Evaluating Evidence: Who Has the Correct Story?

I volunteer with a small museum in the Sierra Nevadas near Yosemite National Park.  Our community grew up in the Gold Rush era, and our genealogical dream is to build a database that will include everyone who has ever lived in our part of the county.  You can see it by finding the Genealogy pages at www.grovelandmuseum.org or going directly to STCHSGenealogy.com. 

In the 35 miles or so of California's Hwy 120 between Don Pedro Reservoir  and the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite National Park there are two cemeteries.  Each year for Memorial Day our genealogy volunteers lead a cemetery tour of one cemetery.  This year we are at the Divide Cemetery, so named because it is at the top of the ridge (aka The Divide) between the villages of Big Oak Flat and Groveland.  Each volunteer has chosen a family represented in the cemetery to share with our visitors.  This year, one family is that of Dearborn Fuller Longfellow  who was born 8 Aug 832 in Waldo Co., Maine.

Longfellow was in California by 1860 when he appears in the census as running a livery stable in the town of Coulterville.  Just up the road is the town of Greeley Hill, named for cousins Si and Watson Greeley.  They took literally the advice of their journalist cousins, Horace Greeley, who wrote "Go west, young man, go west and grow up with the country!"  Longfellow, yet another cousin, was but one of a small colony of New Englanders settled in Greeley Hill, Coulterville, and neighboring Big Oak Flat and Groveland from the 1850's onward.

We thought we knew quite a bit about Dearborn F Longfellow until Peggy started preparing for her part in this weekend's event.  We knew he had come from Maine, that he was connected to THE Longfellow family, that his wife was born in Australia,  that he was a relatively prosperous businessman and rancher in Big Oak Flat, and that he owned a mine, the ruins of which were still standing in 2007 but which burned that winter.  A model of the Longfellow Mine is a  favorite display in the Groveland Museum. 

Yesterday my friend wrote,

I have to run this by you because it's driving me crazy.  Go to Ancestry and look up Samuel Fuller and Mary Longfellow, parents of Mary Fuller, mother of Dearborn F.
...  Am I crazy or do Dearborn's parents have the same great grandfather?

Good observation, good question.  She's looking at patron-submitted data, comparing it with her own research from different records, and asking if what she is seeing is reasonable.   We looked at the Ancestry-posted  profile views and then at the family tree, giving us a better view across several generations.  We realized that Mary Fuller's grandfather and her father-in-law are brothers.  Yes, Dearborn Fuller's maternal great-grandfather Samuel Longfellow and paternal great uncle Samuel Longfellow were the same person. 

But while we were looking at the tree, another question leaped into view.  The Dearborn Longfellow of the tree was assigned a wife Clara.  Who was Clara?  We knew about wife Louisa, but not Clara.  To further complicate matters, Dearborn was assigned two children by Clara.  His daughter, said the tree, was born in Maine in 1863, when we know Dearborn was in California.

As it turns out, there are two men, both born in Maine, both named Dearborn Longfellow, close in age and likely cousins.  One remained in Maine and married Clara.  The other came to California, married Louisa, and settled in southern Tuolumne County.  The researcher who posted at Ancestry knew the Dearborn he was writing about came to California from Maine.  When he found a marriage in Maine for a Dearborn Longfellow of about the right age ...   The assumption throws a cloud over all the rest of his research. 

My friend and I have decided that since the Dearborn  Longfellow in this chart (as well as in other charts of the same family) is consistently reported as coming to California, then the line backwards is probably correct.  We have the marriage records from California, burial records of Dearborn, Louisa and several of their children, and copies of correspondence from the youngest daughter.    We are confident our research from Dearborn forward is correct. 

Notes to self:

• Question conflicting evidence.
• Evaluate the sources.  The closer to the date the event happened, the more accurate is is likely to be.  Original documents are generally more reliable than oral history. 
• Look for those original documents.  The Index to Tuolumne Co. Marriages 1850-1900 lists essential data -- Derbon (sic) Longfellow married Louisa Wootten (sic) on 29 Oct 1862.  The marriage registration in the courthouse shows that her father had to give his permission for her to marry, showing that she was a minor.  It also shows that her father wrote his own name as WOOTTON -- not Wootten or Wooten as we often see in other documents. 
• Evaluate again.  
• Now update your database!

Happy Hunting!  

Same Material, Diffferent Perspective

NOTE TO SELF:  Learn from your errors! 

Back in 2009, I was still deep in recovery mode, dealing with widowhood and aged parents.  My father was in residential nursing care because his needs were greater than was able to meet at home.  Dementia, his primary disability, did not make him a candidate for hospice.  I was living with my mother who was then 95 and unable to live alone safely, and longing for even a brief trip off island to anywhere with a seasonal change that did not include another summer. 

Back in 2009, I wasn't spending much time wading through  complex sets of data or inteligently  evaluating the clues they contained.    

Back in 2009 I purchased two Scottish wills online -- one from 1705 and the other about 25 years later.   Forwarded images to another family member and researcher who is an Edinburgh-trained attorney (Americn term) who routinely explains Scottish law to non-Scotttish legal folk.  

He responded with a series of emails crammed full of significant information, much of which seems to have gone right over my head.  Witness the fact that one of those emails included 3 maps.  Maps from the same set in my previous post.  Maps which I smugly assumed (in 2013) that none of my fellow Lind researchers had discovered. 

Remember what they say about assumptions?  ASSUME, making this: ASS-U-ME. 

Here are my reminders to myself.

• If you have found it, especially online, it is likely that others have found it before you.  Truly original genealogical work is really, really hard to do. 
• Share your work, but be open to someone else's understanding and interpretation of the same facts.  There will ALWAYS be someone who knows things about your family that you do not. 
• Review your sources and research notes regularly.  As your knowledge of and familiarity with a family or community grows, you will read the same information differently, interpret differently, gain new insight. 

Happy hunting!

Finding Mosshat

Several sources link my maiden surname to a  lowland Scots farm called Mosshat from at least 1650 to 1800.

I first heard about Mosshat in the mid-1990's when I received a copy of a letter written in 1949.  The writer, a Canadian, was recounting for her younger relatives the stories her own grandmother had told of life in Scotland before several siblings moved to Canada nearly a century earlier.  She said that the family were lairds, landowners, at Mosshat Farm, but had to sell out about 1800 when an epidemic swept through the sheep flocks, killing sheep "by the hundreds".  She named her grandmother's grandparents, the earliest known generation; her grandmother's parents; and added that there was an Aunt Betts who married a Watson, and an Uncle Tommy who "farmed at Cobbinshaw".

The Cobbinshaw reference was pivotal.  A cousin had already documented that our direct ancestor Thomas Lind was farming at Cobbinshaw by 1800, and that his sons and grandsons continued to farm  there until 1884.  Our shared great-grandfather was born there about 1839.    We were reasonably certain that our Thomas was the "Uncle Tommy" referred to in the 1949 letter.  But where was Mosshat?

Baptismal records didn't help much.  All the daughters of our earliest known ancestors, John Lin(d) and Helen Howison (also spelled Housin, Houston, etc.) were baptised in the Parish of Carnwath in Lanarkshire.  All the sons were baptised across the county line in the adjacent Parish of West Calder, Midlothian.  We assumed (always a dangerous practice, but this time correct) that Mosshat must be somewhere BETWEEN Carnwath and West Calder.  As it turns out, as maps and county lines changed over time, Mosshat was sometimes in Carnwath, and sometimes in West Calder.

A series of wills from the first quarter of the 18th century linked "portioners" (individuals owning a portion of a specific property) at Mosshat and at another farm, Auchengray.

It was several years before it dawned on me to look first for Auchengray and then for signs of Mosshat.  Auchengray appears on current maps.  Sometimes it is described as a village, sometimes as a hamlet, sometimes as a farm. Then it occurred to me to look at the UK Ordnance Survey maps, the last word in current mapping in Scotland.  Sure enough, just north and a little west of Auchengray is Mosshat Road, which wends its way northward to Woolfords.  Nearly within baseball throwing distance, certainly within hollering distance of Woolfords, are North and South Cobbinshaw Farms.  And there at the end of the paved section of Mosshat Road near Auchengray is ... Wester Mosshat Farm!  There is also an Easter Mosshat, but because of the links between our Linds, Mosshat and Auchengray, it is highly likely that our ancestors lived and farmed at Wester Mo  sshat. 

Yesterday, in one of those "new services to help your online research" emails came a link to the National Library of Scotland digital collection, including historic maps.  Take a look yourself.  Google "National Library Scotland", select digital collection, then maps.   Then go exploring.  I found a 1654 map showing Auchengray (spelled Auchingra), Mosshat (spelled Mofsat), and Cobbinshaw (spelled Cobinfhaw).  On this map, all are in Lanarkshire. There are many from which to choose. 

Then the piece de resistance:  Google Earth.  It actually images the paved length of Mosshat Road, ending at Wester Mosshat Farm.  To see for yourself what Wester Mosshat looked like in March 2011, here's the link.

Do your own exploring online.  Look for applicable maps.  READ those genealogical society newsletters that arrive in your mailbox, either electronically or by snail mail.  Explore locations related to but not necessarily exactly the places where your ancestors lived.  Keep your mind open for unexpected links.

Keep hunting!

Hunting Family, or Passionate About Genealogy

I inherited my passion for genealogy from my mother.  I was barely 7 when her father -- the only grandfather I knew -- died.  I remember him as a slight man, quiet, a gardener.  In a shady spot next to his garage he grew pansies and violets.  They are not common in Hawai'i, especially on the dry side of O'ahu, but he grew them because they reminded him of his mother.  When my husband and I visited in Tennessee, I realized that they were a link to generations of his American family -- my ONLY American line among my eight great-grandparents.

My maternal grandfather's father was an Englishman, born in Germany, educated in France,  but from a family of English landed gentry, the Yonges of Puslinch.  Shortly after her father died, my mother decided it was time to learn more about that family.  She found an address for the ancestral home:  Puslinch House, Newton Ferrers, Devon, England.  Her letter of inquiry drew a  response.   "Find a copy of Burke's History of the Landed Gentry of England," the writer advised.  "It's all there."  Sure enough, it IS all there.   Never mind that everything from about 1650 back to the Norman Conquest is wrong -- as proved in the last 15 or so years by the Yonge Family Historian.

A more recent posting at http://www.devonruralarchive.com says,

Puslinch is first recorded as Posling on the 1238 Assize Roll.  The name seems to mean 'hill where pease grows'.  It must have been a farm developed within the pre-Conquest manor of Newton Ferrers, as it is recorded as having been given by William de Ferrers to Roger de Poslinch in the C13.  It was later held by the de Mohun family for several generations before passing by marriage to the Uptons of Trelask in Cornwall.

The Plymouth doctor and merchant James Yonge acquired the property on his marriage to Mary Upton in 1709 and is thought to have built the present house circa 1720.  The Yonge family still own Old Puslinch, the surrounding farmland and Puslinch House, but the latter is let.

  

Right, wrong, or indifferent, finding your family down to your own father laid out in a book like Burke's is pretty heady stuff.  It sent my mother into a research frenzy that lasted for the next 63 years, until just days before her death in January, 2013. She moved from her English family to her mother's Hawaiian family, then her English grandfather's American bride, and finally, to her Irish grandfather about whom she  wrote that she had very mixed feeling. 

I grew up hearing the stories of her research findings -- how her father used to say that they teased his American grandmother that her second husband must have been the notorious highwayman Black Bart (he wasn't, but it is still a good story!); of finding the same grandmother's memoir, typeset, lining the interior of a trunk belonging to her youngest daughter; of it being rude in Hawai'i (at least in our family) to probe into genealogy because if you were identified to the wrong people as a warrior on the loosing side of a battle, forever afterwards your bones (or those of your descendants) would be made into fish hooks by the victors and your teeth set into their poi bowls!  This last was no idle threat.  Here's an example from the collection of Honolulu's Bishop Museum.  See the  story about this bowl and the insult it conveyed at http://kareninhonolulu.wordpress.com.  Scroll down to the photo and article. 

When my brother entered 7th grade and a new school, he wrote the obligatory introduce-yourself-and-tell-us-a-little-about-your-family  essay.  Even in those days it was clear he was a budding journalist.  He wrote about "... my ancestors the British, my ancestors the Americans who were fighting the British, and my ancestors the Hawaiians who were eating the British."  A bit of journalistic license there as the Hawaiians were not known to be cannibalistic, but he did make a point. 

Yes, we were drawn early into the world of family history and ancestor hunting.  Now, 60+ years later, I am still hopelessly addicted.  Where my mother was interested only in her own direct and collateral lines, I will hunt my family or yours, a neighbors, a friends, a strangers.  I will hunt if you ask, or just because you are a part of my community.  Like physicians and teachers, genealogists and historians look for the right questions that will lead to the next piece of the never-ending jigsaw puzzle, the next clue in the matrix of family and community relationships. 

Keep hunting!