The year was 1850 and the U.S. Federal Census counted 23,191,876 residents. Of this number, 2,244,602 were enumerated as being of foreign birth. Not surprisingly, due to the Irish Potato famine of the 1840s, 961,719 people claimed Irish origins–or 42%, making it the largest single country of origin cited. These numbers did not go unnoticed in urban areas and resentment of the Irish Catholic immigrants gave birth to a period of nativism. Irish immigrants found themselves discriminated against during this period as cartoons portrayed them with simian features, and newspaper help wanted ads sometimes specified that “Irish need not apply.”

In California, immigrants were also being shunned as people from all over the world converged on the soon-to-be-state in search of gold. To help stem this tide the California legislature passed a Foreign Miners License Tax of $20 per month.

More women were beginning to arrive on the west coast, but they were still greatly outnumbered at a rate of over ten to one and 73% of the population was between the ages of 20 and 40.

With the flow of gold seekers in 1850, disease followed in Sacramento when Asiatic cholera was brought in and killed between 800-1000 residents of that city. Most had to be buried in a mass grave in the Old City Cemetery.

The growth of California because of the gold rush led to statehood in September of 1850. The state’s admission was part of “The Compromise of 1850,” presented by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. The compromise was an effort to keep the U.S. united as southern states threatened to secede. At issue was whether the new state of California, Washington, D.C., and the new territory acquired in the war with Mexico would allow slavery, and over a land dispute with Texas.

The compromise also covered the Fugitive Slave Act, which legally required the return of fugitive slaves who had fled to the north from slave states. The law also held citizens who refused to cooperate with the apprehension of fugitive slaves subject to legal action. It pushed the fugitives who had begun new lives in the north, even further north — to Canada. Rather than stem the tide of fugitives though, the activities of the Underground Railroad increased following 1850 and it increased northern determination to end slavery.

THE DOMESDAY BOOK ONLINE
http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/

The Domesday Book is a great land survey from 1086, commissioned by William the Conqueror to assess the extent of the land and resources being owned in England at the time, and the extent of the taxes he could raise. The information collected was recorded by hand in two huge books, in the space of around a year. William died before it was fully completed.

The Domesday Book provides extensive records of landholders, their tenants, the amount of land they owned, how many people occupied the land (villagers, smallholders, free men, slaves, etc.), the amounts of woodland, meadow, animals, fish and ploughs on the land (if there were any) and other resources, any buildings present (churches, castles, mills, salthouses, etc.), and the whole purpose of the survey - the value of the land and its assets, before the Norman Conquest, after it, and at the time of Domesday. Some entries also chronicle disputes over who held land, some mention customary dues that had to be paid to the king, and entries for major towns include records of traders and number of houses.

EASY GOOGLE GENEALOGY SEARCHER
http://www.searchforancestors.com/google/searcher.html

Learn to do effective genealogy internet searches with the Easy Google Genealogy Searcher. Can't remember all the Google tricks you've heard for genealogy searching? Want to learn some things you probably had no idea Google could do? The Easy Genealogy Google Searcher puts advanced Google features on one page with suggested keywords and advice about how each feature is useful for genealogy searches.

Download the professional Free genealogy charts, forms and templates you need to document your family tree.

PRINT YOUR OWN CALENDARS
http://www.calendarhome.com/

Tips from the Pros: Build a Research Trip Kit
by George C. Morgan

(Copyright © 1998-2006, MyFamily.com Inc. 6/2/2006 - Archive)

Potato Disease, Cotton Cloth, & Scourges
Adams Sentinel (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania), 06 September 1847:

(Ancestry Daily News, myfamily.com, September 2005)

In the extreme left margin of the 1920 Census for Quinton
Township, Pittsburg County, Oklahoma the enumerator,
David B. Riggs wrote:

“Outside of town, lovely mountain trails,
Where wolves and ignorance prevail.”

Genealogical research is filled with contradictions. That is the overwhelming reason why we are looking for primary source materials, and settling for secondary sources when necessary. With secondary sources, however, we should be looking for multiple materials that are independent of one another in origin to help substantiate a fact.

For instance, a published family history that contains erroneous information may be accepted as "fact" by a genealogist without personally retracing and verifying the information. If that genealogist adds information to his or her genealogical database and then uploads a GEDCOM file or sends it to another researcher, that person is perpetuating the error(s) published in the original family history. After several replications of the erroneous information, it may be construed as fact because, "Well, it's everywhere out there and so it must be right!"

I always tell genealogists that there are two cardinal rules in family history research:

* Learn how to misspell your family's names, forenames and surnames--because they and everybody else did.
* Maintain a healthy skepticism of anything you have not personally examined, traced, and/or verified.

I want to examine some of the places you must be especially careful when working on your family history research. As you read the column, think about your own family history practices, and consider how you can become more discerning in your own research.

Printed Genealogies
Trust me on this one! Your Auntie Em or Uncle Henry may have known a whole lot about family history and may have written an eminently readable account of the family's history. However, how do you know it is 100% correct? Some of the information may have been word-of-mouth or sheer hypothesis. I just read and reviewed one of these family histories. The author stated in his introduction that the purpose was to pass information on to future generations. It was very obvious that he and his wife had traveled extensively in the U.S. and Europe to visit libraries, archives, churches, and places where the family had actually lived. However, other than telling the reader where some information had been found, there wasn't a source citation or footnote in the entire book. As a result, the book is nothing but narrative (often entertaining) and clues.

Many family history writers may conduct very scholarly research, basing the facts they describe on actual records that can be annotated with citations, including the repository or person where the source material can be found. It is these types of well-researched and well-documented family histories that are probably most reliable. However, there is every reason for you to follow the research path laid out by the citations, obtain exact copies of the source materials, and personally examine and analyze them. You can then determine if the author of the family history developed reasonable hypotheses or drew correct conclusions. Remember that all family histories should be subject to your own examination of the research, and the personal review of the evidence for yourself.

GEDCOM Files
Genealogists are a generous and helpful bunch of people, for the most part. This is one of the features of the "hobby" that makes it so enjoyable. Many researchers actively collect and document source materials and add the details to their genealogy databases. Others, however, only seem to collect names and pick up information from other researchers' data. The latter approach is a shortcut to building a family history, and the information may be riddled with errors, omissions, and perpetuated mistakes.

A GEDCOM file (an acronym for the Genealogy Electronic Data Communications standard format) can be extracted from a person's genealogical database. It can then be sent to or exchanged with other researchers as an attachment to an email. It can be uploaded to a website that stores GEDCOM files and makes them available for review and/or download by others. GEDCOMs can also be reformatted into HTML language in order to help produce personal webpages (discussed below).

In reviewing the contents of someone's GEDCOM file, what should you believe? How do you know that what is fact, what is proved and documented, what is hypothesis, and what has been gleaned, unverified, from other people's research? The truth is that you don't know how scholarly the researcher's work might have been and how much attention has been paid to providing accurate and well-documented information. Yes, the information should be used as a guide to source materials that you can personally review and verify. However, that "healthy skepticism" comes in very handy and can save you travels down the wrong roads in your research.

Personal Websites
You may have encountered some pretty impressive websites created by genealogists who are ambitious in trying to get their family history out on the Internet. There are a number of free software programs that will take a GEDCOM file extracted from a person's genealogy database and format the data into pedigree charts, some of which you can navigate up and down, search, and read notes and source citations. Some include photographs of family members and digitized images of source documents. While these sites are very impressive, remember that you don't know how accurate the researcher might be. The data found at the website provides clues for you to trace and personally verify.

Mailing Lists and Message Boards
Queries and commentary exchanged on email mailing lists and posted on message board sites can be splendid ways of quickly connecting with other researchers with whom you can collaborate. However, these sharing people may not always have the correct information themselves, or they may be perpetuating errors they've found in other places. There is no harm in asking for source citations if none are provided. You can do this by private email so as not to clutter a mailing list or message board, and you can then begin a relationship with another researcher. He or she may even offer to provide you with copies of the source documents in exchange for the cost of photocopies and postage. Always offer to reimburse the other researcher as an incentive to share these materials. Until you see copies of original source materials and you can verify the information, all you have are clues.

Only You Can Tell for Sure
The more research you do on each of your ancestors, the better you get to know them. While all of the sources I've mentioned before can be filled with excellent, well-documented information, there is much erroneous of poorly documented data too. As you become more knowledgeable about your people, the more astute you become to their lives, their personalities, and the way that they may have thought or made decisions. Therefore, when you do the requisite retracing and verification of the information yourself, you can take what you know to be fact and use this in the analysis of the materials you find. Only then can you determine whether you have data on the correct ancestor or family. It is then that you can place this new information into proper context and expand the big picture to create a more complete understanding of your family history.

(Copyright 2005, MyFamily.com. Reprinted with permission.)

HEADSTONE

“HERE LIES IN A HORIZONTAL POSITION THE OUTSIDE CASE OF
GEORGE ROUTLEDTE
WATCHMAKER
INTEGRITY WAS THE MAINSPRING AND PRUDENCE
THE REGULATOR OF ALL THE ACTIONS OF HIS LIFE.
HUMANE, GENEROUS AND LIBERAL, HIS HAND NEVER STOPPED
TILL HE HAD RELIEVED DISTRESS.
SO NICELY REGULATED WERE HIS MOVEMENTS
THAT HE NEVER WENT WRONG, EXCEPT WHEN SET GOING
BY PEOPLE WHO DID NOT KNOW HIS KEY.
EVEN THEN HE WAS EASILY SET RIGHT AGAIN.
HE HAD THE ART OF DISPOSING OF HIS TIME SO WELL,
TILL HIS HOURS GLIDED AWAY, HIS PULSE STOPPED BEATING.
HE RAN DOWN ON 14TH NOVEMBER 1801, AGED 57.
IN HOPES OF BEING TAKEN IN HAND BY HIS MAKER,
THOROUGHLY CLEANED, REPAIRED, WOUND UP
AND SET GOING IN THE WORLD TO COME,
WHEN TIME SHALL BE NO MORE.”

(Dorset FHS-June 2004, Richard Allen from a Devon, England churchyard)


"Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded."
~Virginia Wolfe, 1882-1941


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