Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This February 1986 Classic discovers Genealogy using public records and diaries from Baylor’s Texas Collection.
Masterpieces of understatement such as this often propel family members into the wonderful world of Genealogy. Many ultimately find their way to Baylor’s Texas Collection.
Although an academic library, its shelves are filled with materials invaluable to the family researcher.
Through the years, genealogists have posed some interesting questions and problems to our staff and afforded us some of our lighter moments.
Not long ago a woman came into the library and asked to see a list of the men who had been involved in the battle of San Jacinto. She wanted to find her great-grandfather’s name on the list. When she informed me that he had died in 1828, I tried, in vain, to persuade her that he could not have participated in a conflict that took place eight years after his death.
Her response came most emphatically. She had received information from Salt Lake City that said he was in that battle. “Furthermore,” she added, “Mormons don’t make mistakes in genealogy.” Knowing that my battle was lost, I pulled information on San Jacinto and watched; she spent a most frustrating afternoon, finally leaving the library with the firm conviction that 1 was withholding that all important bit of information.
Not all of our patrons are disappointed, however. Some find more than they ever believed possible.
Consider the experience of one researcher when she read about her ancestors in Sarah Pier’s diary. Sarah’s father owned a general store in Travis, Austin County, Texas, and at the store was a large public scale.
The entry, dated July 30, 1862, reads:
Mr. and Mrs. Dabney here to supper last night spend the day at Mr. Cleveland’s.
Mr. and Mrs. Dabney got weighed at the store. Mrs. D. weighed 300 and 12 pounds and Mr. Dabney 200 and 43.
In just one sentence our patron had found a quarter ton of ancestors!
Such records also give insight into the daily lives of early Texans. It is interesting to find their concerns, fears, or pleasures.
Death and dying, illnesses and medication are subjects often written about by the diarist. In the above- mentioned volume, written during the Civil War, Sarah Pier relates that the whole community welcomed a furloughed soldier home. He had contracted smallpox in camp in Louisiana and had been sent home to recuperate. Since some of the sores on his body still held a little pus, the local doctor took advantage of the situation by extracting the serum from the sores and vaccinating everyone that requested it. Only through personal narratives can such experiences be found.
Newspapers have proved to be one of our most often-used resources. Even a weekly paper will open up areas of information that can be found in no other place. At the same time papers can be most frustrating to use. Most researchers ask for papers to find an obituary of a long-dead ancestor only to find no mention of the death in the local news. We then have to explain to our patrons that the obituary of a great- grandparent might not have appeared in the local paper but could be found in a paper published a hundred miles away. The explanation, while simple, is most readily accepted when one understands that in the small towns of the 1800s everyone knew everyone else in town. There was no need to put the obituary in the local paper; besides, invitations or notices usually were issued about town, telling the time and place of the funeral.
Sometimes a researcher will find information in a newspaper that the family has tried for years to hide and forget. One day in searching for information concerning a family by the name of Coe, a patron reading a microfilmed copy of the Brenham Banner found this small notice in the “local” column:
The remains of Mr. Phil Coe, who was murdered at Abilene, Kansas, by a notorious character, known as “Wild Bill” arrived on Monday evening, last, and was interred at our city cemetery on Tuesday morning, by his relatives and friends with whom we deeply sympathize.
She copied the notice and went on with her search; but 1 was intrigued with the statement about “Wild Bill.” The next semester, when a likely looking young man came to me for a suggestion for a term paper, I told him about the newspaper article and advised him that I felt an untold story lay behind it. He took my challenge and began researching the life of Phil Coe. The final story was almost too good to be true — Wild Bill was, indeed, Wild Bill Hickock. Phil Coe turned out to be as unsavory a character as Wild Bill and had instigated the fight by taking the first shot. Coe missed. Wild Bill didn’t! The hometown newspaper didn’t go into the morbid details.
Uncomplimentary facts concerning an embarrassing relative often pose a dilemma for the genealogist. How can one record the information without revealing family secrets or skeletons? Faced with the problem of explaining an inmate of the state penitentiary, one family historian wrote, “Bob is working for the government and living in state housing.”
Several months ago a student called my attention to an obituary that appeared in the Waco Tribune of an early date.
The death of Israel Hyman is recorded in today’s paper. He died young, only thirty seven years, yet he had known many years of privation, physical pain and the experiences of humidity.
It makes one wonder if he would have died sooner in Houston or Beaumont, doesn’t it? A name is a person’s identifying mark, but it can be the researcher’s greatest problem. Because early records were kept by those who spelled phonetically, all kinds of vari-
And then there was the time that Rev. Cannon married William Gun to Emily Maria Pistol.
ations can be found for very simple names. Because of difficulties in spellings, names have undergone many changes with an added “s” or a dropped “e” or even a shortened or anglicized version being adopted by some branches of a family.
Of course, most female names are changed by marriage. Searching marriage records often reveals astonishing information. A favorite story among genealogists is that of the wedding performed on June 9, 1823, when William Gustavus Gun and Emily Maria Pistol of Petersburg, Virginia, were married by the Rev. Cannon.
Some twenty years later the Telegraph and Texas Register of March 21, 1851, reported a marriage license issued in Illinois. A Justice of the Peace had been appointed, but his “commission” had not yet arrived and he could not legally perform wedding ceremonies. He circumvented that little problem with the following entry in his records. (Note how the formality of the record disintegrates in the course of the recording.)
State of Illinois, County of Peoria … to all the world greeting. Know ye that John Smith and Peggy Meyers is hereby certified to go together and do as old folks does, anywhere inside of Copperas Precinct and when my commission comes in, 1 am to marry em good and date em back to kivir accidents.
OMR Justice of the Peace County records offer to the family researcher a treasure of information. Marriages, naturalizations, court cases, jury duty, deeds, wills, and probate records all reveal family history. The Texas Collection is a depository for these records, having the records of McLennan and the surrounding counties on microfilm. As a part of the Regional Historical Resources Depository (RHRD) program of the state of Texas, we can order reels of records from other depositories, thus giving to our researchers an opportunity to do “long distance” research at home.
In the McLennan County marriage records for 1909-10, which are a part of the RHRD program, there is written across the face of one record, “DO NOT PUBLISH.” Items like that always make one wonder about the story behind the lines. At least the couple that did not want their marriage revealed were married. Sometimes, even today, it is not always an easy task to get the ceremony peformed. The Beaumont Enterprise, Sept. 5, 1982, tells about a judge in Port Arthur, Texas, who refuses to officiate at a wedding while a Dallas Cowboys’ game is being broadcast!
That which can be joined together can also be put asunder. Divorce took its toll, even among our ancestors. In a divorce petition presented in 1874 to the district court in Hunt County, Texas, before the Hon. W. G. Andrews, Judge of the 11th Judicial District of the State of Texas, William Aikey sued for divorce from his wife. He presented his case to the court:
In the year 1871, he [Aikey] lost his beloved wife leaving him a disconsolate widower with seven children. In the fall of 1872, Sarah Jane Maxwell crossed his way. She was a widow and the mother of seven children begotten by her former husband. Sarah Jane was a woman of mighty winning ways before they were married and one of the mildest mannered women he ever saw. She told him that all her children were angels, and that she believed all his children were angels too, “for they looked just like their pa.” Sarah Jane told him that she was raising up her children in the fear and admonition of the Lord and required her children to repeat the Lord’s Prayer every night — the one that begins “Now I lay me down to sleep.” One Sunday morning in December, 1872, Sarah Jane came to his house and by her fascinating walk and pious conversation induced him to go to the home of the preacher and there they were united in the holy bonds of matrimony. Then he followed her to her home in Tidwell Thicket.
He discovered that when he went into the house, his Dorcas was gone and Mary Magdalene with her seven devils was there. The Maxwells wanted to know if they and the Aikeys would mix and in trying to separate the children, Sarah Jane hit Aikey over the head with a stick.
Now the house was in the middle of Tidwell Thicket. The trees were so thick that the sun only shone two hours a day. He worked day and night to clear the property to make a garden for Sarah Jane. He finally came to believe that she married him, only to get the thicket cleared. When a good garden was planted, Sarah Jane told him to “git up and git.”
He continued to explain to the judge that when he remonstrated with Sarah Jane and tried to move back into the house she replied: “Bill Aikey, you old fool, I have got my land cleared now and I would not live with you again to save your life.”
His summation to the judge was that marriage is nothing more than a civil contract and when a contract is broken on one side, it is broken on the other. The divorce was granted.
Public records reveal not only marriages and divorces, but also wills. Sometimes a will reveals an interesting family story that cannot be understood without reading all the minutes or records of the probate. One researcher had such an experience when she asked us to order the Austin County Probate records through the RHRD program. She found the will of her great-great-grandfather, in which the estate was to be divided equally among his seven children. The only exception was that his daughter Mary’s share was to be held by her older brothers “until she does what she knows she should do.” Several years later Mary divorced her husband and immediately was given her share of her father’s estate.
One of the most popular aids for genealogical research are the various types of directories. There are business gazetteers, city directories, directories of various professional groups, and telephone directories. By examining some of the old telephone directories, one can see that with the developing technology the phone numbers have increased in length and the concept of service has radically changed. A look at the Saint Jo, Texas, phone directory of seventy-five years ago will suffice to indicate this change. On the back of the directory this notice appears:
To those who have no phones and say they don’t need any. When any member of a residence or business house, that has no phone, uses any other residence or business phone, they will positively be charged (5) five cents for each and every call. We will charge you just the same when any one else talks for you. So if your call is not worth the price, don’t bother Central for we have enough to do
One researcher learned that the “Reservation’ in early Waco wasn’t exactly for Indians.
to wait on those who pay us. Cripples exempt. Now, don’t put off having a phone put in your house until you or one of your family needs a doctor, or your house catches fire, and then run to some phone and ask us to get the doctor or fire department for you. It takes money and work to run a telephone business. Don’t ask us to work for you for nothing. Now, if you use our property and ask us to wait on you, don’t grumble and call us short, for we will certainly call on you for pay. We can’t live by work alone.
At the Texas Collection we have found that it pays the researcher to have a sense of humor. Sometimes when the unexpected is found, it can be very hard to give up some preconceived ideas or to discard family tales that have been handed down through generations.
Some months ago, a couple came to us to try to find information concerning their “Indian” great-grandmother. They explained to Ellen K. Brown, our archivist, that they knew she was Indian because they had found letters she had writ¬ ten with the return address, “The Reservation, Waco, Texas.” Imagine their surprise when Mrs. Brown gently explained that the Reservation did not refer to Indians but was the name of the Red Light District in early Waco. After a shocked silence, they began to laugh; and our staff breathed a sigh of relief. They spent the whole day searching through city directories, manuscripts, newspapers, etc. and laughing over their finds. As they left the library, they joked about postponing the publishing of their findings because “the family will never believe it.”
The Texas Collection offers the amateur and professional genealogist a rich source of information. Even though it is not a “genealogical library” as such, it holds considerable material of genealogical worth.
A beginning genealogist often neglects primary resource materials and depends upon books, published genealogies, and census records to try to trace a family line. After using the resources of the Texas Collection, most of our researchers find that they have been able to put flesh on the bones of a long-dead ancestor.
One of the most promising resources for future generations of researchers is the collection of oral histories being produced by Baylor’s Institute for Oral History. Nothing can take the place of eyewitness accounts or personal knowledge of an event or relationships.
Not many of us can trace our families back five or six generations in one day; but that is how it was done by a fifth grade student in Waco. I was invited to talk with some pupils in one of the private schools in town. Their teacher wanted them to trace their family trees. During the course of the afternoon, I gave them some pedigree forms to be filled out and then invited the whole class to come to the Texas Collection on the following day to do some research. Imagine my surprise when I looked at their pedigree sheets and found most of them completely filled. Finally, I asked one little girl how she had found so much information so quickly. Her reply was “I went home and asked my great-grandmother!”
