The Family Tree Problem Solver: Tried-And-True Tactics for Tracing Elusive Ancestors

THE family tree
PROBLEM
SOLVER

Tried-and-true tactics for tracing elusive ancestors

MARSHA HOFFMAN RISING

The Family Tree Problem Solver.
Copyright © 2005 and 2011 by Marsha Hoffman Rising. Manufactured in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Family Tree Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236. (800) 289-0963. Revised first edition.

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.

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Library of Congress Cataloging has cataloged the first edition as follows:
Rising, Marsha Hoffman

  Family tree problem solver / Marsha Hoffman Rising — 1st ed.

      p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-55870-685-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
eISBN 13: 978-1-4403-1521-3

  1. Genealogy. 2. United States — Genealogy — Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.

CS14.R57 2005

929 .1 072073 — dc22

2004058108

CIP    

Revised First Edition ISBN 978-1-4403-1193-2

PUBLISHER/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR:
Allison Stacy

FIRST EDITION EDITOR:
Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, CG

REVISED FIRST EDITION EDITOR:
Jacqueline Musser

DESIGNER:
Christy Miller

TREE ILLUSTRATION:
Cat Scott

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR:
Mark Griffin

Elizabeth Shown Mills, teacher par excellence and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, who encouraged me to teach genealogy

Marsha Hoff man Rising CG, FASG, was a professional genealogist who specialized in problem solving related to nineteenth century research. She became a certified genealogist in 1992. She served as vice president of the American Society of Genealogists, vice president of the National Genealogical Society and served on the boards of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Board for Certification of Genealogists, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and as president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the Genealogical Speaker's Guild.

Marsha was known for her problem-solving lectures and began teaching practical and effective methods for solving genealogical problems in 1981. She lectured at most national conferences of the National Genealogical Society and the Federation of Genealogical Societies. She taught the Advanced Methodology class at the Institute of Historical Genealogical Research at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, from 1987–1995.

During her more than twenty-five year professional career in genealogy, she received the National Genealogical Society Award of Merit (1989), was elected a Fellow of the Utah Genealogical Society (1990), received the FGS George E. Williams Award (1991), the National Genealogical Society Award of Excellence (1992), and the FGS Malcolm H. Stern Humanitarian Award (1999).

She is the author of numerous articles published in
The American Genealogist, Ozar'kin
, and the
National Genealogical Society Quarterly
.

Marsha died peacefully at the age of sixty-four on February 17, 2010, after a thirteen-and-a-half-year battle with ovarian cancer.

Foreword

by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack

Introduction

1
The First Step: Analyzing the Problem and Planning a Strategy for Success

A research model based on solid principles will focus and direct your work. The first step in the process is “search,” not research. Surveying what has already been done on your family and in the county in which they lived is a necessary step, but many researchers never get beyond searching. Serious research depends on a different perspective and tenacious study.

2
Finding Births, Marriages, and Deaths Before Civil Registration

Civil registration of births and deaths did not begin in most states until the twentieth century. How can you find those important “hooks” for identifying people before the civil registration laws? This chapter is a discussion of the many types of records that provide dates for births, deaths, and marriages, and cautions about their use.

3
Why Does the Census Taker Always Miss
My
Ancestor?

The census is one of the most vital tools for genealogical research. A random survey at the Family History Library showed that 44 percent of the researchers were using the census. Often, however, the individual for whom you are searching, especially if you are primarily using indexes and/or websites, will not appear. What are the steps you should take in such an instance? This chapter discusses why individuals often do not appear where you expect them, ways to be sure that he wasn't actually missed, and what to do if he wasn't there.

4
Consider the Collateral Kin: Genealogical Research in the Full Family Context

Your ancestor's associates can be used to form a network in a new community to create collateral families, find new records, and link new communities to old ones. Learn how to identify those important to your ancestor and discard the many others who will not provide essential clues, as well as what to study about those who do prove significant and how to find those records.

5
Your Day in Court

Using more advanced court records, such as probate, guardianship, and circuit court records, will enhance your research study. This chapter explores actual problems that were solved by a more careful examination of the above records.

6
What to Do When the Courthouse Burned

You have just tracked your family to a new home. It means new records to search, new family connections to make, and a new area to explore. Nothing makes the genealogist's heart sink more than, when turning to a source book or library catalogue, finding a county entry that reads, “Courthouse burned; no records prior to 1900 have survived.” This chapter offers suggestions for overcoming that problem.

7
Give Me Land — Lots of Land

The most helpful source for documenting and connecting people and their relationships is land records. Our ancestors' constant quests for land are very helpful to researchers, and our state and federal government helped by wanting to distribute it. This chapter includes a description of the type of land records genealogists should search for and case studies of how they can prove connections.

8
Sorting Individuals of the Same Name

One of the most difficult problems in genealogy is being sure that the right record is attached to the right person. This chapter provides methods for separating individuals of the same name in the same community and for linking people in one community to those in another.

9
The Critical Connection: Finding Ancestors Who Lived Before 1850

Research before the 1850 census is difficult not only because of the change in form of the census, but also because it was the period of the great migration in American history. This chapter offers solid methods for tracking those early nineteenth century ancestors.

10
Ten Mistakes
Not
to Make in Your Family Research

Common errors and pitfalls are discussed, followed by suggestions on how to avoid them.

11
Analysis of Evidence

Collecting names and records without analyzing, thinking, and evaluating them is like buying eggs at the store and expecting chickens. This chapter will show you how to assess and analyze the records you find.

Find Your Ancestors Online

by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack

DNA Facts and Common Myths

by Lauren Gamber

Glossary of Genealogy Terms

from the editors of
Family Tree Magazine

Research Logs and Charts

Because you've picked up this book, you no doubt have a genealogical problem or two that needs solving. You aren't alone. Sooner or later, every genealogist hits brick walls in their search, whether it's sorting out two men of the same name in the same community, uncovering a birth date for an ancestor, or finding a maiden name for your fourth great-grandmother. Though frustrating, this is actually the fun part of the genealogy! Here is where you put to the test all of your analytical thinking and research skills.

You are no different from anyone else researching his or her ancestors. You no doubt began the climb up your family tree spurred by family stories — or lack of stories — and a curiosity to learn more about those who came before you. With the launch of more and more genealogical websites, you, like countless others, thought this would be a simple project to tackle one rainy afternoon. As you dutifully recorded the names, dates, and places on a sheet of notebook paper or on charts or in a genealogy software program, you might have realized that discovering your ancestors wasn't as easy as you thought.

There are missing generations or conflicting details. There are two women named Ethel Heller and you can't tell which one is your great-grandmother. You make contact with someone researching your surname, but they give you a different birth date for Uncle Sid. How do you sort through all this and know what information is most likely correct? Suddenly, that afternoon project takes on a life of its own, and you are determined to discover more. In chapter one, “The First Step: Analyzing the Problem and Planning a Strategy for Success” and chapter two, “Finding Births, Marriages, and Deaths Before Civil Registration,” Marsha Hoffman Rising will show you how to analyze the information you've already gathered, and tell you what to do if you can't find a birth, marriage, or death record for your ancestor.

If you've been successful in tracing your ancestors through all the available censuses, you have probably discovered that the 1850 census is the earliest enumeration to name all the members of a household (except slaves). The 1790 through 1840 censuses offer only the names of heads of households and tally marks indicating the number of others living in the households. This pre-1850 period is where many genealogists bog down and abandon genealogists bog down and abandon hope. In chapter three, “Why Does the Census Taker Always Miss
My
Ancestor,” and chapter nine, “The Critical Connection: Finding Ancestors Who Lived Before Ancestors Who Lived Before 1850,” Marsha will help dig you out of that black hole of research.

Not knowing how to interpret the census data and not realizing that there are additional sources to research becomes a stumbling block to your research, but one you can hurdle as you learn new research techniques and develop your analysis skills.

As you delve deeper into your family history, you discover that each individual ancestral life is just as complex as your own. While we may find a land record for an ancestor, we tend to overlook all that went into his decision to pick up and move, and why some ancestors migrated while others didn't. Each family evolved and changed while being impacted by the same factors that affect our lives today: the economy, weather, politics, changes in the family, and more. Each geographic area and each time period in our ancestors' lives offer new challenges to researchers. Even if you've been researching for twenty years, when you encounter another branch of your family tree that takes you to a new locality in another era you are at square one and, therefore, not much different from someone who decided to take up genealogy just last week. In chapter seven, “Give Me Land — Lots of Land,” and chapter eight, “Sorting Individuals of the Same Name,” Marsha will not only provide the key reason people migrated — the opportunity to own land — but can help you learn to distinguish individuals of the same name in the same community.

Researching our ancestors and overcoming brick walls means studying the time period and place where our ancestors lived, as well as analyzing and interpreting fragments of information in surviving records. But all this needs to be done with an understanding of people and their typical behaviors for their era. This is one reason Marsha became nationally known as an expert at genealogical problem solving. Before becoming a genealogist, she was a social worker whose job it was to know and understand human nature. She also loved history, and when she began researching her family history, she instinctively knew to study her ancestors' lives in their historical context. She combined her insight into people and their lives with the genealogical research process. She knew that people rarely do things in isolation. They are surrounded by family and part of their community, which has an impact on where they lived, where they worshipped, what type of work they did, whom they married, and whom they sued. In chapter five, “Your Day in Court,” Marsha takes you into the courthouse to see what connections and juicy items you can find in a variety of court records.

Genealogical research has often been likened to a jigsaw puzzle. We get bits and pieces of information from this source or that source. A source by itself rarely tells the full story of our ancestors' lives. Additionally, there is nothing more frustrating than encountering missing records, burned records, or records that exist but don't include our ancestors. But that is the way with genealogy. This missing data requires family historians to put the jagged edges of each piece of research into a semblance of a whole to form a more complete picture. Knowing how to view and interpret that half-finished mosaic of facts and learning to make the most of what records you do find is the difference between success and failure as you resolve your genealogical dilemmas. In chapter six, “What to Do When the Courthouse Burned,” Marsha shows you how to surmount a common problem most genealogists, especially those who have Southern ancestors, face, and in chapter eleven, “Analysis of Evidence,” you'll see how to analyze all the information you've gathered.

Marsha Rising was one of the first, if not
the
first, genealogist to present lectures on genealogical problem solving at the annual national conferences sponsored by the National Genealogical Society and the Federation of Genealogical Societies. She loved to teach and taught problem-solving courses at the National Institute on Genealogical Research in Washington, DC, and at the Institute of Historical and Genealogical Research at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.
The Family Tree Problem Solver
is a culmination of her popular lectures and courses on the topic. One of her most well-attended presentations was “Ten Mistakes
Not
to Make in Your Family Research.” You'll find the essence of this insightful and useful lecture as chapter ten.

Marsha doesn't present just the theory of scaling brick walls in
The Family Tree Problem Solver
, but the practical advice she gleaned during her long career. Most of the techniques she shares were fine-tuned while she was researching and writing her legacy to the genealogical world:
Opening the Ozarks: The First Families in Southwest Missouri
. The goal of that project, which took sixteen years to research and compile, was to discover the origins of the first one thousand pioneers who bought federal land from the Springfield, Missouri, Land Office. The office opened in June 1835, and the first one thousand purchases were made by March 1839. Of the one thousand, she found origins prior to settlement in Missouri for 853. Marsha consulted primary records from more than seven hundred counties spanning the states of Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois, Georgia, South Carolina, Oregon, California, and Texas.

In dealing with the early nineteenth century, before the 1850 census gave us the names of all free household members, there can be no doubt that Marsha encountered more than her fair share of genealogical research problems. I remember our many trips to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, working at the microfilm reader next to hers while Marsha went through countless rolls of unindexed court records, tax lists, and deeds. She read them page by page, many volumes containing faint and nearly illegible handwriting. I admired her stamina and patience. She also visited numerous courthouses when the records weren't accessible any other way. To discover the origins of 853 pioneers out of a thousand meant that she had to become the expert at solving tough research problems. We are incredibly fortunate that she shared the resulting knowledge and her expertise with us in
The Family Tree Problem Solver
.

Sadly, Marsha is no longer with us. She died peacefully at the age of sixty-four on February 17, 2010, after a thirteen-and-a-half-year battle with ovarian cancer.

I had met Marsha in 1989, when I attended my first national conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was one of the many genealogical superstars I stood in awe of. Our initial meeting was brief, exchanging pleasantries. We gradually became friends over the years, but we didn't become best friends until after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1997. Although she lived in Missouri and I lived in Colorado, our friendship grew through faxes, then e-mails, over the phone, and during annual conferences and many research trips to Salt Lake City, where we roomed together. While genealogy was a focus in both of our lives, we found more in common besides our love of dead ancestors.

After her cancer diagnosis, Marsha became a world traveler. She visited seven continents, forty-two countries, and all fifty states. For each destination, she read in advance about the culture and history. In particular, she enjoyed China and Chinese culture and history. A favorite book was
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
, an autobiographical family history by Jung Chang.

Not just a life-long learner through her travels, Marsha was also a voracious reader. She “graded” each book she read, giving it an A, B, or C. She also kept a list of books she had read each year. Usually, she averaged some fifty or more titles annually. One year, she bought us both a copy of
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
. We each initialed the books we'd read. She had read 202 to my 53. She insisted I quit working, so I could spend all my time reading to catch up. If only that had been an option! She read all types of books — fiction, nonfiction, contemporary, history — but she especially liked well-written true crime stories, like those by Ann Rule. One of Marsha's all-time favorite novels, though, was Margaret Mitchell's
Gone with the Wind
.

Marsha also loved watching old movies, and her video and DVD library rivaled her book collection. She was appalled when she discovered I hadn't seen Audrey Hepburn in
The Nun's Story
or Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant in
An Affair to Remember
and immediately shipped me her videos. Of course,
Gone with the Wind
was one of her favorite movies, too, but
Ben-Hur
was the film she hailed above all others.

She was practical, funny, upbeat, and compassionate. Before Marsha entered the world of professional genealogy, she was a social worker and taught for a year at Troy State University. Then she was hired to become the first director of the Missouri State University undergraduate Social Work program, where she guided that Work program, where she guided that program though accreditation. She worked for the Jackson County Juvenile Court in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Springfield, Missouri, she was on the steering committee for the Child Advocacy Council. It was in Springfield where she met pediatrician Dr. Dean Rising, and they married in 1974.

Marsha had planned to pursue a Ph.D. in social work, but when she realized she was choosing a university program based on where the good genealogy libraries were located, she decided to change directions and become a professional genealogist.

Marsha became a Certified Genealogist in 1986, and over time, she held positions in every national organization: the founding president of the Genealogical Speakers Guild, the president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, a Fellow and president of the American Society of Genealogists, the vice president of the National Genealogical Society, and a trustee of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Association of Professional Genealogists, and the Board for Certification of Genealogists. She published numerous articles in the leading genealogical journals and several books, the most popular of which is the book you hold in your hands now. She also published several genealogical references, the magnum opus being
Opening the Ozarks
. Her last book is on one of her own ancestral lines,
Descendants of Nathan Brown (c1731–1779) of Newberry County, South Carolina, Preble County, Ohio, Coweta County, Georgia, and Warren County, Illinois: A Presbyterian Family
.

Along with these publications, Marsha also abstracted newspapers, transcribed diaries, and recorded unpublished military records. Her full bibliography and numerous abstracted records are online at
www.warrencarmack.com/MarshaRising/default.htm
.

In this revised edition of Marsha's
The Family Tree Problem Solver
, you will find two new additions in Appendices A and B. Both were originally published in
Family Tree Magazine
and complement Marsha's problem-solving advice found within these pages. The editors selected “Find Your Ancestors Online,” which I wrote. It deals with problem solving as you search the internet for family history information, and offers advice on how to know what information is reliable and which information you need to use with caution.