“For me, the sto­ry is the first thing and the last thing.”

– Nor­man Rock­well

Today, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the North Car­oli­na Muse­um of Art to view the exhib­it they had put togeth­er of Nor­man Rock­well’s work. Today was the last day of the exhib­it, so it was “now or nev­er.”

What an amaz­ing col­lec­tion! From the ear­ly Boys Life pieces to the Sat­ur­day Evening Post cov­ers, to the lat­er pieces on civ­il rights, you can eas­i­ly see the tra­jec­to­ry of the artist’s work, his increas­ing facil­i­ty, and his grow­ing brav­ery in deal­ing with the world as it is, not in sim­ply the ide­al­ized way we think of when we think of Nor­man Rock­well.

As a geneal­o­gist, I could not help but notice the work “Fam­i­ly Tree.” Rock­well shows descent from a pirate and his para­mour, through Con­fed­er­ate and Union sol­diers and through Native Amer­i­cans and prospec­tors. When asked about start­ing the tree with a pirate, Rock­well is report­ed to have said that every­one has “a horse thief or two in the fam­i­ly.” This is a whim­si­cal dia­gram of the prop­er and the pro­fane in all of our back­grounds.

The exhib­it begins and ends with a quo­ta­tion from Nor­man Rock­well: “For me, the sto­ry is the first thing and the last thing.” This is what geneal­o­gists are engaged in — not mere­ly the cat­a­logu­ing of dates of birth, mar­riage, and death — but teas­ing out the first and last things that can be dis­cov­ered in our fam­i­ly his­to­ries, what I like to call “his­to­ry at ground lev­el.”

Addi­tion­al resources:

• Nor­man Rock­well Muse­um
• “Amer­i­can Chron­i­cles: The Art of Nor­man Rock­well”: Fam­i­ly Guide

I don’t rec­om­mend doing this, but I left an SD card in the breast pock­et of a dress shirt and then put it into the wash. It went through warm water (but not the dry­er; we don’t even have one of those, which is anoth­er sto­ry for an envi­ron­men­tal blog).

After the Tran­scend 4 GB High-Capac­i­ty Secure Dig­i­tal card went through the wash, I retrieved it and put it in my Mac. Lo and behold, it’s work­ing fine. I remain amazed, and expect to buy more of these, but at high­er stor­age capac­i­ties.

Sea­son Two of NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? pre­miers Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 4th, 8/7 Cen­tral.

(The episodes of the first sea­son are avail­able for free stream­ing from NBC’s web­site until Feb­ru­ary 5th at: http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/video/categories/season‑1/1197290/.)

In hon­or of the forth­com­ing sea­son, Ancestry.com is run­ning a sweep­stakes:

http://www.ancestry.com/wdytya2011

The site says the Grand Prize is $20,000 in trav­el mon­ey, plus:

• Up to 8 hours of con­sul­ta­tion time with an expert geneal­o­gist
• Help from up to 5 experts in fields rel­e­vant to your fam­i­ly his­to­ry
• A year­long Ancestry.com World Deluxe mem­ber­ship for you and 5 fam­i­ly mem­bers

They are also giv­ing away 20 Ancestry.com World Deluxe annu­al mem­ber­ships.

You can enter the con­test dai­ly through April 8, 2011. (They also encour­age you to pro­vide five e‑mail address­es of sales/contest leads. If you do this, they allow you anoth­er entry that day.

Good luck!

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. has end­ed its plans to build a super­store on part of the site of the Civ­il War Bat­tle of the Wilder­ness (May 5–7, 1864) near Orange, Vir­ginia.

In 2009, Wal-Mart received local approval to build the store, but a legal bat­tle ensued, and Wal-Mart announced today that it would build its store else­where. This is a major vic­to­ry for the Civ­il War Trust (until recent­ly known as the Civ­il War Preser­va­tion Trust), a not­ed non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that has fought to pre­serve our dis­ap­pear­ing Civ­il War bat­tle site her­itage.

This is an excel­lent sesqui­cen­ten­ni­al gift to all of us, and pre­serves a loca­tion where many geneal­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans can under­stand the turn­ing point of the Civ­il War. The site has intrin­sic, his­toric, and envi­ron­men­tal val­ue far exceed­ing the eco­nom­ic val­ue of yet anoth­er replace­able big box store. 180,000 men fought in the bat­tle, and there were over 30,000 casu­al­ties. This loca­tion must be treat­ed with respect for the sac­ri­fices made.

The Civ­il War Trust posts the fol­low­ing com­ment:

“We are pleased with Walmart’s deci­sion to aban­don plans to build a super­center on the Wilder­ness bat­tle­field,” remarked James Lighthiz­er, pres­i­dent of the Civ­il War Trust. “We have long believed that Wal­mart would ulti­mate­ly rec­og­nize that it is in the best inter­ests of all con­cerned to move their intend­ed store away from the bat­tle­field. We applaud Wal­mart offi­cials for putting the inter­ests of his­toric preser­va­tion first. Sam Wal­ton would be proud of this deci­sion.”

They also note in their full account that:

A wide range of promi­nent indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions pub­licly opposed the store’s loca­tion, includ­ing more than 250 Amer­i­can his­to­ri­ans led by Pulitzer Prize-win­ners James McPher­son and David McCul­lough. One month after the deci­sion, a group of con­cerned cit­i­zens and the local Friends of Wilder­ness Bat­tle­field filed a legal chal­lenge to over­turn the deci­sion.

We should all cel­e­brate this vic­to­ry!

Oprah Win­frey announced on her show today that she has a long-lost half sis­ter. Her moth­er left this daugh­ter at the hos­pi­tal when she was born, in 1963. The daugh­ter grew up in fos­ter homes, and even­tu­al­ly won­dered about her birth fam­i­ly. After two attempts to con­tact her birth moth­er, Oprah’s new­ly revealed half-sis­ter found out who this woman was, and got in touch with Oprah. When Oprah con­front­ed her moth­er, she at first denied it, and then she said, accord­ing to Oprah, “Yes, I think it’s true.” The rela­tion­ship has since been proved by DNA test­ing. While I am glad for Oprah and her new sis­ter, to have the gift of final­ly being able to get to know one anoth­er, I am amazed at the choic­es Oprah’s moth­er made. First, it must have been painful to give up a child, and she must have felt deep shame to keep this a secret through all these years of Oprah’s suc­cess. And final­ly, to have this child know her fam­i­ly despite all the attempts to deny her exis­tence and their rela­tion­ship. For geneal­o­gists, these kinds of denials have always pre­sent­ed a prob­lem, espe­cial­ly in areas such as adop­tion, where con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion may be dif­fi­cult to come by. DNA match­ing can help fill in gaps where doc­u­men­ta­tion or denial sow doubt or out­right obfus­ca­tion.

Freight Con­duc­tor Killed.

At 3:20 o’clock this morn­ing, Chesa­peake and Ohio Freight Con­duc­tor J. B. Lutz stopped his train near Sewell and on the bridge cross­ing the New Riv­er. While stand­ing there a fol­low­ing train ran into the caboose, instant­ly kil­lling Con­duc­tor Lutz and caus­ing seri­ous injury to Rear Brake­man Hugh Rat­cliffe. The approach­ing train was seen by Lutz and Rad­cliffe, [sic] and the lat­ter jumped and land­ed in the riv­er, fifty feet below.

“Freight Con­duc­tor Killed,” The Wash­ing­ton Post, March 13, 1907, p. 12.

This was my great great grand­fa­ther, John Bal­lard Lutz. When he died in this acci­dent in 1907, he left a wife (Flo­ra Belle née Fox) and eight chil­dren between 19 years and one month of age.

Three years lat­er, we find Flo­ra Belle mar­ried to Charles W. Clark in Hunt­ing­ton, West Vir­ginia.¹ On 3 or 4 May, the house­hold is in Lawrence Coun­ty, Ohio, where they turn up in the US Cen­sus enu­mer­a­tion for that coun­ty.² Along with the mar­ried cou­ple are his two chil­dren (Lau­ra M. and William A.) as well as her chil­dren (Lola, Har­ry, Alta, John, Mar­garet, and Made­line).

This cen­sus record presents one ques­tion: Where was Con­nie Marie Lutz? She would have been a 12 year old, between Har­ry and Alta in the peck­ing order.… Per­haps the cen­sus tak­er missed her in the wel­ter of the eight chil­dren he was able to record.

In a flash of the col­li­sion of that train, the lives of this fam­i­ly were inex­tri­ca­bly and sud­den­ly changed. Flo­ra Belle, who had been a house­wife, rely­ing on her hus­band’s rail­road income, sud­den­ly had to find an income while rais­ing her chil­dren. By the time of the 1920 cen­sus, Flo­ra Belle is liv­ing in Hunt­ing­ton, West Vir­ginia again, and list­ed as a wid­ow.³ She lat­er took in board­ers and ran a room­ing house. It was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent life than it would have been because of that wreck on the Sewall Bridge.

¹ Reg­is­ter of Mar­riage, Cabell Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia, 13 Feb 1910, mar­riage record of Charles W. Clark and Mrs. Flo­ra B. Lutz, West Vir­ginia Divi­sion of His­to­ry and Cul­ture, West Vir­ginia Archives and His­to­ry, dig­i­tal image: http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/va_view.aspx?Id=10962571&Type=Marriage : accessed 22 Jan­u­ary 2011.

² 1910 U.S. Cen­sus, Lawrence Coun­ty, Ohio, pop­u­la­tion sched­ule, Union Town­ship, ED 94, p. 10A, dwelling 197, fam­i­ly 198, Charles W. Clark house­hold; dig­i­tal image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/ ” accessed 22 Jan­u­ary 2011); cit­ing NARA micro­film pub­li­ca­tion T624, roll 1202.

³ 1920 U.S. Cen­sus, Cabell Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia, pop­u­la­tion sched­ule, Hunt­ing­ton, Ward 3, ED 22, p. 4A, dwelling 56, fam­i­ly 79, Flo­ra Lutz house­hold; dig­i­tal image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/ ” accessed 22 Jan­u­ary 2011); cit­ing NARA micro­film pub­li­ca­tion T625, roll 1950.

Randy Seaver is one of the best known geneal­o­gy blog­gers. He’s con­sis­tent, ded­i­cat­ed, and a gen­uine jour­nal­ist.

Randy’s reviews of new fea­tures on Ancestry.com and Fam­il­y­Search, cut­ting through mar­ket­ing spins to point out where fea­tures are actu­al­ly improve­ments, or bring more ques­tions than answers. He does this with­out ani­mos­i­ty or ran­cor.

If you don’t know Randy’s work, you should amble over to http://www.geneamusings.com/

Recent posts include:

• a sum­ma­ry of plans for the fam­i­ly tree por­tion of Fam­il­y­Search
• a Google Map that directs one to kayak from Seat­tle to Hawaii, and from Hawaii to Tokyo as part of a trip from the San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia area to Tokyo
• a review of GEDCOM export and import of sources, and a dis­cus­sion of attempts to build a bet­ter GEDCOM

On July 14th 1908, my great grand­fa­ther Nels John­son’s barn burned to the ground.

The sto­ry goes that his son Wal­lace had a pony in the barn and that the first ani­mal that Nels saved was Wal­lace’s pony. My own curios­i­ty is piqued by the fact that they actu­al­ly had time to take these pic­tures.

[slickr-flickr search=“sets” set=“72157625739184401” items=“3” type=“galleria”]

CNN reports about a woman named Flo­rence Hand, who had an inkling that she had been sep­a­rat­ed from a sib­ling, 85 years ago.

Using the Ancestry.com 1930 US Cen­sus, she found this broth­er liv­ing with her grand­fa­ther. She used this infor­ma­tion to find him, and they have been reunit­ed.

The CNN piece is brief but makes a cou­ple of points that are impor­tant for begin­ning Amer­i­can geneal­o­gists to remem­ber, here they are in a more elab­o­rat­ed form:

Spelling. Con­sid­er alter­nate spellings. Suc­cess will come to those who think, “I won­der if they could have spelled it this way?”

The US Cen­sus is a pow­er­ful tool. It is easy to access online, and it can help place your ances­tors in par­tic­u­lar places at par­tic­u­lar times. Per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able cen­sus data is released 72 years after it is tak­en, for the pri­va­cy of indi­vid­u­als. So the most recent cen­sus avail­able is the 1930 cen­sus. (I will add that this also means that the 1940 cen­sus is becom­ing avail­able on April 2, 2012 in a dig­i­tal for­mat from the Nation­al Archives at their facil­i­ties and over the Inter­net. For more infor­ma­tion, see the Nation­al Archives page about the 1940 Cen­sus.

Below are some tran­scrip­tions of news­pa­per arti­cles relat­ing to the like­ly mur­der of my 3rd great grand­moth­er, Jane Gra­ham, in 1854 in what was then Mon­roe Coun­ty, Vir­ginia, and is now Sum­mers Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia.

[ Joseph Graham’s Barn ]

Joseph Gra­ham’s barn, on Green­bri­er riv­er, Mon­roe coun­ty, was burned to the ground on the night of the 27th ult.

From The Dai­ly Dis­patch, Vol. IV, No. 241, Rich­mond, VA, Fri­day, August 14, 1854, p. 1, col. 5. “Vir­ginia.” micro­film, Rich­mond, VA Dis­patch, July through Decem­ber 1854, Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty Library, Peri­od­i­cal Ser­vice, Muncie, IN.

[ The Greenbrier Era ]

The Green­bri­er Era has a long account of the mur­der of Miss Jane Gra­ham, in Mon­roe coun­ty. She was on bad terms with her broth­ers, and accord­ing to the account in the Era, they are sus­pect­ed of hav­ing had some­thing to do with her mur­der. In fact, she once had an ille­git­i­mate daugh­ter, and to this, per­haps, may be attrib­uted the enmi­ty. The barn of Joseph Gra­ham, her father, was burnt on the night of the 27th ult., sub­se­quent to which Jane Gra­ham was not seen until she was found mur­dered in the bush­es, some dis­tance from home. The ver­dict of the jury of inquest is con­sid­ered extra­or­di­nary. We copy the Era’s remarks on the sub­ject:

After hear­ing all the evi­dence, the jury came to the con­clu­sion that Miss Jane Gra­ham fired the barn — that in so doing she roused the fierce dog belong­ing to the fam­i­ly — that the dog fol­lowed her, and that some of the fam­i­ly pur­sued in the same direc­tion — that some of them came up with her where the first indi­ca­tion of a scuf­fle occurred — that she then escaped but was over­tak­en where the indi­ca­tions of a sec­ond scuf­fle were found, and there mur­dered. The jury, we under­stand, were unan­i­mous­ly of a con­vic­tion that this was the man­ner of her death; yet (will it be believed in the land of chival­ry and in the 19th cen­tu­ry?) they brought in a ver­dict, on paper,  that she “came to her death by some unknown means!” One of the jury­men, whom a friend of ours con­versed with, said they dared do noth­ing more — the Gra­hams were such a des­per­ate set that the whole neigh­bor­hood feared them!

From The Dai­ly Dis­patch, Vol. IV, No. 243, Rich­mond, VA, Wednes­day, August 16, 1854, p. 1, col. 4. “Vir­ginia.” micro­film, Rich­mond, VA Dis­patch, July through Decem­ber 1854, Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty Library, Peri­od­i­cal Ser­vice, Muncie, IN.

Arrest of the Graham Family.

A state­ment rel­a­tive to the mur­der of Miss Jane Gra­ham, of Mon­roe coun­ty, which we copied a few days ago from the Green­bri­er Era, will be remem­bered by our read­ers. It was there inti­mat­ed that sus­pi­cion rest­ed on Joseph Gra­ham and his four sons (father and broth­ers of the deceased) of hav­ing com­mit­ted the deed. A friend writes to us from Lewis­burg that they have all been arrest­ed. He also requests us to state that the ver­dict of the coro­ner’s jury was “death by some unknown per­son or per­sons,” not “by some unknown means,” as report­ed hereto­fore.

From The Dai­ly Dis­patch, Vol. IV, No. 245, Rich­mond, VA, Fri­day, August 18, 1854, p. 3, col. 1. “Lat­est Mail News.” micro­film, Rich­mond, VA Dis­patch, July through Decem­ber 1854, Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty Library, Peri­od­i­cal Ser­vice, Muncie, IN.

Monroe County Court.

The Coun­ty Court of Mon­roe met Mon­day morn­ing, 21st instant, when, after the trans­ac­tion of some minor busi­ness, the case of the two negroes charged with the mur­der of Miss Jane Gra­ham was tak­en up. The pris­on­ers were brought in, but at the insis­tance of the Com­mon­wealth’s Attor­ney, it is stat­ed, the tri­al was post­poned to the next ses­sion of the Court.

Miss Gra­ham, the par­ty mur­dered, is stat­ed to have been pos­sessed of prop­er­ty to the amount of some $3000, and was soon to have been mar­ried to a respectable mid­dle aged mechan­ic of Rocky Point. This state­ment is made upon good author­i­ty. The sur­viv­ing par­ty appears great­ly affect­ed at her death. — Green­bri­er Era.

From The Dai­ly Dis­patch, Vol. IV, No. 253, Rich­mond, VA, Mon­day, August 28, 1854, p. 3, col. 2. “Lat­est Mail News: Mon­roe Coun­ty Court.” micro­film, Rich­mond Dis­patch (VA) July thru Decem­ber 1854, Main Film #20, Library of Vir­ginia, Rich­mond, VA, researched August 7, 1999 by Jor­dan Jones.

The Grahams.

The Lewis­burg Chron­i­cle, allud­ing to the con­flict­ing rumors in ref­er­ence to the mur­der of Miss. Gra­ham, says:

“We can only say this much, how­ev­er, that the Gra­hams are not under arrest, as the Rich­mond Dis­patch would have the pub­lic believe.”

It appears to us that there is some ill-nature dis­played in that sen­tence. The Dis­patch “would have the pub­lic believe” noth­ing but the truth, and has only pub­lished brief state­ments in regard to the Gra­ham affair, as fur­nished by cor­re­spon­dents and by news­pa­pers. The arrest and sub­se­quent dis­charge of the Gra­hams was announced sev­er­al days ago, on what we pre­sume to be good author­i­ty, and we have nev­er seen a con­tra­dic­tion of it.

From The Dai­ly Dis­patch, Vol. IV, No. 257, Rich­mond, VA, Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 1, 1854, p. 4, col. 1. “Vir­ginia.” micro­film, Rich­mond, VA Dis­patch, July through Decem­ber 1854, Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty Library, Peri­od­i­cal Ser­vice, Muncie, IN.