House Histories

A popular trend right now is researching ancestor’s homes. You can find many fascinating tidbits about families when you study their homes, why they lived there and who lived there before and after them. A house is so much more than just brick and mortar but is the spirit of the family. Have you felt the different feelings there are in your home when your children come and when they leave? Your ancestor’s homes were just as vibrant too. A treasure is finding a biography that describes the home and the activities of the family in that home, and you can create such treasures for your family too.

The first home history you can write could be your own home or homes if you lived in several. You can include a homemade blueprint of the house and a map of the yard. Grandparents homes would be a great history to cover too. Even if you are not familiar with their homes, you could interview family members who were and add their experiences.

I am forever indebted to Amy Carroll Stark (daughter of Charles and Kezia Carroll) for the house history she wrote of the “Section House” where she grew up. She included crude drawings of the barnyard and the house. Amy was very descriptive in her history. “A flower garden graced each side of the wide path leading from the front gate: first a row of Flags; then spicy Carnations; colorful Snapdragons: yellow and orange French Marigolds; various colored Zinnias; tall, white Cosmos and, flanking each side fence, a row of Hollyhocks – oh the bees and bumble bees we have caught in them.” I wish I could go back in time to see the beauty. Amy’s description of each room in the house was just as detailed. The subjects that she included in her history were the house, hill, living room, kitchen, cellar, cows, pigs, chickens, stackyard, creek, and many more vivid memories. Amy’s house history can be read online at users.sisna.com/doughunt/carroll/section1.htm.

Your house histories do not need to be limited to the houses you know. Ancestry Academy has a course on “Discovering the History of Your House on Ancestry.” (www.ancestry.com/academy/course/house-histories-ancestry) This video course has some great ideas for researching houses of ancestors who lived far away or long ago. A house history is a unique way to give context to your ancestor’s lives and a treasure for generations to come.

Locality Research

Have you ever noticed that your ancestors lived in clusters in one locality? Have you ever wondered why they relocated to areas miles away from where they were born? Locality research answers these questions and more.

Kimberly Powell, professional genealogist, states in her article “Resources for Researching Local History” (www.thoughtco.com/genealogy-of-a-town-1422042) that “researching the local history of the town, village, or city where your ancestors lived is a big step toward understanding what their life was like and the people, places, and events that impacted the course of their own personal history.” Powell in her article gives seven steps on how to conduct this research.

1. Read Published Local Histories. You can find local histories in Google Books, Internet Archive and other similar websites. These local histories have profiles for each family in the community in the area. They also give the history of the locality, why people migrated there, and what people did for a living.

2. Map Out the Town. City and county atlases, plat maps, and fire insurance maps, are great resources. A Google search for these maps is a great place to start.

3. Look at the Library. State and University libraries are great places to look for manuscripts and local histories. The FamilySearch Library catalog is a must search. It will show you the maps, histories, biographies, and records that are available for the locality you are researching.

4. Dig into Court Records. At the courthouse, you will find maps of roads, deeds, probate records, and civil complaints.

5. Interview the Residents. Look for residents that are interested in local interest. You may locate them through local newspapers that carry local history columns. They may have stories that are not available elsewhere.

6. Google for the Goods. Look for local history blogs or Facebook groups. Powell suggests that your “do a search on the name of the town or village along with search terms such as history, church, cemetery, battle, or migration.” Google will find images for these locations too.

7. Read All About It (Historical Newspapers). Local newspapers are full of great information. There are obituaries, death notices, marriage announcements, local events, town news, court cases, etc. Chronicling America (chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) is a great newspaper resource.

These resources may not mention your ancestor specifically, but you can get a good idea on what life was like for them and why they migrated to where they did.

WPA (Work Projects Administration)

During the Great Depression and because of high unemployment, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal to create jobs and get the economy going again. WPA was part of the New Deal and employed millions of people to construct public buildings, roads, and infrastructure. What is surprising is that the WPA also produced a goldmine of records for genealogists.

Part of the WPA was the Historical Records Survey created to preserve the history of the United States. The Historical Records Survey employed millions of people to index census records, naturalization records, passenger lists, church records, newspapers, birth, death and marriage records, and courthouse records. People were also hired to record oral histories of slaves and pioneers, family histories, country histories, and the list goes on and on.

The workers went into archives, historical societies, universities and compiled inventories. They went into courthouses, town halls, vital statistics, and inventoried records. Not only did they compile indexes they also transcribed many of the documents they found. Some of the information they gathered could easily become lost to age and neglect.

One of the projects in Morrison County, Minnesota (morrisoncountyhistory.org) was to collect oral histories from long-time residents, histories on townships, cities, churches, schools, etc. Projects like this were conducted throughout the United States and varied by locality. The locations of records, vary by state and locality too, making them more of a challenge to locate.

The Library of Congress and the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City have enormous collections of WPA records. When searching for these records, whether at the Library of Congress or the FamilySearch catalog or even the state or local archives you will get better results if you use the keyword search terms. Search terms such as WPA, Work Projects Administration, Work Progress Administration, and (Name of state or county) + Work Projects Administration or Work Progress Administration.

Even the social history found in these projects can help you understand your ancestors more. My neighbor was fortunate to locate an oral history of an ancestor that has led her to more information about an elusive ancestor, a treasure for her. Be aware that oral histories vary in length and quality. The transcribers wrote in the dialect of the interviewees without the use of tape records. Also, the histories may have exaggerations and selective memories. The information available is well worth the search.

Recap of RootsTech 2019

Another RootsTech has come and gone, and it was a wonderful conference. Elder David A. Bednar from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commented in his keynote speech for Family Discovery Day Saturday, “RootsTech is the premier family conference in the whole world.” I agree. Deseret News reported that there were estimated to be 25,000 attendees in person and another 100,000 viewing online. Wow! Since I was one of the 100,000 that viewed online, I will give a recap of the broadcasted classes. Rootstech.org already has the streamed classes online ready for you to watch. They have twelve more classes recorded, but not streamed that need to be added to the list.

First, I have got to say that there was not one online class that I watched that I did not think was great. RootsTech did a great job in streaming popular classes. Even though I missed the energy that you get from attending RootsTech, I enjoyed watching it from the quiet comfort of my home, and I found that I could focus better. Hopefully, next year they will stream more classes considering many people who took advantage of learning from the online classes.

Wednesday’s favorite online class was “What’s New at FamilySearch” by Ron Tanner. Keeping up with FamilySearch can be a daunting job. Ron Tanner does a great job in keeping us posted on what to expect.

Thursday’s favorite was “What You Don’t Know about Ancestry” by Crista Cowan. This class included the new twists that Ancestry has added such as tags and DNA improvements.

Friday, I enjoyed “Why and How to Put Yourself into Your Family History.” Curt Witcher did a great job in showing how the chemicals in our brain change for the better with exposure to family stories.

As usual, the big genealogy companies had big announcements. Ancestry announced MyTreeTags where you can add tags to people in your family tree, New and Improved DNA Matches, where you can sort, group and view your DNA matches any way you like, and ThruLines that is replacing the DNA circles making it easier to find those with whom you have common ancestors. MyHeritage announced the Theory of Family Relativity that will show the relationship between DNA matches and AutoClusters that groups and visualized shared DNA matches. FindMyPast announced that they would publish and digitize the 1921 England and Wales census by 2022.

Irish Immigration to the U.S. through Canada

There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that your ancestor was from Ireland and you can’t find the port they immigrated through. After searching through records for the ports of Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Portland Maine, New Orleans, Atlanta, and San Francisco and finding no mention of your ancestor, it is time to turn to our friends up north. Passageway to Canada was less expensive, and from Canada, immigrants made their way to the U.S.

Grosse Ile, City of Quebec, and Montreal in Province of Quebec are the main ports used by the Irish for immigration to Canada. The ports of embarkation and ports of call included Liverpool, Belfast, Waterford, Cork, Dublin, Southampton, Bristol, and London. Geni has some great ports of emigration passenger lists. (www.geni.com/projects/Irish-emigrants-ports-of-emigration-ships-and-passengerlists/8514)

FamilySearch Wiki has an informative article “Finding an Irish Ancestor Using United States Records,” that states how immigration from Canada occurred.

“From 1894, Canadian steamship and railroads advertised to potential immigrants to the United States to instead sail into Canadian ports, and then gain entry through U.S. ports of entries into the United States. In 1894 passenger lists were created to document the movements of all immigrants from Canada into the United States. Therefore, for example, from this time, forward the Port of St Albans, Vermont ship lists become a valuable record source for tracing some immigrants to the United States but who came through Canadian ports of entry first, and then came through St Albans, in order to migrate to their final destination in the United States.”

It took over six weeks to make the trip to Canada. These “Coffin Ships” were breeding grounds for many diseases. The island of Grosse Ile became the quarantine island. It is estimated that almost 5,000 Irish died and are buried at Grosse Ile making it the largest Irish burial ground outside of Ireland. The records for Grosse Ile, located at the Library and Archives Canada, not only have death records, but there are baptisms, births, and marriage records for the Irish immigrants. When you go to the Library and Archives Canada website the search button is on the top left and says Search:Database. (www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/history-ethnic-cultural/Pages/irish.aspx) Another website to check-out is Stevemorse.org as it has Canadian Border Crossings (1895-1956) and Canadian Passenger Lists (1865-1935) that may be helpful. May your research be blessed with a bit of Irish luck.