I walked into a large library and looked
at the menu on the wall. No Genealogy Department was listed, but there was a
History Department. I went to the History Department and just inside the door
was a young man with thick glasses, sitting at a desk and reading a book.
I said, ”Excuse me. Do you have a
Genealogy Department?” He stared at me blankly for a moment,
then blurted out, “That’s a baby doctor, ain’t
it?”
Woman’s viewpoint of the Civil War?
I was born and grew up in west central
Missouri. As a young boy, I was reading everything I could find on Quantrill’s
Raiders and the James-Younger gang. Then, I started wondering, “What was my
family doing then?” I decided to
ask my grandmother.
The exchange went something like this:
“Was your father in the Civil War?”
“Yes, he kept his uniform hanging in the
closet until he died.”
“Which side was he
on?”
“I don’t
know.”
“What color was the
uniform?”
“Either blue or gray or a bluish
gray.”
I gave up and started to leave when she
suddenly said,
“I do know one thing, he was on the side that didn’t
get no pension!”
Of course that meant he was a
Confederate.
I later found out that he had been a
fifteen year old bugler with Price’s Confederate
Cavalry.
I heard that a woman was researching one
of my families. I wrote to her and offered to swap information.
For a reply, I received my letter back
with the following note penciled in at the bottom of the page.
“I got enough to get in the D.A.R. so I’m
not interested in family history
anymore.”
I read in a quarterly that an older lady,
a small town professional researcher, was going to start researching her town’s
founding father’s family history. I
had researched that family for years, because it was one of mine, and I had it
back 5 generations from him. Since she was a local, I thought she
might have some little tidbit that I didn’t have, so I wrote and offered to swap
information, instead of just giving her what I had.
Her reply was a tart, “I don’t do
research for free!”I still haven’t figured that one out, but
I sent her nothing.
I wrote to a courthouse in a small farm
town and asked for a copy of an old record. I gave book and page number, so I
thought I would get the record easily. I received my letter back, with a
note: That old stuff is up in the attic. It’s
cold and dark and I’m not about to go up
there.”
A long shot that paid off: I was researching my Baker family, and
had reached a dead end with the marriage of W.W. Baker in 1879 in Kingsville,
MO. This was soon after I
first started my research. In desperation, I wrote two letters,
explaining my plight. One, I sent to the Mayor of Kingsville.
The other, I addressed to “Mr./Mrs.
Baker, Kingsville, MO.” I received two answers.
One from the mayor, with charcoal gravestone rubbings from W.W. Baker’s parent’s gravestones. One from a granddaughter of W.W. Baker’s brother. She still lived on the Baker farm and gave me loads of information that she had obtained from her mother.
One that didn’t: I was stuck on another line, so I tried
the letter trick again. I wrote one to the small town where that ancestor had
lived and addressed it to : Mr./Mrs. X, with the town name. (I’m not giving out
the surname on this one) The
reply:
“DEAR MR BAKER MY NAME IS WILLY X
AND MY DADDY WAS BILLY X AND HE WAS THE SEVENTH SON OF A SEVENTH SON AND THAT
MEANS HE COULD FIND WATER WITH A STICK I HOPE THIS HELPS WILLY
X.”
I wrote back and thanked him for the
information. He tried.
My great grandfather, William Wiley
Baker, lived in Missouri. Sometime between 1912 and 1917, he went to Kansas and
died there. His wife was listed as a widow in 1920 in missouri. I didn't have
the date or location in Kansas of his death.
I once sent exactly that info, along with
his birthplace and birth year, to a large number of libraries in Kansas and
asked them to check their cemetery records for him. I offered to pay for a copy
of the information, if they found him. I sent a
SASE.
The
replies:
1. Some said they had no cemetery records
(no fee).
2. Some sent me the ones they had on
anyone named William Baker (small or no
fee).
3. Some sent me all of their Baker
cemetery records (small or no fee).
But MOST
said:
4. We checked the 1920 census for him and
he wasn’t here. Please send $5.00 for
research.
(No mention of cemetery records in
most of those letters)
If you reread what I sent them, you’ll
see how funny this is! I’m not knocking small town libraries in
general. I’ve had some send me as much as 30 pages of material, at no charge, or
a very small fee.
I’ve often sent to courthouses for
records and received the following reply:
“We’re sorry but we don’t have the staff
to do genealogical research. We’ve enclosed the names and addresses of some
professional researchers who will be happy to help you.”
My questions:
1. What research? I usually gave them the
book and page number of the record I wanted. They would only
have had to copy a page from a
book.
2. Why not hire more people, charge enough for the copies
to pay them, and turn a small profit for
the county too. Most people don’t mind paying a small fee for a
record.
I’m not knocking county officials in
general. Most of the Baker marriages I have were sent to me by them. I would ask
for a particular Baker marriage and they would send all they had, at little or
no charge.
There was one notable exception. I sent
for one in a California county and was told, “We charge a non-refundable $36.00
fee for searching for the record.”
I had given them the year, the husband’s full name, and the bride’s first name for the marriage. I still don’t have that record.
James R. Baker, Jr.