Tuesday's Tip: Finding All Our Grandmothers Part 6

Military Records

There are stories of women serving in all of America’s wars – sometimes disguising themselves as men to serve in the earlier ones. But the sad fact is that the best military records for finding our female ancestors are Pension records and bounty land warrants.


Pension Files: 
The U.S. government awarded pensions or bounty land to officers, disabled or needy veterans, widows or orphans of veterans who met the eligibility requirements for those pensions.  In addition to the expected info such as the soldier's name, unit, term of service, narratives of events during service, etc., pension files often contain supporting documents such as affidavits, depositions of witnesses, marriage certificates, discharge papers, birth records, death certificates, pages from family bibles, and other record evidence. Even better, from the "finding women" perspective, it was fairly common for the widow of a veteran who had been receiving a pension to file for a pension in her own name. Pension files can run from a relatively few pages to well over 100 pages - needless to say, more usually is better from the researcher's view.

Pension records based on service in the U.S. Military or Federalized local militias from the American Revolution through about 1916 are held at the National Archives & Records Administration. If you can identify the war that your ancestor served in and the unit he served with, you have a good chance of locating any existing pension file. NARA has good information about obtaining these pension files on their website at: http://www.archives.gov/research/military/index.html .

Online, IArchives, in the form of their website Footnote.com, has a partnership arrangement with NARA to digitize original records and has made a good start at making digitized copies of Revolutionary War pension files and Union Civil War pension files available. And very recently, iArchives, Footnote's parent company (well, sort of, since Ancestry.com recently bought IArchives, they are the ultimate parent), and the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) have formed a project to collaborate on the digitization of 180,000 pension applications - an estimated 7.2 million pages of War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files. Like the Revolutionary War and Civil War files, this collection is available on Footnote.com - the first records, only about 1% so far, can already be searched.  Ancestry.com also has some Revolutionary War Pension index cards online and is adding new military records at a considerable pace.

Often overlooked are Pensions from the Indian Wars and these have been some of my personal favorites - particularly, the Florida War, also known as the 2nd Seminole War. This war ran from 1835-1842 and, until Viet Nam, was  the longest and most expensive war in U.S. history.

Yeah, I can hear you whispering out there..."But my ancestor lived in Ohio and would never have served in any Florida War."  It sounds reasonable, but it may not be true at all. By the time that it was over, soldiers from every state in the Union (keeping in mind that there were on 24 states when the war began and 27 when it ended) served in the Florida War, and many a good Yankee boy qualified for a federal pension there.  If your ancestor was of an age to have served, it might be worth checking out.


Bounty Land Files:
If your ancestor served in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, early Indian Wars, or the Mexican War, a search of bounty land warrant application files may be worthwhile.  For finding women, bounty land files can be a hit or miss proposition - I have never found the identity of one of my female ancestors in one of these files. While working on one of my professional projects, however, I did find one bounty land file that provided the wife's maiden name, where and when she was born, as well as where and when she married the Revolutionary War veteran - they are well worth looking for.

What Can You Find?
The short answer is...almost anything. As mentioned above, the files often include everything from personal letters to marriage records, etc. that were sent along as evidence to support the pension application. The pension file of my ancestor Sara Newton Alderman, widow of Revolutionary War veteran, Daniel Alderman, contained photocopies of a small leather-bound book in which her husband had

My most surprising personal find was in a Florida War pension file in an affidavit by my great great grandfather, Jacob T. Porter, stating that, after his wife had died, he had fathered three children out of wedlock with his housekeeper and that he freely acknowledged that he was their father - names and ages of the children were provided. GG Grandaddy was trying to qualify his late-life children as heirs so that they might claim his pension if he died before they came of age. He died before doing so, but his son kept trying until the children were too old to qualify - that file runs to 87 pages.

And then there is this item - two pages from a small, leather-bound notebook carried and scribbled in by my 4th Great Grandfather, Daniel Alderman (1748-1824), whose widow, Sarah Newton Alderman (1757-aft 1831), filed for a Widow's pension after his death. She sent the entire little book along as supporting evidence concerning her family - along with affidavits from several neighbors testifying that they had seen Daniel with the book and believed the notes therein to be his writing. These are 3 of about 14 pages:

Sarah Alderman, at the top of the right hand page is my ancestor.

Pensions and bounty land warrant files - check them out for finding your grandmother.

Tuesday's Tip: Finding All Our Grandmothers - Family Bibles

Family bibles often include marriages, including the woman’s maiden name. If you don’t have a family bible for the ancestress being researched, search for the bible.

• Check with all known relatives to see if anyone in the family has such a bible. 
• Check transcription projects for family bibles – local groups may have a project. Ask all local genealogical and historical societies, etc.
• Look in the DAR's collection of transcribed Bible records. These transcribed Bible records are available at the DAR library in Washington, D.C., local DAR chapters, and on microfilm through the Family History Centers of the LDS.
• The National Genealogical Society also has a bible transcription program that members can search online.
• Check with any and all local libraries or archives. 

This page came from a bible found in a collection of private papers that had been donated to the Florida State Archives.

Tuesday's Tip - Finding All of Our Grandmothers, Pt 4

Children's Records

If you can't find your female ancestor's name among her own records, look up records on each of your ancestor’s children, whether or not they are in your line.  Birth and baptism records, marriage records and death records all may give a maiden name – and you only need one. Also note others named, especially witnesses, as they may be her relatives

Example: I wanted to find the surname of Ann Eliza, wife of James J. Gay. Ann Eliza had been born in about 1829 in the Territory of Florida. She had married James J. Gay in about 1846, in Jackson County, Florida. A courthouse fire had destroyed all marriage records prior to 1848, along with the bulk of other court-related records.

In 1879, Thomas M. White died in Jackson County, and his  Will named Ann Eliza Gay, wife of J. J. Gay, as White's half-sister. This meant that if Thomas M. White and Ann Eliza shared the same father, Ann Eliza's surname was White. On the other hand, if they shared the same mother, it was back to square one. Since the destruction of nearly all court records seriously hampered the search for Ann Eliza's parents, I decided to investigate her family.

I found that one of her daughters, Sarah (Sallie) Rebecca Gay, had married James M. Barnes in Jackson County, Florida in 1872, and had also died in that county on 14 October 1932. A search of the Florida Death Index revealed this record:

When received, the official death certificate confirmed this information, with one small spelling change - Ann Eliza Gay's surname was Davidson. This was later corroborated by handwritten notes in Thomas M. White's Family Papers Collection which had been donated to the Florida State Archives. The notes were labeled as "genealogy notes" and were from interviews with cousins of Thomas M. White who knew him when he was alive. One of the notes read "When old Mr. Tom M. White's father died, his mother remarried to Mr. Davidson, and they had one daughter, Annie Eliza, who he named in his will."

When I looked back at the census records, I found a Lemuel Davidson living close by the family of James J. Gay, and not far from the White family ...but that is a story for another time.

Happy Hunting! 

Tuesday's Tip: Finding All Our Grandmothers, Part 3

Deeds

Because of their complexity and the rarity with which they have been digitized, land records compete only with court records for the title of most underutilized resource in genealogy.  In their favor, land records are nearly always indexed - the need to track and prove ownership of land is one of the oldest reasons for record-keeping - though I suspect that taxation is an even older motive. And while very few of them have been digitized, most surviving land records have been microfilmed.

Yeah, I know - and part of me fully agrees - that peering into a reader as microfilm scrolls across the screen is just oh so yesterday.  But prospectors have always had to wash their way through a whole lot of dirt to find their nuggets.  And if you are one of the lucky ones, you really could get the opportunity to change Mary Ann LNU into Mary Ann Maiden-Name. 

Consider this example from Alachua County, Florida Deed Book A:45 (I have a lovely image, but it turned out to be unreadable at any size that would fit here):

"This indenture made this 16th day of June, eighteen hundred and forty nine, between James H. Smith of the county and state aforesaid, of the fist part and William Dell of the County of Alachua aforesaid, of the other part. Witnesseth, that whereas a marriage has here-to-fore been had and solemnized between Mary, formerly Mary Thomas, now Mary Smith and the party of the first part, James H. Smith and the said Mary hath begotten the following named children, viz:  William F., Bryan, Fanny, James, Hampton, Milton, Florida, America, and Curling Smith...."

I will admit that this was a bit of an odd indenture - Mr. Smith appears to have been going on a long journey. This indenture was putting his major assets into the hands of Mr. Dell in a kind of trust arrangement whereby the wife and children would be sufficiently kept by the income from the assets and Dell would get the profits beyond that. 

The results, though, are not so unique. I have on several occasions found all of a man's heirs listed in a deed when the man died intestate and the land portion of his estate was being placed for sale.

Yep, until FamilySearch gets all of its county records online, it will usually require using older technology - and it may sometimes be a little tedious. But for me, the "Eureka!" moments are worth it. 

Good Hunting!

Treasure Chest Thursday - The Hand-Carved Cane

I have seen some pretty fancy canes. Years ago, I had an Army buddy who collected walking sticks - everything from fancy canes with silver heads and ivory inlays to a staff that he insisted came from a Tibetan Lama. But my hand-carved cane is of another sort altogether. Mine is a limb cut from a grapefruit tree in my grandfather's back yard, with a handle carved and smoothed and with a rubber tip added to keep it from slipping. That's it below - if you look closely, you can see that nearly 60 years later it still has the bark on it.

 My cane was a practical, if poor, man's solution to a need. Big Grandaddy made the cane so that Little Granddaddy could safely get around the house without falling. You see, like most folks, I had two granddaddys when I was a boy, but, unlike most folks, both of mine were on my mother's side of the family. My father's parents had both died before I was born, but on Mama's side, I was luckier - I had Little Granddaddy and Big Granddaddy.

Little Granddaddy stood about 5'6" tall and had not a spare ounce on his small frame. His name was Thomas Harmon Helms and he was born 30 October 1868, in Blue Springs, Barbour County, Alabama, and he was the father of Big Granddaddy, my grandfather. Big Grandaddy was Alto Lee Helms, and he stood nearly 6'5" tall - he clearly inherited his genes from his mother's Gunter family - she was nearly 6' tall, herself.

Little Granddaddy was the son of a Confederate Civil War veteran turned farmer and the grandson of a Primitive Baptist preacher. As a boy, he attended his grandfather's church and apparently the experience took, because Little Grandaddy spent his entire adult life as a Primitive Baptist preacher. He firmly believed that preaching was a calling and not a job. He preached on Sunday and sometimes on Wednesday nights, ministered to his congregation as needed, and worked hard all week earning his living as best he could.

Big Granddaddy and his father, Little Granddaddy

Of course, I didn't know any of that back then; to me he was just Little Granddaddy. It wasn't until the last year of his life that I even figured out that the reason that Mama called him Granddaddy was because he was her granddaddy.

What I remember him for are the days when Big Granddaddy would set the little table and a chair under the Chinaberry tree and Granny would bring out a glass and a big pitcher of iced tea and set them on the table. Little Granddaddy would sit in the chair drinking tea and watching me and my cousins play in the yard, occasionally admonishing us to stay out of the road - and every now and then sharing his tea with us. As we grew,  he began to teach us. He showed us where the yellow-jacket nest was in the field next to the house and warned us to avoid it. And he taught us how to select the ripest guavas and tangerines off of the trees in Granny's back yard.

One my strongest memories involves the old cane and the one time in my life that Little Granddaddy ever yelled at me. It was a day when none of the cousins were there, just my sister and me - I was maybe 7 or so at the time. We were playing in the yard when sister violated the kid code in some way that earned her - in my totally unbiased opinion - physical retribution.  She knew it, of course, even as she did it - so the chase was on. Off around the side of the house and up the front porch stairs.  I was gaining, no more than 3 stair steps behind her, with arm raised to deliver the smack that she so richly deserved...for whatever it was that she did. She cleared the steps and darted for the front door and I knew that I would catch her when she stopped to open the door.

And at that moment, just as I cleared the steps, Little Granddaddy stepped between us from the side of the porch where he had been standing unseen.  Looking down at me  with those angry eyes and shaking that old cane above his head he bellowed at me "Boy, you don't ever hit a girl!"  Standing there with that raised cane, with his felt hat shoved back on his head and his white shirt almost glowiing in the bright morning sun, he rattled me so much that it might as well have been the voice of god rolling over me. I never forgot that moment. 

Little Granddaddy lived until I was nine years old and to this day I have fond memories of him.  Years later, when all of the cousins were grown, I told the story of the day that he yelled at me during a family reunion. Big Granddaddy apparently heard and remembered. When he died a few years later, the old cane came to me - 32 years later, I still have it. 

And every now and then, I still tell my own grown sons Little Granddaddy stories because I want to help them understand that the man who raised them was once and forever deeply touched by a man born 142 years ago...and to maybe help them understand that history is only someone else's yesterday.

Thomas Harmon Helms, Little Granddaddy talking to me as I lie on his daybed on the closed portion of Big Granddaddy's front porch. I was about three - he was already over 80. 

Wedding Wednesday: Finding All of Our Grandmothers, Part 3

Newspapers

Society Pages - Check for Engagements, wedding announcements, and anniversaries. The big anniversaries (50 years+) often have some family history. Also, announcements of vists from or to out of town relatives - brothers, sisters, parents - were common in the late 1800s to mid-1900s.

 

Obituaries: - If it is the woman's obituary, look for brothers and parents. In online newspaper searches, look for the woman's married name in the obituaries of parents or brothers.  This one gives her maiden name and also has both parents and a brother named:

But this one is still the best obituary that I ever found. It gives her date and place of birth, names her parents, names her husband, gives the date and place of marriage, identifies a town where the family previously lied, names a couple of her children and names one of her sons-in-law. It is obituary to dream of :

Good Hunting!

Tuesday's Tip: Finding All our grandmothers, Part 2

Census Records

The 1850 through 1930 U. S. Census  reports recorded the names of every member of the household. From 1880 forward, the relationship of each person to the head of household was also recorded.  Look very closely at people in the household who have different surnames.  An aged or widowed parent of the woman of the house may be living with the family, or they may have taken in a deceased brother’s child. 

 Example: The 1850 U.S. Census of Stewart County, Georgia, shows 21 year old Reason Jerkins and his new bride Mary (note that the married within the year columns is checked). My goal is to learn Mary's maiden name.

By 1860, Reason and Mary had moved to Mississippi; the 1860 and 1870 Census reports there record only themselves and their children in the household.  But on the census of Hinds County, MS, we find that the now widowed Mary Jerkins has her widowed mother, Elizabeth Bates living with her.

If we look back at the 1850 Census of Stewart County, Georgia, we notice that the family recorded just above Reason and Mary Jerkins is that of  William Bates, age 21 - of an age to be Mary's brother. And just before William, we find Elizabeth Bates who is likely the same Elizabeth Bates living with Mary Jerkins in 1880.