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Illegitimate Law: What Were Our Ancestors Afraid Of?

2 Comments / Genohistory on Purpose, Legalities / By / 7 minutes of reading

The rules our ancestors lived by mystify us, at times. They horrify us, on occasion. In a hysteria, citizens executed neighbors accused of witchcraft. One human could own another. A woman’s children could be placed under a guardian’s control upon her husband’s death. And children born to unwed parents were shamed and impeded in life. We ask of our ancestors, “How could they?” and “Why would they?” In most cases, you find the beginnings of the answer by asking a more fundamental question: “What were they afraid of?”

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Early Federal Census Drama: A Tool for Your Sanity

2 Comments / Censuses, Genohistory on Purpose, Writing Genohistory / By / 12 minutes of reading

Update Jan. 20, 2023: A new generation of this tool is now also available, using a Google Sheets foundation. See the 90-60 Census Workbook.

We love the U.S. federal censuses, don’t we?  We need them. Right back to 1850, they’re our bedrock — or 1870, if you descend from enslaved persons. Earlier than that, however, we dread them. Fear them, maybe. Avoid them, to our peril. While limited in value individually, however, the early federal censuses become gold when compared to each other. Comparing them is a hassle, though, right? Not any more. I have designed an Excel-compatible spreadsheet tool that makes early federal census tally-matching a game you actually want to play. Let the Early Federal Census Worksheet restore your sanity.

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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: Unfolding Ancestral Traditions

4 Comments / Genohistory on Purpose, Newspapers, Research / By / 11 minutes of reading

Happy holidays to you all! As I planned for this post, I intended something quick and simple about our ancestors’ holiday traditions. I thought it would be fun to pick a Christmas, any mid-nineteenth-century Christmas in my region of interest, and discuss how the local newspaper treated the holiday. I was in for a surprise.

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Born Here, Died There: The Life between Bookends

10 Comments / Genohistory on Purpose, Writing Genohistory / By / 5 minutes of reading

My 2nd-great-grandfather Jacob Dennis Mayberry, widowed in 1917, desired a fresh start. In 1919, he purchased a 440-acre farm in Chilton County, Alabama, 24 miles northeast of his former residence in Bibb County. He built a large and rambling house around the old cabin that stood there. His daughter, Clara, her husband, Otha Payne, and their baby, Clara Thomas Payne (my grandmother), and his unmarried daughter Mary Thomas Mayberry moved with him to the new place. And on this property, they all lived out the rest of their lives, though you would not know that by a basic family tree.

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Judging Ancestors: The Distortions of Hindsight (A Cannibal Story)

10 Comments / Controversy in History, Genohistory on Purpose, History, Writing Genohistory / By / 8 minutes of reading

An earlier edition of this post appeared in my blog, The Golden Egg Genealogist, in April 2019. Genohistorians are encouraged to see the link to our discussions of “the now of then” in recent posts. A “Call to Action” and “Zotero Notes” have been added to the original post.

Hindsight will never be 20/20. The further back we look, the fuzzier the view gets. In looking back past our own personal experience—that journey we call “studying history”—we become strangers in a foreign land. Observing what we see there can be immensely valuable. Evaluating the effectiveness of our ancestors’ choices can enhance wisdom. Morally judging ancestors through the eyes of the 21st century, however, is a destructive misuse of hindsight.

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The Height of Modernity: Newspapers and the Now of Then

8 Comments / Genohistory on Purpose, Newspapers / By / 10 minutes of reading

We live in the height of modernity—the newest and most sophisticated of everything. But guess what? Just about every generation who has ever lived could say the same. And future generations will look at the world of 2020 with bemusement at our backwardness and pity that we lived without their comforts. It is a tale as old as time.

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And Then There Were None: Mortality of an Alabama Household

7 Comments / Genohistory on Purpose, Interconnected Families / By / 10 minutes of reading

Members of the Charles Sanford household seemed to have everything going for them on August 10, 1860, as the federal census taker arrived at their home in Centreville, Alabama. Wealthy white-collar town dwellers with an average age of 22.5, the mortality statistics were in their favor.[1] But death claimed them, every one, long before the census taker returned.[2]

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Semantics: What Did They Mean by That?

9 Comments / Genohistory on Purpose, Research / By / 11 minutes of reading

Friday was my birthday. Yes, 9/11. In the years after the World Trade Center disaster, people tended to express sympathy to me on my birthday, saying things like, “ I hope you can enjoy it, in spite of everything.” This past Friday, though, I heard nothing at all about 9/11 in my birthday messages.  

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Writing Genohistory: Waldo and the Now of Then

13 Comments / Genohistory on Purpose, History, Writing Genohistory / By / 12 minutes of reading

Some say it is not history until you write it. I have a bit more expanded view of history. Inevitably, though, we who are starting to call ourselves genohistorians will start to think of writing genohistory projects. I have tiptoed in with my blogging. As we expand in this field, what will writing genohistory look and feel like?

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Sinful Souls and Church Discipline for the Genohistorian

4 Comments / Church Records, Genohistory on Purpose / By / 6 minutes of reading

I had been predisposed to see the worst in my great-grandfather, George Lewis Cox of Randolph County, Alabama. I saw him through the eyes of my grandmother—his daughter-in-law—who remembered him without a speck of fondness. As she recalled it, he was a drunken philanderer who drove his betrayed wife to suicide. But he was also, apparently, a church-going man. Might he have been called out under church discipline?

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