Act of 3 Feb 1818

It was in the very first session of the Hart County Court, the September term 1819.² The court orders carefully record that the County Court

ordered that Dudley Rountree, Isham Hardy and Philip Maxey be appointed to grant writs of Injunction, and of neexeat and to grant writs of habeuscorpus agreeable to the provisions of an act of Assemble passed 3rd day of February, 1819.³

Now don’t go looking for any “act of Assemble” passed 3 February 1819 because you won’t find it. The statute was actually passed in 1818. And don’t go looking for any dictionary definition of neexeat or habeuscorpus because you won’t find those either. (Court clerks rarely, if ever, wrote Latin with anything resembling the right spelling.)

But do stop and think for a minute. Just what the heck was the Legislature up to with this enactment anyway? The answer is, walking a tightrope between the need for citizen-judges out in the counties on one hand and the need to give those judges — largely untrained and unschooled in the law — some amazingly broad powers.

What the act of 3 February 1818 called for was the selection of only three justices of the peace in each county — “three of the most experienced” members of these county courts — who would have the power to grant three specific writs during times when the higher, usually law-trained circuit judges weren’t available. Those writs were the writs of injunction, of ne exeat and of habeas corpus.⁴

And the statute makes perfectly good sense, since these were and are the Big Three writs: the ones that can make or break somebody and often have public policy issues woven into the facts or the law.

     • The writ of injunction is an order from a court either requiring someone to do a specific act or barring him from doing a specific act. Although the law courts have long had the power to issue injunctions, it’s really the quintessential remedy of equity — it’s the kind of thing somebody would ask for if money damages alone wouldn’t be enough to make things right at the end of the case.

An injunction is issued in two types and at two times in a lawsuit:

Mandatory injunctions command defendant to do a particular thing. Preventive (injunctions) command him to refrain from an act.

An injunction is called “preliminary” or “provisional,” or an “injunction pendente lite,” when it is granted at the outset of a suit brought for the purpose of restraining the defendant from doing the act threatened, until the suit has been heard and the rights of the parties determined. It is called “final” or “perpetual” when granted upon a hearing and adjudication of the rights in question, and as a measure of permanent relief.⁵

Even today an injunction is considered extraordinary relief, not granted as a matter of course and usually limited to those few cases where nothing else will do, at least in the short term.

     • The writ of ne exeat is another old equitable remedy, and it’s basically an order to haul somebody into court right now this minute because he’s likely to be heading for the state line (or at least out of the jurisdiction). It was issued mostly against debtors, and if they couldn’t post bail to secure their presence to answer the suit for debt, they’d end up in the hoosegow.⁶

In English law, it was the writ of ne exeat regno, a “writ which issues to restrain a person from leaving the kingdom.”⁷ In the United States, the long form you’ll sometimes see in court records is ne exeat republica.⁸

     • And the writ of habeas corpus is the storied, constitutionally-based court power to bring somebody who’s in custody into court and to order him set free if the custodian (jailor or sheriff or whoever) can’t establish that the person is being properly held.⁹ With this writ alone, the statute put one additional restriction on the local judges: they couldn’t issue a writ of habeas corpus for a person being held on a criminal felony charge. In that case, only the circuit judge could issue the writ.¹⁰

For a law geek like me, this is fun stuff. The ins and outs and quirks of legal history are things I just love.

But for The Legal Genealogist — for all of us as genealogists, it’s solid gold.

First, these writs are among those we see all the time in court records and need to understand. Maybe our ancestors asked to have one of these writs issued. Or, if your family was like mine, maybe one of yours skipped out of town just before the ne exeat could be served to stop him…

Second, for all of us who’ve got a justice of the peace in the family, it’s a wonderful snapshot of the role and the power of the citizen-judges who served so long and so well in early America — and the fear the lawyers and lawmakers in the state capitals had of giving that power, unbridled, to just plain folks.

And, third, for those who have Kentucky ancestors. Oh my. Think about it. There were — as a conservative guess — somewhere around 60 counties in Kentucky when that statute was passed. Another 24 or 25 were created before 1830.¹¹ And every single one of those counties had to choose three of their best, their most experienced justices of the peace to exercise these particular powers, and to replace those justices when they retired or resigned. We’re talking hundreds of men selected by their peers.

Makes you want to go read old court records, doesn’t it? I know darned good and well that one thing I’ll be doing at the Kentucky State Archives today is finding out if the law was still in effect later in the 1800s, when my 2d great granduncle George Fore was a justice of the peace in Pulaski County… and whether his name was ever on such a list.

Well, I mean.. okay, at least when I’m not hunting for the other George’s footprints in Madison County… or Hart… or Knox… or Shelby… or Mason… or…

SOURCES

Battle of Perryville KY, 8 Oct 1862

Now I won’t say it was because it was starting to get late and I was starting to get frustrated — as I usually am — with George and his missing parents, but my eyes did stray along the shelves of the Kentucky Historical Society and came to rest on those odd-looking books on the shelf.

Now, an hour later, having been thrown out of the KHS at closing time, I’m no closer to finding George or his parents (or their footprints) but man… what a find those odd-looking books turned out to be!

It isn’t just that they told me much I’d never have known otherwise about the Battle of Perryville, 8 October 1862, by far the bloodiest battle in Kentucky and — purely in terms relative to the size of the armies that met in the field — one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Civil War. Union losses were 4,276 men (894 killed, 2,911 wounded and 471 captured or missing; Confederate losses were 3,401 men (532 killed, 2,641 wounded and 228 captured or missing).¹

But those books told me so much about what’s hidden behind the battle lines on the map you see here. If you look really closely at the enlarged version (click on the map to enlarge it), under the bottom red arrows where Bull Run meets Doctor’s Creek, are two words: “Squire Bottom.”² And therein lies the tale.

Henry Pierce Bottom (1809-1901) was a prosperous slave-owning farmer and a magistrate in Boyle County, Kentucky, from 1860-1865. He married Margaret “Mary” Delilah Hart around 1840 and they are known to have had two sons: Samuel Davis Bottom in 1841, and Rowan Bridges Bottom in 1848.³

Sources differ as to his loyalties during the war. Historian Kenneth Noe refers to him persistently as a secessionist⁴ while other sources — and, eventually, a court decision — held that he was loyal to the Union.⁵ What is beyond debate is that it was his farm on which much of the Battle of Perryville was fought.

And those odd-looking books on the shelf of the Kentucky Historical Society contained a printout, from microfilm, of hundreds and hundreds of pages of court filings, depositions and other papers related to “Squire” Bottom’s unsuccessful decades-long fight to win reimbursement from the Union forces for the damage done to his farm.

Battle losses weren’t compensable — they were simply what happened in war — but Bottom claimed that most of the damage was done by the thousands of Union troops who camped out on his farm after the battle. They burned his fence posts for firewood, ate his smoked meat and his oats and corn, made off with all of his hogs and his cattle and two horses. All told, he claimed more than $4,800 in damage — and collected nary a cent.⁶

The claim was first filed in 1866, and denied shortly thereafter both because the Bottoms didn’t get vouchers from the Union quartermaster and because of doubts about Henry’s loyalty. It was refiled thereafter and then lay dormant for years as Henry’s health failed. After his death, his executor pressed the case and kept appealing and appealing. The loyalty issue eventually went their way, but not the final decision: ultimately it just wasn’t proved that the damage came from the troops and not from the battle.⁷

Now maybe there are folks out there who’d have put those books back on the shelf after seeing that they have dry and dusty legal documents from a court of claims case. I mean, hey, after all, you’re not really going to get good genealogical information from a lengthy description of corn crops and numbers of hogs, are you?

And oh boy would those folks have been making a mistake. The documents in the file are simply amazing: Henry’s son Samuel testified in 1904 that the farm was “all tore to pieces,” with not a fence intact, the barn burned, and their entire crop destroyed. The family didn’t give anything to troops on either side, he said; we “had nothing after the battle to give.” Preston Sleet, a neighbor after the war and an African American Union soldier during the battle, testified for the Bottoms family that Union troops had burned the fence rails for firewood and used hay for their bedding. Even a Union quartermaster testified in favor of the claim.⁸

A physician from town, J.B. Bolling, said he went to the farm the day after the battle and every day thereafter for weeks to care for the wounded. The farm, he said, was “in desolation. It was all used up pretty much.” and Henry Bottom “was broken in spirit from that time on, until he died.” Another neighbor, Mingo Williams, spoke of the sheer numbers of dead in the fields. The farm was “covered in dead men.”⁹ Witness after witness came forward, and each and every one was examined in detail about his knowledge of the area, his own role in the battle and his relationship, if there was one, to the Bottom family. The wealth of detail is stunning.

The farm was never the same after that battle. The Union troops buried their own in neat rows. Bottom, his hands and his slaves were pressed into service to bury the Confederate dead. By 1868, the Union dead had been moved to a federal cemetery in another county; a Confederate cemetery was dedicated near the battlefield in 1902, just after Bottom’s death — the stone pillar bears the names of a few Mississippi soldiers whose effects Bottom had saved so they could be identified.¹⁰

The Union dead at Perryville were not honored there until 1931, then the entire battlefield area became a national historic landmark in the mid-1950s.¹¹ Today, the Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site occupies much of what was Henry Pierce Bottom’s land and a major re-enactment is scheduled for the 150th anniversary of the battle, on the weekend of October 6-7, 2012.

I don’t have any ancestors — that I know of, yet! — from Boyle County, Kentucky, and I can’t spare time on this trip for a side jaunt to Perryville. For today, I’m off to the archives and back to hunting for footprints left by George and his parents.

But if my eyes should come to rest on any other odd-looking books on the shelf, you know what I’ll be doing. Because for us, as genealogists, it’s the hidden treasures tucked away in those dry and dusty odd-looking books that keep moving us forward… and where, who knows, maybe someday, those footprints I’m hunting may just turn up.

SOURCES

Image by Hal Jespersen, http://www.posix.com/CWmaps/, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

Thelma, 1919

Electricity didn’t make it out to the farm until long after she was married and had moved away, running water was an unheard-of luxury, and her prize possession was a kerosene lamp of cut glass that she could use to read by. She learned to drive at the age of 10, she substituted for a fourth grade teacher for an entire week when she was only a high school freshman herself, and she has seen and endured more than most people in her nearly 93 years of life.

But the only thing my cousin Thelma was ever truly afraid of — what she remains afraid of even today — was the storms of spring.

Thelma was born in Tillman County, Oklahoma, in June 1919. Oklahoma had only been a state for a little more than 11 years, and that part of Oklahoma had been among the very last of the Indian lands to be opened to white settlers. Thelma’s grandparents — my 2nd great grandmother and her second husband — had settled there after the turn of the century, and her father farmed out near Hollister.

The land there is flat — so flat that the family could see the marvel of electric lights in Electra, across the state line in Texas; only the curvature of the earth prevented them from seeing more. And so flat that nothing, literally nothing, stood between them and the storms of spring.

The stories are chilling: the storm cellar dug deep into the earth away from the house, with benches on one side and a small opening on the side away from the door so that if the door ended up covered by debris, they could escape through the opening. Sitting out on the porch on spring nights with her mother, watching the sky and listening for the telltale sounds of the wind. The time the tornado took the shed and the barn roof. The time the lightning brought down the chimney, sending bricks crashing down inches from her brothers’ heads as they slept. The ball of lightning rolling across the floor of her bedroom and hitting her with a jolt, leaving her stunned.

The time her second grade class was hurried across the street into her own grandmother’s storm cellar because there wasn’t enough room in the school shelters for all the children. The wet towels they had to use to breathe through as the dust rolled through town. Waking up in the morning with gritty dust on the chenille bedspreads and in everyone’s mouths. Wondering sometimes if they were going to wake up at all.

Thelma smiles today as she relates that she was determined not to marry a boy from Oklahoma. She wanted so badly to move away from the storms of spring. When she met Bill Dibble of Indiana, it was love at first sight, and storms — well, whoever heard of storms in Indiana, she thought. And then came the day here in tiny Ohio County, Indiana, when she tucked her newborn daughter and herself into whatever cover she could find as the tornado took off the roof of her house. And then came the 3rd of April 1974 when massive tornadoes — one F4 and one F5 — ripped through the county, leaving 64 people injured.

She is still afraid of the storms of spring. A sudden cloud cover, a greenish tint to the sky, a rumble of wind will raise the hairs on her neck here just as they did in Oklahoma all those years ago. But, she says, she’s still very glad she didn’t fall for any of those Oklahoma boys. She had 47 years of a happy and fulfilling marriage to Bill (who died in 1996), and has two daughters, three granddaughters, three great grandchildren and generations of schoolchildren who still revere her in a town that has adopted her as surely as if she’d been born here.

For all that, Thelma says now, Indiana’s storms of spring seem a small price to pay. And as I drive away on the first leg of my trip home, I surely see no reason to disagree.

Leva & Ova Livingston

If you ever in your life have wondered why we do genealogy and what good things like the 1940 census can be, I have the answer for you.

It was written on the face on my soon-to-be-93-year-old cousin Thelma in Indiana yesterday morning when, for the first time, she saw her family’s entry in the 1940 census.

Thelma is my grandmother’s first cousin, my first cousin twice removed, and one of the reasons why I was so looking forward to attending the National Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati was that I would be able to go on west of the Ohio River and meet Thelma and her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren here in Indiana.

I knew what I was hoping to get from this visit. I wasn’t really sure what to hope that Thelma might get from it. But after I handed her that 1940 census page, I didn’t have to wonder any more.

It wasn’t just that it’s a tangible link to her father, Leva Pyron Livingston (1891-1984) and her mother Ova (Winningham) Livingston (1890-1963), and to her brother Denton (1913-1982) and sister Esta (1917-2006). I had showed her the 1920 census (where she’s listed as a six-month-old boy named Thelma!) and the 1930 census as well (where she’d morphed back into a girl) that enumerated them as well.

But by 1940, Thelma was a young woman, age 20, about to begin her schoolteaching career, and much more familiar with neighbors near and far than she’d been as a younger child. On that census, far more than on earlier censuses, the names of those nearby were more than just names. They were friends, neighbors, a boy she’d dated, a child she would go on to teach.

I watched her face as she looked at that census page for the very first time and I saw her eyes light up. “Oh! There’s the Calloways!” she exclaimed. “We used to visit them ever Saturday night. In the winter even if the weather was bad we could go play dominoes or gather round the piano and sing.”

Her finger moved up and down the page, again and again. Another name, another memory, another bit of history recaptured and shared. Not History in the big sense but in-depth, up-close and personal. The history of her family, remembered, and shared with me, a part of her extended family she’d only just met.

We have moved on from that census to the storms of spring and to the problems of life on the dust bowl. We’ve gone from to picking cotton to making dresses from flour sacks. We have covered the distance from going to school barefoot in second grade in Oklahoma to teaching barefoot children in Florida.

But it all began in that moment, with the shining eyes and the gentle smile, and the 1940 census.

And that… that is why we do genealogy and what good the 1940 census can be.

Martha Louise (Shew) Livingston and Abigah Livingston, c1900

The cousin I was most anxious to meet is Thelma Livingston Dibble, who’ll be 93 at her next birthday — and my grandmother’s first cousin. She’s the youngest child of the next to the youngest child of Martha Louise (Shew) Livingston; my grandmother was the oldest child of Martha Louise’s oldest child (by a different father). As is common in big families, my grandmother as the much older cousin was married and a mother twice over herself before Thelma was even born.

Thelma’s aunt, my great grandmother, didn’t exactly approve of my grandfather (I’ve heard tell that the phrase “that riffraff isn’t near good enough for my daughter” was often employed) so my grandparents moved away from Oklahoma. Thelma’s family stayed there, and Thelma knew my great grandmother well. She has stories and pictures to share that I’ve never before heard or seen.

I’m dying to share as much of this joyous get-together as I can but at the moment I’m discovering the limitations of small town historic hotels… and wifi that doesn’t quite make it to the riverside rooms.

But even if I have to type one letter at a time into a cellphone, I couldn’t NOT say what a joy yesterday was. I was welcomed not just by Thelma but by both her daughters, my cousins Sherry (and husband Ron) and Angela (and husband John), two granddaughters Lori and Lisa, and three great grandchildren Maxwell and Christopher and Ashley. They all shared their Mother’s Day with this distant relation, and I will treasure the memory.

Seeing so many of my grandmother’s features stamped on these cousins’ faces is something I particularly cherish… We lost her in 1995, and I feel as though something of her was given back to me here in this small riverside town.

Stay tuned for more of my Indiana adventure as my cellphone typing finger allows…

The exhibition hall at any genealogical conference is always a fun place to be and to hang out. So many goodies — new books, new products, new services — you almost don’t know where to look first. One thing I knew I wanted to check out at this year’s NGS conference in Cincinnati was the Ancestry.com booth and the new autosomal DNA test offering, AncestryDNA.

Fortunately, I was able to sit down for a time with John Pereira, vice president of DNA at Ancestry.com who runs the DNA Product & Marketing team. And, yes, like a bunch of other folks who are intensely interested in and writing about DNA, I was handed a free DNA test kit (and yes, I’m gonna do it, since I have yet to meet a DNA test I wouldn’t take, and no, Ancestry isn’t getting a pass on any tough questions as a result. I just believe in full disclosure).

So… with that out of the way… here are some things I was able to clarify and some things that have yet to be decided or clarified about this new test.

Pricing

Right now, the autosomal test is only being offered to Ancestry,com subscribers at an introductory price of $99.00. Not everybody who wants to be tested right now is being tested right now (see availability, below), but Pereira said all Ancestry subscribers who get their names on the wait list during the introductory offering will get the introductory price.

Where will the pricing go after that? “It hasn’t been decided yet.” When will long-term pricing be announced? “We just don’t know yet.” Will it stay at $99 for Ancestry.com subscribers? “This is an introductory price.”

Availability

Again, the test right now is only being offered to Ancestry.com subscribers. It won’t be offered widely to non-subscribers until the demand from Ancestry.com subscribers is met. The lab facilities can only handle so many tests at a time, so even subscribers are being put onto a wait list right now.

Will non-subscribers be able to test with AncestryDNA? “Yes.” When? “We’ll know that when we see how the demand from subscribers gets met. … Our design is to take care of our subscribers first.”

Subscription or not

“No subscription will ever be necessary to access results.”

The promise is that test results and match lists will always be accessible whether the test taker is an Ancestry subscriber or not.

But some of the AncestryDNA results system is so tightly integrated with subscription-based Ancestry services that it’s clear non-subscribers will see a more limited set of functions and features (and that non-subscribers will be encouraged, and not at all subtly, to subscribe).

“It’s just that some of the information we’re providing is information our subscribers pay for. They’re entitled to access it all, and those who don’t subscribe won’t get the information that’s subscriber-only. But the results themselves will always be available.”

Raw data

“We understand it’s important to serious genetic genealogists and we’ve got that under review. We’re working to figure it out.”

Pereira emphasized the desire to make DNA results as easy as possible for all genealogists to understand: “We’re trying to present the DNA information in a form that’s understandable and simple for everyone.” The game plan for the product: “simple, actionable, integrated.”

But, he said, that priority didn’t preclude providing more down the road. “This is a work in progress.”

Data from other test labs

“Yes, absolutely, we’re considering how we could allow people who’ve tested with other companies to transfer their results to the AncestryDNA database.” Will it happen? “We sure hope so.” When? “We couldn’t even take a guess.”

Acquisition of GeneTree

Data acquired from GeneTree and the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation included “an unparalleled sample set” with not merely DNA samples but samples validated by pedigrees and paper trail genealogies. The data greatly enriches the ethnicity and admixture information pool available to AncestryDNA. “We expect to provide much more detailed admixture results because of this acquisition.”

Privacy agreements entered into between persons tested and Sorenson or GeneTree are legally binding on Ancestry as the acquiring company. This doesn’t answer the issue of folks feeling put out that they tested with a non-profit research foundation and ended up with their data being owned by a commercial corporation but it’s all the law requires.

There is no current plan to integrate GeneTree test results into the AncestryDNA system. The GeneTree results system will remain up and running “for now.” Those whose test kits had arrived at GeneTree by the acquisition date will be reported at GeneTree. Those whose test kits had not arrived will receive refunds.

“We want to make GeneTree customers happy to the extent that we can.”

Integration with Ancestry user family trees

Ancestry is “keenly aware” that integrating DNA results with undocumented user-supplied family trees poses potential problems. “It’s clearly up to us to make sure people understand the tree matches are just a tool, just clues for people to use to make their own decisions,” Pereira said. “We have a big educational task in front of us. We have to make sure people know that it’s not just DNA. It’s DNA and records and research and more.”

“We hope we’ll get help and input from genealogists on how to validate results, how to show users that DNA is just another tool and can’t replace good research.”

Family tree matches will be presented the same way for DNA results as they are for other searches: if the tree is private, a match will be able to send a request to the tree owner for contact and the tree owner will be able to decide, globally, or person by person, to allow or disallow access. Similarly, contacting matches can only be done through the internal Ancestry system; email addresses will not be disclosed by Ancestry.

“It’s a global rules set we’re working under. All the same privacy settings will carry over no matter what part of the Ancestry system a person is seeing.”

Where to next?

So… how about full genomic sequencing? Is Ancestry looking in that direction? “We’re going to be looking hard at every new development especially since it is just crazy and exciting how costs are plummeting.” But, Pereira cautions, “we have to consider just what it turns out we can learn from full genomic sequencing that’s really valuable for our genealogy customers. Does this make sense — will it provide data that, for the typical user, will really advance genealogy?”

My own take

I remain deeply concerned that integrating DNA results with totally undocumented unvalidated user-supplied family trees is going to end up with an awful lot of people absolutely convinced of facts that just ain’t so.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the theory. I wrote about the potential for just this kind of link-up last year for the National Genealogical Society Magazine¹ after talking to Blaine Bettinger of The Genetic Genealogist. If it were ever executed well, linking family trees and DNA results would be the best thing for genealogy since sliced bread.

My problem is that I’m not convinced that the AncestryDNA system can do it well simply because of the vast numbers of demonstrably inaccurate user-submitted trees that are already in the Ancestry system. Telling two people who are DNA matches that their family trees match on an individual who really isn’t an ancestor to one (or even either) of those people isn’t going to move the ball forward so much as an inch.

Take my own Baker line for example. There are still dozens of user-submitted trees on Ancestry.com that say that Thomas Baker (c1711-c1777) of the Pamunkey Neck area of Virginia descended from Alexander Baker who came to Boston in 1635. The whole “we descend from Alexander Baker” theory has been totally disproved by years of YDNA testing (not to mention good genealogical research).

But when one of these “yes we do descend from Alexander” descendants of Thomas Baker matches any Alexander Baker descendant (and they will, not because of the Baker ancestor but because of some other ancestor they share that they don’t know about), what I’m afraid of is that they’re going to think they’ve proved the relationship — to Alexander as well as to each other — when the autosomal test is doing and can do no such thing.

How are we as genealogists going to answer “but AncestryDNA says it’s so”?

I don’t know. And it worries me.

That being said, I wouldn’t pass up the chance to detect any autosomal match in my own family and AncestryDNA adds to my chances. But when I butt heads with one of those Baker descendants in the future, I’m going to ask John Pereira to help me explain that no, AncestryDNA really didn’t say it was so at all.

SOURCE

Into the final stretch at the National Genealogical Society Conference here in Cincinnati — one more day of sessions and meeting people and putting faces with names and catching up on old friends and…

So… what were my three highlights for Friday, Day 3 of NGS 2012? Hmmm… documentation, boxed sets and birthday celebrations.

Documentation

You can pretty well count on filling any room at any national conference by putting a well-known speaker with a keen-sounding lecture title in the room. Elizabeth Shown Mills can fill a room at 8 a.m. with Okay, I Got the Neighbors: Now What Do I Do With Them? And Thomas W. Jones’ lectures on things like Finding Unfindable Ancestors and Inferential Genealogy were sure winners.

But sometimes you wonder… can even a great speaker like Tom Jones fill a room on a subject like Documentation: The What, Why and Where — the nuts and bolts of genealogical citations?

Now anybody who’s read this blog more than once knows I’m a fanatic on documentation. Someone gently joshed with me that I’m the only person they know who’d add footnotes to update an epitaph.¹ But even I had my doubts on that one — a room full of folks who’d take an hour out of a busy morning to listen to the hows and whys of citations?

But I’m delighted to report I was dead wrong. Yep, a whole room full of folks, taking notes and paying close attention. And listening, really listening, when Tom kept drilling home the central lesson of good genealogical practice: we cite our sources not just so we can find our way back to them when we need to, not just so others can check out what we’ve found, but so that we can really understand the record we’re using and evaluate the evidence it contains.

Our families — the people we do genealogy for — deserve nothing less than the best genealogical practices and it was wonderful to see a whole room full of people serious about setting their sights on just that, for themselves and for their families.

Boxed sets

I was walking past the table of Jamb Tapes just outside the exhibit hall when a sign caught my eye. Usually, the tapes of lectures are $12 each. But Jamb is launching something new: a set of four lectures by the same speaker for $45. These are not sets from this conference, though some of the topics are from this year. They’ve been put together from past presentations by first-rate speakers.

Eventually, the Jamb folks said, we’ll be able to go onto the Jamb website and pick any four lectures by the same speaker — say, two from this year and two from another year — and package them into a boxed set of our choosing.

The four sets available for ordering now, at the conference, and after the conference on the website, are:

Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS:
    • The Genealogical Proof Standard: What It Is and Is Not
    • Using Correlation to Establish Facts That No Record States
    • Organizing Evidence to Overcome Record Shortages
    • Inferential Genealogy: Deducing Ancestors’ Identities Inferentially

Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS:
    • Genealogical Problem Solving: Professional Techniques for Everyday Success
    • Citations & Sources Simplified: From Memorabilia to Digital Data to DNA
    • In a Rut? Seven Ways to Jump Start Your Research
    • How to Find the Truth about a Family Story

Paula Stuart-Warren, CG, FMGS, FUGA:
    • Genealogical Goldmine: Records of Old Settlers Organizations
    • Tho’ They Were Poor, They May Have Been Rich in Records
    • The WPA Era: What It Created for Genealogists
    • Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking

John T. Humphrey, CG:
    • Finding Your German Ancestor’s Place of Origin
    • Researching 18th Century Germans
    • German Church Records: the Heart and Soul of German Genealogy
    • WWW of German Genealogy

Good deals, all!

Happy 100th birthday, NGSQ

By Friday evening of an NGS week, folks are usually pretty tired. It’s information overload hitting hard for the most part. Even socializing can be tough after a few days of all day sessions.

But this Friday night at NGS, things were a little different.

An absolutely radiant Ann Hilke, whose term as NGS President will end later this year, kicked off a lovely reception Friday evening to celebrate the 100th birthday — volume wise — of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. Past and present editors were introduced and honored, and those who have contributed to and learned from the NGSQ joined in the fun.

Today’s NGSQ is a far cry from its beginnings 100 volumes ago. Some of the articles printed in the earliest days can be — and are — cheerfully described as downright embarrassing. Undocumented would be a kind way to characterize early submissions; downright fictional might be a fair description of others.

Nowadays, it’s an educational tool beyond measure and getting an article published in “The Q,” as it’s called, can be about as heady an experience as a genealogist can hope for.²

But one message the editors work tirelessly to get across: any family may have an NGSQ-worthy story to tell. Nobody tracks down every line with ease and an abundance of records. When we do find solutions to difficult genealogical problems with a variety of sources to fill in record gaps, writing it up — well and well-documented — is the first step towards seeing your name in print as an NGSQ author. Go on. Give it a try. You know you want to…

SOURCES

Okay, let’s see here. What three things stood out for me in Day Two of the National Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati? Let’s try these: Germans; widow’s weeds; and records access.

Germans

It’s estimated that one out of every six Americans has German ancestors. (Count me in on that — my father and grandparents were born in Germany and came to the United States in 1925.¹)

And the National Genealogical Society conference is in Cincinnati — a city with deep German roots. According to the website Cincinnati: A City of Immigrants:

In 1830, 5% of the city’s total population had German roots. Within ten years the number of German-born immigrants reached 30%, and that number doubled between 1840 and 1850. Backgrounds and dialects of the Germans varied and religions consisted of a mixture of Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Jewish. Germans founded hospitals and various cultural institutions in the city. By the 1850s, the German language was used in four newspapers, in all church school classes, for sermons at church, and in transactions at banks and stores.²

So can somebody explain to me why the rooms set aside for lectures in Thursday’s German research track were among the smaller rooms at the conference center? Every single presentation, from 8 a.m. through to 5 p.m., was standing-room-only, or at least they would have been SRO if the fire marhsals had allowed folks to stand.

Sure was glad to see a wider variety of presentations on German research than in some past conferences. Some great new offerings on getting acquainted with German church records and marriage customs and laws. But it was a little disconcerting to hear one man literally beg for a seat, saying the German track was the one thing he’d come to the conference for. (And heartwarming, I should add, when another attendee gave up his seat, saying he’d catch the lecture on tape later.)

Widow’s weeds

I absolutely adore the unusual and the out-of-the-ordinary in genealogy, so the luncheon by the Board for Certification of Genealogists was a real treat. There’s usually a speaker, and the speaker is usually worth hearing, but this year it was decidedly unusual and out of the ordinary.

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CG, CGL, did an in-costume presentation called Lunch with Mrs. Davis, a dramatization of the life of a widow during the Civil War that was amazing. Using the setting of a widow — Mrs. Davis — writing in her diary, Liz took us on a tour of the social constraints placed on widows in the middle of the 19th century.

Heard the term “widow’s weeds”? It means the formal clothing a 19th century widow was expected to wear to signify her mourning.³ I had an idea of the meaning of the word, but Liz’s presentation — wearing the clothes of mourning — made the whole concept come alive: the year and a day of black dress and veil of full mourning; the time thereafter in half-mourning; the isolation of the widow and her dependence on her or her late husband’s male kin.

Great demonstration of history coming alive, and one that gave me an entirely different view than I’d had of a direct ancestor of my own who was widowed in the Civil War.

Records access

Towards the end of the day I had a chance to stop in at a session entitled Strategy for Records Preservation and Access conducted by the Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC). And I have to say I left there a little disconcerted. I realize I arrived late (I was not about to leave a session on German marriage laws that may help me with one of my own family history mysteries⁴) but there were so very few people there.

Perhaps many of the conference attendees didn’t realize the meeting was open to the public. Perhaps others had commitments to other sessions and felt they could not come in late. Perhaps it was just that it was late in the day.

But the truth is, folks, … winning the records access battles that genealogists face is critical to all of us. We really need to pull together for all of these fights: for the SSDI, for access to vital records and so much more. These battles can’t be won if they’re fought by only a few.

SOURCES

Even for veterans of several national genealogical conferences, the National Genealogical Society’s annual conference — underway now in Cincinnati — can be overwhelming. And with dozens of official bloggers, tweeters, Facebookers and more covering this year’s conference, even those who stayed home may feel overwhelmed soon.

So I’m going to keep this short and sweet and offer just three points that were driven home for me today.

Record accuracy

Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, spoke today on Strategies for Finding “Unfindable” Ancestors. And during the course of his hour-long presentation, he offered one fact that jumped out and absolutely blew my mind.

In his experience, he said, when there was an inaccuracy in a record (and particularly in a vital record like birth, marriage and death), half the time the inaccuracy was intentional.

That started me thinking about all the reasons why somebody would lie in one of those situations, and the mental laundry list is stunning. A bride or groom lying about age to be able to marry without parental consent. The identity of the father of a child born out of wedlock or as the result of rape or incest. (I think of my father’s cousin, born out of wedlock in Germany, who listed her grandparents as her parents in her application for a Social Security number so she wouldn’t have to admit she didn’t know who her father was.) Or, perhaps, the place where somebody came from when the law in that original place might still be looking for that person. The list goes on and on.

Sure gives you a different perspective on just how much trust to put in that one public record, doesn’t it? And underscores, big time, the reasons why the Genealogical Proof Standard puts so much emphasis on not relying on one public document but requires instead a reasonably exhaustive search.

The changing world of genealogy

Curt B. Witcher, manager of the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, spoke at the luncheon of the Association of Professional Genealogists, and painted a picture of the genealogical community that, I think, caused many of us to stop and think.

Change, he said, was overtaking us. A whole new generation of genealogists — who came to the field in this 21st century — had different expectations than those whose interest and activities began when microfilm was on the technological cutting edge.

And, as he spoke, I realized that I myself am one of what he described as the 21sters. I didn’t get into genealogy seriously until after the ball dropped on 31 December 1999. I am a technology geek, want all the latest toys, and would want instant digital access to all genealogical information if it weren’t for the fact that instant access takes too long.

And yet I’m also old school in many ways: I want my journals printed on paper. I belong to a bunch of state and local genealogical societies and value the work they do. I love brick-and-mortar repositories and would happily spend my days poking through old records on paper were it not for that minor little problem of paying the mortgage and keeping the cats in the style to which they’ve become accustomed.

It’s going to be up to all of us to find the common ground between the old school and 21sters in genealogy. We all have much to learn from each other.

You don’t have to miss out

Even if you’re here in Cincinnati, you can’t do it all. How do you choose between sessions when there are three of them at the same time that you absolutely want to attend? The answer is, you don’t have to be there, and you don’t have to miss out.

Most sessions at the national conferences — both NGS and FGS — are tape-recorded. The audio CDs are available on site and afterwards through JAMB Tapes, Inc. Check JAMB’s website after the conference for the list of lectures available on CD — and check it out now for lectures from earlier conferences of NGS, FGS and other genealogical societies.

While genealogists began to gather yesterday in Cincinnati for the 2012 National Genealogical Society Conference, foes of public access to the Social Security Death Master File — known to genealogists as the SSDI — gathered in Washington, D.C., calling once more for an end to public access to the SSDI.

Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Social Security, and Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr. (R-La.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, jointly chaired a hearing yesterday on identity theft and tax fraud. And despite overwhelming evidence that public access to the SSDI is barely a blip on the radar screen for this problem, the pressure continues for a legislative end to SSDI access.

The testimony by J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, couldn’t have been clearer: tax fraud stemming from identity theft involving the living is the big issue. In his prepared remarks, George said use of new filter systems had stopped the issuance of $1.3 billion in potentially fraudulent tax refunds — and that an entire new system to prevent fraudulent returns based on a deceased taxpayer’s information had prevented $1.8 million in refunds.

Now math is not a big thing in law school, and The Legal Genealogist would have been in remedial math if it’d been a required subject. But even my feeble math skills are good enough to tell me that the problem of false returns using the Social Security numbers of the deceased is barely one-tenth of one percent of the problem here.

As a matter of fact, George disclosed that 4,157 “potentially fraudulent tax refunds” totalling $6.7 million — roughly five times the total problem caused by returns where the SSNs might have come from the SSDI — were all being deposited into one of 10 bank accounts, and each of those 10 accounts had direct deposits of more than 300 tax refunds.

Uh… and closing the SSDI is going to be the fix here? Really?

You’d think that the facts might be enough to focus attention where it really belongs, but that, of course, seems to be too much to ask. Patrick P. O’Carroll, Jr., Inspector General, Social Security Administration, in his testimony continued to call for passage of legislation which would end public access to the SSDI.

He was echoed by Steven T. Miller, Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, who in his testimony said his agency was “working with SSA on a potential legislative change to the practice of routine release of the Death Master File.”

And David F. Black, General Counsel, Social Security Administration, in his testimony, said his agency wanted “congressional action to exempt this information from the FOIA to protect countless Americans from the threat of identity theft through abuse” of the SSDI.

Nina E. Olson, National Taxpayer Advocate, Internal Revenue Service, went so far in her prepared remarks as to say that if Congress didn’t act to end SSDI access, she hoped the Social Security Administration would do it on its own.

Nope, the threat to the SSDI isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.