Geneology Before Technology

Genealogy Tips

Genealogy Before Technology

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by Carolyn Ann Howard

This blog post was updated 20 Aug 2021

I'm looking through my father's records, amazed. Oh, the theories that went back and forth between my father, his sister, and others who were early Howard researchers.

I remember doing a bit of genealogy in the 1970s when thinking about writing a history of Monticello, Indiana, the town where I grew up. It was grueling. Hours in front of the microfilm, looking at every single name on the census record, hoping against hope that the person you were researching was at the very beginning of the file or that the file was small. Or that your eyes hadn't glossed over thereby missing the information needed. We had no search engines. We were the search engines! Click on photos to enlarge

Book kindly sent to me concerning John Harbolt from Monticello, IN

Information was slow and hard to come by, especially if a person lived far away from the area they were researching. Instead of looking up records on-line, a genealogist would have to send away for records and usually for a fee. Afterward, they would have to wait for weeks and weeks until finally the new information arrived in the mailbox. Maybe the new information was a break-through. Many times, unfortunately, it wasn't.

On one of my several research visits to Monticello, which is 5 hours away from my home, I was, as usual, excited. What interesting information would I find? I had invested much into taking this trip, but it was only for 2 days. I should've called ahead. (Maybe I did. It's not like me to not plan everything.) When I got to the library on the second day to search through microfilm, I was asked to leave. The preschoolers were there for their movie. I begged the librarian to let me stay, but she wasn't having any of it. So much for that.

My first day was spent at the Monticello (White County) Historical Society, which was wonderful. A tip if you're planning a trip, though, definitely call ahead. A later trip to Indiana State Historical Society was also productive as, indeed, most trips to historical societies go well.

A great genealogical tool available in on-line places at Google Books or Archive.org, for example, are the various county histories written in the early part of the 20th century. Many of these books were out-of-print in the 1970s and now are freely available on-line! If my memory is correct, I paid $22 for a History of White County, Indiana, where Monticello is the county seat. What a treasure trove of information! This volume is now available free-of-charge at books.google.com. Go specifically to books.google.com and type in "History of White County, Indiana" and BOOM! It comes up as the first choice. Try this for the county where your ancestor lived. You might find out some stuff about them that you didn't know before!

One way of making your ancestors come to life is to make a timeline of things that happened during their lifetime, such as wars, presidents, epidemics, weather or even just when the county fair was that year. These early histories can help a lot in building such a timeline. If you use the Life Story feature in Ancestry, they try to do this, but its better when you do it for yourself.

As a funny aside, John Harbolt, the man from Monticello I was researching, it was said in the History of White County, Indiana, that he "went west to die." Ahhhh. When I first stumbled upon Find-A-Grave nearly forty years later, on a whim, I looked up his grave. I found out that John Harbolt had gone to Kansas. I contacted the person who made the Find-A-Grave page, and she laughed. White County history states that he "went west to die." Their history states he "left the east so he could live." And live he did. He took a wife, who apparently was the life of the party, and had children.

John Harbolt's brother, Billy.
Courtesy of White County Historical Society

One regret is that we had a family who went to our church in Monticello who was descended from the Harbolt family. I didn't realize it, though, until many years later. Too bad. But it is something to keep in mind should you pick up fresh research. You might actually be socializing with people related to the person you're researching.

Facebook is also a great place to connect with all those cousins you're bound to find through your research. This has been the most rewarding part of being a family genealogist.

Back to my father's records. Dad's sister had written letter after letter to the Wyoming County, New York Historical Society. I think the society may have gotten tired of the many inquiries. Many letters back to her started with "I'm sorry it has taken so long to respond to your latest inquiry. We really have nothing more we can tell you about your ancestors."

In particular, it seems the Howard family was quite interested in the fate of George Washington Howard. His family is all together on the 1850 and 1860 census records, but he isn't with them. He appeared later in Michigan. Theories abounded. Did he change his name? Perhaps the family is mistaken in whose family he really belongs. One theory - I kid you not - was that one of our forebears "turned into George Washington Howard." Another person turned into George Washington Howard? Abracadabra!

Another example is our forebear John G. Howard. For some reason, my family decided to rename him Jacob Howard, because they had found a Jacob Howard in the 1810 and 1820 New York census records. I found John Howard in the 1810 and 1820 census records living in Grafton, New York, the place where our John Howard lived. The new technologies and applications allow us to do this work quickly and easily.

I'm in the process of reading through all the letters, and if they're just conspiracy theories, they're getting shredded. I don't want to be the bearer of falsehoods. I understand the speculation, particularly in the era prior to technology when records were so difficult and many times expensive to come by. I'm sure it was fun to ask all the questions, no matter how stupid some of them were, in the end. They have no place in our modern era of genealogical research, though. Questions, certainly. Theories, yes. Conspiracies? Definitely not.

It was truly the voice of reason that stated, calmly, George Washington Howard left his home at the age of 14, because he didn't get along with his stepmother.

My relatives went back and forth and back and forth trying to figure out what happened to George Washington Howard. I'm grateful that someone knew the answer, but getting to that answer was truly overwhelming. And unnecessary.

I'm still looking for George Washington Howard in the 1850 and 1860 census and also for Henry Albert Howard in the 1860s. I may  never find them but it won't be for lack of trying. In the meantime, however, no speculation is required.

© 2022 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC

Do Not Believe Your Family's Twisted Story

Benjamin W. Carroll Family Line

Do Not Believe Your Family's Twisted Story

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by Carolyn Ann Howard

This post was updated 30 Aug 2021

My family tree has more twisted stories and lies. This is the one thing that saddens me about genealogy, but undoubtedly, every tree is filled with lies and varying degrees of twistedness simply because we're human beings each with our own filters.

Blood of My Ancestor was written to set the story straight about Joel Lyon's role in the murder of his wife and to clear his good name. He had previously been falsely accused of murder by my family and other families as well. Joel was the husband of my 2x grandaunt Adaline Cannon.

The story of Joel Lyon that my family likes to spin starts with "Joel was Catholic and Adaline was Protestant." This was happy news for the author in me, because it meant I'd get to write about the differences between Catholic and Protestant and to do so in a positive light. Because Adaline most likely would not have been taught about Catholicism in her girlhood, this became a great part of their story. Imagine her curiosity with Joel to begin with and then to learn his faith was so much different than hers.

About a month ago, I learned that even this, this small piece of the story another grandaunt had written down on paper was false! Author Beth Willis, who has chronicled so much of the history of Stockholm, New Jersey, from whence Joel came, told me that Joel was most likely Methodist. I posted this on Facebook -- like, can you believe it? And Joel's granddaughter replied:

I know that my grandfather was Methodist, because as a kid I would ride with him to church sometimes. And I was baptized Methodist when I was a kid.

Seriously, though? The whole damn story written about Joel Lyon in my family's records was false to its very core. "Joel was Catholic and Adaline was Protestant" needs to be changed to "Joel was Methodist and so was Adaline." Then again, that one sentence would blow up the whole story that begins with Joel baptizing their new infant son as a Catholic behind Adaline's back.

I recently learned more about a different story that had only been heard in passing. The story was so crazy, it didn't even sink in. My father started the story by saying, "I understand that John Cannon was an atheist." John Cannon was my 2x great-grandfather. The story was so preposterous to me, I didn't even want to hear it, which made my father realize that it wasn't true. Thankfully, he stopped telling that story. Years later, my dear cousin said he had heard his father preach about how my great-grandmother, John Cannon's daughter, who birthed and reared my grandfather, was an infidel. An infidel!

I grew up in a legalistic household with lots of rules that must be kept in order to find favor with God. That upbringing made this word infidel conjure up feelings of vilification and shame. My great-grandmother, Hester Cannon Howard, however, was not an infidel. She was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and brought her children up the same. This was confirmed in her obituary that stated "from girlhood, she was a consistent adherent to the faith." We know that after she moved from Mount Calvary to within the city limits of Loogootee, Indiana, she attended the Methodist Church there in Loogootee. Prior to that, she attended Mount Calvary Methodist Episcopal.

I admit, sometimes I put my great-grandmother on a pedestal. Mostly, though, I just hold her in high esteem. Why not? She owned her own business and ran it successfully. She was a single mother, and she had spunk. Another uncle, one who had known her in real life, told me she had spunk. He said it with the most beautiful smile on his face. He was proud of her, for sure. Click on photo to enlarge.

Hester Howard on the left at her home in Loogootee, IN
Carolyn Ann Howard family collection

I have a theory how this story about Hester got started. You see, Hester had two boys with her husband, Billy, who died of tuberculosis shortly after their births. She was protective of them, and they of her. Her eldest son fought in World War I and, after that, he moved to Binghamton, New York, escaping her protection. Earl was 31 when he married, and he stayed in Binghamton the rest of his life.

Once Earl had moved, Hester only had her youngest son, Rodolphus, who went by Dolph, to help her on the truck farm, with their boarding rooms, and whatever needed to be done around the home. Hester's parents were gone, and her sister and best friend was gone - murdered brutally in cold blood. I'm sure Hester really relied on Dolph.

When Dolph turned 30, he married my grandmother, Grace Carroll. As was the custom in those days, the couple lived with my great-grandmother for about a year before setting up their own household. The two women did not get along. Not even a little.

I knew my grandmother well. She was excessively religious and felt rules needed to be followed in order to achieve holiness. Her father also was an extremely religious man. Her half-brother, John Carroll, was the founder of four Pilgrim Holiness churches in Martin County - Burns City, Mount Zion, Poplar Grove and Shoals, as well as the Pilgrim Holiness campground called "Singing Hill."

Singing Hill in Shoals, Indiana
Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection

Rules were the order of the day. No pants for the girls. No dice. No playing cards. No board games. No laughter. Children do not talk. No make-up. No cutting hair. The rules were crushing. To make things worse, my grandmother attended the Methodist Church in Loogootee, and I knew these weren't Methodist beliefs, so it made absolutely no sense! The fact that her heritage as Pilgrim Holiness was never discussed led me to realize that she was a Pilgrim Holiness cleverly disguised as a Methodist.

In my grandmother's eyes, surely I'd be an infidel. I drink wine. I wear pants. I wear make-up. I use dice in my piano classroom to play music games with my students. It is doubtful that Hester drank or wore pants or make-up or even played with dice, but she had spunk and could stand up for herself, that is for sure. My uncle told me a man was harassing her, so she threw a tomato right in his face. He told me that with the same proud smile.

It's so easy to make up stories about the dead, whether those stories are true or false, good or bad. Your job as a genealogist is to sort through the data you have and make informed observations, backing that up as much as possible with eyewitness statements, newspaper clipping, and other documentation. It's also good to make sure everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

© 2022 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC

Rape, Predators, and Genealogy

Genealogy Tips

Rape, Predators, and Genealogy

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by Carolyn Ann Howard

This post updated 08 Sep 2021

About a week ago, I began to write a glowing blog about a particular ancestor, but in our current climate and with the MeToo movement, I stopped to think. Of course my desire is to write glowing accounts of all my ancestors. Unfortunately, it is known for certain that at least one of my ancestors was a pedophile. This particular ancestor was a pillar of his community and a well-respected church-goer, an elder. The ugly fact is only known by family and victims who have been successful in keeping it secret. These things that happen behind closed doors are so vile, so shameful, that victims most of the time remain silent.

Even today in 2018, "60% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years. Those rapists, of course, never spend a day in prison. Factoring in unreported rapes, only about 6% of rapists ever serve a day in jail." [1]

The message, then, is this: We who do genealogy must be diligent and intentional in our documentation. Indeed, we must be excellent. We owe that to those who read and use our work for their own trees. Its tough, and it can be exhausting, but we must not allow mediocre results to creep in.

I'm guilty. An example from my tree: I always thought Eliza Jane Raney's father was Joseph Raney. She lived in the same household as Joseph Raney so why wouldn't she be his daughter? It was brought to my attention through another person's blog that Eliza Jane Raney was an orphan who had been adopted by her Uncle Joseph Raney. [2]

To be fair, she does fit right in as a daughter. The couple have four children on the 1850 census ages 10, 8, 6, 2. Eliza Jane is the 8-year-old. So we really have no clues from this census that she is adopted. Genealogists can't rely on a single source or even several sources. Fortunately, with technology, genealogists now have so many more tools. Even so, we must always keep an open mind and consider possibilities for different outcomes.

Rape and illegitimacy have always been seen as shameful, things that are to be kept secret. In my book Blood of My Ancestor, I confronted and explained the reality of life in rural America in the 1800s. The reasoning was necessary to understand why one of the main characters, Malinda, who had a baby "out of wedlock," turned down Isreal's proposal for marriage. A hugely weighty decision made by a brave woman. (Update: This is now a deleted excerpt from the book, because, in hindsight,  I felt that it interrupted the storyline.)

The real problem was that the pioneers had no real form of birth control, meaning that many times having sex led to having a baby. That was the conundrum. Because of that, society imposed its own birth control in the form of abstinence. The punishment that society dished out to those who broke the rule of abstinence, finding themselves pregnant, was to make the woman an outcast. An unmarried pregnant woman found herself to be an object of scorn, ridicule and gossip. They were treated poorly and were deliberately humiliated. The child was often treated worse.

Another problem Malinda couldn’t fully grasp was the collective thought of what having a baby outside of marriage meant to society. Who would be financially responsible for the child? The pioneers had no social service organizations to help women with this. Orphanages, poor farms and workhouses were starting to crop up, but these were poor excuses for childcare.

Some unmarried women, after having their baby, not knowing what else to do or where else to turn, simply abandoned the child, allowing it to die. Some left their babies on the steps of a church, hoping the church or someone in the church would take their child in. 

Abrahm Alley Log Cabin in Colorado [3]

Sometimes a family would send their pregnant daughter away to hide with relatives, while the mother feigned pregnancy by stuffing her clothes with pillows. In that way, when a new child appeared within the family, people would naturally assume it was the mother’s child and not the daughter’s. Some families sent their pregnant daughter away, hiding them with relatives, telling everyone their daughter had gotten married. Then, when the daughter returned some months later with a new baby, they would say she was a widow whose husband had died shortly after the marriage. All of that was done to save face in a culture where the pregnancy of an unmarried woman was greatly stigmatized and feared.

Some states, like North Carolina, had legal lists called “bastardy bonds.” When the state learned a so-called illegitimate child was being carried, the family or the father would be forced to sign a bond. Someone had to declare financial responsibility for the child. [4]

It may never be known which ancestors of yours or mine were raped or those who were sexual predators. We can be certain they're there, though. Of course, we don't want to be judgmental, because this is very serious! But if something isn't lining up, or even if it is, keep in mind that anything is possible.

Be diligent in your documentation and resist the temptation to put your ancestors onto pedestals. Even if they deserve that pedestal, it does them a disservice as they take their place on your family tree.

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[1] Facts About Sexual Assault. (n.d.). Retrieved October 01, 2018, from https://cmsac.org/facts-and-statistics/

[2] https://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/raney/761/

[3] Photo credit: By Darrylpearson [CC BY-SA 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

[4] Howard, Carolyn Ann. Blood of My Ancestor. December Moonlight Publishing, LLC, 2012.

© 2022 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC

Sex, Rape, and Divorce in the 1800s

Genealogy Tips

Sex, Rape, and Divorce in the 1800s

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by Carolyn Ann Howard

This post was updated 01 May 2022

Really? Seriously? A divorce rate of less than 2,000 in the 1860s? No, not really and not at all seriously. This chart is wrong. Although divorce rates may not have been as high in the 1800s as they are now, they were definitely not this low. What's wrong with this chart? What's wrong is that it looks like documentation, even though it isn't. Because divorce in the 1800s was not well-documented, we don't really know what the divorce rate was.

Keep this in mind when doing genealogical research: If a female relative disappears, don't assume that she died. Assume that she lived. Go, look for her. It’s probable that she just quietly 'went away.' Her husband may have had her committed to an insane asylum. Check those records. Check the census records to see if she was living with a relative. Check the census records to see if she was living in a hotel. Or maybe she remarried.

If this seems absurd, remember that records were not well-kept at this time in the U.S., especially in the case of a *gasp* divorce. Also remember that the United States was extremely rural, so a neighbor didn't necessarily know another person's business.

 
It must also be understood that women in the 1800s had NO RIGHTS. Their decisions were made by their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Many times, they were treated as mere property and suffered abuse with no rights under the law. It certainly was not difficult for a man to end his marriage.

When doing research, one must also keep in mind the beliefs that embraced the country in the 1800s or simply the beliefs of your ancestor. Divorce was shameful and women who were divorced were many times treated as a 'sinner,' shunned from their friends and from their church. Naturally, many divorced women and even men would say they were a widow/widower, passing that information on to their children and grandchildren. Better to lie than to be disowned!

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) documented faithfully many of the marriages in the United States in the 1800s. The WPA didn't, however, document divorces. Those records, if indeed there are any records of the divorce at all, are safely tucked away in the local court houses or in historical societies. If you can visit the county where your ancestors lived, this is usually a good way to obtain information.

Whatever you do, keep your mind open to any possibility when doing genealogical research. Try not to judge your ancestors too harshly! They lived their lives just like you're living yours. Most of them did the best they could with what they had.

Thinking about intimacy between two people can feel a little creepy. When I first began my study of the 1800s, I had a difficult time reconciling the fact that those people lived in close quarters yet had many children. Where did they find the privacy to do have sex? Well... mostly they didn't find the privacy. They just did it. In my book Pioneer Stories, John and Sally are in their bed downstairs making out, while the boys are upstairs in the dormer, grossing out. "Ew!" Albey exclaimed. "There they go again!"

Not only that, some had children just a few months into their marriages and some had children even after their spouses had been dead for several years. Where was that perfect ["holy"] world I had been taught as a child? If you're also looking for that perfect or holy world, stop. It's not there. Its not there now; it wasn't there in the 1800s.

A friend of mine tells me this story of one of his ancestors. She was raped repeatedly by her neighbor and had all her children by him. He threatened her that if she ever tried to get away from him, he would take her children away from her. The man's wife knew of the relationship and, in fact, the two women worked together to take care of their children. Again, one must remember that neither of these women had any rights. If the extra-marital woman would've left, the man would've been able to legally take the children. The extra-marital woman writes in a diary that SHE is the one who is sinful and needs to do better. In other words, she blamed herself for being a victim. She was shunned by all the other folks living in the village as being an adulteress, even though the man was forcing himself onto her.

Another friend tells me yet again of his ancestor who was outside drawing water out of the well. She was ambushed and raped by her neighbor. The rape resulted in a pregnancy.

In my stories, I strive to make my characters real and to make them honest. For instance, in Pioneer Stories, we are sure that Charity was pregnant before John Freeman married her. As Quakers, they were forced to confess this sin not only in front of the elders but in front of the entire church before being excommunicated. Charity never recovered from the shaming. 

Plain and simple - in the 1800s - sex, relationships, and divorce, were the same then as they are now. To accept this fact will make working on your family tree a whole lot easier, leaving you to create more possibilities.

© 2022 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC