The 1920 household of Abe and Mary Ella (Fendricks) Copeland in Hardin County, Tennessee indicates four children: Myrtle, O.D., Robie, and Jo K[ate]. Mary Ella was the sister of my great-grandmother Effie Fendricks. The Problem and A Story I have never been able to find the daughter named “O.D. Copeland” in anything other than […]
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Category: Posts 2014-2019
Examining Slaves in Inventories
Inventories are one of the key documents researchers use as evidence to support their assertion of slaveownership. Before 1865, a slaveholder’s estate inventory includes their enslaved property. They vary in the information that they provide, but remain an important source for those researching African Americans. What is an Inventory? The inventory is a report of […]
Census Tricks: Not Lodgers or Boarders b...
We all know how problematic the census is as a source. Nevertheless, it’s often the foundation of much of our research, so census records are a favorite subject of mine. Here’s another common error we see: a census household includes lodgers or boarders. Later, we discover they are actually family members. Why didn’t the enumerator […]
Revisiting the Slave Interviews
I am often surprised about how little time genealogists researching former slaves spend exploring the slave interviews. The Slave Interviews comprise over 2,000 interviews of former slaves that were made in (primarily) the 1930s. An Underutilized Source Mostly gathered by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program, these interviews comprise one of the richest […]
Slave Mortgages
Human collateral provided much of the capital for slaveholders to purchase more land and more slaves. This, in addition to enslaved people’s free labor, created much of the 18th century wealth that US growth and development depended upon. Edward Baptist elucidates how slavery drove capitalism in his book, The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery […]
About That Mulatto…
We cannot assume that anyone marked “mulatto” in a census record had one white parent and one black parent. I have previously discussed that genealogists should know some of the instructions provided to enumerators, and that the changing definitions of race, since it is a social and not a biological construct, should tell us something. […]
Analyzing a Death Certificate
Have you maximized your understanding of the most common sources in genealogy? Your ability to solve problems in your research will grow as you learn to scour each source for every clue it imparts. This image is from one of my lectures. There are twenty-two pieces of genealogical information on this death certificate. Would you […]
Do You Use A Census Tracker?
One of the first things I do with every family I research is to try to locate the family in every census during their lifetime. As most researchers know, depending upon the time and place, this is much easier said than done. I “track” the families using census trackers which I have created in Microsoft […]
Finding Sharecroppers in Deeds
As genealogists, it’s difficult to research people who were poor and marginalized. The lives of wealthier and more prominent people simply created more records. I’ve had many people say to me that they haven’t researched deed records because their ancestors did not own any land. However, in many cases, the types of agreements that sharecroppers […]
Freedmens Bureau Narrative Reports
Want to know a great way to find out about the lives of your enslaved ancestors after the end of the War? The narrative reports of the Freedmens Bureau. I have discussed the Bureau records numerous times in this blog. They are a critical resource for the tumultuous five years between 1865 and 1870. Genealogists […]