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December 21, 2000
See Rhonda's Previous
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County Names
Q:
How do you handle the circumstance where the county name has changed? -- Janet
A:
Down through the years as states grew in population, county boundaries changed.
In fact you often need to do a little genealogy of the county to be sure that
you are researching in the correct county for the time period you are working
on.
Everton's The Handybook for Genealogists and Ancestry's Red Book
both give you the year of creation for a county and include information about
parent counties. A parent county is the one from which the land has been set
aside for the new county. Sometimes this is a single county. In other instances
it can be multiple counties that each set aside a piece of land to form a new
county in the middle of the original counties.
With these boundary changes, it is possible for your ancestors to have remained
in the same town for two hundred years and still have ended up in two, three
or more counties. When recording genealogical information it is important to
record it as the place was at the time of the event.
Another excellent book that is useful with boundary changes is William Thorndale's
& William Dollarhide's Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 1790-1920.
This can be useful when a county is created from two different counties. By
pinpointing the location of the town they were in, you can then refer to this
location to determine what county they came from. Each map includes the counties
as they were in that given year in black and underlayed in white are the counties
as they appear now.
Lost at Sea
Q:
My third great grandfather was lost at sea somewhere between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
and Baton Rouge, La. I have been told this was in Feb. of 1884, but city directories
for Philadelphia do not list him for 1882 or 1883 either. I have been told Seamen
papers for Philadelphia have survived at the National Archives. How do I send
for them, it seems you have to know a form number in order to get information?
-- Sandie
A:
Seaman protection certificates were created by an act of 1796. This was a direct result of those American sailors that were on the "Lydia" and were taken on the high seas. There were five of them. This was apparently a problem in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through impressment, Great Britain and other powers filled their naval ship crews.
Sailors who were impressed were generally taken against their will to serve
on a ship. I have read of ship's sending a detail out to gather up the needed
men to serve on a ship. And apparently those who ended up in any of those countries
that filled their crews this way could sometimes end up in such a gang regardless
of the fact that they were citizens of another country, such as the United States.
The National Archives organizes everything into Record Groups. In researching
about impressed American Seaman, I discovered that Record Group 36 "Records
of the Bureau of Customs," held many of the earlier records pertaining
to Seaman Protection Certificates. Unfortunately, those for Philadelphia ended
short of the time period you needed. They covered the years 1796 to 1861. And
actually these were the original applications. The seaman carried the actual
certificates on their person.
When this group of records did not reveal information for your particular time
period, I turned my attention to Guide to the National Archives of the United
States, which is actually a detailed listing of everything found in the
National Archives. Record Group 41 "Records of the Bureau of Marine Inspection
and Navigation," includes records about steamboat inspection service and records
relating to merchant vessels. This record group also contains seamen protection
certificates from 1916 to 1940.
However, included in the "Records of the U.S. Shipping Commissioners,
1872-1938" are some records that might be of use to you. The commissioners
took over the protection of seaman. The records have shipping articles. Also
included in the records are official merchant marine logbooks that were filed
with the commissioner at the end of the voyage. This may be the only proof of
your great grandfather's service. The shipping articles include valuable information
about each of the crew.
Hinshaw's American Quaker Genealogy
Q:
How can I buy that CD of Hinshaw's American Quaker Genealogy collection? Thank you. -- Alan
A:
One of the great aspects of this modern technology is the advent of resources on CD. These offer genealogists a two-fold advantage. First, they don't take up nearly as much space as the original published volumes. Second, they usually have a much better way of searching for our ancestors than the original books.
One of the newest releases from Genealogical
Publishing Company, Inc. is a CD-ROM version of William Wade Hinshaw's Encyclopedia
of American Quaker Genealogy. This CD-ROM is also available through Genealogy.com
as The Encyclopedia of
Quaker Genealogy, 1740-1930.
Unlike some CDs that are available, this particular resource has scanned images of the actual volumes, rather than converted text through optical character recognition (OCR), so you do not need to worry about mistakes creeping in from misreading by OCR software. And the CD also has included an every-name index, making it much easier to search for individuals, rather than surnames.
There were six volumes when the Encyclopedia of American Genealogy was
finally finished. Commonly referred to as "Hinshaw" in family history
circles, this has long stood as the resource for researchers of Quaker
ancestry. Volume I, sub-titled North Carolina, includes monthly meetings from
both North and South Carolina as well as Tennessee. These were all part of the
North Carolina Yearly Meeting. Volume II, sub-titled New Jersey and Pennsylvania
included those monthly meetings that were part of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Volume III, sub-titled New York, includes four monthly meetings in and around
New York City. Volume IV and Volume V, sub-titled Ohio, includes the records
of 51 monthly meetings in Ohio (46), Pennsylvania (4) and Michigan (1). Volume
VI, sub-titled Virginia which includes the records of 13 monthly meetings were
part of the Virginia Yearly Meeting. The Virginia Yearly Meeting was disbanded
and these monthly meetings were then attached to the Baltimore Yearly Meeting.
Crossing the Pond
Q:
I was wondering if you have any information for those of us from immigrant families in the past century. How do we get information from other countries about our roots? -- Marie
A: Immigrant research must begin like all other research. It is important that you work from the known to the unknown. There are temptations to immediately jump over the ocean to the old country, but this usually results in disappointment and frustration. All possible records including vital records, census records, naturalization records, newspapers, probate records, and so on should be exhausted before jumping over the ocean.
When researching family in most countries, it becomes necessary to know the town of birth or residence for the family before anything more can be accomplished. This is true of such countries as Ireland, Germany and Italy.
If your family immigrated after 1906, then locating them in the passenger lists will supply you with the much needed place of birth, among other things. Also, for a majority of the ports, these passenger lists are indexed. Of course, in order to effectively identify your ancestor, you must have some knowledge of the year of arrival, the port of arrival and so forth.
Once you establish where your ancestor was born, the next step is to see what
records for that town may have been microfilmed. A search of the Family History
Library Catalog available online at FamilySearch.org
and through your local Family History Center is the easiest way to accomplish
this. Understand that these records will be in the native tongue of the country
they are from. This may require your getting a translation dictionary.
Finally, if you need to order vital records, you can get the necessary forms and information from Thomas Kemp's International Vital Records Handbook. He has compiled the necessary forms from the various state offices and countries along with information on costs, and record availability.
Rhonda R. McClure is a professional genealogist specializing in celebrity trees
and computerized genealogy. She has been involved in online genealogy for fifteen
years. She is the author of the award-winning The
Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Genealogy, now in its second edition.
She is the author of four how-to guides on Family
Tree Maker. In late 2001, she wrote The
Genealogist's Computer Companion. She is a contributing editor to Biography
Magazine with her "Celebrity Roots" column and a contributing writer
to The History Channel Magazine. Her latest book is Finding
Your Famous and Infamous Ancestors. She may be contacted at rhondagen@thegenealogist.com.
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