- I had to order a copy of a Missouri birth certificate on short notice recently. I ordered it through VitalChek. Now the trick is not to order birth certificates from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services in Jefferson City, which is the main repository. Instead, order them from Kansas City or St Louis, which both have statewide records. I picked Kansas City. I was told that processing time at the agency would be 3-5 business days before shipping. In this case, I also opted for UPS air delivery. I placed the order on Tuesday, April 20, and had the birth certificate in my hands before 3:00 pm on Thursday, April 22. Now that’s service!
- I found a federal criminal case from the late 1930s in Arizona. I consulted Ron Arons’ recent book, Wanted!, which disclosed that the case file should be found at NARA’s Pacific Region at Laguna Nigel (now actually Riverside). I called NARA and chatted with some of the most pleasant people I’ve run across. They found the file, took my credit card number ($15.00 to copy and ship this file) and I had it in a matter of days! No muss, no fuss. Thanks to the archivists and support staff at NARA Pacific!
Archive for April 23, 2010
Genealogical Customer Service Kudos
Ancestor Approved
George Geder, Pat Salt, Elizabeth Saunders, and Deborah Andrew have each honored me with the “Ancestor Approved.” My backlog has kept me from ackinowledging them sooner. The terms are that the recipient must list ten things I have learned about any of my ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlightened me and pass the award along to ten other bloggers who you feel are doing their ancestors proud. Well, here are ten things:
1. SURPRISE! My maternal family is connected to the Clarke family of New Jersey Revolutionary times.
2. SURPRISE! My father appaers to be a direct descendant of the Birdsong family, originally from Virginia, but very prominent in antebellum Georgia.
3. SURPRISE! My father’s uncle, Elias Bowie, was the first African-American to participate in a NASCAR event (1955).
4. HUMBLED: Despite a life in the bondage of slavery, my second great-grandfather, William Sanford, survived to the age of 106. In 1854, according family lore, his masters moved from Tennessee to Texas. William walked the entire way, pushing a wheelbarrow in which rode the sons of the master.
5. HUMBLED: My second great grandfather, Ezekiel Johnson, escaped from slavery at age 17, and immediately enlisted in the Union Army.
6. HUJMBLED: By all the achievements of my ancestors!
7 . ENLIGHTENED: By the realization that my family is like many other American families with a variety of races and ethnicities in our family tree.
8. ENLIGHTENED: To learn that human relationships are a lot more complicated than they seem on the surface–and that’s been true for many generations.
9. ENLIGHTENED: To fully understand that where I am has been determined by where they were.
10. SURPRISED, ENLIGHTENED, & HUMBLED: To comprehend that all my ancestors, African, Scots, English, French, and Native American, were all the hardiest of their cohorts and ready to take enormous risks for the sake of future generations.
Please visit the blogs of my nominators:
George Geder: http://gedergenealogy.com
Elizabeth Saunders: http://elizabethsaunders.blogspot.com/
Pat Salt: http://www.genealogygals.com/blog
Deborah Andrew: http://debsresearch.blogspot.com/
Now for more recipients. I just chosen five, since during my recuperation. I haven’t kept up with as many as usal. Please visit these interesting folks:
- Judy Shubert, Genealogy Traces
- Apple’s Tree
- Stephanie, Lincecum Lineage
- Kathleen Scarlett O’Hara, You Are Where You Came From
- Elyse’s Genealogy Blog
Census Sometimes Little Help Tracking Migrations
I put my census form in the mail a little after the first of the month. I also scanned it, and I’m making some family group sheets to go with photographs. All these items together will constitute our family’s census 2010 documentation.
Seventy-two years from now, family researchers may conclude that I have lived in the same county for an uninterrupted thirty years or more. I was here on Census Day 1980, Census Day 1990, Census Day 2000, and Census Day 2010. Of the six censuses on which I should appear including the present, four of them show me living in Sacramento County. In fact, during that 30 year period of time, I have lived in Prince George’s County, Maryland; Pima County, Arizona; Suffolk and Norfolk counties in England; El Paso County, Colorado; Alexandria city, Virginia (twice); and Fairfax County, Virginia (basically in that order). But somehow, I always manage to be back in Sacramento County at census time.
At the time of the 1970 census, I lived in Monterey County, California. Before the 1970 census, I had spent more than half my life to that point, living in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. At the time of the 1960 census, I actually lived in Karlsruhe, Baden-Wuerttemburg, Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Federal Republic of Germany, then popularly known as "West Germany"], very near the French border.
So in 1960, my family was among the 1,374,422 Americans living abroad. (Oops, make that 1,374,421 –Elvis had left the Bundesrepublik on March 1 before Census Day). These consisted not only of military personnel and their dependents living with them, but included federal civilian employees stationed abroad and their dependents living with them; crews of vessels of the US merchant Marine at sea or docked at a foreign port; and private US citizens living abroad for an extended period and their dependents living with them. In 1960, none of these people were enumerated stateside, and hence were not included in the apportionment of Congress. (See Mills, Karen M., Americans Overseas in US Censuses, Technical Paper #62, US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1993, available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/overseas/techn62-1.pdf ).
My dad, an Army first lieutenant at the time, received a form like the one below, and filled it out. He returned the form through his chain of command, and it, like all such forms, was eventually shipped to the Census Operations Center at Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Census form used by military personnel overseas in 1960 (front and back)
One result of the 1960 census for my family was that the government had two different domiciles for us: the Census Bureau said we were domiciled “overseas,” and the Army said we were residents of Harris County, Texas, a place I had only visited for less than a week in my entire life to that point. What a country!
The rule about where to count Americans overseas, i.e., as part of their “home state” population or some “Americans abroad” population, has been different from time to time. Starting in 1990, the rule was to count them as part of their home state population, which of course has an effect on congressional apportionment. In 2010, the pre-1990 rule will be back in effect: Americans abroad will not be counted as part of their home states populations.
At the time of the 1950 census, my dad was a high school senior, and a census enumerator. And I, well, I simply was non-existent.
No census shows me at the place of my birth or reflects the time I spent living in Marion County, Indiana.
Where were you during the censuses of the last fifty years? How well does the census document where you’ve been?
3 comments
1950 Census, 1960 Census, 1970 Census, 1980 Census, 1990 Census, 2000 Census, 2010 Census, African-Americans, Albuquerque, Alexandria Virginia, Arizona, Bernalillo County New Mexico, California, Census Records, El Paso County Colorado, Fairfax County Virginia, Pima County, Sacramento County California, Suffolk and Norfolk counties (UK)
Census Collection Free on Footnote.com through April
This note came from Justin Schroepfer, marketing director at Footnote.com:
I wanted to update you that we have decided to extend our Interactive Census Collection free to the public through the end of April. Since opening this collection a few weeks ago, we have received a very positive response. In order to view the images from the collection, visitors only need to register for free.
Go to www.footnote.com/census/.
Footnote.com has the “interactive” census images; that is, users may annotate or comment the census iamges. The 1860 and the 1930 censuses are 100% complete, while others are in various stages of completion on Footnote.
I found the notorious outlaw Bonnie Parker on the 1930 census, living under another name. If you want to know where and by what name she was then known, go to Footnote.com find my annotation on the 1930 census.
Georgia Digital Library Now Provides Access to Atlanta Historical Newspapers
The following information was provided by the Digital Library of Georgia last week:
A new digital database providing online access to 14 newspaper titles published in Atlanta from 1847 to 1922 is now available through the Digital Library of Georgia, housed at The University of Georgia Libraries.
The Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/atlnewspapers) consists of more than 67,000 newspaper pages and provides historical images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date.
“This site will provide users with a record of Atlanta’s history from its origins as a railroad terminus, through the devastation of the Civil War, to its eventual growth into one of the nation’s largest cities,” said Toby Graham, director of the Digital Library of Georgia and deputy university librarian. “Of great interest to anyone curious about Atlanta history, it promises to be invaluable to researchers on any number of topics.”
The archive includes the following Atlanta newspaper titles: Atlanta Daily Examiner (1857), Atlanta Daily Herald (1873-1876), Atlanta Georgian (1906-1911), Atlanta Intelligencer (1851, 1854-1871), Atlantian (1911-1922), Daily/Georgia Weekly Opinion (1867-1868), Gate-City Guardian (1861), Georgia Literary and Temperance Crusader (1860-1861), New Era (1869-1872), Southern Confederacy (1861-1864), Southern Miscellany, and Upper Georgia Whig (1847), Southern World (1882-1885), Sunny South (1875-1907), Weekly Constitution (1869-1882).
The Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia as part of the Georgia HomePLACE initiative. The project is supported with federal LSTA funds administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Georgia Public Library Service, a unit of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.
Other newspaper archives available through the Digital Library of Georgia include the Macon Telegraph Archive (1826-1908), the Columbus Enquirer Archive (1828-1890), the Milledgeville Historic Newspaper Archive (1808-1920), the Southern Israelite Archive (1929-1958, 1984-1986), and the Red and Black Archive (1893-2006). These archives can be accessed at: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/MediaTypes/Newspapers.html
Comment: I love old newspapers, and I do Georgia research. This collection covers very important times in Georgia and US history. I’m quite eager to dig into this collection and see what’s there. Of course we’ll report back. For more information about the Atlanta historical newspapers contact Toby Graham, tgraham@uga.edu, 706.542.7123, at the Digital Library of Georgia.
Getting Back in the Race
Each time I find myself flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get back in the race.
(That’s Life, lyrics copyright by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon)
I continue to gradually emerge into the world as my recuperation from back surgery progresses. It’s been difficult not to have had the time to write. I will have, however, an article in the upcoming April edition of shades the magazine. And there are some original posts here on their way.
But even worse, I haven’t had time to read a number of blogs that I usually keep up with. So I felt like I’ve been on the wrong side of the universe. I’m making my way back, however.
There’s been a lot of news that we’ve not reported on and so the next several posts are devoted to catching up with the news.
A Visitor Arrives, Bringing a Little Sunshine to Northern California
The first word came several days ago via email, sort of like the way I used to receive alerts in the Air Force about the imminent arrival of a Distinguished Visitor (a general officer, a high-ranking civilian appointee, a Member of C0ngress). The subject line needed no decoding: Becky’s coming for a visit!
“Becky,” of course, is Indiana family historian and intrepid traveler Rebecca Wiseman, who authors the Kinexxions blog. She’s been on the adventure of a lifetime, travelling the United States, seeing family and old friends, hooking up with her genea-blogger colleagues, meeting and making new friends.
Today she was in Northern California and she and Sheri Fenley (The Educated Genealogist) joined me for lunch in Sacramento. Previously on her California trip, she had met Kathryn Doyle and Steven Danko.
Yesterday and most of last week had been cold and dreary in the Sacramento region. Becky’s arrival was heralded by warmer temperatures and an actual bit of sunshine.
There is a kind of unreality to meeting in reality someone you know from cyberspace. But Becky is as sincere, genuine, and down to earth as an person could be. We talked about her travels (Q: “How long will you be traveling?” A: “Till I’m done!”), and of course, blogging and genealogy. And if some of our fellow writers had burning ears, that was our doing, too.
Everyone needs to meet Sheri Fenley. “What You See is What You Get” is an apt phrase to describe this fun and funny lady who lacks every pretension.
Becky described for us her visit to Allensworth, the historical site of the first African-American town. She told us about going to the town in central California where James Dean died in a car wreck in 1955. And she waxed about the night sky at Big Bend National Park in Texas (“If you think you’ve seen stars [in the California desert], you ain’t seen nothing yet!”).
Despite the apparent grimaces on my face in the photos we took after lunch (OMG! Maybe I looked that way because I’d spent the morning at the dentist!), I had a great time. And I’m looking forward to reading more about Becky’s travels and seeing some more of her great photography.
