The following article was written by my good friend, William Dollarhide. Enjoy…
Dollarhide’s Genealogy Rule No. 23: Locating the county where your ancestor lived is the first step in finding records about the time he was hauled into court for shooting his neighbor’s dog; threatening the census taker with a shotgun; or making illegal corn whiskey behind the barn.
Genealogists often find their ancestors by accident. An example of this is when you are looking in a particular resource for one family and stumble on to evidence of another family, one you had not thought to find there. These surprises happen to all of us, and is part of what we do in genealogy. But, knowing that such things might happen, why not prepare for it? We can turn what might be considered “accidental research” into “planned research.”
Accidents Happen
Accidents usually happen because we were looking in the right place and didn’t know it. This is because we learn early that the three things we need to know about a person is 1) a name, 2) a date, and 3) a place. The ancestor’s full name is obviously important to the process of discovery, and knowing a general time period when that person lived is important too. But, as it turns out, the most important aspect of finding genealogical sources is knowing the place where a person lived. The geographic location where an ancestor lived is the same place where old records are mostly found today, whether in a local court house, library, cemetery, funeral home, archives, or other local repository of some kind. So, genealogists are place finders. We try to find the place where our ancestors lived, then scour the records that still exist for that place. And, this focus on the place of residence for a particular ancestor is what lends itself to accidental findings for other relatives. Accidents are accidents only if we were destined to find the information because we were looking in the right place and didn’t know it. If we know the place, we can turn the accidental research into planned research.
Census research, for example, is a place where accidents happen frequently. Again, this is because we are focusing on a particular place in the U.S. where an ancestor lived, and once we find the exact family we were looking for on a census list, it is often the case that other closely related people are living nearby. Knowing that the chances of finding other related people in the same local census records should cause us to scan the pages before and after where our ancestor was listed looking for more people of interest. Instead of going back to the same page later, why not make a list of the people who are neighbors of your ancestor the first time? You may be surprised to find out later that the family living a couple of doors away were closely related, or that one of the neighbors’ names shows up later on a marriage record. Since this is where accidents are most likely to occur, then prepare a list of potential accidents subjects. This is a way of turning accidental research into planned research — assume that there are going to be accidents and anticipate where they might happen.
City directories are good resources for listing people who are neighbors of your ancestors. Many city directories have a “cross-street index,” where it is possible to find the addresses and names for neighbors living nearby. Make a list of the neighbors — it may prove to be a search list for relatives and allow you to turn accidental research into planned research. Click Here to see our previous article, “Old City Directories” for examples of City Directories and Cross Street Indexes.
Fellow Travelers
Making a list of the neighbors of your ancestors has other benefits. You may find some fellow travelers. For example, let’s say your ancestral Smith family appears in the 1850 census in an Ohio county. The parents and the first two children were born in Pennsylvania, and later children were born in Ohio. This tells you where they were living and about when they moved. But, without some other evidence, it would be difficult to know the exact county in Pennsylvania to search for the name Smith. By looking at the neighbors of your ancestors in the 1850 Ohio census, you may discover other families with the same pattern: parents and older children born in Pennsylvania. Even if these neighbors are not related, they may have traveled together with your ancestors. They may also have surnames that are not as common as Smith. Now try to find a county in Pennsylvania in which your ancestral surname and the surnames of Ohio neighbors appear at the same time. This may be the clue to the right county to start a search there for evidence of your ancestors’ names. In normal practice, finding your Smith family in Pennsylvania along with a surname that appears in Ohio with them a few years later may seem to be a coincidence — but since we know that families did not travel alone, we are simply trying to turn accidental research into planned research.
Dollarhide’s Genealogy Rule No. 24: A cousin, once removed, may not return.
Bill,
I have several times found records in places where it would be crazy for anyone to expect to find them.
One was the marriage of Thomas Pollock to Susannah Curd, recorded in Charles County, Maryland, in 1778. There was no reason to expect to find the marriage there because Thomas owned the building where the Powhatan County Court met while the first courthouse was being built, his father died testate in Goochland County in 1755 (Powhatan then being a part of that county), the will of Susannah’s father being one of the first recorded in Powhatan, and the baptisms of two of their children being recorded in the register of Rev. James Douglass, rector of St. James Northam Parish, Goochland.
I found the marriage because I make a point of checking for Pollock when I discover a book which has a surname index or is organized alphabetically. I recognized the marriage as being the correct one by virtue of Rev. Douglass including the maiden names of the mothers in his baptismal records.
One another occasion I stopped in Cadiz, Ohio, to do some research on an unrelated to me so far as I have thus been able to determine Pollock family on my way to Xenia, Ohio, to do research on a branch of my Adams family. There I came across the marriage of a Baldwin Adams to Priscilla Brock (not certain I am remembering her correct surname).
Baldwin was the son of a Lydia Adams, nee Pickering, according to a genealogy of the family provided to me by Walter Farmer of Cincinnati, Ohio, now deceased, but Walter was unable to identify Baldwin’s father. Baldwin’s marriage to Priscilla was mentioned, but not either the date or place, in that family genealogy.
The records of Hopewell Monthly Meeting, Frederick County, Virginia, acknowledge the marriage of John Adams, Jr., to a Lydia Pickering and report that Lydia moved with her children, none named, to Ohio, but I had been unable to determine where. I was interested in this family because John was the half-brother of my Catherine (Adams) Daniels.
Finding that marriage helped to substantiate that Walter’s Lydia Pickering Adams was indeed the very same Lydia Pickering who married John Adams Junior in Frederick County, Virginia.
While I would never advocate someone looking for an individual in a place where there would normally be no expectation of finding that person, I do believe that when an opportunity to look in an “unexpected” place presents itself, one should take advantage of the same.
That said, the circumstances are somewhat different for me, my being a professional genealogist who also publishes. Whenever possible, I like to search a record book not so much for a specific record or for a specific client, but to see what interesting jewel I might be able to find. The result has often been discoveries such as the marriages of Thomas Pollock to Susannah Curd and Baldwin Adams to Priscilla that I have incorporated into the article I have published.
I agree on checking the ‘next door’ neighbors on the census sheets. Moreover, one should also check the near-by neighbors who are across the street or around a corner from your ancestors – which can be several census sheets away (even in another enumeration district). For example, in Detroit I found (the soon to be) second husband of my great grandmother living around the corner from her. Also, two of her sons lived in houses in the same block but across the street from her.