Wordless Wednesday

New Online Database of Arkansas Deaths

The Arkansas History Commission has added a database of Arkansas deaths covering 1819–1920.  The database was designed to supplement the official state vital records, which began recording deaths in 1914.  The results from a search give the source of the information and the date recorded there.  Sources include cemetery records, mortality censuses, newspaper obituaries, church publications, and records from the Arkansas History Commission’s holdings.  Only the name is given for the source; if it isn't something you recognize, I would guess you can e-mail the Commission staff and ask about it.  The database is being created by Commission staff and volunteers, who continue to add new records every month.

I tried some sample searches.    It appears that the search does not support wildcards.  The search is by exact spelling, but it looks for names that match or begin with your search term.  For example, I searched for "robins" and got results for Robins and Robinson.  When I searched for "seller", however, I got all the Sellers results twice.

In addition to the new database, the Arkansas History Commission (which is the state archives) also has search pages for newspapers, military records, photographs, land records, and more.  This is a great resource for Arkansas research.

Things My Mother Taught Me

Most parents teach their children; it's part of the job, after all.  But along with the things they consciously set out to teach you -- potty training, how to dress yourself, the manners you need to get along with others, responsibility, respect for others -- there are the things you learn by observing them and what they do.  Some of those lessons can be profound, while others just help make you the unique individual you are.

I learned a lot about tolerance and acceptance of others from both of my parents, but I think especially from my mother.  When I was about 5 years old, my father's ex-wife and my half-sister came to live with our family (my parents, my brother, my sister, and I).  Not exactly what most women would be willing to do!  But we all got along fine.  My mother worked a graveyard shift, so my dad's ex-wife would get us up in the mornings and ready for school, and my mother would get home in time to see us before we left.  My half-sister and I even went to the same elementary school for a while, and the administrators sometimes got the two different Mrs. Sellerses confused.  Even after they moved out to a place of their own, we visited often.

Long before multiculturalism was talked about, our family had a wide range of friends -- black, Hispanic, Indian (from India), and even gay.  We children were taught open-mindedness and acceptance, and that people are just people.  And I grew up knowing that Rock Hudson, Raymond Burr, and Montgomery Clift were gay, though I've never figured out how my mother knew.

My mother always told me I could do anything I wanted to do and be anything I wanted to be, from the time I was little.  She told me I could succeed on my own and didn't need someone to help me.  I believed her and have carved out my own unique corner of the world, first as an editor and now as a genealogist.  (When I did follow my own path as an editor, though, she couldn't understand why I didn't want to work for the CIA or the UN, and why I wasn't rushing to get married and give her a granddaughter.  So not every lesson is perfect!)

My mother loved to watch movies.  She taught me how to listen to the actors' voices and recognize them, which gives me a nice party trick today.  She explained how to watch actors who were portraying musicians and what to look for to see if they were really playing the instruments.  She also explained that it took someone who really knew what he was doing to portray a character who didn't.

My mother loved to play with words.  She taught me to do crossword puzzles, which I still enjoy.  She would flip words around, like spoonerisms, so we had chublip stamps (Blue Chip Stamps) and chotato pips (potato chips).  I still tell people to have a happy "oneth of the month" when a new month rolls around.  And she taught me an appreciation of foreign languages, which definitely influenced my choice of a major in college.

I don't think my mother met a cuisine she didn't like.  We grew up eating Chinese, Mexican, and Indian food; if Thai and Vietnamese had been available at the time, we probably would have had them also.  My mother used to call us kids the vultures -- there was never any food left on the table after a meal.

Unlike the stereotype that is prevalent even today, both of my parents enjoyed watching sports.  As soon as she walked into the house, my mother would turn on the television, often to sports.  So we watched football, baseball, basketball, gold, boxing, car racing ... if it was on television, my mother would watch it.  I find that I still tend to be a minority among most women I know because I enjoy watching sports and have a good working knowledge of most of them.

If my mother were still alive today, I like to think she'd enjoy my working as a genealogist, since she's the one who started me on that path by telling me stories about my family.  Thanks, Mommy.

Antique and Vintage Maps of India Discovered

1863 Map of Delhi

Last year, an Indian woman who was walking around London and browsing through items on the roadside found a large collection of old maps of India.  Though she originally planned to cut them up and reuse them for other purposes, friends advised her to have someone evaluate what she had found.  What she had thought about turning into placemats and coasters turned out to be some of the Survey of India's first maps of India, ranging from 1871 to 1928.  India was part of the British Empire during this period.

Some of the more significant items are a 1912 map of Delhi (now Old Delhi) and a 1928 map of Mt. Everest.  Also dating from about 1928 are accurately detailed travelers' maps of two UNESCO World Heritage sites, the Ajanta and Ellora caves in the state of Maharashtra.  The earliest maps are for areas that are in or near present-day Bangladesh.  The maps were purchased by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, and about 30 of the items were displayed in their offices until the end of April.

Maps are useful in genealogy because they show the development of cities and other areas over time and often include buildings and roads that may be connected to family members.  For example, the Delhi map shows the early British occupation of the city and the areas of the city where the native Indian population lived.

More information about the maps is in a Times of India article.

Wordless Wednesday

Skeletons in the Closet: Adoption

This is the second in an occasional series of posts.  The series discusses subjects which are often covered up in family discussions.  The first post discussed divorce.

I have relatives on both sides of my family who were adopted, both into and out of the family.  Most of them I have known about pretty much all my life, because the subject was not taboo.  In fact, it was usually treated in a positive manner, and those relatives were not considered any differently.  It was kind of like saying that someone had brown hair -- just a trait that person had.  My mother's favorite cousin was adopted.

Some family members, however, were not as open about the subject.  One cousin requested I not indicate in the family history that her children were adopted.  Another relative had never told her husband about the son she had given up for adoption, which caused an interesting situation when the son showed up at the house one day.

Adoption has a profound effect on millions of people and on society.  Laura Callen, who is an adopted person, noted the lack of a museum that explores adoption's history and story and decided to change that.  She began and now directs the Adoption Museum Project, which plans to create the first museum about adoption.  The museum will look at the experiences of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and their families, along with the social phenomenon of adoption.  It will also relate adoption to contemporary social issues.  Following two years of concept development, the project is now working on creating a sustainable organization and advancing its mission.

To help publicize the project, two free events are being held on Saturday, May 11:
• "Our Place at the Table:  Honoring Birthmother Stories", an exhibit at Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom Street, San Francisco, California, from 1:00-4:00 p.m.  Children are welcome.
• "Birthmothers Speak", a solo performance and presentation of material written by birth mothers, at Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th Street, San Francisco, California, from 5:00-7:00 p.m.  This event is intended for an adult audience.

The Adoption Museum Project has a Facebook page with quite a bit of activity, including serious disagreements about terminology, showing how this subject stirs up emotions on both sides.  There is also a WordPress site with some bare-bones information.

From a family history perspective, adoption can be very difficult to research.  Most states in the U.S. have closed adoption records (and some people claim that the real reason for that is to protect the adoption industry, not the rights of the adoptee or either set of parents), and gaining access usually requires a court order.  Often adoptees have had success because they needed to know about their birth parents so they could find information about their families' health histories.  You should always check on what the laws are and were in the area you are researching.  Illinois recently opened adoption records to adoptees; some states had open records into the early and mid-20th century, such as New Jersey, which didn't close its records until 1941.  There are also organizations which help coordinate contact between birth parents and children who were given up for adoption.  Cyndi's List has many helpful links for adoption research.

Adoption is a very sensitive subject.  Be diplomatic when speaking with family members and respectful of their privacy, but also be loving and nonjudgmental.

Wordless Wednesday

Last Day of Ohio Genealogical Society Conference

I went to more interesting sessions today at the conference.  The first session was on how to do research for a house history.  I've been wanting to do that for a while with my house, which was built in 1910.  I started the research a while ago, but now I have more good ideas on places to look for information.  After that I went to Colleen Fitzpatrick's session, "Forensic Genealogy:  CSI Meets Roots."  Unfortunately, this really wasn't a talk about forensic genealogy (see my recent post about the Forensic Genealogy Institute I attended two weeks ago to learn more about what that actually is).  Her talk was really about DNA and using science in your research.  So I was a little disappointed, but right at the end of the lecture she talked about her family connection to a surname I am researching in County Cork, Ireland, so that helped salvage the talk for me.

We had a three-hour lunch break today, which gave me time to catch up on four days of e-mails.  After that I headed back downstairs for a case study by Jay Fonkert, where he discussed how he tracked down four wives for an ancestor of his wife's where people originally thought there was only one.  He used several less common record types and had to prove several condlusions through indirect evidence, and it was interesting to see how it all came together.  In the next session James Beidler gave an overview of German Palatines, the area they came from, and the historical governmental structure in that area and how it affects research.  My family, Sellers, which was originally Söller in German, were Palatines.  Currently I have the family tracked back to 1615, but I want to see what else I can find.

The last session was on using estate papers and deeds for Irish research.  Richard Doherty had lots of wonderful information and links, which I hope to use for my research in Cork, Roscommon, and Sligo counties.  The Irish estate records seem to be very similar to the Polish magnate records which many Jewish researchers have been finding in archives.  Feudal landlords preceded governments in many areas; they owned the land, and they kept track of who was renting land, how much they paid, repairs that were made to buildings, etc.  So if you can find out who owned the land, you look for that person (or family's) archives and see if your ancestors appear in the records.  It's an excellent way to look for people who were not landowners.  And to celebrate a great convention, I took myself out to dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House!  (Well, it wasn't much of a splurge, because someone gave me a gift card, but it was still a treat.)

Tomorrow I have allowed myself more time for research at the Cincinnati Public Library.  I'm going to see what else I can find on my con man and maybe do a little research on my Columbus relatives.  Then I head back to California on a nonstop flight (yay!) and get ready to go back to my regular schedule on Monday.

Cincinnati is a really nice city, and I've enjoyed my visit a lot.  I also got along great with my roommate for the conference, Luana Darby.  She is also a professional genealogist, and it was amazing how many things we have in common -- we've both done musical theater; we know multiple languages; we like NCIS, Criminal Minds, Chopped!, and Iron Chef America; we love to cook and sew; and we love to talk!  We stayed up late talking every night.  I'm glad I got to meet her, and I'm sure I'll see her again at another conference.

Days 1 and 2 of Ohio Genealogical Society Conference

I am having a great time at the Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati, Ohio!  It's the end of the second day, and I finally have time to write about it.

The opening keynote on Thursday was by Tom Jones, the well known genealogist.  The topic was "Strategies for Finding 'Unfindable' Ancestors."  He discussed many excellent strategies for difficult research situations and gave several case studies that demonstrated some of those techniques.  I didn't get to hear any other talks that day, however, because I was helping in the exhibit hall.  I manned the table for the Warren County and Clinton County genealogical societies and handled their sales.  I was next to the Family Tree DNA booth and got to meet founder Bennett Greenspan (who knows a cousin of mine from Omaha, Nebraska!).  We talked about the next tests I should be doing with my father's DNA, and I ended up ordering an mtDNA test for him.  And that evening, the Cincinnati Public Library stayed open late just for conference attendees (they called it a "research lock-in").  Several staff members worked late in the genealogy and newspaper departments, and everyone who was there got great help all evening (except for not letting me get a library card, just because I'm from California).  They let us stay there until 11:30 p.m.!  I found two more marriages for a con man whom I am researching, who was originally from just outside Cincinnati (I think that brings him up to six marriages), and one of them appears to overlap with a marriage I already knew about -- so maybe he was a bigamist in addition to being a con man?

Friday I had a full slate of sessions.  In the morning I went to "Using Land Records in Slave Research", "Using State Court Records to Locate Slaves and Slaveholders", and "German Territories and Maps:  You Can't Research without Them" (yes, I have broad research interests).  While they all covered some material I knew, I learned something new in each session.  The afternoon started with my presentation, "Using Online Historical Black Newspapers", which everyone said they enjoyed very much.  The talk was recorded, and I already have my copy, so I'll get to hear one of my own presentations for the first time, which should be interesting.  Later in the afternoon I went to "Finding Rejected Claims and Pension Requests", which unfortunately really didn't talk much about rejected claims, and "Researching World War II Ancestors", which was an excellent talk with well explained information.  Then I was one of the experts on the panel for the African American Roundtable, where we had about 20 attendees asking all sorts of questions.  The evening ended with about twenty APG members and ProGen graduates getting together for dinner at Arnold's, which was featured on the TV program Harry's Law.

I started off my trip with a one-day stop in Columbus, where my aunt's sister lives.  In addition to getting to visit her, her daughter, and her granddaughter, we went to get some documents for relatives of her late husband's, which will help me with my research on his side of the family.

Saturday has a slightly shorter schedule because it's the last day of the conference.  I'm planning on attending sessions all day, and I'm hoping to meet Colleen Fitzpatrick, with whom I've had several entertaining e-mail conversations.  But I better get some sleep soon, or I'm going to miss those morning talks!