My Research Plans Concerning the 1940 Census

The 1940 Census is due to be released on April 2nd, 2012.

Several other geneabloggers have been discussing their plans for research upon its release.  I suspect I will be waiting a couple months before I dive in.

Why?
1) I am getting married in April. I expect to be busy. (Yes, my fiancee and I are sharing the responsibilities. I'm not the type to relax on the sofa and let her do all the work.)
2) I would actually rather wait for the records to be indexed.  There are a handful of ancestors I should be able to find without too much difficulty by browsing the images, because I know where they should be living. I will need to wait for the rest.

I expect I won't be able to resist searching for my parents at some point in April, as a necessary distraction from the wedding plans.

105 Years Ago

Updated from a post back in 2007.

My maternal grandfather would have been 105 years old today. On February 28, 1907, my grandfather was born in a small town in Transylvania called Varalmas. (aka Almaşu Mare).  At the time the town was part of Hungary, but now it is part of Romania.

Latitude: 46.950
Longitude: 23.133

(These numbers are taken from the Global Gazetteer). For those who are numerologically inclined: Add the digits together, and you get 36. Admittedly, some take longitude to a few more decimal places. But as long as you take it to 6 (or a multiple of 6) more decimal places, the sum is still a multiple of 18)

I have many fond memories of my grandfather.

• He taught me how to bowl. As some of you know, I don’t bowl extraordinarily well. That isn’t his fault. I recall him bowling over 200.
• He was always interested in new technology. In 1982 he bought me, my siblings, and my parents our first computer. A Commodore 64. Ironically (oh, yes, I’m pretty sure this is ironic) I was very loyal to the Commodore, and I swore at that time I would never own an Apple.
• He exercised by jogging around his basement, and always insisted on shoveling his own driveway during the winter — with a cast iron shovel. I have two ten-pound weights of his, which he used much more than I have.
• I remember eating waffles for dinner at my grandparents’ house, and he was the one who cooked them. I loved the idea of waffles for dinner. (He also had a Presto Sandwich maker, which I thought was cool.)
• As a young man in Chicago, at Fort Sheridan, he served in the ‘Cavalry‘ in its final days. He had a cavalry sword engraved with a Star of David. After WWII he retired from the Air Force at the rank of Lt. Col.

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5 Years Ago

I began blogging about genealogy in 2007.  While I date my obsession with genealogy research to this April 17th, 2007 post, that's going to be a very busy week for me.  So I will observe this blog's 5th anniversary today.

Favorite Cemetery Photo

The Graveyard Rabbit has resurrected the Graveyard Rabbits Carnival.

I missed the call for submission of entries, but there were several participants.

While I am too late to participate, I'd like to provide some links to past entries that contain a few of my favorite photos.

1) Sam and Rose Newmark (a favorite because of the lesson it taught me.)
2) McGrigery Van Every (the way his tombstone has been preserved is fascinating)
3) Samuel Deutsch (for the information, and entertainment, it provided)

Friday Five

Five names from various census databases related to a particular theme


Allen Wrench - 1930 Census - Quitman, MS - Age 26
Allen Key - 1900 Census - Comanche, TX - Age 5
Jack Hammer - 1910 Census - Manhattan, NY - Age 11
Philip S. Driver - 1880 US Census - Sacramento, CA - Age 17
Brad Neil - 1920 Census - Duluth, St. Louis, MN - Age 26

Valentine's Day

To A Lady
by Victor Hugo,
From Les Feuilles D'Automne

Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
     My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,
My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool,
     For a glance from you!

Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs,
     Angels, the demons abject under me,
Vast chaos with its teeming womby lairs,
Time, space, all would I give--aye, upper spheres,
     For a kiss from thee!

translation by Thomas Hardy
photogravure by Goupil et Cie, from a drawing by Deveria, appears in a collection of Hugo's poetry published by Estes and Lauriat in the late 1800s.

Why is Valentine's Day on February 14th?

There is a theory that the only reason tomorrow is associated with Cupid is due to a poem Geoffrey Chaucer wrote.

In 1381, Chaucer was busy composing a poem in honor of the arranged marriage between England's Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. This was a very big deal indeed, and Chaucer was looking for just the right saint to honor on May 3, the day Richard II signed the papers of engagement to his Bohemia beauty.


His search ended, Kelly surmises, when Chaucer learned that a Saint Valentine of Genoa had an honorary feast day on May 3. Perfect! So he wrote the poem "The Parliament of Fowls" in the couple's honor.


"The Parliament of Fowls" literally means "the meeting of birds," says Kelly. "Chaucer dreamed up the idea that all birds chose their mates on May 3rd," he says.


After Chaucer's death in 1400, Valentine's Day celebrations got pushed back to February.

Why exactly is unclear, however, if you forgot, and someone is upset, perhaps you can use this information to give yourself a few extra months.

Amanuensis Monday: A Patent for Improvement to Hydrants - 1898

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project three years ago, back on February 16, 2009, and this is my 157th transcription.  Since I began, many others have joined in on the meme. I am thrilled that this meme I started has inspired so many to transcribe their family history documents. Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others.

I am going to use this milestone to take a break from my weekly transcriptions.  It took awhile, but I am running out of things to transcribe and post.  (I have no shortage of things to transcribe, but many aren't appropriate to post for one reason or another.) I also want to set aside some extra time in the week for last minute details that are bound to arise for an upcoming spring wedding, and summer honeymoon.

I suspect I will come across documents that are appropriate for Amanuensis Monday, and when I do, I will post them, but it won't be every week.
***
This week I transcribe a patent filed by my second great grandfather, Selig Feinstein and his business partner, Max Wieslman in 1898.  I discovered this patent back in 2008, before I began this project.  The text is stored in the patent database, with only minor OCR mistakes, but it's good to have a copy for my own records, and some family members may have started reading my blog since 2008.

Weeks in Review

It's been a few weeks since I had a "Week in Review." Below are some highlights from news stories and blog posts I have read in the past few weeks that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.


Petition to Save the SSDI

The Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC) has created a petition on Whitehouse.gov to protect the SSDI from elimination.  The SSDI is the Social Security Death Index, and is under attack from politicians who claim it is to blame for identity theft.  However, the Death Index was created to prevent identity theft.  If the Social Security numbers in the index are being used for fraudulent purposes, the fault isn't the index, but that the index isn't being used by the IRS and others to check.  Read the Press Release.  Several bloggers have written about this, including: Dear Myrtle, Genea-Musings, and Geneabloggers.

Genealogy
 
C. Michael Eliasz-Solomon at Stanczyk - Internet Muse asks the question: Is GEDCOM dead? (Warning: You may need a degree in computer science to completely understand the entry.) 

Diane Haddad at The Genealogy Insider discusses a project by several genealogy websites to compile a database of surname and given name variations.  The hope is that this will be a significant improvement over the current Soundex system developed over 90 years ago.

The Ancestry Insider discusses FamilySearch's new product, Family Tree. While the intent is similar to Ancestry.com's OneWorldTree, it appears to allow for people to make corrections, so there may be some promise.

Technology

Bill LeFurgy at The Signal asks, Email is Where Knowledge Goes to Die, or Is It?  An excerpt: "Email collections from famous people are arriving in libraries and archives.  The Salman Rushdie “papers” at Emory University include the author’s email, and the British Library acquired Wendy Cope’s email as part of the poet’s archive...We can chose for our email to live on rather than die through neglect, error or mindless deletion.  Given all the time and effort we put into our messaging, and the wealth of information it contains, it makes sense to think about what should be saved." 

Dick Eastman at Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter writes on An End of an Era: Kodak to Stop Making Cameras.

Poetry

Judith Richards Shubert at Genealogy Traces has been posting some wonderful poems over the past few weeks.  For example, Hardscrabble Fields.

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Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogist
• Julie Cahill Tarr's Friday Finds at GenBlog
• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Genealogy Round Up at MSS's Roots World
• Diane Haddad's Genealogy News Corral Catch-up at Genealogy Insider

Amanuensis Monday: Letter from Myrtle Van Every - Feb 15, 1944

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week I transcribe a letter my grandmother, Myrtle (Van Every) Deutsch wrote to her sister-in-law Jean (Deutsch) Kamerman on Feb 15, 1944.  (Dashes indicate names of living or possibly living people)

Friday "not so random" Five

It's been awhile since I had a "Friday Five" post.
I'm sure those of you who enjoy this game have hungered for a follow-up.

Names on a theme from various census databases

1. Catherine Everdeen - 1870 US Census - Downers Grove, DuPage, IL - born 1856
2. Constant Mellark - 1860 US Census - Burlington, Hartford, CT - born 1848
3. Gale Hawthorne - 1930 US Census - Lubbock, Lubbock, Texas - born 1908
4. Haymist Smith - 1920 US Census - Charleston Ward 7, Charleston, SC - born 1910
5. Preston Snow - 1870 US Census - Fancy Gap, Caroll, VA - born 1843

• If I can trust the online media campaign, it's 49 days until the movie.  
• I was given the trilogy to read about two weeks ago as a birthday present.  
• I am on the third novel.

Let it Gleam, or Let it Glimmer... (repost)

This was first posted on Feb 2, 2010

One day, in the course of that winter, the sun had come out for a while in the afternoon, but it was the second of February, that ancient Candlmas-day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of six weeks of cold, inspired Matthew Laensberg with the two lines, which have deservedly become classic:

Let it gleam or let it glimmer 
The bear returns into his cave.

(Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 1862, p. 730)

Bears and groundhogs are both hibernating animals.  I suspect it's a little safer to use groundhogs as official prognosticators.

THE LIEGE ALMANAC

The celebrated almanac of "Francis Moore, physician," to whose predictions thousands are accustomed to look with implicit confidence and veneration, is rivalled, on the continent, by the almanac of Liege, by "Matthew Laensberg," who there enjoys an equal degree of celebrity.

Whether the name of Laensberg is a real or an assumed nаme is a matter of great doubt...The earliest of these almanacs known to exist is of the year 1636. It bears the name of Matthew Lansbert, mathematician, and not Laensberg, as it is now written.

-- The Table Book, W. Tegg, 1827, p. 138

Some feel it is cruel, and potentially dangerous, to wake up groundhogs.

While waking groundhogs from their hibernation has become a major tradition on Feb. 2, such efforts can actually put the animals' lives at risk...If a groundhog is awakened from hibernation too early, it might not have the energy to find food and survive in cold winter temperatures.

The St. Louis Zoo doesn't participate, but it's not due to groundhog health issues.

"The fact that we're not having a Groundhog Day celebration is not really a stand we're taking so much as it is that we have a really cranky groundhog who doesn't like to be woken up," St. Louis Zoo public relations director Janet Powell told the Tribune. [same link as above]

 More on the Candlemas origins of the holiday.

Wordless Wednesday: Westerschelde

Source: Henk Kosters

More information on Old Everinge, New Everinge, and the Van Every surname.

Fifth Annual iGene Awards

The Carnival of Genealogy's Annual iGene Awards have returned - where Geneabloggers choose the Best of their Best posts from the past year in five categories: Best Comedy, Best Biography, Best Documentary, Best Screenplay, and Best Picture.

The TransylvanianDutch chapter of the Academy of Genealogy and Family History has participated in all prior years, and will do so again. For those who are nostalgic, here were our selections in 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008 from the prior year's posts.

With no further ado, we will open the envelopes for 2012


Best Picture

For Best Picture, the winner is:  March 22nd, 2011 (which was posted on the 23rd)

The rules define this as a photograph, but a video is made up of a series of stills. And some videos this is more true of than others. We know the winning video has very little to do (directly) with our family history, past or future, however, other aspects of this post swayed us in our selection.

Runner Up:

Wordless Wednesday - Tel Aviv hotels, and postage stamps - 1944 was also nominated.   This post contained scanned images of several Tel Aviv business cards and postage stamps from the 1940s.  The war-time souvenirs were from my maternal grandfather's collection.

Best Screen Play (story you would make into a movie including the cast)

For Best Screen Play, the winner is: Dawes Commission Testimony

Readers may point out that some of these posts were prior to 2011, however, it seems appropriate that the series of posts win an award for the year of completion.  I've indicated the year of each post below, and five of them were in 2011.

Dawes Commission Testimony - Samuel T Hartley - Nov 21, 1900 (2009)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Robert Hartley - Nov 21, 1900 (2011)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Virginia Hartley Shultz - Nov 21, 1900 (2011)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Sophronia Hartley Cagle - Nov 21, 1900 (2011)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Melvin Elijah Van Every – Nov 21, 1900 (2009)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Samuel W Denyer - Nov 21, 1900   (2011)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Caroline Hartley Taylor - Nov 26, 1900 (2011)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Eliza Caroline Foster Reeves – Nov 26, 1900 (2009)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Georgia Hartley Phillips – June 17, 1902 (2009)
Dawes Commission Testimony - Samuel T Hartley – June 17, 1902 (2009)
The Dawes Commission Decision - July 11, 1902 (2010)

Casting: The Dawes Commission judges made a point that none of those testifying 'looked Choctaw."  However, I have no photographs of any of them, except my great grandfather, Melvin Elijah Van Every.

My first choice for casting Samuel T Hartley will be Morgan Freeman.  My second choice will be Leonard Nimoy.  My third choice will be Kirk Douglas.  None of them appear Choctaw, so they fit the requirements. (How Samuel T Hartley, who fought for the Confederacy, would feel about some of those casting suggestions doesn't matter to me.  He's not my ancestor.)

For Samuel's four daughters: Sophronia, Virginia, Georgia, and Caroline, I'd like to cast Drew Barrymore, Natalie Portman, Mayim Bialik, and Soleil Moon Frye.  Don't ask me why, but I think they'd make excellent sisters.

Perhaps Leo DiCaprio could play the role of my great grandfather, and Macaulay Culkin could be Robert Hartley.  Jewel Staite can complete the main cast members as Eliza Foster Reeves.

Best Documentary (investigative research)

For Best Documentary, the winner is: Civilian Occupation Codes: What's Going On?

This series of posts began with the discovery that Ancestry had changed the occupation for my great uncle on his Army Enlistment record, sometime after 2007 when I first obtained the record.  I conducted some research, and realized several other members of my family had had their occupations changed.  I identified the cause: Two different lists of Occupation Codes.  In my final post, I linked to the report from the National Archives indicating that the original Occupation Codes were in error.  It was dated in 2005, two years prior to when I initially obtained the records from Ancestry.  I still don't know when Ancestry updated their records.

Runner-up

Also receiving a nomination is: 1942 Tax Returns - a post where I looked at my grandparents' tax returns and calculated how salaries, and deductions compared to today.

Best Biography

The winner for Best Biography goes to: 

Judson Van Every - Manchester Journal - 1902 - 1910 and Judson Van Every - Manchester Journal - 1915-1917.

These two posts contained newspaper clippings from the Manchester Journal (OK) concerning my great grandfather's brother, Judson Van Every.  The clippings reveal a lot about the 15 years of his life. 

Best Comedy

The winner for Best Comedy is: Missouri Sheriff has a Mule Problem - the St. Louis Post Dispatch had a little fun at the expense of Sheriff Louis P. Gober of Scott County, Missouri (my fiancee's second great grandfather)

Runner-Up:

Also receiving a nomination was a poem I wrote: Genealogy Research

This ends the awards for the five main categories.  However, in 2010 and 2011 I added a category where  I present awards to show my gratitude to other Genea-Bloggers who commented upon, or in some other way responded to an entry, providing me with more information on my family.

Geneabloggers in a Supporting Role

This year this award goes to a blogger whose post spurred me to conduct some research for which I am grateful.

Philip of Blood and Frogs back in April posted a primer on finding and ordering US Naturalization Records.  While I already had the Declarations of Intent for most of my immigrant ancestors who arrived recently enough, I realized there were several other documents of which the National Archives might have copies.  The process led to the Naturalization Petition for Salomon Deutsch - my great grandfather - and the first name of his first daughter who remained in Transylvania, and likely died in the Holocaust.  The process also led to the Naturalization Petition for Barnet Newmark - another great grandfather - and a date for his arrival in St. Louis.

Thus concludes the Fifth Annual iGene Awards - TransylvanianDutch Chapter

Amanuensis Monday: Death Record for Andrew Van Every (1798-1873)

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
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This week I transcribe the death record of my 3rd great grandfather, Andrew Van Every (1798-1873)

Amanuensis Monday: Company Muster Roll - Ebenezer Denyer - Jan & Feb 1863

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week I transcribe a transcription from a Confederate Company Muster Roll for my second great grandfather, Ebenezer Denyer (1828-1872)

Amanuensis Monday: London Dreyfus Demonstrations - Sept 1899

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week I transcribe a New York Times article from September 15, 1899 concerning demonstrations in London.  My Newmark ancestors were in London at the time, but I don't know if they were present at the demonstrations.

Week In Review

Below are some highlights from news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

• The controversy over the new Martin Luther King, Jr. monument may serve as a reminder to genealogists, that just because something is inscribed in stone, doesn't make it accurate.

• The January 2012 Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter can be downloaded.

• Megan Smolenyak² at The Huffington Post covers the celebrity genealogy offerings of NBC and PBS this spring, listing all 32 celebs participating.  I believe Kyra Sedgwick, who will be on PBS's "Finding Your Roots" is a distant cousin of mine through shared Stoughton ancestry, though I have no clue whether that branch of her tree will be mentioned.

• Alan Stewart at Grow Your Own Family Tree discusses Ancestry UK's launch of Parish pages.

• The National Archives (NARA) is encouraging Citizen Archivists to transcribe documents, and tag images. (H/T: Upfront with the NGS)

• In two separate posts, Dear Myrtle compares the ease/difficulty of finding the same record on FamilySearch and Scotland's People.

• Police - using Y Surname DNA test - have discovered the probable last name of a culprit. (Of course, over almost 400 years, name changes, and illegitimacy happens.) Blaine Bettinger at The Genetic Genealogist discusses the case and ethical concerns of using DNA for this purpose.

• In the world of Social Networking, the big news this week is Google's adding of Google+ posts to their search results.  Levi Sumagaysay at Good Morning Silicon Valley covers the aftermath.

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Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogist
• Julie Cahill Tarr's Friday Finds at GenBlog
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday Gems at Adventures in Genealogy
• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Genealogy Round Up at MSS's Roots World
• Wndy Littrell's Follow Friday at All My Branches Genealogy
• Greta Koehl's Friday's Finds and Fun at Greta's Genealogy Bog
• Diane Haddad's Genealogy News Corral at Genealogy Insider
• Donna Pointkouski's Donna's Picks, Link Love, and More at What's Past is Prologue

Amanuensis Monday: The Marriage of Willa Van Every and Lex Roberts

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
***
This week I transcribe a news clipping from the Galveston Daily News announcing the marriage of my maternal grandmother's sister, Willa Van Every

Week In Review

Below are some highlights from news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

• Missy Corley at Bayside Blog discusses When Even Vital Records Can't Be Trusted, reminding us that if the person providing the information on the document didn't know or couldn't remember the correct information, the document will be wrong.

• The Ancestry Insider reminds us that some census enumerators were lazy... and raises a disturbing question about why they are unable to find the same document at FamilySearch.

• Cynthia at ChicagoGenealogy takes a closer look at the Chicago Lying-in Hospital birth records.

• Michael John Neill at Genealogy Tip of the Day reminds us January 1st was not always the start of the year.

• Tamura Jones at Modern Software Experience responds to a statement by the IrishCentral that twins born in different years was a 'historic first.'

• Bill LeFurgy at the Library of Congress' Digital Preservation blog listed the Top Ten Digital Preservation Developments of 2011

• Dean Kaner at Jewish Magazine writes on his grandparent's immigration story in Jewish Immigrants to America as Seen Through Letters

• James Tanner at Genealogy's Star highlights some Genealogical Myths and Fallacies. 

• Some may see a connection to genealogy in Fred Clark's post at The Slacktivist on Three Kinds of Falsehoods: Innocence, Interest, and Intrigue.

• The National Archives has posted several interesting historical documents this week to their Document of the Day feed. 

• Answer of the Proctors for the Amistad Africans
• Emancipation Proclamation
• The Check for the Purchase of Alaska

In the News

• NBC announced the celebrities who will be in the upcoming season of Who Do You Think You Are

• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is returning to PBS with a 10-part series entitled Finding Your Roots.

• A Polish WWII ursine war hero named Wojtek is to be commemorated.  (You're probably not related.)

• The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has corrected the spelling of a soldier's name in their database

•  Scientists create monster super-soldier ants by activating ancestral genes.

Carnival

• The 113th Carnival of Genealogy has been released at CreativeGene.  The theme was A Dickens' Christmas.  The theme for the 114th edition will be The Fifth Annual iGene Awards. For more information, read here.

New Blog Discovered

• This week I discovered Michael Twitty's Afroculinaria.  While his focus is the culinary traditions of Africa, he has started a series he entitles: The Cooking Gene.  From his bio: "I am a Judaics teacher and Culinary Historian focusing on the foodways of Africa, enslaved African Americans, African America and the African and Jewish diasporas."

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Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogist
• Julie Cahill Tarr's Friday Finds at GenBlog
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday Gems at Adventures in Genealogy
• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Genealogy Round Up at MSS's Roots World
• Apple's Weekly Rewind at Apple's Tree
• Wndy Littrell's Follow Friday at All My Branches Genealogy
• Greta Koehl's Friday's Finds and Fun at Greta's Genealogy Bog
• Diane Haddad's Genealogy News Corral Catch-up at Genealogy Insider

(Source: Wondermark)

The Black Swan Fallacy

Modification of 2009 post

The Black Swan Fallacy is taught in college logic courses.

"I've never seen a black swan," the logic goes, "so black swans don't exist."

The logic is obviously absurd. No one has the opportunity to personally examine the color of every swan on the planet. That doesn't stop us from accidentally falling into this logical trap.

We may be very familiar with American swans, for example, and think our experience is sufficient. But black swans actually exist in Australia, if not elsewhere.

 [image source]

 There are also people who are very adamant that no two snowflakes look alike, or that there's no such thing as an honest politician. Science tells us the truth about snowflakes. Though I fear the existence of an honest politician is an element of faith one must either have, or not have.

Genealogical Black Swans

In genealogy we run across this fallacy when we assume something didn't happen, because we haven't seen the evidence for it.

I'll use an example from my family history.

Fact 1: Melvin Van Every, his wife, and children appear in the 1900 census in Caldwell County, Texas

Fact 2: Dates of birth for the children from a Family Record (believed to be copied from a family Bible) indicate births in Caldwell County in 1884, 1886, 1888, 1890, 1898, and 1900.  (With one birth in Oklahoma in 1892)

Fact 3: in 1900, in front of the Dawes Commission, Melvin Van Every testifies that his mother-in-law, Sarah (Hartley) (Denyer) Foster, was living with them in 1898 when she died.

Fact 4: The eldest child above has written notes indicating they only remained in Oklahoma briefly - between December of 1891 and Spring of 1892.

Most genealogists would look for records of the death of a Sarah Foster in Caldwell County, Texas.  Due to the scarcity of death records in 1898, there would probably be little effort made looking elsewhere when they weren't found.  Maybe you'd look in neighboring counties. However, if we catch ourselves stating with certainty that she died in Caldwell County, we have fallen for the Black Swan fallacy. We may have found no evidence to the contrary, but we don't have proof.

The Genealogical Proof Standard includes a "reasonably exhaustive search." Though we must remember reasonably exhaustive will still miss records. And truly exhaustive is next to impossible.

I was lucky, and a young Minnie Van Every wrote letters to The Houston Post between 1897 and 1899 (age 13-15).  She signed her name with the town she was writing from, so I know in November 1897 they traveled to Ganado, Jackson County, Texas, and if the Family Record is correct, they returned to Caldwell County prior to May 1898.

I now believe that Sarah Foster lived in Jackson County, and the Van Everys spent a year living with her. (Perhaps she was ill, so when she died, they returned to Caldwell. However, this is an unproven hypothesis.)  In the above map of counties in Southeastern Texas, I've colored in Caldwell and Jackson.  They are near each other, but probably not near enough that I would ever consider searching in Jackson if it weren't for those letters Minnie Van Every wrote.

There were enough missing years in the example above to raise some suspicion.  How about this for an example?

Entries from the St. Louis City Directory for my grandmother, Myrtle Van Every

• 1921 - Astor Hotel
• 1921 - 4528a Enright
• 1922 - Westgate Hotel
• 1922 - 4123 Westminster
• 1923 - 4515 Washington
• 1924 - 5630 Delmar
• 1925 - 5540 Pershing
• 1926 - 4506 Forest Park
• 1927 - 4545 Washington
• 1928 - 5707 McPherson apt 111 
• 1928 - 5656 Kingsbury apt 203
• 1930 - Georgiana Court Apartments, 5660 Kingsbury, apt 203, St. Louis, MO (census - ED 169 - Sheet 1B) 

She moved around a lot, but she remained in St. Louis.  She doesn't appear in the 1929 directory, but not appearing in a particular directory isn't uncommon.  I can imagine many genealogists, of varying experience levels, stating as fact that she lived in St. Louis continually from 1921 to 1930, citing the St. Louis City Directories and the 1930 census as evidence.

Unfortunately, it's not true.  In April of 1927 she was married in Oakland, California.  In October of 1927 they divorced, and Myrtle returned to St. Louis. She didn't miss appearing in the 1927 directory.  She appeared in the 1928 directory under her maiden name, and her married name.  And she did appear in the 1929 directory, but only under her married name. She returned to her maiden name by the census in 1930.

Since she worked for the US Postal Service, I was able to obtain her personnel records, which indicated her name change, but said nothing about geographical relocation.  Her brief husband was born in Illinois. not too far from St. Louis.  I'd have had absolutely no reason to conduct any research in California.

Once again, I was lucky, and my grandmother saved her divorce papers, which I found in a box of her effects after obtaining her personnel records.

Each document we uncover is but a snapshot in time.  Adding more snapshots increases our knowledge, but we need to beware of Black Swans nesting in our genealogical assumptions and conclusions.

Amanuensis Monday: The Year of Liberation - Letter Home from WWII - Jan 1, 1944

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe? I provide my three reasons in the linked post. You may find others. If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.
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This week I transcribe a letter my grandfather wrote home from World War II, January 1, 1944.