Thanks to the genius that is Casefile Clues (read my post about why you should subscribe to this wonderful genealogy tutorial resource) I have been looking at old deeds from the County Clerk's Office. This can be somewhat difficult because there is no easy way to look for really old records other than going through all the indexes and looking for the surnames you are researching.
Anyway, this is not the topic of this post. I found the following paragraph in one of these old deeds:
It reads:
neither said property nor any part thereof shall be used for negro tenements nor rented to negroes, nor sold and conveyed, either directly or indirectly to any negro or person of African descrent [sic], within a period od [sic] fifty years from the date of this instrument.
This is from Decatur, DeKalb County, Georgia. What year do you think this is? Take a guess in the comments. I will write an update after a couple of days with the answer.
Not sure why I was so surprised about this. I guess I have never actually seen it in writing before. In a real live county document. How could this kind of discrimination take place out in the open? How is that possible?
I found another deed for the same property dated six years later and the same paragraph was in it except now they changed the limitation from 50 years to only 40.
I watched WDYTYA? last night with my wife (and almost 7 million others) and have to admit, we had a pretty good time. If you didn't get a chance to watch the first episode with Sarah Jessica Parker, you can do it right now:
I've been reading a lot of different reviews today and have to agree with most of them, but here is what stuck in my mind:
1. Wait a second, she comes from this big family and she's all about family and yet she had no idea who her great-grandmother was until the taping of this show? I find that hard to believe. I think this was just a setup for the show to be able to go and "discover" SJP's American roots.
2. The first thing I thought when they brought out the obit was that if the son was born in late September 1850 then his father couldn't have died in 1849. That would have been my first question when presented with the evidence and not "was he part of the gold rush?"
3. Geni.com published a family tree for SJP before the show aired. It had about 9 people in it. Today it looks like this and includes all the Hodges and Elwells:
You're going to need to click the image to see the a larger view of the tree. But I am surprised that the show didn't show a tree like this instead of the single vertical line that only showed parent-child relationships.
4. The funny thing is that a lot of the "findings" are pretty easy to replicate.
5. I wish they had followed the GPS to show why John S. Hodge in the 1850 census is the right one.
6. Only took about 11 minutes to mention Ancestry.com by name.
7. I wish they would have shown how they located the old letters detailing how John S. Hodge died.
8. I love some of the grandiose declarations such as "you find hundreds of documents like these."
9. One of my frustrations with Ancestry.com is that a lot of the database have no images. Here's the entry for Esther Elwell in the Salem Witches database:
Seriously, what does this give you? And I couldn't figure out how to find this entry through the regular search results. Because there are 348 results for the exact search of Esther Elwell and none of the categories are going to point me to the Salem Witches database:
10. By the way, if you do a Google search for Esther Elwell the first 5 pages of results (all I really checked) point you to a malware site. All the same site. Why would Google allow that to even happen? Someone did a great job of blasting the search engine and hoping people end up clicking one of those 50+ bogus links:
11. At some point in the show they show an Ancestry.com search and for some reason they use "old" search. I wonder why?
12. I wonder if they try to see if SJP's husband's tree (Matthew Broderick) overlap at all since they are both on the show.
13. I am surprised that the "young man with so much old information" couldn't have told SJP that Esther Elwell was not executed. I guess it's smart editing to make for good television.
14. I wish they would have said something about collaborating with other researchers because if you go to GenForum and look at the Elwell Family Forum and search for Esther Dutch you find this:
On page 12 of the Rev Jacob Thomas Elwell book "The Elwell Family in America", it says that Rachel Elwell was born Feb 21, 1688 (doesn't say where) and that she married Peter Lurvey. The timing is right.
Her parents were Jacob Elwell and Abigail Vinson. Jacob born Gloucester MA 8/10/1662.
Jacob's parents were Samuel Elwell and Esther Dutch. Samuel was born 1635 or 1636 in Dorchester MA. Esther was taken to Ipswich MA for examination on charges of witchcraft, but was released a week later.
15. They could have toned down the un-be-lievables and the wows a little. I wish I had a way (or time) to count the number of "incredible" and "amazing" that were said.
Anyway, I have a lot of other thoughts but I'm going to have to stop at this point. I loved the show and thought it was really well done. It captivates the audience and will probably encourage a lot of people to check out their own genealogies, so everyone wins. Sounds like Ancestry.com had a huge surge in traffic after the show with slow search times and general sluggishness.
Yesterday during scanfest, some people said they were going to sadly miss several of the episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? starting March 5th on NBC. Aside from the funny comments about setting up a DVR or (yikes!) a VCR, I mentioned that if the show was popular enough someone will do us all a favor and upload it to YouTube. So I figured I would go search the site for some of the BBC episodes and found them all there broken up into several short segments.
I have to say that none of the names of the people on the show rang a bell except for Stephen Fry. So here's the entire episode:
I've read that the US show will be significantly different than this in format and length (a lot of wasted time on commercials and previews of what we're going to see after the commercials), but this gives us a flavor of what's to come.
Like pretty much everyone else who's into genealogy I have been following the wave of new shows already shown on TV or coming soon to a screen near you. I have a few comments and wanted to share my thoughts with my readers.
Faces of America - I was very excited about this show, but overall I am a bit disappointed. I am not sure that the format of cutting a slice in time and then connecting the different stories to it is very appealing to me. I would probably prefer to go deeper than wider. The show is well done, but barely scratches the surface of what is possible to research. I guess PBS was trying to get wider appeal to its audience of non-genea-nuts.
I watched the first two episodes with my wife, who is a non-nut. I am not sure she was 'that' interested. Some historical facts are absolutely mind-boggling and could have been more throughly presented. For example, the fact that on one hand allied forces were liberating Jewish survivors from Nazi concentration camps compared with the incarceration in concentration camps of American citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent would have been interesting. How could something like this happen? How is it possible that this took place in America?
In any case, I like the historical aspect of the show, but as I've read elsewhere, I would have liked more meat on the bones. How were these resources located? How were these 'Book of Life' volumes put together, how long did it take and how much did it cost? Maybe that's just my curiousity...
The Generations Project - This is a fantastic show! The host is terrific and the filmed segments really show how any person can have an interesting ancestry. I would have liked to see a little more of the research, but perhaps that would have caused the show to be a little dull. I love this show and I think everyone reading this should tune in and watch it.
Who Do You Think You Are? - I am really looking forward to this show. I think that doing an episode on each celebrity is a better format than 'Faces' and will allow the viewer to follow the storyline better. It looks to have the most polished production as well, but that probably comes with a much higher price tag.
I will probably have more to say once WDYTYA starts. But so far, I love the new genealogy themed shows that are starting to sprout everywhere. Enjoy!
I've been going over old census entries to see if I can find new clues as well as cite my sources properly. While this is somewhat tedious, I've already found a lot of information I've overlooked in the past. Here's an interesting example, the 1930 US Census for my wife's great-grandfather Saul Hytowitz and his family. Here's the interesting bit:
These are the columns 25-31 that deal with occupation, employment and veterans. I couldn't figure out what his occupation was from the handwriting although I can clearly see he worked in the shoe industry. Luckily, I ran across a blog post on Ancestories that had a link to a website that details the instructions for the census enumerators. And then I found this:
217. Distinguish a traveling salesman from a salesman in a store; the former should be reported as a commercial traveler.
I knew he was a shoe salesman because I found that out in the 1930 Pittsburgh City Directory and other sources:
But I didn't know he was a travelling shoe salesman. And guess what? His son Joe does the exact same thing.
A few other interesting things:
1. The city directory shows Saul owning the house on Straka Street with his children renting space there. The 1930 census says he's the one renting the house for $73 a month. I wonder which one is right. I wonder if he bought the house sometime during the year. 2. I just noticed that Saul's parents, Jacob and Rose are also in the city directory. Didn't see that before. 3. The veterans section of the census shows that Saul was a veteran and served in World War I. His son Joe was also a veteran. I need to figure out how to get their service records. I didn't notice that before either.
UPDATE: Steve Morse has a great little page that deciphers the occupation codes in the 1930 Census. I entered 4290 and got 'Commercial travelers' in 'Retail store or retail trade'.
I saw the great 2010 Census ad on the SuperBowl last night and that gave me a great idea. First, check out the ad:
So anyway, that got me thinking. I don't really remember filling out a census form or talking to anyone in 2000. I think I got something in the mail, but not confident that I filled it out or mailed it in. I know I will be a lot more prepared this time around in 2010.
So my idea is to save my 2010 Census info in my genealogical database. And maybe even ask all living relatives in the tree to send me a copy of their forms. This way I will be 72 years ahead of the curve. And when I eventually pass this burden on to someone else, they won't have to wait until 2082 to see who we were and what we did. I can do the same thing every decade. Imagine my great-grandson's surprise when he is handed an antique flash drive that includes every census the family has taken in the past 70 years...
My question about doing this is - is it legal? From the 2010 Census site I got the following:
Census information is protected by law, and everyone who works for the census must swear that they will never disclose any personal information. Penalties for any employee who might share that information are severe: up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. By law, the Census Bureau can’t share your information with anyone — including other federal agencies and law enforcement. Your information is safe.
But does that mean I can't share my own information or ask relatives to send me their forms? I don't think so. Obviously if it's in a genealogical database that is not properly protected, this information might leak and cause all sorts of issues for some people, but the same can be said about all the info I already have about living relatives, right?
What do you think of this idea? Isn't it a great way to get a lot of information about your current living relatives that you might already know? I didn't see any question that might seem to personal.
I am not sure what the appeal is with the awful show called Jersey Shore, but I guess MTV has to air something since they don't show videos any more. So the whole Snooki phenomenon has gone insane and with it a couple of sites that let you download a PNG file of the orange one where you can insert her into other images (site 1, site 2).
I decided to have a little fun and add Snooki to some historical images. If you decide to make your own, post a link in the comments!
