Finding thier lives
Reading Documents in great detail can do two things. One is - I can get way distracted in the story they tell, or two - I can find unexpected details about the daily lives of one or more ancestors. I might not have expected to find this ancestor in the document of a name I don't recognize. A great example is court records. If I didn't look at every record, not just the ones that concern my ancestor"s vital records, I wouldn't discover the wonderful little details about the what and wheres of their lives, between the birth, marriage and death records. I get a marvelous kick out of finding that someone paid a few dollars for several acres of land, for instance. But, to know that a person related to me was shopping an estate sale and picked up a small kitchen item or 10 hogs is the stuff of life. Wonder if you buy hogs on impulse? A great example of what you can learn is found on a short document I read in the Yancey Co. NC probate records. It was the final payout disclosure to a deceased person's heirs. It is written on the opposite page in the probate books to one of my ancestors estate records. This record shows the ususal date, the deceased, the administrators and the purpose of the document in the top line or two. It then lists several small checks that were paid out "to the heirs." Also a hog and 2 bushels of wheat, "to the heirs." There is one line that identified the taxes paid of about $3. The thing that caught my attention, however, were the entries for "S H Hall 15 days work.....$15," and "D H Silver 10 days work....$10." These men were listed at the bottom of the document as the "guardians." This term seems to be used when the heirs are all or in part under age. If the deceased had a long life, and has made a will which assigns persons to administer the specifics of the will, they are therefore called Administrators. The Guardians are most often court appointed, but may be among extended family. The "Guardians" in this case were being paid for their hours of work on behalf of the heirs of this deceased at the rate of $1 per day. I therefore can know that a reasonable "minimum" wage in September of 1875, in Yancey Co. NC was $1 a day.
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Scan, Save, Read
I don't actually read every page I am reasearching through. This little bit of info is not vital to documenting the ancestral facts. For me it just makes the facts more interesting. What I do is scan the pages for names. Usually it am looking for family "last" names, but for a few individuals in large families, it pays to look for their first names. In my family, for instance, my brain stops on Leander before it stops on Ray, although he is actually Leander Ray. I do look for Leander's brothers, father, uncles too, but generally when I run across "Rays", I stop and look up the specific names so I can drop off the ones not closely related to me. Once I have found only one name on the document I recognize as family, I try to save it. I may then decide to check it for other names, or not. The research goes faster that way. I find that taking a look at the documents again when my mind is not in scan mode at a later time, benefits my actually seeing all the names on the record that pertain to my family. Otherwise, my brain overload dulls my ablility to process the information. But the obvious joy to looking closer, is finding the tidbits of fun info, such as I noticed in the document above. This makes the story come alive. I don't feel like I am just putting up data. Instead, I am getting to know the people I research, and I see them in the environment where they actually lived. Its both nostalgic and eye opening. And even a little fun for a person who hates history. Or thought she did.Scan, Save, Read
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Fact or Facts?
I still can't remember the dates unless it is an exceptional fact. But I do consider getting them right imperative. So when the dates on diferent documents and in different researchers posts are not the same for the same event, (death for instance,) I need to know why. And which one is correct. I found that dates taken from old death records are guesstimates. The person who places the stone often puts up a different date, based on info available to them, that was not available to the person writing the death certificate. I looked very closely at a number of death cerificates which seemed to indicate that numbers of people were born and died on the same day. Cause? The deceased may have told someone filling out papers an age. Since they were sick, that age is sometimes wrong. (My mother for instance would have given them a date 10 years earlier than what it was, due to a stroke.) Based on that age, someone figured back that many years from the death date and entered a birth year. This discrepency seemed to have promted a custom to put the number of yrs, months and days a person lived on the stone itself. Thereby, clearing any unknowns...or so you would think. Because it became the custom, it was then entered this way on the death certificate and became a riddle of errors. Add to that the delayed birth and death records that were entered from Bibles and family tradition into the formerly unrecorded records system for the sake of getting Social Security numbers, or applying for benefits, and a whole new set of dates comes into play. Fact or Facts?
Then consider the errors the parents made for example, which were never corrected and it is possible to have 4 sets of dates which disagree. I am a prime example of a record that was never changed. I was given papers to fill out on my daughter's birth, the day following minor surgery, just after she was born. I gave the ages of my husband and myself for our birthdays which were coming up in a month, rather than our actual ages. In my mind we were already a year older, and because the drugs had not worn off, I simply recorded us a year older. Due to lack of funds, I didn't change it for years. I wonder even now if it has been fixed. Another example is of my mother. Her dad didn't give their whole names when he filled out the papers on his children. It was obvious why he didn't give Mom a name, because it was touch and go whether she would survive. But it is this very habit of his that makes him stand out in the records. If an H. Roland has an unnamed child, in Buncombe or Yancey Co., NC between certain years....It is my grandfather. Then match the dates to the birthdays of Mother's brothers and sisters, and you have an exact record for there births. Add to that the records of his brothers and sisters and cousins records in this same time period, and you know you are looking at my family.
It is therefore, important to look closely at more than the singular record. So much more can be learned. And my security in the facts I list rises. The stories are far too many to tell, but I hope knowing I have gone this extra mile to ensure I know as much as I can, will add credence to my work.
Not all dates recorded have had this kind of scrutiny, because it is like building a house very slowly with very small bricks. The house is not done til the last brick is laid. I will inevitably have to change some dates, and even documents credited to the wrong person, whose name is the same. But the best effort has been made to make an ongoing test of the truth.
