A Genealogist’s Most Powerful Tools: Luck and Karma

by Sally Sheridan

I have had many exciting breakthroughs in genealogy, and atruly bizarre one.

I have known for a long time that my 5th great grandmother, Barbara Culp, was scalped by Indians in the tiny settlement of Fishing Creek, South Carolina in 1761. She survived to have the child she was pregnant with and two more children, including my 4th great grandmother.

My husband and I have now been married for 40 years. He was raised in Illinois and Wisconsin. I grew up in Arizona. We met when we were both in our late twenties. He came to my home town of Yuma as a stranger who happened to land a teaching job here when he finished graduate school in another city. He had been here a year and a half before I moved back to this town. We met in 1972 on a blind date and he asked me to marry him two weeks later. We married in 1973.

When my father-in-law died in northern Wisconsin in June 2009, the question came up about my husband’s family’s genealogy materials. My 90 year-old father-in-law, Ed, had collected a great deal of his family’s information but my husband’s sister wasn’t interested in it. So, even though I wasdrowning in my own family history, I had said to her, “I’ll take it.” (The true test of a natural born genealogist.)

Two weeks after my father-in-law died, his 80 year-old cousin, Jim, whom I had never met, called me and was very excited that someone in Ed’s family was interested in Ed’s genealogical materials. Jim had talked recently to my sister-in-law, and she made it clear that she was clearing out Ed’s house and sending Ed’s stuff to me, the daughter-in-law. Jim was ecstatic that I was interested in keeping all of the stuff. So Jim and I now became bosom buddies.

 

Now get this picture:

Here I was, trying to write a book about my own Culp and related ancestors who owned slaves.

I had found 48 slave names and I was working with a university project (LowCountry Africana) to get that information online. Ten of those enslaved people were the children of my 3rd Great Grandfather, Peter Culp. They are my cousins and I am still trying to find their descendants.

Then my father-in-law died and I got all of this totally different family’s stuff. I didn’t need this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to “do” my husband’s family. “I don’t have time for this!” I wanted to say. But this Cousin Jim told me in his first phone call that he was coming up on the first anniversary of the death of his dear wife of 57 years. It was just a matter of a few days away. And he was so happy to talk to me for two and a half hours about Ed’s mother’s Thomas family and I didn’t have the heart to cut him off.

He had tons of materials that he was itching to send me immediately and what am I going to say? (Shall I say, “I’m really busy with my own family right now, Jim.”?) He was genuinely elated as he talked of getting this package together to send to me.

So instead I said something like, “I’d be thrilled to have that hundred pound package of new genealogical materials.”

This is when the Universe decided to teach me a lesson in Karma. You can’t avoid it if you are sending out the signals to bring things to you.

 

This is THE REST OF THE STORY. This is where it gets strange.

You must trust me on this. My husband and I were raised thousands of miles apart, met on a blind date and he asked me to marry him two weeks later. We had just celebrated 36 years of marriage in 2009, when I received this package of new materials on my father-in-law’s mother’s Thomas line.

I still cannot report this without getting chills. What I found in the Thomas family records:

• In 1761, the man responsible for protecting the settlers, the Commander of the British Militia at the tiny settlement of Fishing Creek, South Carolina at the time my 5th great grandmother was attacked and scalped, was my husband’s 5th great grandfather, Colonel John Thomas.

Two hundred fifty-two years ago, my husband’s ancestor failed to protect my ancestor from being scalped.

My husband has always said he “recognized” me as soon as he met me and that’s why he asked me to marry him so soon after we met. He was looking for me and he knew I was the one he was looking for. He has always said that, and now we know why. KARMA. He has spent this lifetime making me feel safe and cherished.

The second part of  THE REST OF THE STORY.

• When I looked at Colonel John Thomas’ will, I found the names of eleven more enslaved persons in South Carolina: men, women and children, who I can document on Low Country Africana.

So, my husband’s family documents, that I didn’t want and considered to be a distraction from my own work, turned out to be impossibly interwoven with my own family history and to my work finding and saving slave names.

Adapted from a blog originally posted on Genealogywise.com,October 19, 2009

 

We always love a guest post here at BrooklynAncestry.com, and the following post written by Sally Sheridan is a great genealogical success story, and a very interesting look at the Doric language.

Speaking Doric in New York; My Mitchells come to America

By Sally Sheridan

My mother’s father was a character. I have spent the last ten years researching him and his complicated family. At first it was the task of finding the family that he abandoned to marry my grandmother in 1911. In 2003 I found them using Genealogy.com., and in 2011, one hundred years after the fact, I met the grandson of the woman my grandfather abandoned in 1911. But that is not the story I am telling here.

Among the many odd things I have learned about my grandfather was that he declared on my mother’s birth certificate, in 1913, that he was born in Ireland when was actually born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. My mother always said he was a great storyteller who could electrify a room with his entertaining stories. And one of his stories was that he was Irish. The truth is that his father was born in Huntly, Scotland and his mother in Illinois.

I have done a great deal of research into his Scottish grandparents and I have spent several weeks in the village of Huntly, situated in the northeast of Scotland between Aberdeen and Inverness, where my Great Grandfather John Charles Mitchell, Jr. was born in September 1845. I have visited the nearby hamlet of Gartly where his father was born and have stood in the kitchen of the farm house near Clatt, Scotland where his mother Isabella Laing was born. All these place names are within a few miles of one another. Walking distance, really.

When Isabella Laing married John Charles Mitchell in the early 1840s, it was the Laings who had the wealth, not the Mitchells. Her family had deep roots in the area and were related to the Gordon Clan. Her family had lived on the same property since 1777. Mitchell, on the other hand, was a stone-dyker (the original spelling on the birth register), an itinerant worker who built with stones. They were not allowed to join unions of masons. They were day-workers. In addition, Isabella had five brothers. She was never going to own land. By 1853, the family now of five could no longer survive in Scotland.

It was a Thursday in July. The twenty-first of the month, 1853. Hot and muggy, no doubt, but after three weeks in steerage with her husband and three little children, Isabelle or Isabella Mitchell as the passenger manifest read, was ready for fresh air.

Captain and Master George W. Robinson signed the manifest top and bottom and took responsibility for delivering the ship Edward Hunly with himself and 592 others from their departure from Liverpool, England to the arrival and presentation to the office of Collector of Customs at the Port of New York. Of the 593 individuals on board, the majority, by far, were from Scotland and Ireland with a sprinkle of English. The other nationalities aboard were as follows: 42 Germans; 14 Dutch (listed as being from Holland); 6 Russians, all males; and 3 Americans.

Before I caught genealogy fever, around 2003, my profession was teaching English as a second language to elementary students, Mexican professional people who needed to learn English and even prisoners at the Arizona State Prison. As a language specialist, I look at the above passenger manifest and wonder, what was the language environment on the ship? Obviously, the majority of language speakers spoke English. As I analyze the other language groups represented, I see the next largest language group were Germans, 42 of them. I would expect that some if not all of the Dutch passengers also spoke some German. The Russians were a distinct language minority.

I now believe that although my Mitchell ancestors were counted among the 528 presumably English-speaking individuals on board, they very well may have been linguistically isolated even from the other Scottish, and almost certainly from the English and Irish. Only six years ago I would have found it absurd indeed to say my Scottish ancestors arrived in America not speaking English but that was before we spent a week in Huntly.

*What language do you hear me speaking?

In July 2007, my husband took me on the genealogy trip of lifetime: a week in the lovely village of Huntly, exploring the villages, farms and, of course cemeteries occupied by my own ancestors, since 1680 (documented). Huntly, at present, has a population of about 4,400. Its original name was Milton (mill town) of Strathbogie. One of its claims to fame is that it is the historic home of the Gordon Highlanders. It is also historically tied to the Blackwatch regiments, which you might think is a good thing. But in my family of Jacobites, supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Blackwatch were the local traitors the British hired to keep the Clans from rising again after they (the British) massacred us at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. Not that we are still bitter, of course.

The first evening we were having dinner with our daughter, Jill and our son-in-law, Scot Stacy, in the dining room of the Gordon Arms Hotel in Huntly, Scotland. Scot was the last to join us at the table. He sat down and said the oddest thing. Shaking his head slowly, as if slightly confused, he said, “Up until now, I always thought I spoke English, but apparently I don’t.”

He explained that coming downstairs to dinner, he had met a local man who said something to him. Scot said something back and they had this back and forth exchange, neither being able to understand the other and yet each speaking English. Thus was our son-in-law shaking his head and briefly wondering what language was coming out of his mouth.

There are at least three explanations for Scot’s confusion. The first may be that the man on the stair may have been speaking English with a very thick Scottish brogue. The second explanation may be that the man was speaking Scottish English, a recognized variety close to English. The third possibility is that the man was speaking Doric.

Doric is a dialect that is even further removed from English. There are an estimated several hundred thousand Doric speakers in Scotland, and Rhynie, the area where our family is from, is the center of the Doric speaking world according to recent articles in The Scotsman newspaper.

To illustrate the difference between English and Doric, here is a portion of a children’s folk tale told first in English and then in Doric:

THE THREE GIFTS (in English)

​​Where the Royal Oak [pub] is today, there was once an oak tree. And in the shadow of the oak tree was a cottage. In the cottage lived a young woman called Margaret, together with her husband Donald, and their little baby Angus. And if you asked Margaret which of the two –Donald or Angus– she loved the most, she would find it very hard to say.

Margaret had been born with three gifts: a light hand for the baking; a light foot for the dancing; and a light heart that could see her through the day.

Donald was a drover, sometimes away for weeks. One beautiful day in the late summer, during one of these absences, Margaret decided to go for a picnic. She took a bottle of milk and some sandwiches, and set off up the road with the baby. In the early afternoon they stopped by a grassy knoll to rest. Margaret had unpacked the sandwiches and taken out the milk when she noticed a cloud of dust coming up the road towards her. As the cloud got closer she saw inside it a little old man with a long white beard. He looked worn and weary, and the dust of the road was on him.

THE THREE GIFTS (in Doric)

Faar the Royal Oak [pub] is noo-a-days, there wis eence an oak tree. An in the shadda o the oak tree wis a hoosie. In the hoosie there bade a young wife ca’ed Marget, wi her man Donal, an their wee baby Angus. An if ye speirt at Marget which o the twa –Donal or Angus– she loo’ed the maist, she wid hae been hard pitten til’t ti say.

Marget hid been born wi three gifts: a licht han for the bakin; a licht fit for the dancin; and a licht hert ti mak the day ging by.

Donal wis a drover, sometimes awa for weeks at a time. Ae bonnie day in the late Simmer, durin ane o the times fin he wisawa, Marget took it intil her heid ti ging an see foo the peats war dryin on the peat moss on the hill. She took a bottle o milkan a piece, and an gid awa up the road wi the bairnie rowed in her plaid. In the early efternoon she stoppet by a grassy knowe for a rest. She took oot her piece an hid ta’en oot the bottle o the milk, fin she notice’t a clood of dust comin up the road in her direction. As the clood got closer she saw inside it a littleaal man with a lang fite beard. He looket trachet an sair-come-at, and the dust o the lang fite road lay thick upon him. ​​

(From the small book Secret Doorways and Strange Worlds: A Storywalk Through Huntly. It is available at www.deveron-arts.com)

My son-in-law is in good company. No less than Queen Victoria herself had difficulty communicating with the Huntly folks. This story comes from the book Widow Smith of Spence’s Bridge, by Jessie Ann Smith. Both Jessie Ann Smith and her husband John were born in Gartly in the early 1850s. She tells some delightful stories about life in the area of Huntly. This is the story:

Queen Victoria was our ruling sovereign. Her Majesty liked to journey by railway because she found it pleasant and soothing. While on one of her frequent trips she visited the Highlands of Scotland incognito. While distributing packages of tea among the crofters, a practice often performed by gentle ladies of the district for tea was considered a great luxury and a rare treat.[sic] Her Majesty fell into conversation with one of the few women able to speak English. It was actually a dialect, for Gaelic was her native tongue. [The woman was speaking Doric, but it is close enough to English that the Queen was able to understand her satisfactorily.] The odour of the magic concoction, “Kale,” in the crofter’s hut made the Queen hungry, for she had often heard about the Kale under its better known name of Scotch Broth. The hostess, renowned for her hospitality to travelers, handed the visitor a bowl and spoon and told her to help herself.

​The simple, humble fare offered with such a good heart, was very acceptable to the Queen. “How do you manage to make such good broth and what do you put in it to give it that wonderful flavor?” asked Her Majesty.

​“Oh,” replied the crofter, “It’s quite aisy. I aye hae plenty o’ beef, then I put barley intult, peas intult, cabbage intult, parsley intult, turnip and carrot and leeks intult. After that Isaison it.”

“But what is ‘intult’?” asked the Queen naively, thinking this was some new ingredient of which she had never heard.

​“But amn’t I telling ye what’s intult?” said the crofter. “There’s beef intult, barley intult, peas intult, cabbage intult, parsley intult, and turnip and carrot and leeks intult.”

At last the Queen realized that ‘intult’ just meant ’into it’.

​The Queen enjoyed this joke immensely but particularly the homely, rustic way the Highland woman took so much for granted, never, for one moment thinking she was addressing Queen Victoria, ruler of the British Empire.

This became one of Her Majesty’s favorite stories and it was not long before it was known from Land’s End to John O’ Groats.

*What Language Do You Hear Me Speaking? is an excerpt from the unpublished book, Grandfather’s Secret Family, by Sally Sheridan

The following is a guest blog, an a great example of how hiring a genealogist is sometimes the best option, even for the economically conscience researcher. As I mentioned in my Genealogist Fees post, it is sometimes just better to hire a genealogist to get the family tree building back on track after hitting a roadblock. Read about the progress made after only 2 hours of research conducted by this websites Brooklyn Genealogists.

Beginning Your Family Tree Project

I would like to sincerely THANK the Genealogist at BrooklynAncestry.com for providing a major breakthrough for me in my quest to build my family tree. I began my project about ten months ago, and on my father’s side I had practically no information. My Dad’s parents were both only children, and both had lots of mystery about their parents (my Great-Grandparents).

My Dad’s father never introduced his three sons to his parents, and he adamantly refused to discuss them. He told his boys only two things from his childhood, and they were that he was born in Brooklyn, NY and he spent most of his youth working on a farm. With such little information, my search was a monumental task.

Using New York and US Census

Thru the United States Census records I eventually learned the first names of my paternal Great-Grandparents, but I still needed more. Luckily for me, New York State used to do their own state census in the 1800’s and early 1900’s, and I was finally able to learn my paternal Great-Grandmother’s maiden name. I felt I was finally making some real discoveries. My Family Tree now had branched back to my paternal Great-Great Grandparents and a Great-Grand Uncle (I found that my Great Grandmother had a brother).

This victory made with thirst for much more and I began to feverishly search every genealogy website I could find. I needed to know if I had distant cousins out there somewhere. I was constantly on search engines digging for ‘hits’ of my new found information, but I was not having any luck.

Back to the US and NY Census and I was hitting roadblocks. I could not find any record of my paternal Great-Grandparents after 1910. I began to assume that one or both had died around that time, and this must have been why my Grandfather refused to discuss his childhood.

I continued to search through various family tree sites and I eventually found some leads that indicated that my Great-Grandmother was hospitalized in a state facility, and that my Great-Grandfather changed his first name. With this new information, I went back to the US and NY Census records and began to locate both of them at 5 and 10 year census intervals, but not much beyond that. Frustration was setting in.

Through the sharing of my family tree information on a genealogy website, I was contacted by a paternal distant cousin. She was able to provide me with many answers about my paternal Great-Grandfather. Her Grandmother was his sister and she had pictures of him!!! She sent them to me and I have shared them with my family. My Dad and his brother went from never knowing anything of their Grandfather to now holding his picture, truly an emotional discovery.

With my Great-Grandfather’s story beginning to unfold, we needed to know what became of our Great-Grandmother. Beyond her living with her husband and only son in Brooklyn, NY in 1910, I was only left to know that she went into a state hospital prior to the 1915 NY State Census, and she remained there at least through the 1930 US Census. Unfortunately, the 1940 US Census has no record of her anywhere. I had been stuck at that point after about 4 – 5 months from when my journey began. What I knew about her was an approximate date of birth, her parents were both deceased by 1902 and that she had a brother about 13 years older than her. Beyond that I was stuck. I could not find any viable lead on her brother, so that was a dead end.

I hoped that my new found cousin may have known something, but regrettably no. She only knew about a hospitalization, and did not know what hospital. She never met her and said that she was rarely spoke of.

I searched the hospital name and found that it was a massive facility that housed patients for many years, and that it has long been closed. Its patient records had been transferred to another NY State facility.

I wrote to the Records Bureau of that second facility and they invoked patient confidentiality in a standard form letter. The basically did not confirm or deny that my Great-Grandmother had ever been a patient. The letter referred me to the State of NY, and so I wrote them.

Again I got back a ‘no comment’ type letter, but they did give me some guidance. The letter stated that the closest living relative was allowed to get her death certificate, but they could not tell me where her certificate would have been filed.

Back to the internet and genealogy searches I went. I was making a guess that she probably passed during the 1930’s because she does not appear in the 1940 census. I then searched the state hospital again and found the municipality that had jurisdiction over the hospital where she lived. In February 2013, now 7 months into my project, I loaded my family into the car and we drove two hours to that town on Long Island.

The two women in the office were as helpful as they could be. Each searched the records for quite some time, but to no avail. They tried to provide some additional guidance and resources, but all were dead ends.

My search for my Great-Grandmother had come to a complete halt, with no leads. I began to contemplate hiring a genealogist but the costs seem very prohibitive. I was torn between the need to know what happened to her versus the expense in this economy.

<For the next three months my family tree had been stalled, not a single new branch or update was made to anyone already on it. I joined genealogy sites through social media sites in hopes of finding new information, but nothing developed for me on my own.

Then the sky opened up for me. Through the Twitter account I opened and was using to follow various ancestry pages, I was notified that an ancestry page began to follow me. That was a new twist, so I had to learn more about them.

It was Brooklyn Ancestry(@BKlynAncestry). I loved that they were following me, so I sent them a tweet and then immediately responded. From there, I went to their Facebook page (BrooklynAncestry.com) and ‘liked’ it as well. I went through their page history and saw their roots were in my Great-Grandparents old backyard – Brooklyn, NY. I was hoping their intimate knowledge of this region would be the key to uncovering my mystery of my Great-Grandmother.

Hiring a Genealogist

I contacted Brooklyn Ancestry through the message application on their Facebook page and we exchanged several notes. Within two hours of our online conversations, Brooklyn Ancestrys’ genealogist not only found out that my Great-Grandmother was still living in September 1943, but they found that she had an older sister. They also confirmed that her brother was still alive as of 1943. BrooklynAncestry.com sent me two newspaper accounts documenting this discovery. They had done in mere hours, what I had been totally unable to do in months.

With the discovery of a Great Grand Aunt, I was then able to locate her husband and their three children. My Family Tree has instantly added some substantial new growth with great potential for more. I also learned that my Great Grand Aunt is buried only 50 miles from my home, so I have another road trip planned.

BrooklynAncestry.com has not only given my family some new members, it has brought my Great-Grandmother into a new decade – the 1940’s. With this new information, I can begin looking in new databases, and go back to review some previous ones. Since I assumed she passed away prior to the 1940 US Census, I was only searching prior to that date. Brooklyn Ancestry has opened a whole new area for me to go exploring. I cannot thank them enough!!

Ken S.

Why Hire a Genealogist?

Everybody has the responsibility to recognize and honor the actions and the sacrifices of their ancestors.  It is easy to know that your grandfather was a WWII hero, but did his father serve in WWI?  Do you have an ancestors that served in the Civil War?  Sometimes these discoveries can be made by a genealogist on the first day of research.  Every generation in your family tree played an important part in your genealogy and are worthy of your recognition and praise. Honor them by bringing their memory back to life to carry on for generations to come.

New York Genealogy Services

When you hire a genealogist from BrooklynAncestry.com you are hiring a genealogist experienced a full range of Genealogical Research Services in New York, and more specifically in Brooklyn. Aimed at keeping the service as affordable  as possible, every attempt to conduct research using online Genealogical databases is made.  In most cases our hourly rate ranging from $5-$25 will return your desired results, and all the information you need.  Do not be fooled by genealogists that claim they need $65 hr from day 1 to cover travel expenses and time spent in a courthouse.  We can first research the following categories online:

Online New York Genealogical Resources

• Brooklyn Newspapers
• New York City Housing Records
• Veterans Gravesites
• New York Birth, Marriage and Death Records
• New York Cemetery Records
• New York State and National Inmate Records
• Federal and New York State Census Reports
• Military Draft Records
• New York City and Brooklyn Directories and Phone Book Listings
• Immigration Records
• Much more

 

Not until all the online records have been exhausted should you ever consider paying a genealogist more than you would be charged on this site. After these genealogical resources stop producing results, it may be time to hire a genealogist from this site or another, to visit one of the many New York Public Libraries,  Cemeteries, Churches or the New York City Municipal Archives, and begin paying a higher fee for that additional service.   Hiring us to begin building your family tree, or to help get past that point you have been stuck at for years may be the smartest money ever spent on your genealogy research.

Build Your Family Tree

If you are old enough you have undoubtedly seen many changes within the community you lived in as a child. But what will it look like in 120 years from now? Where will your great – great grandchildren be living? How many children will they have? What will their profession be? Will they have any idea who you are and what your role in their family history was?   While it may be impossible to look ahead to the lives of your descendants, it certainly is possible to look back and find out exactly who your ancestors were. Whether your interest is in tracing your lineage back to the old country, finding living relatives, or just learning the details of your family in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there is a good chance I can uncover a good amount of information in just a few short hours.   Don’t pass up the opportunity while it lasts.

Contact a genealogist now. Easy communication is available through E-Mail, Facebook and Twitter.