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Archive for July 27, 2009
Another Texas School Record–With an Ironic Twist
I posted this one at GenealogyWise:
This record is for my grand-uncles Carl Manson and Otis Preston Manson (who was known as Preston.) It’s signed by my great-grandfather, Otis Manson (1871-1950). The historical ironies reflected here is that the school trustee who also signed the card, Daniel Henry Sanford, was the grandson of Reuben Sanford (1796-1846), whose family owned as a slave my gg-grandfather Billy Sanford (1809-1916). They “acquired” him in Virginia, took him to Tennessee when they moved there in 1819, and finally brought him to Texas when they moved again in 1854. Billy Sanford was the father of my great-grandmother, Otis’ wife Betty Sanford Manson (1872-1955).
Texas School Census Records
Over at GenealogyWise, in the Texas History Hunters Group, Barbara Cunningham pointed out that Texas school census records can be a 1890 census substitute. “In some counties, the County Clerk keeps and maintains the records. In other counties, they are kept by the County Judge,” Barbara said. [Note for non-Texans: the "County Judge" is not a judicial officer--at least not anymore--but is the chief executive officer of a county].
I actually have copies of school census cards for my grandfather’s family who lived in Rockdale, Milam County. Here’s one for my grand-aunt Myrtle from 1905.
Click on image to enlarge
Now Let Us Move On . . .
With malice toward none and charity for all . . . .we learn that there are gentlemen of the first degree in this century.
A Baby Boomer Remembers the Man Who Came to Dinner… Every Night
Starting the year after we come back to the United States from Germany, this man came to dinner almost every night. He never ate anything, but he did regale us with tales of the twentieth century’s most important events. He kept me caught up with the last doings of my first heroes whose names were Shepard and Schirra, Carpenter and Cooper, Grissom and Glenn, and the not-to-be-forgotten Deke Slayton. This man had an authoritative air about him; sort of a more serious version of the man who always showed up at breakfast time. Mom pointed out one day that the man had come from her hometown of Kansas City; Dad countered that the man had really grown up in Houston. A son of Missouri and Texas—just like me.
The man’s presence at dinner every night was, a psychologist or sociologist might say, a stabilizing factor in an uncertain world. But he would tell us frequently of distress in places like Cuba and Vietnam and the Congo. And my family’s only reason for being in the ironically idyllic calm of our “ultimate gated community”–the semi-secret atomic weapons installation known as Sandia Base, New Mexico,–was because of the worldwide anxiety that the world could be destroyed by the ultimate weapons.
Reassuring as it was to find the man at dinner every evening, it was quite disconcerting one Friday to find him there when I came home from school for lunch. Another man, a man from Oklahoma, was usually there at lunchtime. Dad would be sitting at the end of the table eating a bowl of soup, while the dulcet Tulsan baritone sat on a ledge above him and told us what had happened that morning. Another reassuring presence.
But this particular Friday in November, I walked through the door to find Dad standing with his hands on his hips staring at the man from Missouri who should have been there at dinner time. The man was seated just inches away emotionally describing what would become the worst event in my lifetime for the next 40 years. It was November 22, 1963.
About six years later, the man turned up in the middle of the night, to tell us about the most thrilling thing that would happen in my lifetime perhaps forever ever. It was July 20, 1969. In between the worst day and the best, it seemed that the man’s visits came more and more frequently at times other than dinner. The days of which he would show up other than at dinnertime are emblazoned on my mind like a calendar of horribles.
Most of the summer of 1968
November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981
He described events of The Twentieth Century in a way that made us feel, for better or for worse, as if we were present at each one. “What sort of day was it?” he would ask rhetorically. “A day like all day is filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times… and you are there.”
To someone who never experienced this manner of getting information, it’s difficult to convey the full import and meaning of the passing of Walter Cronkite. With the end of this era in American history, as another of the secular saints in our civic theology passes on, thing will never be like they were:
When there were only three nightly newscasts… when the nightly news was only 30 minutes… when two decades were filled with the most thrilling and most shocking events of recent history… when a journalist was considered by some to be “the most trusted man in America”… That’s the way it was…
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (1916-2009)
FamilyLink Mis-Cues Mar GW Debut; “H*ll” Breaks Loose at Site
I had written some fairly positive things about FamilyLink’s new social network, GenealogyWise, whose official debut is supposed to be today. The company had a “soft” opening a week ago and within two days had garnered thousands of members with hundreds of specialty groups and discussions. Many highly influential names in the genealogy world joined up.
It seemed as if FamilyLink CEO Paul Allen had found the right formula for a specialty social network. The site is rich in content, some of it generated by FamilyLink, but most of it user-created. There are none of the silly applications found on Facebook and the crowd for the most part appeared to be mature and well-mannered. For most of the week, enthusiasm ran high about the site and expectations seemed to be met. I, in fact had written a draft post to run yesterday that described GW after its first week as “one of the most advanced collaborative cyber-communities: a place where both individualistic and communitarian democracy can flourish.” I said it “might be the ultimate achievement in mass technolgical communications for special purposes.”
Not everybody was so effusive. Cautionary sounds were made by Jasia, footnoteMaven, and Thomas MacEntee, who had been in the first cohort of travelers to GW. Randy Seaver took a “wait-and-see” approach. These are all people I like and respect.
Then, the mis-steps began. First, FamilyLink announced a “contest” in which there would be $100 prizes for “the most” blog posts, friends, group members, and other things. This was a mistake for several reasons, not the least of which was that it mis-apprehended the nature and interests of the community. No doubt it was intended to be celebratory; but it was off the mark.
Terry Thornton, the well-known writer from Monroe County, Mississippi, then took to GW’s forum to point out the other problems with the contest. Under the headline “GW is Running a Numbers Game,” Terry noted that the contest could be easily “gamed” and that in any event,
Why not a contest based upon content, character, helpfulness, consistency, and clarity of postings/comments rather than who has piled up the most numbers in any of these categories?
Within hours, GW had revised the contest rules to take up Terry’s suggestion and about the same, Terry’s post had been taken down.
Will people never learn?
Nothing roils the blogosphere or the Twitterverse like the appearance of censorship.
FamilyLink tried to mitigate this disaster by cancelling even the revised contest and by purporting to seek community input on “the level of censorship” at GW. The now-anonymous FamilyLink poster asked whether GW should allow pornography, commercial advertising and, by the way, disrespectful and rude posts. This all seemed a red herring. Nobody in the community wants porn; and there wasn’t any realistic chance that there will be “porn” depsite the difficulty in defining it and the various hypotheticals posed by commenters. Most don’t want ads (that ultimately will lead to spam), either.
In the mid-afternoon, the FamilyLink poster apologized (perhaps at the prompting of Paul Allen) for removing the post and then asked whether profanity should be allowed on the site. This led to another “down the rabbit hole” discussion.
The entire episode left folks wondering if FamilyLink understands social networks at all. As for avoiding such mis-steps and learning to deal with the blogsphere and Twitttereverse, there plenty of precedents: Ancestry.com, Facebook, etc.
GW’s auspicious start was marred not only by this tawdry business, but by a techno-rookie error in handling its domain name transfer that left the site off-line two nights ago.
I wrote in the forum discussion on this topic at GenealogyWise:
It seems to me that the history of such cyber-communities, brief in time though it may be, is rich with examples of how community sponsors should interact with the community. It is true that these precedents come from trial and error. One consistent theme is that community members believe strongly in the right to express dissatisfaction with the sponsor when they believe it is warranted. The success of any such community depends on recognition of this fact.
I know a number of people that I like and respect that are bailing out of GenealogyWise. for the time being I’m staying. I think it’s too early to make a judgment on this community. But after the last couple of days, GW, remember I’m from Missouri–you’ll have to show me.
How Grandpa Zeke Collected a Bounty on Himself
My great-great-grandfather Ezekiel Johnson collected a bounty for turning himself into the federal government in 1864. Actually, so did a lot of other folks earn such bounties.
Zeke Johnson was held as a slave in Clay County, Missouri, fro the day he was born in 1847 until one day in May, 1864, when he was 17 years old. That day he “left” his master. How exactly he got away is not known. But two months later in July, 1864, he enlisted in Company D, 18th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops.
During the Civil War, two acts of Congress—one passed in 1864 (13 Stat. 11) and one in 1866 (14 Stat. 321)—allowed loyal slave owners whose slaves enlisted or were drafted into the U.S. military to file a claim against the Federal government for loss of the slave’s services. The law allowed for up to $300 compensation for slaves who enlisted, and up $100 for slaves who were drafted.
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed the slaves in the states which were in rebellion, but in border-states which were loyal to the Union—slavery continued to be legal. The law authorizing the formation of the USCT stated that no man was to fight as a slave, so for slaves in the border-states, enlistment meant freedom. If owners would not give permission to enlist, then slaves had to run away in order to join the army. In some cases, flight from slavery led to enlistment in the state where the slave resided, but other times it led to enlistment in a neighboring state. If a slave’s former owner found out where and when he joined—and the owner was loyal to the Union—then he or she could file a slave compensation claim.
St Louis County Library, What was a Slave Compensation Claim?
The compensation generally was $300 per slave. But since Grandpa Zeke ran away, he, not the slave owner, was entitled to his own bounty! See Colored Men and Their Relation to the Military Service and Black Missourians in the Civil War
The document below shows that Zeke was still owed $100 of his bounty when he was discharged. I don’t know if he ever got it.
By the way, Zeke Johnson’s holder, Henry Wilhite was not loyal to the United States, having enlisted in the Confederate army, and so would be ineligible for compensation for Zeke Johnson.
To see another document about this story, go to my page on GenealogyWise.com!
A Unique Story of Ancestors: Spirit of a Choctaw Freedwoman
Our Genealogywise friend, Angela Walton-Raji, has produced and narrated a video entitled Spirit of a Choctaw Freedwoman, which tells a very unique story. The story is that of her great-grandmother, Sallie Walton, who was among a great number of African-Americans enslaved by American Indians. This is an important and poignant story, well produced. If you want to understand a difficult part of history about which many myths persist, see Angela’s work at ireport.com.
Thanks to George Geder and Terrance Garnett for the tip.
French Genealogy: The Blog
I have several reasons to engage in research in France. Of course, I’ve written a fair amount about “The French Negroes of Illinois.” And one of the Louisiana lines I work on is the LEJAY (or LEGER/LEGIRE) family, who may be tied to descendants of French Huguenots who landed in South Carolina in the late 17th Century. These folks in turn may be related to the LeJays of Sancerre, Cher, France. Finally, there is some little evidence that my GINES line may be connected to a Frenchman, William Guines, who was born in France in about 1813.
In any event, I undertook to teach myself “genealogical French” in order to look at records in French, most especially the church records of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois.
Now I have come across just the right source for those with French genealogy to study. Anne Morddel is an American living in Paris who publishes a blog called “The French Genealogy Blog.” A native Californian, Anne has been doing genealogical research for thirty years. Her blog is full of tips and resources for studying French lineages.
If you have reason to research French records, you’ll want to go visit Anne at The French Genealogical Blog. And note that one of her most recent posts is entitled “Learning Enough French for Genealogy.”
You can also find her here.
Cyber-Stampede: Genealogywise.com Makes Spectacular Debut
It looked a bit like the land rush when Oklahoma was opened to settlers as new social network Genealogywise.com made its appearance earlier today. The FamilyLink property had a “soft” opening–no flashy press conferences or celebratory speeches marked the launch. A simple unembargoed notice to several influential bloggers seemed to be all that was necessary to set the ‘Net on fire with the stampede to the site.
New members were signing up at a furious pace this afternoon and new groups on the site seemed to spring up literally every other minute. Friend requests threatened to overwhelm new members as they settled in.
I visited Genealogywise in the midst of the initial frenzy–and I was impressed with the site. It is very clean, yet rich in its contours. The organization of the site is excellent. It is tied into FamilyLink’s World Vital Records site.
Sometime ago, I had grown disenchanted with World Vital Records, finding it to be a pale imitation of GenealogyBank. But now, I’m inclined to take another look.
The launch today may well re-order the genealogical cyberuniverse. It can’t be seen as anything other than a direct assault on Facebook, Geni, and even perhaps WeRelate and MyHeritage.
It’s starting to get interesting out there!
Ben Sayer as quoted by Miriam Midkiff:
“Will the last genealogist to leave Facebook please turn off the lights?”
