Climbing the Family Tree

Search out stories and details to bring those ancestors to life

By Lynda Rego
Posted 3/21/16

In researching our ancestors, we spend a great deal of time tracking down dates and places in vital records. Obviously, this is important because we have to be certain we have the right John Smith …

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Climbing the Family Tree

Search out stories and details to bring those ancestors to life

Posted

In researching our ancestors, we spend a great deal of time tracking down dates and places in vital records. Obviously, this is important because we have to be certain we have the right John Smith living in the right place and time.
But, in that quest, we sometimes forget the names we’re researching were flesh and blood people, who lived interesting lives — often in interesting times. So, how can you flesh out these dry details? By moving past basic government documents to more detailed descriptions of a life.
The American Libraries Internet Archive has collections from across the country that range from local libraries to the Library of Congress. It’s at https://archive.org/details/americana. You can search by library or topic and within those categories by date or subject. A list of subjects runs down the right side of the page.
Town council records, court records, town correspondence, newspapers and diaries all hold tidbits that can put flesh on the bones of your ancestors. These are really fun documents and can include punishments for bad behavior, arguments between neighbors, who was named to committees, gossip, and all types of sundry goings-on.
The records of the Boston Committee of Correspondence are now available at the New York Public Library website at http://archives.nypl.org/mss/343#detailed. The committee formed in 1772 and corresponded with communities around the state until the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1774.
You can look at the records from a particular town in Massachusetts from 1773-74. I checked the correspondence for Shirley, Mass., where my fifth great-grandfather lived. He was a minuteman who marched at the Lexington Alarm in 1775.
One letter to Boston in February, 1773, states that “the voice of the Province will convince the Ministry of Great Britain that we are determined to be a free people.”
And, a list of the results of unanimous votes of the freeholders of Shirley in March of 1774 included “that we will neither buy nor sell, drink nor suffer to be drank in our families, any tea that is subject to an American duty.”
That grandfather, James Parker, had a daughter Abigail, who died “in a fall from her horse” at age 21. I assumed it was a riding accident until I found a newspaper item describing how she and her brother were at an outdoor church service sitting astride their horses, when Abigail suddenly slid to the ground. When they tried to help her up, she was dead. James’ diary entry for the next day is heart breaking in its simplicity, “I went to the burying yard. Chose a place for the grave.” The next day, “My daughter was buryed. A great number of people in the funeral.” The next day, “I about home, did but little.”
Diaries are always a source of great personal data. One of the amusing and very informative things James detailed on a regular basis, was the type of food and drink imbibed when they ate out at other people’s homes. For farmers, who worked long and hard every day, I’m sure it was one of the only forms of entertainment, especially in the winter months.
The diaries of World War I soldiers from 1914 to 1942 are being placed online at the British National Archives at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/. If you have a British or an American soldier in your family tree, this is a way to learn firsthand what they experienced.
Of all the wills held by the archives, 280,000 handwritten wills were put online last year. Searching is free; however, there may be a charge to download documents. This is part of First World War 100, an extensive program from 2014 to 2019 marking the centenary of the war with digitization of letters, diaries, maps and photographs. They have lots of other online collections, too, including service records, pension records, nurses’ records, prisoner of war interview reports and more.
Even if you can’t find a diary for your ancestor, look for one from the same period in the town he or she in lived in, or check out the American Memory Project on the Library of Congress website (https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html) to see what life was like for a fisherman or a French-Canadian textile worker. “American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940,” has 2,900 documents by over 300 writers in 24 states. There are life stories by people from all periods, male and female, free and slave, suffragettes and immigrants.
Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life at www.common-place.org is filled with details of life in America before 1900. The site has won awards for being a resource for history teachers. The articles in the online magazine are written by scholars, professors and others. You can search for a topic or just browse the articles, which have great photos. You can sign up to be on their mailing list for updates. There are book reviews, too. Or, click on archives to see all the past issues.
And, see the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program, which has more than 10,000 volunteers who take daily weather observations across the United States. Scans of the original historical observation forms are available through a legacy interface at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html, where you can read weather reports dating back to the mid-19th century for any weather station in the country. (There are some that go back even earlier to the 1700s).
Especially if you had ancestors who were farmers or fishermen or anyone affected by the weather (practically everyone), you will enjoy reading these reports. I did a random search for Rhode Island, then Bristol, and then chose January 1887. The observer was N.G. Herreshoff. The first thing I saw was a note: “Brilliant meteor seen in west about 5 p.m. of 3rd.” A second page has a chart that lists wind direction, rainfall, snow in inches, temperatures and remarks by the observer. This is a great way to add details to your ancestors’ lives.
Lynda Rego has a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lynda.rego where she shares tips on genealogy and other topics. Stop by, click on Like and share any interests you have for upcoming columns.

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