by Paula Stuart-Warren, CG

Many of us have someone in the family tree who just disappeared–maybe for a few years or “forever.” The reason may never be clear, but some knowledge of the family dynamics and of the history and economics of the time might help. Back in 2005, I did an article on this topic. That article covered some records to use in looking for missing ancestors. Today I am offering some specific reasons why family members may have disappeared.

Land
The ads that appeared in older newspapers promised inexpensive and fertile land. Did Uncle Harry succumb to one of these ads while his wife Annie did not? The U.S. Homestead Act of 1862 enticed many to move “westward,” but the rest of the family may not have followed.

Land colonization companies and railroads enticed settlers westward in both the U.S. and in Canada. Check out the Saskatchewan Homestead Index that covers land purchases from 1872-1930. Use the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s website for more searching. Advertisements in newspapers all around the world promised the perfect lands and eager people traveled to these places. What was appearing in the newspaper in your ancestor’s home town? Did your Indian ancestor move because of a treaty that took away their land?

Gold Rushes
Talk about eager people–the various gold rushes that occurred in the U.S. and other countries attracted a wide variety of fortune seekers. Again, the family may not have followed the seeker. The most talked about rush is the California rush in the late 1840s, but others occurred in Alaska beginning in 1849, with the most famous ones in the 1890s.

The Yukon area of Canada also drew 1890s rush fever. Colorado drew seekers in 1858. South Dakota’s Black Hills drew fortune hunters in the 1870s. Check out some overland routes to the various rushes at the Overland Trail website. I had a cousin leave Scotland for the gold fields of  Australia in the 1850s. Continue reading →

from Michael John Neill

There are times to search for specific years and there are times when we should not. Many searches at Ancestry.com allow users to include more than just a specific year as a part of their search. Before you mindlessly enter some search terms and click “search” think about that year and that range you entered.

If you know (reasonably) that a relative immigrated to the United States in 1850, you may want to search for 1850 immigrations allowing for an error of plus or minus two or five years, depending upon how reliable you think the 1850 date of immigration is. It may be necessary to broaden the search even more.

If you are searching for someone in the 1860 census whom you think was born in 1840, you may want to search for them as being twenty years of age, plus or minus a few years, again depending upon how reliable you think the year of birth is. The older a person is, the more likely their age is to be incorrect.

Newspapers may be a little different. Some would run a “days beyond recall” column, where items from 20, 30, or even 50 years earlier were re-published in the newspaper. Consequently a death notice from 1890 may appear in a 1940 edition of the paper. Do not assume that a reference to your ancestor 40 years after his death cannot be his. It may be that the paper is rerunning part of an earlier notice. Death notices typically do not appear thirty years before a death, but they may occasionally appear thirty years after.

Think about the record you are searching. How accurate does that date need to be? And it is possible that the range of years you are searching for needs to be larger than you think?

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More Help for Hard-to-Read Images
I have translucent poly file folders in various colors. I’ve found that if I hold the yellow one up to my monitor screen it makes hard-to-read images much easier to read.  This works well with microfilm readers too. You can find these folders at office supply stores.

Steve Rosen Continue reading →

The year was 1887 and on 23 February an earthquake struck the Riviera. Hardest hit was the Genoese Riviera, where 1,500 people perished. All told the death told was estimated at 2,000. Property damage was extensive throughout the Riviera and even as far north as Switzerland.

One of the worst floods in world history claimed an estimated 2 million lives when the silt-filled Yellow River, or Hwang Ho, in China flooded 50,000 square miles wiping out entire towns and villages.

In London, following a period of unrest there was a ban on meetings in Trafalgar Square. Times were tough as a result of the “Long Depression” which had begun in 1873. A meeting was scheduled there by socialists on 13 November to protest the recently pass Crimes Act which prohibited many forms of protest. As 10,000 protesters moved towards the park, the police responded with violence and hundreds were injured on “Bloody Sunday.”

Further north, Sheffield in South Yorkshire was in the grips of a smallpox epidemic that sickened more than eight hundred people. An insurance system was set up where contributors could derive benefits if they or someone in their family was ill. This not only helped the families to get through the difficult times, it discouraged sick or exposed persons from reporting to work because they needed a paycheck, which helped with containment.

In the U.S., Congressman Henry Dawes of Massachusetts sponsored legislation aimed at assimilating Native Americans and the break-up of tribes. Tribal lands were taken and family heads were given plots of grazing or farmland. Any additional land was opened up to white settlers. In the end, the Dawes Act was responsible for the loss of two-thirds of the 150 million acres previously under control of Native Americans. 

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Contributed by Wylodene “Dene” Nall Morgan
Attached is a photo of my uncle, Henry Marley “H.M.” Nall.  He fought in WWI with the 129th Field Artillery.  He was born 9 Jun 1895 and died 22 May 1935 in Crosbyton, Donley Co., TX.

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Contributed by Hartwig Humbert
This is the photo of my grandmother Emma (Sinn) Humbert working on the fields. She was born in 1904 and died in 1978.