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150 years ago today, 12 April 1861, the Civ­il War start­ed in earnest with a Con­fed­er­ate attack on the Fed­er­al posi­tion at Fort Sumter, in advance of sup­ply ships arriv­ing with food to resup­ply the fort.

For Amer­i­can geneal­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans of the Unit­ed States, the Civ­il War is the cen­tral event, even more calami­tous than the Rev­o­lu­tion, and affect­ing the lives of a wider per­cent­age of what had become, since the Rev­o­lu­tion, a more pop­u­lous coun­try. (In the 1790 cen­sus, the pop­u­la­tion was record­ed to be 3,929,214. In the 1860 cen­sus, the pop­u­la­tion was 31,443,321, or eight times larg­er.)

Some­where between 618,000 and 700,000 sol­diers died in the con­flict, mak­ing it more dead­ly than all the oth­er wars the US par­tic­i­pat­ed in from the Rev­o­lu­tion to the Viet­nam War, com­bined. And, of course, the war, fought main­ly (despite revi­sion­ist protests to the con­trary) to main­tain a way of life found­ed on enslav­ing a race of peo­ple, end­ed by grant­i­ng free­dom, first to blacks in states which had seced­ed, and then to all blacks in all states and ter­ri­to­ries of the US.

This trans­for­ma­tive time is full of records for geneal­o­gists. There are mil­i­tary and pen­sion records, which are some of the best known mil­i­tary records from this peri­od. But there are also the final pay­ment vouch­ers, reports of camps, forts, and pris­ons, numer­ous man­u­scripts, the papers of the South­ern Claims Com­mis­sion, which “was an orga­ni­za­tion of the exec­u­tive branch of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment from 1871–1873 under Pres­i­dent Grant. Its pur­pose was to allow Union sym­pa­thiz­ers who had lived in the South­ern states dur­ing the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, 1861–1865, to apply for reim­burse­ments for prop­er­ty loss­es due to U.S. Army con­fis­ca­tions dur­ing the war” (Wikipedia. “South­ern Claims Com­mis­sion,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Claims_Commission Accessed : 13 April 2011).

If you have not start­ed look­ing for your Civ­il War ances­tor, you could do much worse than start with the Civ­il War Sol­diers and Sailors Sys­tem: http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/. This site includes a search­able data­base of over 6.3 mil­lion names of com­bat­tants from the North and the South, rep­re­sent­ing 44 states and ter­ri­to­ries. There are also many sailors, though this part of the project is not com­plete. The site pro­vides lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion, but usu­al­ly includes enough infor­ma­tion to find out more about your sol­dier. For exam­ple, my 3rd great grand­fa­ther, Thomas D. Via, has this entry:

Thomas D. Via (First_Last)

Reg­i­ment Name 7 Vir­ginia Infantry

Side Con­fed­er­ate

Com­pa­ny I

Sol­dier’s Rank_In Pri­vate

Sol­dier’s Rank_Out Pri­vate

Alter­nate Name

Notes

Film Num­ber M382 roll 57

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And also, this:

Thomas D. Via (First_Last)

Reg­i­ment Name 7 Vir­ginia Infantry

Side Con­fed­er­ate

Com­pa­ny I

Sol­dier’s Rank_In Pri­vate

Sol­dier’s Rank_Out Pri­vate

Alter­nate Name

Notes

Film Num­ber M382 roll 57

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(He served in the Con­fed­er­ate army, was cap­tured, and joined the Union army, most like­ly as a way out of the prison camp he was in at Point Look­out, Mary­land. For more infor­ma­tion see, Sur­name Sat­ur­day: Via.

As the sesqui­cen­ten­ni­al con­tin­ues, I will pro­vide oth­er sites and tips for Civ­il War research.

The Unit­ed States Cen­sus Bureau has a page out­lin­ing its data access tools. While the data being made avail­able is sta­tis­ti­cal data, not per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able genealog­i­cal data, it should be of inter­est to geneal­o­gists to under­stand trends and the pop­u­la­tion trends and geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States.

The site pro­vides large datasets for analy­sis, but also allows you to nav­i­gate into pop­u­la­tion demo­graph­ics for any coun­ty, state, or munic­i­pal­i­ty in the Unit­ed States.

Here are some of the resources avail­able on the page:

• Cen­stats — Appli­ca­tions avail­able include: Cen­sus Tract Street Loca­tor, Coun­ty Busi­ness Pat­terns, Zip Busi­ness Pat­terns, Inter­na­tion­al Trade Data, and more.
• Quick­Facts — State and Coun­ty Quick­Facts pro­vides fre­quent­ly request­ed Cen­sus Bureau infor­ma­tion at the nation­al, state, coun­ty, and city lev­el.
• Online Map­ping Tools — using TIGER and the Amer­i­can FactFind­er
• US Gazetteer — Place name, and ZIP code search engine.

I am look­ing for­ward to hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to look at these resources.

Tonight, Ash­ley Judd was the celebri­ty on the sea­son finale of Who Do You Think You Are?

Her fam­i­ly sto­ry is com­pelling, and includes a Union Civ­il War vet­er­an from Ken­tucky, who was cap­tured twice by the Con­fed­er­ates, and was a bat­tle­field amputee.

Addi­tion­al­ly, her line goes back to the ear­li­est days of the Ply­mouth Bay Colony in Mass­a­chu­setts.

The show pre­sent­ed her as doing some of the research with her father. This was­n’t an entire­ly believ­able por­tion of the show.

At one point, a researcher indi­cat­ed that the Civ­il War ances­tor’s age of 18 at the mus­ter­ing in and 18 at mus­ter­ing out might have indi­cat­ed that he lied about his age on mus­ter­ing in. That is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble. But the age being the same on mus­ter­ing in and out is com­mon through­out US mil­i­tary records, and is sim­ply reflec­tive of a prac­tice that lists the age at mus­ter­ing in instead of the sol­dier’s cur­rent age through­out the records about that sol­dier.

How­ev­er, despite that glitch, it was a com­pelling, dra­mat­ic, and emo­tion­al sea­son finale. The video will be avail­able for a lim­it­ed time on demand at: http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/episode-guide/

This week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? returns to a more tra­di­tion­al research method­ol­o­gy, start­ing from what is known, and mov­ing back­ward to illu­mi­nate the unknown.

While many crit­ics will note that the star did not engage with much of the research, and was being hand­ed hours of research in a moment, I appre­ci­at­ed the use of fam­i­ly lore (a Bar­ba­dos back­ground on the moth­er’s side; a line of rab­bis on the father’s side). Instead of mak­ing assump­tions that this lore was gen­uine­ly true, the researchers took it as clues to what they might find. There was an acknowl­edge­ment that the lore could be true or false, mis-remem­bered, mis­un­der­stood, or very very close.

In addi­tion to the lore about the line of rab­bis and the ances­tor from Bar­ba­dos, the third inter­est for Ms. Pal­trow was find­ing out if there was any way to under­stand what had hap­pened in her pater­nal grand­fa­ther’s youth to make him ret­i­cent to talk about it oth­er than to say that he did not live in a home like she did. She dis­cov­ered details about her great grand­moth­er, the loss­es that she endured, which helped her put it in per­spec­tive. This would have been a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the change, his­tor­i­cal­ly, in life expectan­cies. Some­one in the mid­dle class los­ing a child today is more rare than it was 100 years ago.

The episode was enter­tain­ing, and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see spec­tac­u­lar vis­tas of Bar­ba­dos as well as con­sid­er how var­ied Amer­i­can fam­i­lies are. Ms. Pal­trow was vis­i­bly moved by some of the dis­cov­er­ies. This was a sol­id episode, which would still have been improved with a brief state­ment of the amount of research done to get to these dis­cov­er­ies; how­ev­er, I know that con­tra­dicts with the Ancestry.com mar­ket­ing mes­sage, which can be boiled down to: “This is so easy, even you could do it!”

This week’s install­ment of Who Do You Think You Are? with Steve Busce­mi has an enter­tain­ing sto­ry about depres­sion, sui­cide, servi­tude, and the Civ­il War … but it’s not about geneal­o­gy as it is gen­er­al­ly under­stood.

After a fair­ly stan­dard, but sol­id begin­ning, with Busce­mi talk­ing to his par­ents about his mater­nal grand­moth­er, the show descends into wild spec­u­la­tion.

As with many of the shows, instead of start­ing with the present, and work­ing back­ward, the show skips a gen­er­a­tion. I under­stand that, in terms of pri­va­cy con­sid­er­a­tions on the show, but I hope the actu­al research start­ed with fam­i­ly doc­u­ments, and with Buscemi’s moth­er’s birth cer­tifi­cate, for exam­ple. So, they go to find Buscemi’s grand­moth­er’s death cer­tifi­cate in New York records from 1928. This is rea­son­able enough. It’s good to see the star read­ing and eval­u­at­ing the doc­u­ment. From here, Busce­mi is direct­ed to the 1880 cen­sus. Why? Did they not find her in the 1920, 1910, and 1900 cen­sus records? If they did search those cen­sus records, it is not men­tioned in the show.

The death cer­tifi­cate says that Jane Mont­gomery would have been born cir­ca 1880. How­ev­er, when we find an 11-year-old Jane Mont­gomery work­ing as a ser­vant in a house­hold in the 1880 cen­sus in New Jer­sey, there is no ques­tion­ing whether this is the right Jane Mont­gomery. There are no oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers and the par­ents nowhere near­by, we assume this must be the ances­tor.

In fact, of course, this 11-year-old ser­vant is prob­a­bly not an ances­tor of Busce­mi. First, her age is 11 years off what the death cer­tifi­cate would sug­gest. The death cer­tifi­cate has Jane as dying at the age of 48 in 1928. We know from the fam­i­ly sto­ries that when she died in 1928, Buscemi’s moth­er was “like 3.” If any­thing, Jane is younger than what is stat­ed in the death cer­tifi­cate, as 45 or so is push­ing the high end of a wom­an’s fer­til­i­ty. If Buscemi’s grand­moth­er in the death cer­tifi­cate and this ser­vant girl are the same per­son, she have birth at the age of about 56.

It is at this point that things real­ly veer off from gen­er­al genealog­i­cal prac­tice. The researcher from Ances­try sug­gests that Busce­mi should search for shared trees on Ances­try. Now, I know they have a prod­uct to sell, and I give the researcher cred­it for say­ing that these trees can pro­vide “clues.” How­ev­er, as soon as they see a fam­i­ly tree with the expect­ed names of the father, moth­er, and one of the chil­dren, they assume it’s cor­rect. The next thing you know, Busce­mi is off to the Penn­syl­va­nia state archives. Absolute­ly no evi­dence or analy­sis is pro­vid­ed to sub­stan­ti­ate a rela­tion­ship between Buscemi’s Jane Mont­gomery and the one in the mem­ber chart.

So, the show was a bit of a dis­ap­point­ment. I had been look­ing for­ward to it, as I appre­ci­ate the integri­ty of Buscemi’s work. In my opin­ion, Ances­try, in an attempt at prod­uct place­ment of their mem­ber trees has done a dis­ser­vice to geneal­o­gy. This goes beyond the nor­mal com­plaints of touch­ing the doc­u­ments, or hand-feed­ing insights to the stars. Ances­try seems to think (per­haps even know, based on met­ri­cal analy­sis of the use of their web­site), that unsourced trees are a key way to get mem­ber­ships. So, despite the fact that doing so works con­trary to the goal of sourced and thor­ough research, which can stand up to crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion, Ances­try push­es for­ward their trees fea­ture. Pro­fes­sion­al geneal­o­gists and seri­ous non-prof­its in the field will have even more to explain because Ances­try has sug­gest­ed jump­ing to con­clu­sions is a valid research method­ol­o­gy.

And I end up won­der­ing what Steve Buscemi’s ances­try real­ly looks like.…

Google received a painful judg­ment from Judge Den­ny Chin on its $125 mil­lion agree­ment with the pub­lish­ing indus­try. Judge Chin felt the agree­ment gave Google a “de fac­tor monop­oly.” Google had been sued by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Pub­lish­ers and the Authors Guild in 2005. These groups object­ed to the fact that Google was in the process of scan­ning mil­lions of books for which they were not the copy­right own­er, and then plac­ing small snip­pets on the web for search and retrieval.

Espe­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic were the mil­lions of orphaned books, that is, books that are still under copy­right pro­tec­tion, but for whom no one is sure who the copy­right own­er is, usu­al­ly because of faulty record keep­ing by pub­lish­ers, pub­lish­ers going out of busi­ness, or com­pli­cat­ed by pro­bate con­fu­sion. Cur­rent­ly, these books have lit­tle val­ue, as they are main­ly out-of-print, and only for sale in the resale mar­ket. How­ev­er, Google has been in the process of sell­ing dig­i­tal ver­sions of books that have been long out of print and had some lev­el of pent-up demand. While each par­tic­u­lar book might not be a best sell­er, in the list of mil­lions of titles that require no roy­al­ty to Google, the aver­age num­ber of books that sell would not have to be great for Google to make a prof­it. In fact, it’s clear that $125 mil­lion is clear­ly not enough for own­er­ship of such a great chunk of humane let­ters.

So, where will Google go from here? No one knows. It is even unclear whether their part­ners in the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Pub­lish­ers and the Authors Guild will con­tin­ue to work with them to try to come to an agree­ment accept­able to the court, or whether, instead, they will sue Google, now that their agree­ment is no longer in place.

How­ev­er, I think there are some inter­est­ing options for Google:

• Google Books will cer­tain­ly still dis­trib­ute its vast cat­a­log of pub­lic domain books.
• Google could donate all the orphaned books to a non-prof­it, such as the Inter­net Archive, with and under­stand­ing that Google could make the books avail­able as they come into the pub­lic domain.
• Google could nego­ti­ate anoth­er, more expen­sive, agree­ment. It’s unclear how this agree­ment could be designed to meet the court’s require­ments for eco­nom­ic fair­ness, as Google would like­ly still be far ahead of any­one else in dig­i­tiz­ing the worlds books.

For geneal­o­gists, Google Books has been a book, pro­vid­ing unlim­it­ed access to a num­ber of pub­lic domain titles, includ­ing law library con­tent, and local and fam­i­ly his­to­ries.

Scott Tur­ow of the Authors Guild pro­vides an idea of the like­ly direc­tion, and the dif­fi­cul­ty of law get­ting in the way of long-term trends:

“Regard­less of the out­come of our dis­cus­sions with pub­lish­ers and Google, open­ing up far greater access to out-of-print books through new tech­nolo­gies that cre­ate new mar­kets is an idea whose time has come,” said Mr.Turow. “Read­ers want access to these unavail­able works, and authors need every mar­ket they can get. There has to be a way to make this hap­pen. It’s a top pri­or­i­ty for the Authors Guild.”

In going through fam­i­ly heir­looms, great and small, we came across a small tro­phy in the form of a cup.

“O. F. D. / Crib­bage Tro­phy / Won By / Hill & Hallen”

I am not sure who the win­ners are, or what the year was, but my moth­er told me, years ago, that this was won by her father, Ernie Hill, and his bud­dy Hallen. My guess is that “O. F. D.” is the Ord Fire Depart­ment in my moth­er’s home town of Ord, Nebras­ka.

The only way to find out more about this is to search the Ord Quiz, and pos­si­bly oth­er local papers work­ing back­wards from Ernie Hill’s death in 1933. I know he did­n’t win it after 1933, as dead men don’t win crib­bage tour­na­ments.

Will I find out much? Pos­si­bly not. Will I find out any­thing? Prob­a­bly so.

It is all part of the “rea­son­ably exhaus­tive search.” When one finds a clue, one must fol­low it where it leads.

ArkivDig­i­tal, the pre­mier inde­pen­dent sub­scrip­tion-based genealog­i­cal research web­site in Swe­den, will be free this week­end in cel­e­bra­tion of Swe­den’s “Geneal­o­gy Research Day” (March 19th).

The site boasts 26 mil­lion records online in col­or. I have writ­ten about the site pre­vi­ous­ly (“Review: Gen­line vs. Arkiv Dig­i­tal”). The site is con­tin­u­ing to improve, and there is a beta ver­sion of a new Eng­lish ArkivDig­i­tal appli­ca­tion. (The Java-based appli­ca­tion runs on your desk­top and helps you find and nav­i­gate through images on ArchivDig­i­tal’s web­site.)

While most of the doc­u­ments in the Swedish church records that make up the bulk of the ArkivDig­i­tal col­lec­tion are not as col­or­ful as the exam­ple above, I was sur­prised at how much eas­i­er it is to read hand­writ­ten images in col­or than it is in black and white. It prob­a­bly has to do with the paper in grayscale not pro­vid­ing the same con­trast to the let­ter­ing as one sees in the the sepia-toned col­or images on ArkivDig­i­tal.

I high­ly rec­om­mend the site, and since you can use it free this week­end, you can deter­mine if it’s some­thing you want to sub­scribe to or not.

To the left is a pic­ture of my great grand­moth­er, Alice Mar­garet Gregg (b. 29 Apr 1870, Nod­away, Adams, Iowa; d. 29 Mar 1919, Ord, Val­ley, Nebras­ka). She mar­ried the farmer Nels John­son on 26 Sep 1888 at her father’s farm near Alliance, Box Butte, Nebras­ka). They had three chil­dren.

She died just one month shy of her 50th birth­day, a vic­tim of the world­wide flu pan­dem­ic. Her daugh­ter, Bethene Blanche John­son (1892–1919), suc­cumbed three days lat­er.

Moca­vo, a new Inter­net search engine, launched today.

Its focus is on search­ing free genealog­i­cal web­sites. It has gained the atten­tion of the geneal­o­gy blog­gers, show­ing up in Randy Seaver’s Genea-Mus­ings (“First Look at Moca­vo — A New Geneal­o­gy Search Engine”) and Dick East­man’s EOGN (“Mocavo.com — A Geneal­o­gy Search Engine”).

The site offers a very intu­itive inter­face, with a sim­ple, and large, search bar, which tells you to “Enter names, places, years, etc. Full names best in quotes.”

The search results, which exclude con­tent from non-genealog­i­cal sites, such as Face­book and Twit­ter, and focus on free sites geared toward geneal­o­gy (Rootsweb, USGen­Web, Find-a-Grave, and on and on), are gen­er­al­ly rel­e­vant for geneal­o­gists.

I searched for

“Swan John­son” Nance

(Nance being the coun­ty Swan end­ed up in after emi­grat­ing from Swe­den and migrat­ing through Illi­nois and Iowa). I received rel­e­vant results, many of which I had writ­ten, but I not­ed that the results on Rootsweb were there, but none from this blog, though those entries are months old. My sup­po­si­tion then, is that Moca­vo is search­ing a spe­cif­ic sub­set of genealog­i­cal sites — ones where the total name count is already in the bil­lions.

Nev­er­the­less, this seems to be an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful search tool. It will not replace Google for genealog­i­cal data, but it will be a site many of us com­mon­ly use, par­tic­u­lar­ly when our search­es turn on a major­i­ty of social media pages, instead of genealog­i­cal gold.