1. Apart from the World: An Account of the Origins and Destinies of Various Swiss Mennonites who fled from their homelands in remote parts of the Cantons of Zurich, Aargau, and Bern as well as Alsace, the Kurpalz, and later along the edges of the American Frontier in Pennsylvania and Virginia; Namely the Families Bachman, Bar, Bruppacher, Houser, Hiestand, Leaman, Ringger, Schmidt, and Strictler, 1495-1865.  1997.  J. Ross Baughman.  Also available on microfilm, FHL #2055473.  Includes pedigrees, migration routes, and many other families who intermarried with (and perhaps traveled along with) Baughman’s ancestors.
2. The Chain Rejoined; Or, The Bonds of Science and History Amongst Family, including Many Attempts to Recover Ties Across the Atlantic Ocean to Ancestors and Cousins of Baughmans and Bachmanns.  2005.  J. Ross Baughman.  Shenandoah History, PO Box 98, Edinburg VA 22824. Includes an extensive glossary of terms found frequently in records dealing with German and Swiss background ancestors.
3. Harvest Time: Being several essays on the History of the Swiss, German, and Dutch Folk in Early America named Baughman, Layman, Moyer, Huff, and Others; Across New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Four Centuries.  1994.  J. Ross Baughman.  Shendoah History, PO Box 98, Edinburg VA 22824.

These three volumes by J. Ross Baughman include copious footnotes referencing some very interesting emigration-immigration sources not usually consulted in the compilation of what is basically a genealogy study of specific families.  And you know that I read the footnotes first! The volumes also include numerous maps showing where the people come from, where they settle, and where they migrate to.  Land ownership maps have been drawn for several families and their neighbors.

If you have a German or Swiss background ancestry, you will benefit from reading these volumes–whether your ancestors are listed in the indexes or not.

4. From the Rhine to the Shenandoah:  Eighteenth Century Swiss and German Families to the Central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and their European Origins. 3 vols. 2002.  Daniel W. Bly.   Available from the author, Box 242, Mt Sydney VA 24467.  (Printed by Gateway Press, Inc., 1001 N. Calvert St., Baltimore MD 21202-3897.)  Genealogies of many families.

5. Kentucky’s German Pioneers by H. A. Rattermann. 2001. Translated and edited by Don Heinrich Tolzmann.  Heritage Books 1540E Pointer Ridge Place, Bowie MD 20716.  Based on articles written by Rattermann in Der Deutsche Pioneer (1877-1880).   These writings are 3-4 generations closer to the actual settlement period and they include names and migrations into and from Virginia not found in other sources!

Make February a time of study in the origins and migration patterns of your German, Swiss, and perhaps Holland Dutch ancestors too.  Begin with these titles and then search out the additional references cited by the above authors.

Make 2010 a new beginning of successful searching by standing on the shoulders of writers who have ploughed the way.  Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://arleneeakle.com

PS  My presentation on Virginia at the St George Family History Expo is brand NEW.  You won’t want to miss it.  Register now and plan to attend 26-27 Feb 2010 at the Dixie Center in St George UT  http://www.fhexpo.com

We left Utah early that February.  The day in Utah was bitterly cold–below zero.  Our car windows did not thaw completely until we had been in Oklahoma for 2 days.

When we arrived in Virginia, the afternoon and early evening were balmy and so much warmer, that we walked cemeteries in Rockbridge county without coats!

But, oh…the snow fell!

The next morning, we awakened to 24 inches of snow in the Shenandoah Valley–and topping our car.  And it continued to snow all that day and into the night.  A total of 36 inches fell.  Of course it paralyzed Virginia.   They had to import snowplows from Pennsylvania.   It did not paralyze us.  We had snow tires with heavy grid and tire chains in the trunk!

We were staying in a small motel in rural Rockbridge.  Our focus was the courthouse at Augusta County–to the north.  We just had to wait until the main roads were cleared and the courthouse opened.  So we played games. Shoveled snow.  And ate the kitchen, attached to the motel, out of almost all their food.  All that is, except the lemon meringue pie, baked just for us.  It crashed as the waitress slid on the floor wet from opening the outside door  to cool the porch… and the pie.

That trip we visited with relatives and those who knew the relatives.  Walked over 300 cemeteries. Personally dusted the original court case files tied tightly in neat bundles and stored in metal file boxes.  Hand-copied from the original land and personal property tax rolls.  Unfolded the original marriage bonds of many Virginia ancestors.

We attended the churches our ancestors attended and even sat in the same pews.  We watched the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier.  We walked down “bloody lane” at Antietam Cemetery and studied modern-day memorials for each regiment  and some individual companies who fought in that horrendous 2-day Civil War battle. We crossed the upper bridge over Antietam Creek, with its supports firmly planted on Eakle land, along the edge of the Battlefield.

Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania–the origins of the Eakle family and all the families they married into.  In the snow, as it fell, and after it was cleared from the roads,  and finally when it started to melt.

And on to Washington DC, where we visited the National Archives.  Not the White House.  Not the Pentagon.  The National Archives–where we examined the original enumerators books for our Eakle Ancestors.

…the strictest of need…

Never again, would we have the privilege of holding the originals of these documents in our hands.  And copying pertinent entries on our ancestors.

Today, its microfilm, microfiche, print, and computer screen where we view these documents.  The originals, now too fragile to be handled and exposed to florescent lights, are unavailable–except under the strictest of need.  Genealogy is not considered “strictest” of need.

So as the snow in Virginia piles higher, this week, I reflect on that wonderful trip and the work crew I assembled to help with the research.  Alma and his mother Mary Alice are gone.  There is a 4-drawer file cabinet where 2 very full drawers house the document copies and transcripts we collected.  Here are the photographs of the cemeteries and tombstones we copied.  Photographs of the homes and churches our ancestors inhabited.  And the photographs of the piles of snow on the land.

Virginia has not had a snow storm like we encountered…until now.  It still paralyzes the people.  And in Utah, where the snow is still piled over 2 feet in my  back yard and 12 feet over my yard well, we have snow tires with heavy treads and tire chains under the seat of my 3/4 ton truck.   Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle

PS  Did you know…that snow and cemeteries are quite compatible?  Snow is strong enough to clear the green moss and lyken from the stones so they can be read and photographed, and soft enough not to damage them.

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United Sates or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Ratification by all states was completed by 18 Dec 1865.  Presidential Proclamation 25 Jan 1949, ensured that all succeeding years from that point on, the US would celebrate that amendment and its signing.

What did you hear today about this momentous occasion for which so many gave their lives–more than all subsequent wars we have fought combined…

My media did not comment.  I marked the day gathering more references to Free People of Color for you:

Locating Free African American Ancestors:  A Beginners Guide. Aaron L. Day.  (Anaheim CA:  Carlberg Press, 2003.  Includes a master surname list based on census records and other sources.

“Slavery on the Upper Holston,”  Publications of the Historical Society of Washington County Virginia, Series II, #18 (May 1981).  Considers the total numbers of whites, slaves, and free people of color in the absence of complete census schedules.

Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South. Ira Berlin. (New York City:  New York, 1974.)  A perceptive,  older study that created an historical uproar at the time.  Still worth reading.

And check out these websites:

http://www.freeafricanamericans.com Paul Heinegg’s  Database.

http://middlepassages.com Middle Passage Slave Ship Database.

http://americanrevolution.org/blk.html Black Revolutionary War soldiers.

Remember, if you are researching Native American/Five Civilized Tribes ancestors, your success will often be in direct proportion to the amount of study you invest in Free People of Color and “all other free persons.”  Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle   http://arleneeakle.com

PS  I’ll be giving  a NEW presentation on Virginia at the Family History Expo in St George UT, 26-27 Feb 2010.  Written especially for those who attend this Expo.   Even if you can’t attend in person, you can access the syllabus I wrote online, once you register for the Conference.  It’s well worth the effort. You know that I am unbiased.  Ha!

Two people, only, are involved in the telling.   Words and objects enhance the recollections and spur the memory and recall.

From that point on, each re-telling often shifts details in some way.

Oral informants can draw maps of local knowledge, lead you to local family  sites and cemeteries, tell you the names and addresses of others who might know something, as well as provide testimony themselves.

As you converse, whether in person or by mail,  include among your questions:  “How do you know this information?”

Reliability of recollections from oral informants can be checked using a series of interviews with persons who live within the same local framework or family tradition.  Where more than one informant agrees without deviation, the recall is probably true.  Where they differ slightly, the recall is probable.  Where they disagree completely, the stories and traditions are questionable.

In a series of blogs, we will examine some traditions and family stories along with specific strategies to check them out and prove them–one way of the other. Stay tuned in.  Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://arleneeakle.com

PS  I am presenting a brand NEW session on Virginia Migration, that I just wrote this week at the St George Family History Expo.  And I am very excited about it:  “Where do I come from in Virginia?:  Migrations into and around Virginia.”  In the past few months, I have discovered some unusual and unexpected migrations.  You could register for the Expo and attend my class–or register for the Expo, even if you can’t attend, and access the conference handouts and syllabus online.  My syllabus pages are detailed, not just an outline.

This is the original migration pattern to the New World.  The little fleet left English land sitings behind 1 Jan 1607 and arrived in the river they called the James, 13 May 1607.  The next morning they dropped anchor on a peninsula (almost an island) which they called Jamestown.

When Newport returned to Virginia with the First Supply, as it was called, only 37 of the original 104 were still alive.

This pattern to Virginia continued for several years, as the settlers moved up the river seeking a better harbor and safer moorings, free of malaria, typhoid,  and cholera.  And it took many supplies to outrun the death rate so that more people were alive than had died.

Another migration pattern, often overlooked or ignored, was the movement of settlers from Maryland to North Carolina to southwestern Virginia and into Kentucky.  Studies in the census records indicate that whole counties in eastern Kentucky held persons born in North Carolina or parents who came originally from Maryland.

Now that census records can be screened on  your computer, study both 1850 and 1880 carefully.  Note the birthplaces of children and elderly residents living within the family units.  Even if your research has progressed well and already moved beyond these censuses–study them for the evidence of origins they provide.

Patricia Givens Johnson provides another important and overlooked migration pattern in her Settlers from Delaware River Come to Roanoke and New River, 1995 (an expansion of her New River Early Settlement, 1980.   She examines the experiences of the Swedish Stille and  Yocum families along with their kinship networks the Robinsons, Ogles, Grahams, McDonalds, Rosses, and others.

This migration pattern matches many families who originate in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland as well as Pennsylvania.  Johnson’s perceptive and understanding comment:  “The settlers had left disputes over proprietorship in West Jersey to find the same on the New River.  They had left the flooding on the Delaware to find the same on the Roanoke.  They had left pirates on the Delaware only to find the same fear on the New River, except from the Indians.”

Johnson’s use of little-known  sources to document these migrations include diaries of journeys, correspondence of government and church officials, manuscript histories of families and biographies of principal players, council proceedings and petitions to specific council members, court depositions and minutes, private family papers, church minutes, contemporary maps which chart Indian trails and roads laid out by the settlers themselves, and previous research completed by earlier genealogists including her mother, Dorothy Hall Givens.

One of the chapters I found especially helpful, dealt with the border wars and overlapping land claims along the Delaware River–the “Chester County Plot” and the Conojacular War of the late 1730’s and early 1740’s.  And the part played in all this mess by Jacobites–both those who were transported to the New World for their roles in Scotland and those who fled from prosecution and transportation in Scotland.

Many of these settlers who migrate to the New River in what they called “New Virginia, ” were not Scots-Irish at all.  They are usually identified thus.  They came directly from Scotland!  Or they came via England, not Ireland.

Please study her work carefully, noting the names of these settlers and where they migrate from.  Surnames are often the same.  And  surnames are often misleading.

No attempt is made to establish kinships between these settlers and their Scots-Irish counterparts.  Some may be related.  And some may even have known they were related.  Preston and Preston.  Campbell and Campbell.  Robinson and Robinson.  Stinson and Stevenson.  And so forth.

Only research into the sources establishing kinship links can determine if they are related to each other in Virginia and later in Kentucky.  They move together along the same migration routes being chronicled in the same tax records and wills.

Watch carefully, lest you attach my ancestors to your pedigrees!  Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle

PS  Is it any wonder that the pedigrees and family groups on World Tree and other genealogy sites have gaps and errors and ? marks where facts might appear?  Watch carefully.

This is our 25th year.  With a few exceptions, we still have the same professional research consultants and the same husband-wife team to oversee and prepare breakfast, our banquet, and our closing Ice Cream Social.

And Leland and Patty Meitzler still host their Genealogy Book Store.  Illya D’addezio is still our computer retrieval and programming expert.  Bill Balter still takes us for picture-taking tours of the Christmas lights on Temple Square and prepares a photo-CD of memories. 

And Donna Potter Phillips still corrals and guides our actions (and at times our behaviour) smoothly each day.  She especially watches over the newbies to ensure that they learn the ropes of genealogy in Salt Lake City without trauma. 

In preparation for the Tour, I reviewed several shelves of Virginia genealogy, including the oversize book area.  And found one of the most beautiful pieces of genealogical research I have encountered–ever!

B. Bernetiae Reed’s The Slave Families of Thomas Jefferson:  A Pictorial Study Book with an Interpretation of his Farm Book in Genealogy Charts.  2007.  2 vols.  Sylvest-Sarah, Inc.  PO Box 5825, Greensboro NC 27407-1285.  http://www.sylvest-sarah.com

Bound in leather, printed in full color with color-coded genealogy charts, thoroughly indexed and documented, these two volumes are an eighteen- pound model:  not only for the genealogy compiled,  but for the hope and promise of what we all could accomplish.

Wall Charts Become a Full-Blown Study

MS Reed began with a family tree chart in mind.  Chart by chart, she summarized her findings on wall charts hung around her home:  genealogy descents from the slaves Jefferson inherited, married, bought, and traded.  And genealogy descents of the slaves as they moved from plantation to plantation.  And as they were emancipated and migrated west.  Each slave and the family to which that person belonged are color-coded so you can track the lineages of each and every one.

Reed’s indexes include full names, occupations, relationships, and other identifying factors that enable you to differentiate between persons of the same name.  For this reason, if for no other, this book is a genealogical model. 

Surname indexes, which many authors are still creating , are time-consuming and often worthless–it takes more time to check page after page seeking one surname than it does to read the whole book.  Reed does not put us through that torture.

And her choice of illustrations–period maps, pictures and photographs of slavery and Virginia–give you a cultural base for understanding Jefferson’s original Farm Book and the census schedules upon which the families are based.

Carefully selected documents, including wills with full transcripts, correspondence, and sales receipts open your eyes and mind to the possible.

What if…you were to use the same sources, could you achieve similar results?  Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://arleneeakle.com

PS  Watch for an addition to my list of Free People of Color bibliography.  Much work is going on in this area.  And remember that many Native American ancestors are “hidden” within this people category.

The original edition became a classic and was still used as a college text when Billings decided a new edition was critically needed–to expand suggested readings and add new research findings about ethnic backgrounds, including Indians and Blacks.  Historical summaries of Virginia society and political development were out of date.  And the discovery of caches of little-known Virginia documents required new understanding of historical events. 

This wonderful, jusrisdictionally-oriented volume, discusses and illustrates the evolution of self-government in Virginia:

1. The Governor and the Assembly (House of Burgesses)
2. Local Government–County and Independent Cities
3. Virginia Society–Important families and their kin; indentured servants and slaves; Indians and their conflict with white culture
4. Local Rebellions–Lawne’s Creek Rising (1673), Bacon’s Rebellion (1674), and the Plant-Cutter Riots (1681-83) 
5. Virginia Life and Life Styles including religion and leisure pursuits.

An amazing variety of sample documents are included for each section, taken directly from the records themselves.  With full citations for each one.   And a full name index just may include the very ancestor you have sought for so many years.

The suggested readings will give you both a context in which to understand the documents and the jurisdictions which produced them.  Some documents include lists of  of names as they appear in the records. 

When you finish studying the samples, you are ready to  locate and search similar records for your own ancestors. This book is a guide to Virginia genealogy records–although the word genealogy is never mentioned.

Billings wanted to write a book that could be used as a text.   He succeeded.  Your favorite genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

PS  Run, don’t walk to your nearest book store and order your own copy of this helpful volume .  Or order online at http://uncpress.unc.edu/

If the Virginia legislature would not pay the price of the documents he found, Brock made arrangements for Henry E. Huntington, of the Huntington Library in San Marino CA.  These include tax rolls, military land warrants–the individual warrants issued to soldiers directly–and land warrants issued to new immigrants as well as many other kinds of records.

Next week, I will be at the Huntington Library, doing Virginia  research.  And I am very excited about the opportunity to spend the week  there.

Stay tuned.  I hope to get my system working shortly and I can share what I find with you.  I am writing this on a borrowed computer–which will not let me access Twitter or Facebook . The computer just resets to another online presence and ignores mine.  If Kathryn, my webmaster, can get me in, I will continue with my Research Tips  and other genealogy delights.

I have so missed talking with  you, my readers.  I still am doing much Virginia research for clients and for my book on Virginia  jurisdictions.  Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://arleneeakle.com

PS  Talk to you again soon.

I had read in a library chronicle that the U of VA had more than 12 million books on its shelves and almost that many manuscripts in its special collections.  Among the manuscripts were the working papers of the Carnegie Institute survey of American colonial documents in the libraries and archives of Europe.

We went there to read those papers and to spin the microfilmed pages made of the documents they found–including the original version of the 1622 census.

Like bears at a picnic we were!  Entering the library at 7:00 am with our breakfast and lunch in bags.  Exiting the library at midnight, ravenous with physical hunger.  And sated by the wonderful name lists and old maps we had captured in photocopies.  Pages and pages of genealogy data!

But, we had to go there and spend the time and the due diligence to find out what that huge research library held and then make copies of those items that applied to our genealogy research.

Now, the Virginia Heritage website, a consolidated database of finding aids and guides to manuscripts, lays out the historical records and materials you need to document both Virginia history and your ancestors, from 1607 on.

Twenty-three–count them, 23 university and college libraries, historical and genealogical archives and libraries, and the Library of Virginia participate.  You can access the information by locality, subject, time period, personal names–just decide what kind of information you want.

http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/small/vhp

When this on-going project is completed, it is estimated that 25,000 finding aids to over 30 million manuscripts and 16 million archives will be available to scholars and researchers.  African-American materials include 15,000 pages describing some 500 collections scattered across the state of Virginia.

In the beginning…all was Virginia!

In a project this vast, copyright becomes a question.  So the project is available under these rules–

1. The database is available to the public for use in research, teaching, and private study.  Prints and downloads may be made without prior permission, with proper credit for all copies.
2. Guides and associated images and examples carry copyright held by the participating library or archive.  These cannot be re-published or used for commercial purposes without prior written permission.

Even if the image is the long lost will of your 4th-great grandfather, you cannot reproduce it for the attendees at your family reunion without prior written permission.  And you cannot claim ownership of images that detail the lives and times of your family members and ancestors.

Even if your website is used and quoted by other genealogists for the use of students earning professional credentials, you cannot upload the images to your own website without prior written permission.

The technical maintenance of Virginia Heritage comes from the University of Virginia.  Check this site out.  And return to it again and again–seeking those family papers your family did not inherit.  Those volumes of church minutes the minister reported to you were lost before 1900.  Those letters written from Donegal Ireland to Augusta County or Botetourt County where your family finally settled.  Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://arleneeakle.com

PS  I did not get to Virginia my last research trip–so I am planning to go in January 2010.  Let me know if you want your ancestors added to my research list.

PPS  Read my Research Tips posted most days on Facebook.  I invite you to become a friend and ckeck-in often.