Cluster research works. You will find more information about your ancestors if you study the lives of those in the community where they lived. I swear by this and I’ve discussed it here over and over again. One source that illustrates this clearly is Civil War Pension Records. Don’t just check research your ancestors and […]
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Category: Records, Resources and Tools
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 […]
Finding Sharecroppers in Deeds
As genealogists, it’s always more difficult to research people who were poor and marginalized. The lives of wealthier and 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 […]
What Did Slavery Look Like?
President Lincoln spent a lot of time studying the map above, created by the United States Coast Survey. The darker the shading, the higher the percentage of enslaved laborers. Slavery maps such as this and several new databases help us understand the experiences of enslaved ancestors. At a glance we can see the density in […]
Fall In Love With Libraries Again
Oh, my fellow genealogists. We have become blinded by the light, we have taken the wooden nickel. Ancestry. Familysearch. Fold3. Any digital archives. We have left our strong and steady marriage for a fling on the wild side. I’m talking about libraries. Good old faithful brick and mortar libraries. Now, I will be the first […]
Freedmen’s Bureau Record Uncovers Likely
I made a big discovery recently courtesy of Familysearch’s newly indexed Freedmen’s Bureau Labor Contracts. A Little Background Several years ago, I used cluster research to trace my Tennessee ancestor Mike Fendricks back to his Alabama roots. At a standstill with Mike, I traced the roots of Dee Suggs, a man Mike lived with in […]
Deed Record Bonanza
I’ve discussed deeds in this blog before and why they should be a cornerstone record in researching the lives of your ancestors. In this post, I show how using deeds connected a family from the 1850s through the mid-twentieth century. Levin Waters Levin Waters and other ancestors lived in Somerset County, Maryland in a little community called […]
The Ku Klux Klan Hearings
In 1871, the U.S. Government held hearings on the rampant violence in the South by the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist organizations. The official name of these records is the “Report of the Joint Select Committee Appointed to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States.” However, they are often referred […]
Thomas S. Sudler Account Book
I’ve written before about the information that can be found in what I call Community Papers. These Papers include account books, diaries, ledgers, loose papers, family records, etc. These are the papers of (usually) prominent men and families. They might be large slaveholders, doctors, merchants or lawyers. Almost every library and archives has these kinds of […]
Perry Simpson Found in Freedmen’s Bureau
I found the proverbial needle in a haystack when I found my 4th great-grandfather, Perry Simpson, in Freedmen’s Bureau records. I have searched in thousands of pages of these records through the years and that is no exaggeration. Perry Simpson’s Complaint I found his name in a Register of Letters Received in the Field Office […]