Houston is home to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (“Mission Control”) and the renowned M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and The University of Texas Health Science Center At Houston, among its many great institutions and companies.

My familial ties to Houston: Both sides of my family have connections to Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city.   My late father, Harold V. Manson (1932-2013), spent much of his childhood in Houston, where his mother, Jesse Beatrice Bowie (1909-1973), worked as a domestic.  Her brother, my dad’s uncle, Herman A. Walker (1906-2002), was an accomplished chef who worked at several of the Bayou City’s popular restaurants.    Uncle Herman worked as the chef for many years at an establishment called Ye Olde College Inn, within walking distance of Rice University. It’s been said that he invented a dish known as Oysters Herman, but I have reason doubt the veracity of that story.

Grace Gines Wedlaw (1916-2002) was my mother’s older sister.  Aunt Grace lived in Houston, having moved there from Shreveport where she was raised.  My mother grew up in Kansas City, having been born after my grandfather William Edward Gines (1898-1955) relocated there in 1920.   My mother adored her sister and visited Grace in Houston when the occasion arose.

Such an occasion arose in the summer of 1951.  My father had graduated from Houston’s Phillis Wheatley High School and was headed to Lincoln University in Jefferson City. As luck would have it, my mother had been at Lincoln for two years.  And serendipitously, she had been asked by the Lincoln admissions office to go to Houston and meet with incoming freshmen from that city.

In 1953, my parents were married in Houston.

My dad was an Army officer.  The Army required its members to state a “home of record,” a permanent domicile to which the member would intend to return at the end of the member’s service.  The first address I knew by heart was 3011 Truxillo Street, Houston, Texas.  That was Uncle Herman’s house and Dad’s home of record.  The law at the time imputed the father’s home of record to his wife and children.   So for the first 17 years of my life, I was legally a Texan. I had been there exactly twice, both visits before I was ten years old.

My first visit to  Houston came when I was three years old.  We had been living at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis when Dad got orders to Germany.  Before we embarked on that journey, we went to Kansas City and visited my mother’s family and then to our “legal” home, Houston.

I am told that I was so excited about all of our travel that I told multiple adults that we were going to drive along Chocolate Bayou Road all the way to Germany!

My second visit to Houston came when I was eight years old and I’ve written about that trip  here.

Recently I discovered the University of Houston publishes a magazine called Houston History. I subscribed right away after hearing about it. The subscription is only $15, a real bargain for what you get about the history of Houston. And if that were not fun enough, I stumbled upon the University of Houston’s digital collection. What a joy that is going to be as I explore it!

Then I found the video below about Houston after dark.  The sound is lousy, and the pictures sometimes difficult, but it is fascinating nonetheless. It’s called Expedition Houston! The Dark Hours (At about 4:28, there’s a shot of Ye Olde College Inn.) It was produced by Houston television station KTRK and now appears on J.R. Gonzales’ blog Bayou City History (originally posted August  4, 2011)

The deepened insight I had was just how important historical context is to genealogical research.  A researcher should seek out sources such as books and film about the times and places that were extant during one’s ancestors lives.  One probably won’t (but may be some will) find names and dates for specific family members, but of what significance are those names and dates without context? So don’t overlook contextual source materials!

Craig and Uncle Herman Walker, Houston, Texas, 1962

“Journalist, Business Leader, Public Servant”

Oveta Culp Hobby (1905-1995) was one of most recognized women of the 1940s through the 1980s. Born in 1905 in Killeen, Bell County, Texas, by the age of 25 she had earned a law degree and was both the Assistant City Attorney in Houston and the parliamentarian of the  Texas House of Representatives. But that was only the beginning.

Oveta was second of seven children of Isaac William Culp, a lawyer and state legislator, and Emma Elizabeth Hoover Culp. From her mother, Oveta got an inclination for civic duties in the service of others.  From her father, she got an interest in the law.  Before law school, she attended Mary Hardin-Baylor College. She then went to the University of Texas Law School.

In 1931, having lost a bid for a legislative seat, she went back to Houston to concentrate on the law. There she got to know a family friend, William Pettus Hobby, the former Governor of Texas, and then the president and publisher of the Houston Post newspaper. They married  later that year. Governor Hobby, as he was known long after he left office, was literally twice the age of his bride. [The Governor had been married once before, but his wife had died].  Oveta became a research editor at the Post.  She was named executive vice president of the newspaper in 1938.

The Hobbys also owned a radio station, KPRC 950 AM, in Houston.

Both the Governor and Oveta were actively involved in Democratic Party politics at all levels: local, state and national. Both were well-known in political circles.  So Oveta was probably not surprised when the War Department asked her to head up a project to bring women into the Army to perform tasks that would free men for combat.    Oveta responded by saying she would advise on the project, but she did not want any further involvement than that. But Secretary of War Henry Stimson was not taking that for answer.  Thus it was that Oveta found herself in Washington, DC, as the director of the Women’s Interest Section in the War Department, for an annual salary of $1.00.

The Women’s Interest section was not about bring women into the Army. Instead it was a section of the War Department’ Bureau of Public Relations.  It did address issues of interest to women generally.  Meanwhile, the plans for women in uniform went forward, with Oveta commenting on them.  In the spring of 1942, the War Department was ready to unveil the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC)(later, Women’s Army Corps (WAC)).   Oveta, being no doubt the most knowledgeable woman in the Department was named director of the WAAC. She was given an officer’s commission as a major, and later was promoted to colonel.   She commanded a corps of about 100,000 women throughout the war.

Only one unit of WACs were deployed overseas, that being the all-black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.  Nonetheless, Army commanders were pleased by the performance of all of the women.  That helped keep the WAC as part of the Army after the war.

Below: Col. Oveta Culp Hobby

At war’s end, Col. Hobby resigned from the Army to return to the publishing business.  Governor Hobby had acquired a television station and a radio station, which all operated under the  corporate umbrella of the  Houston Post Company.  The Governor was chairman of the board and Oveta was president of the company.

The Hobbys turned their interests to Republican politics. They were enthusiastic supporters of Dwight Eisenhower for  President.  Not long after Eisenhower was elected, he  appointed Oveta Culp Hobby as director of the Federal Security Agency.  That organization dealt with economic security.  It was renamed the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and elevated to Cabinet status. Oveta Hobby was the first secretary of HEW (now the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services). She served in that post for two years, before once again returning to Houston. She later became publisher of the Post.

Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Oveta Culp Hobby

Oveta Culp Hobby is an iconic figure in women’s history.   Her contributions were all across the spectrum of American life.  In addition to having been the first commander of women in the Army,  and the first Secretary of HEW she is also remembered for:

• service on the boards of boards of the Advertising Federation of America, the American Design Award Committee, the American National Red Cross, the American Cancer Society, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report, the American Assembly, Rice University, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
• as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Conference on Freedom of Information and the Press in Geneva, Switzerland in 1948.
• service as  president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association in 1949.
• service on the  boards aand committees of the Advisory Committee for Economic Development, the Continental Oil Company Scholarship Award Committee, the National Advisory Board of the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, the Committee of 75 at the University of Texas, the board of the Eisenhower Birthplace Memorial Park, the President’s Commission on Employment of the Physically Handicapped, the President’s Commission on Civilian National Honors, the Committee for the White House Conference on Education, the board of the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, the Southern Regional Committee for Marshall Scholarships, the Board of Directors of the Houston Symphony Society, the Southwest Advisory Board of the Institute of International Education, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project, the Crusade for Freedom, the Visiting Committee of the Graduate School for Education of Harvard University, the advisory board of the George C. Marshall Research Foundation, and the boards of the Society for Rehabilitation of the Facially Disfigured, the Texas Heart Association, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas,  Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a member of the Junior League,  the Houston Symphony Orchestra Committee, the General Foods Corporation, the General Aniline and Film Corporation, and the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television,  the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service, and the Houston  Business Committee for the Arts.

She served eighteen years as Chairman of the Board of the Houston Post Company. With all of her active  interests swirling about her, she had two children, William Pettus Hobby, Jr., and Jessica Hobby Catto.   William junior served eighteen years as lieutenant governor of Texas, a tenure without precedence or repetition. He was also the Chancellor of the University of Houston System .  Jessica was a well-known newspaper columnist and author concentrating on environmental issues.

Oveta Culp Hobby died on August 16, 1995, at the age of 90.

Stamp Honoring Oveta Culp Hobby issued April  2011.

To the rescue of the mail strode the 800 African-American women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.    They were “posted” to Great Britain and France to keep the mail moving and directed to the right soldiers in the field.

The “Six-Triple-Eights” were the only women, other than nurses, who were deployed overseas during the war.  And unlike most units made up of black male soldiers, the women of the 6888th did not have white officers in command.  They had black women officers over them.

The commander of the 6888th was Major Charity Edna Adams, a native of North Carolina.  She was the first black women to become an officer in the then-Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC; later Women’s Army Corps (WAC)).  Adams eventually was promoted to lieutenant colonel, becoming the highest ranking black woman to serve in World War II.

Charity Adams majored in math and physics  at Wilberforce University in Ohio and later earned a masters degree from The Ohio State University.  In 1942, she was among a small group of women invited to join the then-new Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps.   Against the advice of family and friends, Adams joined the WAAC.  Following her training assignment at Fort Des Moines, Iowa,  she served in  various positions before taking command of the 6888th after it was formed.

After her wartime service, Adams taught at Tennessee A&I and Georgia State College.  She married medical student and fellow veteran Stanley Armstead Earley, Jr., in 1949 in Columbia, South Carolina.  The couple moved to Switzerland where Stanley attended medical school. The Earleys settled in Dayton, Ohio, upon his graduation from medical school. They had two children.

[The four-star general in the film with Major Adams is her boss, General John C.H. Lee, Commander of Services of Supply for the European theater.]

Charity Adams Earley lived up to her name in Dayton.  She was involved with numertous civic organizations, including the American Red Cross, the United Way, the YWCA, the Urban League, the United Negro College Fund, and the Dayton Opera Company. She served on the boards of the Dayton Power and Light Company, the Dayton Metro Housing Authority and Sinclair Community College.

In 1989, she published a book called One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC.

Lt. Col. Charity Edna Adams Earley died on January 13, 2002, at the age of 83.

Video courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 111, Series SC and SCY, via YouTube.

A: I don’t know.

Papal Aide: Holy Father there is exciting news. Some of it’s good but some of it’s bad.
Pope:Okay, give me the good news first.
Aide: The Savior has returned to Earth! He’s on the telephone asking for you!
Pope: What could possibly be the bad news then?
Aide: He’s calling from Salt Lake City!

As such ecumenical matters sometimes go, relations between Catholics and Mormons have been relatively without rancor over the past several decades. Despite deep doctrinal rifts, the relationships between individual Catholics and Mormons have been free of the personal hostility which characterizes relationships between certain other denominations. In fact, the Bishop of Salt Lake City has said that Catholics and Mormons work together and get along fine in the Mormons’capital city.

But the facial peace between Catholics and Mormons has been strained by issues related to genealogy. It is well-known that the LDS church has some of the greatest genealogical information in the world in both quantity and quality. They obtain those records by going out all over the world and collecting or copying the original records. What is less well known is the doctrinal motivation for collecting ancestral records. Not being a member of the LDS church I’m hesitant to characterize their purposes other than to say that I am informed that it has to do with so-called re-baptism of non-LDS ancestors. That is the least what the Vatican knew in 2008, when the Holy Father instructed Catholic parishes not to cooperate with Mormon records seekers.

This issue had been brewing for quite a while. In 1995, Mormons and Jews reached an agreement that the LDS church would no longer “re-baptize” or “seal” Holocaust survivors that some LDS members had characterized as their ancestors. In 2001, Pope John Paul II approved a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which stated that baptism in the LDS church cannot be held to be a valid Christian baptism. The statement went on to say that because of differences between the Catholic and Mormon understandings of the Trinity, “one cannot even consider this doctrine to be a heresy arising from a false understanding of Christian doctrine.” L’Osservatore Romano, a newspaper which frequently reflects inside thinking at the Vatican said the ruling “changes the past practice of not contesting the validity of [Mormon] baptism.”  The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time was Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

Nothing much seems to have happened on this issue between 2001 and 2008. But then in January 2008, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a letter which expressed “grave reservations” about the Mormon practice of posthumous baptism. A few months later, Pope Benedict XVI approved an order that each bishop should not “cooperate with the erroneous practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”  Cooperation includes allowing Mormon genealogists to have access to Catholic parish records. Ironically, just 10 days after this order was approved, Pope Benedict embarked on a visit to the United States during which two Mormons participated in a papal ecumenical service. According to the Catholic news service this was the first time any member of the LDS church participated in such a service.

This is a difficult issue for a Catholic genealogist to write about.  Somewhat surprisingly, both the Vatican and the Mormon hierarchy seemed to downplay the impact of the letter on general relations between the two churches.  Father James Massa, an official of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service that while the order had the potential to disrupt relationships between the two churches, the Catholic Church was embarking on a new friendship with the LDS church. At about the same time a spokesman for the LDS Church in Salt Lake City said that he had not seen the order and thus could not comment on it. He went on to say “We don’t have an issue with the fact that the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize our baptisms, because we don’t recognize theirs.”  It’s a difference of belief.”

Other Catholic and LDS spokespersons further emphasized that the ban on allowing parish records to be given to LDS genealogists was not a major rift between the two denominations. The Catholic vicar general of the Diocese of Salt Lake City said that Catholics and Mormons enjoyed a long-standing mutually beneficial relationship. He said that the order concerning parish records was nothing new, because the Salt Lake diocese long had refused to give parish records to anyone “not authorized to have them.”  This policy was much broader than Mormon genealogists.

So how should Catholic genealogists react to the church’s official ban on giving Mormon genealogists access to parish records?

Here are some things to consider: first of all, the Mormons do have the greatest collection genealogical records in the world. Additionally they have been an incubator for new advanced archival technologies.  They allow free access to most of their records and have been known to create digital archives of Catholic parish records for the parish to keep.

I recall on my visit to the parish of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois in 2007, that the priest had labored alone and with great difficulty to get the parish records organized in a computer database. And before the completion of the project is computer crashed and the data was lost. Today, the records of St. Joseph parish in Prairie du Rocher  are available free of charge as part of the set of records of the diocese of Belleville, Illinois on the LDS-run site FamilySearch.org.

Here are some other things to consider: the ban is directed to bishops and clergy, not to individual Catholics. So Catholic genealogists who cooperate with Mormon genealogists will not need the “Get out of Hell Free” cards available from my colleague Sheri Fenley.

Despite the ban, FamilySearch.org  seems to add new Catholic parish records every week. Curiously most of those seem to come from outside the United States.

Perhaps the LDS spokesman quoted above was on the right track. Why should we as Catholics care that the Mormons believe in something that we don’t believe in? It is, as he said, a matter of belief.

One objection to the use of records by LDS genealogists has been the complaint that some of the Mormon records are inaccurate.  Mormon leaders say that there are inconsistencies and inaccuracies primarily in the IGI. They say that they have taken steps to weed out inaccurate information in the IGI. Finally, the ban on cooperation relates only to the LDS church. No doubt there are many many other faiths with severe doctrinal differences with the Roman Catholic Church, who are not banned from examining parish records. And we’re not going to change their belief system by refusing to cooperate on genealogical records.

One of the ironies here is that the Catholic Church once had the biggest collection of genealogical records in the world. They weren’t centralized  like the LDS records are. But for many centuries, the only place that genealogical records were kept was in the local church.  After the Reformation, Catholic and Protestant churches alike continued to be the main repositories of genealogical records. Civil involvement in matters of birth, marriage and death is a relatively new phenomenon.

Because Catholic records aren’t centralized, there was an opportunity for cooperation that could have led to greater accessibility of Catholic records to historians, genealogists and the general public.

In 2008 I wrote:

“The LDS Church has been more than generous in sharing their extremely costly research endeavors with the world at little or no cost. I would hope that my church, had it been in their shoes, would be as magnanimous. In fact, what the Mormons have done is downright Christian. . .

” . . .  Catholics and our faith are actually strengthened in a way by knowing and understanding our past and appreciating our ancestors. Curiously, we have the Mormons to thank for that.” See Catholics, Mormons at Odds Over Genealogical Records?  at GeneaBlogie.

That’s still my thinking on the matter.  What do you think?

Longtime readers of this journal (if there are any out there!) will recall that in 1884, my great-great-grandmother and her son Otis went from Hootenville, Upson County, Georgia, to Rockdale, Milam County, Texas. An elaborate family myth was constructed around this move. See, for example, She’s Spanish. In a number of posts, I’ve de-bunked the myth and developed an hypothesis about the reasons for this move. See Debunking a Family Myth. I’ve also written about the other side of the family, the Sanfords, and how they got to Milam County from Tennessee. See William “Billie” Sanford, 1809-1916 .

Although I went to Upson County, Georgia, seven and a half years ago, I had never been to Milam County, Texas. Nor had my father, whose father had been born there.   I had been in touch with a few relatives in central Texas and I had corresponded with the county clerk’s office.  But there’s nothing like actually being on the ground.

I arrived in Austin at nearly midnight on a Sunday evening. American Airlines had delayed my flight by almost four hours. The next morning, I hooked up with my cousin Hope and her uncle Matthew, who live in Austin.  I had spoken on the telephone before with Matthew and exchanged emails with his daughter Angela.  I had “met” Hope through a social media site.  Cousins Hope and Matt are from the Sanford line.

Along with Matthew’s wife, we set off for Rockdale, a drive of about 65 miles northeast of Austin.  Rural areas seem to sprout immediately beyond the city limits of Austin.  We drove through places that I had come to know in the course of my research, like Taylor and Manor  (pronounced MAY-nor by locals). Manor is in Travis County (of which Austin is the county seat), and Taylor is in Williamson County, adjacent to Milam County.

This is, broadly speaking, is the eastern part of the Texas Hill Country.  I took a liking to the landscape immediately.   For some folks,  it’s a taste to be acquired if it is to be appreciated at all.  I had no need to acquire it; it just felt right at the beginning.

Rockdale is on U.S. Highway 79 at Texas FM (“Farm to Market”) Road 908. The city limits extend northeast and southwest of the enter of town where these thoroughfares meet.  US 79 is also FM 487 and is known as Cameron Avenue through town.

On the western edge of the city, there is a large Wal-Mart, the consequences of which might be explained by the rather sparse downtown area not very far away.  There are a number of fast-food restaurants on that side of town.

As we drove into the center of Rockdale, Hope said, “Our folks literally lived on the other side of the tracks.”  She turned right off Cameron Avenue onto South Main, the name that FM 908 takes in that part of town.

And indeed, we crossed over railroad tracks originally laid by the International & Great Northern railroad in 1874.  The decision to put the tracks through Rockdale instead of some other town, was a great boon to Rockdale’s economy. Today, Rockdale’s IGN depot is a museum.

Hope turned left at East 1st Avenue, which near Mulberry Street, splits into  East First and East 2nd Ave.  We took the 2nd Avenue fork.  We passed a place called “Sho ‘Nuff Soul Food” on Mulberry. It appeared to me to be a quite sizeable establishment; and unfortunately, it was closed. We turned onto Plum Street, which after slight jog becomes Martin Luther King Drive. Eventually we found ourselves on Oak street, which is what the lower portion of FM 908 is called.  A block or so up Oak is White Street.

Rockdale’s Old City Cemetery sits near Oak and White Streets, not far from the old train depot. Of course, we had to explore it.   The cemetery is really three cemeteries stitched together.  There is the Jewish cemetery, the “white” cemetery and the “black” cemetery.  The Jewish cemetery, which appeared to me to be the best kept-up part of the place, is gated and fenced off from the black cemetery.  The black cemetery lies roughly between the Jewish and the “white” cemeteries. It is fenced off, sort of, from the “white” portion, but has no fence along the street. As we walked about, it became clear that in both non-Jewish sections,  many of the headstones were too old to read. We found a few readable ones, but none that I particularly recognized.

One online source asserts that the black portion of the cemetery is also known as the Fulcher  cemetery. This fact was of intense interest to me because I have Fulcher-surnamed ancestors and cousins. But I don’t think I saw any Fulcher  headstones.  Of course, one realizes that many graves were left unmarked because some families couldn’t afford the costs.  I was hoping to find the grave of Billie Sanford, my gg-grand father, 106 years old when he died in the early part of the 20th century. A slave of the Sanford family since his birth in Virginia, he is said to be “the oldest colored person” ever buried in the Rockdale Old City Cemetery.

After tromping around the cemetery for awhile, it was time for lunch. There were more discoveries to be made yet.

Coming up: Searching for People and Records in Milam County, Texas

Black Catholics make up just 3% of the Catholic population in the United States. So why a Black Catholic History Month? Because Black Catholics make up just 3% of the Catholic population of the United States. Few African-Americans, and even fewer other Catholics have an understanding of the history of black Catholics in America.

There are several prevalent assumptions about African-Americans and religion. First, many people presume that we are all Baptists.  Second, people think that we are all recent converts, that there are no “cradle Catholics” among blacks.

The facts reveal  very vibrant black Catholic communities across the nation, which in some cases have existed for generations prior to the Civil War.  Though often overlooked by demographers and sometimes  by clergy and liturgists, African-Americans have played crucial roles in the propagation of the faith in America.

During November, we’ll explore the persons and communities of black Catholics in America–here at GeneaBlogie and at The Catholic Gene.

Generally known as “Eddie” or “William Edward,” he was named after our grandfather, William Edward Gines (1898-1955), who was also called “Eddie.”  His father was Alfred Eugene Gines (1930-2011) and his mother was Ida Mae Johnson, who survives him. Among his survivors are his sister, Linda Jeanette Gines, and his brother, Alfred Eugene Gines II.

The Year of Faith begins on October 11, 2012 (the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council) and ending on the Solemnity of Christ the King: November 24, 2013. The Year of Faith is “intended to contribute to a renewed conversion to the Lord Jesus and to the rediscovery of faith, so that the members of the Church will be credible and joy-filled witnesses to the Risen Lord, capable of leading those many people who are seeking it to the door of faith.”

Pope Benedict XVI, in his Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei for the Indiction of the Year of Faith observed

The ‘door of faith’ (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church.

I haven’t got a picture of the door of the church I’m writing about, but I have this photo of the sign in front of the Church.

St Joseph’s Church in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, is more than 290 years old. My wife’s family was part of that parish for seven generations. Her great-great-grandfather was baptized at St Joseph’s in about 1813.  But we know that her ancestors as early as 1722 worshipped at St Joseph’s. Many of her aunts, uncles, and cousins attended there as well.

The faith community at St Joseph’s was extremely important to the family. They were baptized there, confirmed there, married and buried there. Near the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, several family members entered into holy orders.

Joseph Perry Micheau (1890-1983), my wife’s grandfather, wanted very much to be a priest. But then he met Edna Julia Lewis and this tested his resolve in the most severe way.  They wrote each other every week and saw each oth

ommunity

So, anyway, at the end of last week,  I,  like all good Americans, was perusing the Supreme Court’s orders ( you don’t do that?!) and I came across a case with potential impacts for genealogists.

The case is called McBurney vs Young. It challenges the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia which provides that persons not residing in Virginia are not entitled to access to Virginia’s public records.

I did not know that the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA) limts access to public records to citizens of Virginia.  Neither did Mark McBurney, who had lived in Virginia for 13 years before moving to Rhode Island, or Roger Hurlbert,  a Californian who finds real estate records for clients all over the country. The brief filed on their behalf asking the High Court to hear the case, states the facts as follows:

 When McBurney’s former wife defaulted on her child support obligations, McBurney asked the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE) to file a petition for child support on his behalf while he was living overseas in Australia.  Although DCSE told McBurney that his petition was filed in August 2006, DCSE did not actually file the petition until April 2007, depriving McBurney of almost nine months of child support payments.

Believing that DCSE mishandled his child support petition, McBurney submitted a VFOIA request to DCSE in April 2008 seeking “all emails, notes, files,DCSE denied McBurney’s request because he was not a citizen of the Commonwealth.  In May 2008, McBurney sent a second VFOIA request seeking the same records—as well as treatises, statutes, legislation, regulations, administrative guidelines and other reference materials relied on by DCSE “when one parent is overseas”—but was again denied access to those records because of the statute’s citizens-only provision.¹

As for Hurlbert, the petition states:

Roger W. Hurlbert is a California citizen and the sole proprietor of Sage Information Services, a company he formed in 1987. Hurlbert earns his living by obtaining public records from real property assessment officials on behalf of private clients.  The requested documents are often copies of computer-readable databases of property ownership, valuations, land tenure, and land use.  Hurlbert obtains these documents by making requests under state Freedom of Information statutes and negotiating with local officials for the removal of impediments to their release. Although he operates his business from California, his clients seek public documents from real property officials nationwide.

In 2008, a client hired Hurlbert to obtain documents from the Tax Assessor of Henrico County, Virginia.  An official from the office denied Hurlbert’s request because he was not a Virginia citizen.  Hurlbert no longer requests records in Virginia and has advised  clients that he cannot offer his services there.  As a result, he has lost business.²

McBurney and Hurlbert claim that the Virginia law violates their rights under an arcane provision of the Constitution called the “Privileges & Immunities Clause.”³ This part of the Constitution is rarely relied upon by the courts for decision and there have been conflicting rulings from the Courts of Appeals, and from the Supreme Court itself. The fact that the Court decided to hear the case may indicate that the Justices want to clear up this area of law.

The implications for genealogists are clear.  If every state had such a rule, it would be a calamity for genealogists.  The fact that this case arises in Virginia, one of the original states,  makes it just as bad.

The Court gave no indication as to when it will hear arguments in this case, and it may be as late as June 2013 before the case is decided. I’ll keep an eye on it for you.

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