century US Immigration. Guests include Marian Smith, Chief of the Historical Research Branch of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); Audrey Collins, Blogger and Family Historian at The National Archives (UK); and Angela Walton-Raji, genealogist and host of the African Roots Podcast.

Um… er… well… and me. I’ll be chiming in at the tail end of the program, a little after 10 p.m. Eastern time. Join us all for the most fun you can have with your genealogy on a Friday night!

Posted in General | Leave a comment

SSDI: Genealogy’s Public Enemy No. 1

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Say hello to the genealogical community’s Public Enemy No. 1.

Michael Astrue

Commissioner Michael Astrue

The man pictured to the left is Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. And he’s out to get us.

More specifically, he’s out to get our access to the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) and to the social security records that underlie the index, such as all those wonderful SS-5 forms (applications for a Social Security number) that we use all the time as evidence in place of the birth records that — for most of two or three generations — just don’t exist and the death records we’re not allowed to see.

If you don’t believe me that he’s out to get us, take a gander at the video clip Michael John Neill has posted on his website RootDig.com. Astrue isn’t bothered one bit about closing off records for 10 years… or 75 years. After all, he says, genealogists can get the information they need from other sources. We’re just overreacting.

Folks, make no mistake: Astrue would be perfectly happy closing off the SSDI, and he wouldn’t stop there. Read his formal statement to the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Social Security when it held a hearing on the bill by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) to close the SSDI. I highlighted this comment in my report on the hearing, and I’ll highlight it again:

“Trying to keep up with individual FOIA requests for information on millions of deceased individuals is a resource issue at a time when the agency is struggling to keep up with rising demand for services in a time of dwindling resources.”

Note that he never mentions that we pay for each and every one of those FOIA requests. You’d think if resources were really an issue, the agency would just increase the price, wouldn’t you? And how about transferring the records of deceased individuals to the National Archives when they’re not being used by Social Security anymore? Wouldn’t either of those be better solutions?

Now before the loonies come out of the woodwork, kindly note that no, Commissioner Astrue is not an Obama appointee and, no, he was not put into office to hide the truth about Obama’s birth certificate or Obama’s social security number. He was appointed in 2007 by President Bush and before that he served in both the Reagan and Bush Administrations.1 And the bill he’s supporting was introduced by a Texas Republican. So enough with the conspiracy theories already yet!

Back to business here. You know what those individual FOIA requests are that Astrue wants to stop? They’re the ones you file and I file asking for the SS-5 forms. But hey… we don’t need these, right? We have lots of ways to get the information we need. Sure we do. And I have a bridge to sell you. It’s a great bridge. It’s right on the waterfront. In Arizona.

There’s a bit of a mystery about my Alabama-born maternal great grandmother (who was her father? what maiden name did she use?). My grandmother’s birth and death records might help solve the mystery. But my grandmother was born in Texas in 1898. There are no Texas birth records between 1876 and 1903.2 She died in Virginia in 1995. Under Virginia law, I am not closely related enough to be entitled to get a copy of her death certificate.3 Thank heavens I have living aunts and uncles. But what if I didn’t? Mr. Commissioner, just what other easy source of information do I have?

There’s an even bigger mystery about my father’s German-born relatives who emigrated to the United States. They’re all in Chicago until the late 1940s, and then — just after my own paternal grandparents died — they all completely disappear from the records. My father is long gone, there are no family records that even hint at what happened. Did they go back to Germany after the war? Move to South America? Settle somewhere else in the United States? Where do I start looking, Mr. Commissioner, if you close off my chances to find the one great aunt who lived long enough to make it into the SSDI… and whose one line of information gave me the clue I needed to find a mass migration to sunny southern California?

I did some research for my brother-in-law last year. His grandfather was born in Virginia in 1898. Guess what, Mr. Commissioner? No birth records on him either — they don’t exist between 1896 and 19124 — and my brother-in-law isn’t eligible to get a copy of his death certificate. Where does my brother-in-law turn?

And these are the easy cases, Mr. Commissioner. What about the estate cases where there’s real hard cold cash available for American families if only the many forensic genealogists who research probate matters for lawyers and courts are allowed to do the work they need to do to find those families? Can they wait 10 to 75 years? And what about the really hard cases? What about the forensic genealogists working day in and day out to bring the remains of service members home to their families? They need those records every day to make the links to living family members. You want them to wait 75 years, Mr. Commissioner? Do you really want them to wait even another 10 years?

Look. I teach law students practical skills, including how to answer questions asked by judges. I always advise my students not to start an answer with the phrase “with all due respect.” Why? It sounds good, doesn’t it? Nice and polite?

The fact is, it usually annoys the judge who asked the question, who knows darn good and well that what the person really means is, “Boy, are YOU full of it!”

So, with all due respect, Mr. Commissioner, I beg to differ with you on the value of the SSDI and SS-5 forms to genealogists. And I’m planning on continuing to “overreact” as much as necessary to protect our access to this information.

Anybody who agrees with me should stand up and be counted. Start now by adding your signature the RPAC petition to stop identity theft by using the records, not hiding them. (Read more about it here, and talk to your family and friends — RPAC needs a total of 25,000 signatures by March 8th.)

And speak up to save our access to the SSDI.

SOURCES

  1. “Michael J. Astrue,” Press Office, Social Security Online (http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/factsheets/astrue.htm : accessed 15 Feb 2012). ↩
  2. Vital Statistics, About County Records, Texas State Library and Archives Commission (https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/local/aboutrecords.html#5 : accessed 15 Feb 2012). ↩
  3. 12 Virginia Administrative Code, Chap. 550, 12VAC5-550-5 (defining immediate family as mother, father, sibling, current spouse and adult children) and 12VAC5-550-470 (death certificate limited to immediate family) (http://www.vdh.state.va.us/vital_Records/documents/regulations.pdf : accessed 15 Feb 2012). ↩
  4. See “Using Vital Statistics Records in the Archives at the Library of Virginia,” Library of Virginia, Research Notes Number 2 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/rn2_vitalstats.htm : accessed 15 Feb 2012). ↩
Posted in General, Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Too many district courts!

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Which district court is the right district court?

While we’re on the subject of Philadelphia and its records (yesterday’s mysterious Abraham Shechter settled in the City of Brotherly Love), reader Joan Peake ran into a snag recently with too many similarly-named courts in the Philadelphia of the late 1820s. A court case mentioned in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1829 reported an action in a Philadelphia district court, and she wasn’t sure exactly which court that was.

No wonder. There were three courts in Philadelphia at the time with “district” as part of their names. There was the Eastern District of the Supreme Court. There was the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. And there was the Philadelphia District Court. Keeping them straight sometimes requires a scorecard.

Philadelphia Inquirer legal notice 1829

The news report in question1 was a legal notice to creditors in the case of John Lloyd v. Eli Lloyd and others,2 an action in partition,3 to show up at the auditor’s office on an afternoon in January 1830 prepared to prove whatever claims they had against a fund in court.4 The case, according to the notice, was No. 160, March Term 1829, in the District Court of the City and County of Philadelphia.

So… a whirlwind tour through Pennsylvania judicial history.5 The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Courts of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Bucks and Chester Counties were all created by the Judiciary Act of 1722.6 The Constitution of 1776 established Courts of Sessions, Courts of Common Pleas and Orphans’ Courts in each county.7 A new constitution in 1790 grouped the Common Pleas courts into judicial circuits under the administration of president judges.8

The Supreme Court was broken into two districts in 1806. The Eastern District was made up of 23 counties including Philadelphia County. In 1807, Philadelphia and 10 other counties stayed in the Eastern District after the Middle District was formed. By 1809, two more counties were moved out of the Eastern District. The districts weren’t used between 1826 and 1834, but were put back into action then with Philadelphia and eight other counties in the Eastern District. There have been a lot of boundary changes for the districts over the years and, today, only Philadelphia County is in the Eastern District.9

The title of that Court was and is the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District, and that’s not the court of Lloyd v. Lloyd.

Now while Pennsylvania was setting up its own courts, the federal government was creating its courts as well. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created 13 original United States District Courts, including the District of Pennsylvania.10 Then in 1818, the Pennsylvania federal court was divided into two districts: the Eastern District in Philadelphia and the Western District in Pittsburgh.11 (The Middle District wasn’t created until 1901.12)

The title of that Court was and is the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and that’s not the court of Lloyd v. Lloyd either.

It turns out that by 1811 the Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia — the every-day state trial court — was drowning in lawsuits and other court business. The Legislature tried to ease the crisis by creating what was, in effect, a super-Common Pleas Court. This new court, created by the Act of March 30, 1811, P.L. 138, was given the task of deciding the bigger cases — those where the amount at issue was more than $100. The court met for the first time on 6 May 1811 and for the last time on 4 Jan 1875, after being abolished in the Constitution of 1874.13

And the title of that Court was District Court of the City and County of Philadelphia, and that was the court of Lloyd v. Lloyd.

The records for this Court are held today by the Philadelphia City Archives but here’s a warning. The search box at the upper left of the page can be wonky. Instead, use what experienced Pennsylvania genealogists14 use: the link in the box on the left to PHILS — the Philadelphia Information Locator System (direct link here). Where you want to end up is Record Group 22, Records of the Prothonotary15 of the District Court, here.

Now… to find out what all those Lloyds were fighting over…

SOURCES

  1. Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 Dec 1829, p. 3, col. 1; digital images, GenealogyBank.com (http://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  2. The legal term often used is “et al.,” short for et alii, which simply means “and others.” Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 438, “et al.” ↩
  3. “The dividing of lands held by joint tenants, coparceners, or tenants in common, into distinct portions, so that they may hold them in severalty. And, in a less technical sense, any division of real or personal property between co-owners or coproprietors.” Ibid., 878, “partition.” ↩
  4. A fund in court is simply money held by, but not belonging to, the court. It’s kept by a court officer awaiting the court’s direction on how and to whom to distribute it. The term was in common use at the time, see for example Lesher v. Gillingham, 17 Serg. & Rawle 123 (Pa. Supreme Ct., Eastern District, 1827), and is still used today. ↩
  5. See generally “A Short History of Pennsylvania’s Courts,” The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania (http://www.pacourts.us/Links/Public/CourtHistory.htm : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  6. An Act for Establishing Courts of Judicature in this Province, 22 May 1722 (3 St. L. 298, Ch. 255), Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau (http://www.palrb.us/statutesatlarge/17001799/1722/0/act/0255.pdf : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  7. Section 26, Constitution of Pennsylvania – September 28, 1776, Avalon Project (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  8. Sec. IV, Article V, Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 1790, Pennsylvania Constitution, Duquesne University School of Law (http://www.duq.edu/law/pa-constitution/index.cfm : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  9. Series Description, Record Group 33, Records of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District, Pennsylvania State Archives (http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/rg/sd/r33e1sd.htm : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  10. Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States, 1 Stat. 73 (1789); digital images, “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation,” Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsl.html : accessed 14 Feb 2012.) ↩
  11. Ibid., Act to Divide the State of Pennsylvania into Two Judicial Districts, 3 Stat. 462 (1818). ↩
  12. Act to Create a New Federal Judicial District in Pennsylvania, to be called the Middle District, 31 Stat. 880 (1901); “United States Statutes at Large,” Constitution Society (http://constitution.org/uslaw/sal/sal.htm : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  13. Frank M. Eastman, Courts and Lawyers of Pennsylvania; a History, 1623-1923, 4 vols. (New York : American Historical Soc., 1922), vol. 2: 355-357; digital images, State Library of Pennsylvania (http://pilot.passhe.edu:8020/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First : accessed 14 Feb 2012). ↩
  14. Thanks go to Kimberly Powell for this tip! ↩
  15. A fancy word for clerk of the court. See Black, A Dictionary of Law, 958, “Prothonotary.” ↩
Posted in Legal definitions, Resources | Leave a comment

The mysteries of immigrant Abraham Shechter

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Judy G. Russell

Two mysteries for immigrant Abraham Shechter

Reader Martha Forsyth is puzzled by two mysteries in the immigration and naturalization records for her grandfather, Abraham Shechter, who emigrated to the United States in 1905.

Shechters & Golds in 1910

First, Abraham’s entry in the manifest of the S.S. Merion, sailing from Liverpool on 21 June 1905, shows that his contact in the United States was his “brother-in-law Simon Gold, 340 League St., Philadelphia.”1

Martha doesn’t know anything about any Gold relations, and can only find that a “Samuel” Gold and family lived next door to her grandparents in the 1910 census.2 So… how to “follow the clue” in the records?

Second, in Abraham’s naturalization records, the judge authorized a change of name to “Samuel Salinski.”3 Her question as to that is, in her words, “‘Huh???!’ no one still living in the family seems to have ever heard that name!”

Let’s start with your Simon / “Samuel” Gold mystery.

The law of the day gives us a little hint here. Starting in 1893, and through the time Abraham came to the United States, the ship manifest forms had a column for whether the immigrant was “going to join a relative or friend, and if so, what relative or friend, and his name and complete address.”4 While you didn’t have to be joining a relative, you weren’t likely to be admitted to the country without listing somebody in the United States. Not having a friend or relative nearby was often the reason why the person was held for a special inquiry, as Abraham was here.5 So listing Simon certainly meant that Abraham thought the claim of a relationship could be verified and, at the least, that Simon would vouch for him. But that’s all the law here can really tell us; it won’t tell us exactly how Simon is related to your family.

So the answer you’re really looking for here is going to come only from plain ol’ ordinary shoe-leather-type paper trail research. But you have a TON of clues here, and you need to identify them one by one and then follow them up one by one.

Your first clue, of course, is the Gold family next door to your grandparents in the 1910 census. Start there and tear that record apart. I know Ancestry indexes the head of the Gold household as Samuel, but I don’t read the entry that way. To me it looks like Shmuel. And that could be what Simon was called, no?

This Shmuel came to America in 1904, a year before your grandfather. So he’s certainly a candidate to be Abraham’s American “relative or friend.” The two men were close in age, both tailors, both Russian, both Yiddish speakers and both with a child born in England only a year apart. There isn’t anything in that record that says this couldn’t be Simon.

And there’s nothing in that record that says this couldn’t be a brother-in-law. Don’t let the fact that you don’t know of Gold relatives throw you. Remember: though the technical meaning was and is a wife’s brother or a sister’s husband,6 in the Russian language there is a co-brother-in-law (meaning either a spouse’s brother-in-law or a sibling’s spouse’s brother).7

Now I’m not going to do your research for you here — the chase is about 99.98% of the fun of genealogy as far as I’m concerned. But I’ll give you a BIG hint: your “Samuel/Shmuel” Gold living next door was Simon Gold. His naturalization papers are online at Ancestry.com.8 And look for Simon in the 1920 and 1930 census as well. He’s there.

What do you do next? Hit the research bricks. Find out everything you can about your grandfather and Simon Gold and their families. Then spread out to information about the people they both knew and associated with — what Elizabeth Shown Mills calls the FAN club9 for both men: Friends, Associates, Neighbors.

    • Look at birth records. On the 1910 census, you have at least four Pennsylvania-born children: Jacob Shechter and Samuel, Max and Rebecca Gold. What do their birth records show? Philadelphia birth records starting in 1904 included the mother’s maiden name and occupation, if any, and the age and place of birth of both parents.10 Look particularly at the maiden names of the mothers and the birth places of all four parents.

    • Look at death records. Philadelphia death records starting in 1906 had the parents’ names and their places of birth.11

    • Look at census records. Follow both families forward in time. You’ll need these to find later children and to help find marriage records for those children so you can find the death records. And while you’re looking at those census records, look at other families that stayed near one or both of your target families. (Remember: Friends, Associates, Neighbors.)

    • Look at local business records. Both heads of household were tailors. Did they work together? Join a union? Pay a business tax of some kind?

    • Look at religious and school records. The Shechters and the Golds were both Jewish families who spoke Yiddish. Did they attend the same synagogue, send their kids to the same schools (religious or public)?

    • Look at immigration and naturalization records for both families. You want to check every name and place and date that appears in those records to see where you can put them together and where they differ.

    • Look at city directories to place the families in time. They’re available at the Philadelphia City Archives for the period 1785-1930 and 1935.12 They’re also online at the subscription site Fold3 (and there’s a beta City Directories database online at Ancestry as well). And don’t forget maps to help learn about the neighborhoods they lived in. There’s a great resource, the Philadelphia Public Library’s map collection. And the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network has some wonderful online resources too.

And just as a few other suggestions, make sure you look at:

        • Court records
        • Diaries or letters
        • Newspaper articles, including obituaries
        • Tombstones, cemetery records, and funeral home records
        • Voter registration records
        • Wills and probate records

As you can see, you’ve got a lot of work ahead! Figuring out exactly where Simon fits into your family ought to be a ton of fun.

Now… as to your real corker… the authorization of the name change to “Samuel Salinski” in your grandfather’s naturalization on 8 Apr 1915.

There’s nothing in the law — federal, state or local — at the time to suggest a reason why your grandfather would have wanted to change his name. Although the Immigration Act of 1903 did exclude anarchists13 and you think your grandfather may have been involved politically before leaving Russia, the fact is that he used Abraham Shechter on the ship in 1905, and in his naturalization papers five and 10 years later, so he clearly wasn’t worried about having that name get him into any legal trouble.

And there certainly isn’t anything in the records that says your grandfather wanted to change his name. He’s still using his own name in 192014 and 1930.15

So to find the answer here, I suspect you’re going to have to look not at the man whose name change was authorized but rather at the man who authorized it. Because, I suspect, that entry in the records will turn out to be a judicial ooooops.

The federal Judge who signed that document was John Bayard McPherson. Born in 1846, he became a federal District Court judge in 1899 and was elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1912. He was still serving as a Circuit Judge when he died, 20 Jan 1919.16 McPherson was nearly 70 when your grandfather was naturalized. Somebody — most likely a clerk from the Court Clerk’s office or in his own office (called his chambers) — put a stack of papers in front of him and told him to sign them. One of them was supposed to have a name change.

I’d be willing to bet that if you were to review all of the naturalizations authorized by Judge McPherson on that day, you’d find the person who really did want his name changed. Not an easy task, for sure, since naturalizations aren’t usually indexed by date (though you might double check that with the National Archives at Philadelphia and other repositories that have copies of the Circuit Court naturalizations). In your shoes I might start by finding all the Samuel Salinskis in the Pennsylvania records after 1915 to see if you can work backwards.

Let us know when you find the answer!!

SOURCES

  1. Manifest, S.S. Merion, 3 July 1905, List E (penned), line 3, Abraham Shechter; “Philadelphia Passenger Lists, 1800-1945,” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication T840, roll 49. ↩
  2. 1910 U.S. census, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 1024, p. 248(B) (stamped), sheet 14B, dwelling 216, family 238, Abraham Shechter household, and dwelling 217, family 239, Shmuel Gold household; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication T624, roll 1410. ↩
  3. Abraham Shechter, petition for naturalization no. 16211 (1915), Naturalization Petitions for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 1795-1930; “Selected U.S. Naturalization Records – Original Documents, 1790-1974,” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication M1522, roll 113. ↩
  4. It’s column 16 on the manifest for Abraham’s ship. Manifest, S.S. Merion, 3 July 1905. ↩
  5. Marian L. Smith, “INS – U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service History,” U.S. Citizenship.info (http://www.uscitizenship.info/ins-usimmigration-insoverview.html : accessed 13 Feb 2012.) ↩
  6. Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 156, “brother-in-law.” ↩
  7. See Wiktionary, (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/) “co-brother-in-law,” rev. 4 Jul 2011. ↩
  8. Simon Gold, petition for naturalization no. 6811 (1912), Naturalization Petitions for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 1795-1930; “Pennsylvania, U.S. Naturalization Originals, 1795-1930,” digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication M1522, roll 86. ↩
  9. See Family Search Wiki, (https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main_Page) “Elizabeth Shown Mills,” rev. 29 Dec 2011. ↩
  10. “Genealogical Resources at the Philadelphia City Archives,” City of Philadelphia website (http://www.phila.gov/phils/docs/inventor/genealgy.htm : accessed 12 Feb 2012). ↩
  11. Ibid. ↩
  12. Ibid. ↩
  13. Act of 3 March 1903, 32 Stat. 1213, chap. 1012. ↩
  14. 1920 U.S. census, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 474, p. 42A (stamped), sheet 7A, dwelling 110, family 141, Abraham Schecter; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication T625, roll 1617. ↩
  15. 1930 U.S. census, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 51-956, p. 27A (stamped), sheet 9A, dwelling 152, family 162, Abraham Schecter; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Feb 2012); citing National Archive microfilm publication T626, roll 2118. ↩
  16. Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), “John_Bayard_McPherson,” rev. 14 Feb 2011. ↩
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