Fantastic Find: The Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation

The Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation (SOLEIF) is a private sector charity which partners with the National Park Service to restore and maintain these monuments. In addition SOLEIF has created an American Immigrant Wall of Honor, listing the names of 700,000 immigrants to date. If your ancestors entered the United States through Ellis Island, you can locate then using the SOLEIF's passenger search page.

[Immigrants on an Atlantic Liner, Levick, Edwin, 1869-1929. Date Created/Published: c1906

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

[Ellis Island, Bain News Service, publisher.

Source: George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Home to Thanksgiving - 1867

For those of you who are traveling today, keep safe.

[Currier & Ives. (ca. 1867) Home to Thanksgiving. , ca. 1867. New York: Published by Currier & Ives.

Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2002695889/.]

P.S. My daughter Christine has come down with the flu and won't be posting until she's feeling better.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Memorial Day

Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day honors the memory of people who died while serving in the United States military.

[Johnston, F. B., photographer. (1899) Daisies gathered for Decoration Day. Washington D.C, 1899. 

Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2001703674/. ]

Harold Delbert "Hal" Currey, Jr. (the only son of the parents who raised me) and my uncle John William "Jack" Slater, both Second Lieutenants in the Army Air Corps, died in action during World War II. You can see their pictures and read more about them here.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers: The Grand Review of the Armies, Washington D.C. - May 23, 1865

On this day 153 years ago, 90,000 soldiers from the Army of the Potomac marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on the first of two days of military parades to celebrate the Union victory.*

[Mounted officers and unidentified units on Pennsylvania Avenue, May 1865. Source: Library of Congress]

And where was Dick Worden, my great great grandfather, at the time? Was he one of the marchers in Washington D.C.?

Alas, no.

After being invalided out shortly after Vicksburg in 1863, he had reenlisted early in the next year and went back to his old Company G of the 24th Iowa Infantry Regiment, then part of General Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah in Virginia, which was in Georgia when the Grand Review took place.



*The men from General Sherman's Army of Georgia, 60,000 strong, traveled the same route the next day.
**Either Savannah or Augusta.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Today in History: Homestead Act - May 20, 1862

The first thing I see every day when I go online is "Today in History" from the Library of Congress. It reminds me of how various events influenced my ancestors and the Homestead Act was crucial to the settling of the West, including Alaska--80 million acres were claimed through 1900, 160 acres at a time.

["New Settlers on the Prairie." East Custer County, Nebraska, by Solomon D. Butcher, 1887.

Nebraska State Historical Society, (Digital ID, e.g., nbhips 12036)]

[Source: Library of Congress]

It's not an accident that the law, passage of which had been blocked for 20 years by a coalition of Northern businessmen and Southern slaveholders, didn't become law until 1862 when Southern interests were no longer represented in Congress.

[Source: Library of Congress]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

From the Probate Files: Richard Woodward - Chester County, Pennsylvania - 1706

Ancestry's online databases weren't very helpful in regard to the will of my maternal ninth great grandfather Richard Woodward. All I could find was this:

[Ancestry.com]

And I found nothing at all on FamilySearch.

But I persisted because, as you will note, one of his children was "Martha, wife of --- Baker" and therefore my 8th great grandmother. Fortunately an earlier Woodward published a book in 1879* about the family (available through the Internet Archive) which includes a transcription of Richard's will.

[Genealogy of the Woodward family of Chester county, Pennsylvania, with an appendix giving a brief account of the Woodwards of some other portions of the United States. by Lewis Woodward, b. 1848. From the collection of the Boston Public Library. Internet Archive.com]

(As you can see Martha's bequest was "five pounds in monys or a Cow equivalent to the sum" while her sisters Jane, Mary and Sarah each were to receive twenty pounds, perhaps because Martha was already married which they were not.)**

It appears that the house in Thornbury Township that Richard lived in before he removed to Middletown is still standing and it was documented in the 1930s by the Historic American Buildings Survey which stated that "Significance: This house, although much altered, is of interest because the original section was possibly built in the last decade of the 17th century."

[SOUTH FRONT AND EAST SIDE - Richard Woodward House, Concord Road (Thornbury Township), Westtown, Chester County, PA

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. ]

[ WEST AND NORTH SIDES - Richard Woodward House, Concord Road (Thornbury Township), Westtown, Chester County, PA.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

[FIRST FLOOR, EAST WALL FIREPLACE - Richard Woodward House, Concord Road (Thornbury Township), Westtown, Chester County, PA.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

[SECOND FLOOR, HALL - Richard Woodward House, Concord Road (Thornbury Township), Westtown, Chester County, PA.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

Here's how I'm descended from Richard Woodward:

[Ancestry.com]

*Here's the title page:

**Of his sons, only Joseph (not the eldest) inherited property. The others had to settle for "four shillings or a pair of gloves".



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Valentine's Day

Here are two valentines from 1884 printed by Obpacher Brothers who are described as Art Publishers of Munich and New York.

[New York : By Obpacher Bros., New York, 1884.

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

[New York : By Obpacher Bros., New York, 1884.

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Drive: Automobile Parade - Manhattan, New York, 1899

If you follow this link you'll be able to watch a short Thomas Edison produced film from 1899, the content of which is summarized by the Library of Congress this way:

This may be the first annual automobile parade, held on November 4, 1899 in downtown Manhattan. At least ten different makes and models are seen, including electric and steam powered machines. Only three years earlier, in 1896, Henry Ford, Charles Brady King, Alexander Winton and Ransom Eli Olds had each introduced their gasoline cars. In 1900, the first National Auto Show was held at Madison Square Garden and the favorites were the electrics and the steamers. In 1901, new oil fields in Texas made gasoline affordable. That same year, mass production techniques were introduced into car manufacturing. These two factors would prove to be key developments in the rapid growth of the American automobile industry.

[Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division Washington, D.C.]

The horse in the third image above certainly wasn't happy to find himself in that crowd.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Labor Day

If you have 3-1/2 minutes to spare I highly recommend that you watch this 1904 Labor Day parade in Massachusetts which the Library of Congress describes this way:

Shows a parade through bunting-draped streets, probably in the town of Leominster, Mass. First, a decorated grandstand bearing the banner "Leominster heartily greets its guests" is seen, and then the camera pans to the street where the parade is to be photographed. The sidewalks are crowded with people, including many little girls in white or light-colored dresses. People run back and forth across the street, and then the parade starts. Automobiles decorated with flowers, flags, and ribbons pass in review. Next come horse-drawn fire engines, followed by horse-drawn carts, carriages, and floats of assorted shapes and sizes.

[Labor Day parade, Fitchburg, Mass. Source: Library of Congress]

It looks like everyone in town who owned an automobile participated.

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Gone for Soldiers? Sailors? Marines? William T. Slater (About 1794 - 1847)

This morning the Library of Congress* reminded me that today is the 202nd anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. Family history gives this date (or sometime near it)** as the moment when one of my maternal third great grandfathers Yorkshireman William T. Slater*** decided he didn't want to be English any more.

[Battle of New Orleans…the 8th of January 1815. William Edward West, artist; Philadelphia: Published and sold by J. Yeager, engraver, [1817]. Popular Graphic Arts. Prints & Photographs Division]

Three years later he was applying for citizenship in Jefferson County, Indiana.

*Through their Digital Collections' Today in History which is my home page.
**You can find an excellent overview of the War of 1812 leading up to the two-month long campaign now known as the Battle of New Orleans here. I had never considered the terrain my great great great grandfather faced upon leaving his post, but this National Park Service photo of a Louisiana bayou included by the author makes it clear that it must have been daunting--even without taking into account the wildlife that's found there.

[Alligator crossing the road, Jean Lafitte National Park

Both photos courtesy of the National Park Service]

And he wouldn't have had the benefit of the safety information currently distributed by the Park Service--an example:

Think like an alligator. Alligators are surprisingly fast: on land they can move quickly over short distances and in the water they're unstoppable. Remember to keep your distance and stand tall. Alligators judge their prey by its size, and if you are kneeling down to take a picture, you're a much more tempting target than if you're standing up.

***Allegedly part of the British invasion forces, you can read more about William T. Slater in my original post and see what more Christine was able to find out about him here.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Christmas, 1902/03

[Graves, C. H. , -1943. Christmas Morning. [Philadelphia: The Universal Photo Art Co., C.H. Graves, publisher, c1903, ca. 1902]

Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/90709344/. Accessed December 25, 2016)]

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Christmas Eve, 1876

[Christmas eve--getting ready for Santa Claus. [published, 1876] Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/92520926/. Accessed December 24, 2016. ]

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

The Veterans History Project

Beginning in 2000 Folklife Center of the Library of Congress has been collecting, preserving and making accessible "the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war." The Veterans History Project is the largest oral history archive in the nation.

Here's a video explaining how individuals can participate:

P.S. The database that's been created can be searched here.


© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Fourth of July

Here's hoping you have a safe Fourth of July!* 

[Fourth of July, 1906. F.A. Loumis, copyright claimant.

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

Unlike that of my friend Bonnie's paternal great great grandfather Thomas Davis Blossom on July 4th, 1853 in Hingham Massachusetts. He was "shockingly mangled by the premature discharge of a cannon...while in the act of loading.--His face was terribly burned, and his side and one arm severely shattered." Although early reports considered his injuries too grave to allow for his survival, he did in fact live on until 1871 although he suffered the loss of his left arm. He was a printer and newspaper publisher and was able to continue his profession after his recovery.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: FamilySearch article "United States Newspapers"

I've been asked how I find so many articles in newspaper databases.  Most of it entails having plenty of practice learning all the vagaries  of any given database.  Though most of my searches come up without meaningful results, I find the process fascinating, so I just keep trying.  Okay, I'm a bit obsessive.

The FamilySearch article, "United States Newspapers," has a great section, "Identifying and finding newspapers in an area," that can really help you know what might actually exist.

In particular, they mention the Chronicling America project, which I use a lot:

1690-present: The Library of Congress' Website Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers contains information about America's newspapers from 1690 to the present, including the locality each paper covered, its title, publication years, and current locations in various repositories. The database is searchable by place or title. After using this source to identify newspapers in your ancestor's locality, we recommend you use both this site's listing of repositories as well as OCLC/WorldCat to find repositories in your area that have the newspapers in question. Chronicling America also contains a growing collection of digitized newspapers published between 1836 and 1922, and is planned to become a comprehensive source for digitized U.S. newspapers from that time period.

For example, my 3rd great grandfather, John Nosler (1800-1864) in Winterset, Madison County, Iowa.  In his estate file I found the following newspaper clipping:

A lot of interesting stuff on this page.
Madison Co., Iowa, probate case files, John Nosler (1864), confirmation by E. W. Fuller for publishing notice, 5 February 1866; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 6 Feb 2016). 

I went to the Chronicling America to see if I could find out where and IF this particular issue of the Winterset Madisonian was available so I could see the "Original Notice" in its original context.

There are two options at Chronicling America that I use most often to see what might actually be available; "All Digitized Newspapers, 1836-1922," and the "US Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present."  The latter directory contains all known newspapers to the LOC, and may or may not be digitized (most haven't been yet).

As of this posting, there are 153, 642 titles listed in the directory.

I selected Iowa and the county Madison to search:

The first page of results of all newspapers (digitized or no) known to the LOC, from Madison County, Iowa, where my Noslers were for a while.

I didn't find any place that has the 1865-1866 run of the Winterset Madison that I was searching for (darn it!).  However, I chose the Winterset Madisonian 1874-1880 on the second page to see what libraries/archives have this run of the newspaper, just for an example.  Here is part of the results, showing how sporadic holdings can be (sometimes a library/archive only has 1 issue), but also leads where individual issues might possibly be, even if not online.

NOTE: I did a blog post last August about Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West, which uses Chronicling America's records to give a visual representation of where newspapers were from the Colonial American era to modern America.




© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: John Herrod (About 1805 - 1870), Herod & Birmingham's Stage Line

In 1860 my paternal fourth great uncle John Herrod* and his partner Norman Birmingham acquired the assets of D.W. Lamkin's Line and offered a daily connection between Yazoo City and the Mississippi Central station at Vaughan,**  a distance of about 24 miles.

[The Yazoo Democrat. (Yazoo City, Miss.) 1858-18, April 28, 1860

Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn98021556/1860-04-28/ed-1/seq-3/]

[Detail from Colton's Mississippi. Published By Johnson & Browning, 172 William St. New York. 1860.

Entered 1855 by J.H. Colton & Co ... New York. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

After the Civil War started a year later, Herod & Birmingham transported men and supplies for the Confederate States as these invoices show.**

[Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, documenting the period 1861 - 1865;

the National Archive. Source: fold3]

The company was presumably still in business early in 1866, owning 4 carriages each valued at $125.****

[Description : District 2; Annual, Monthly and Special Lists; Dec 1865-Dec 1866. Ancestry.com. U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA. Original data: Records of the Internal Revenue Service. Record Group 58.

The National Archives at Washington, DC.]

But John Herrod had died in January of that year and on November 10, 1866, his son (also named John), acting as administrator of his father's estate, filed suit against Mr. Birmingham and the case was settled in January of 1871 but it's not clear to me what the outcome was.

[From Catherine-Seabolt's public tree Terrell2011 on Ancestry.com]

*He was born in about 1805 in Tennessee and was the son of my paternal fourth great grandparents Polly (Williams) and Barnabeth Herrod.
**This link has pictures of Vaughan, Mississippi, taken in 2012. You can find a history of Yazoo County here.
***Although the second invoice is for several thousand dollars, remember that the company would have been paid in Confederate dollars which in January, 1864, would probably have been worth about 10 cents each.
****A John Herrod is listed as the owner of a single carriage worth $100 but it seems likely that he's the son.

["CSA-T64-$500-1864" by National Museum of American History - Image by Godot13. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg#/media/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Celebrations: Thanksgiving Turkey Revisited

The Library of Congress has lots of pictures. These date from the first two decades of the twentieth century.

[The Thanksgiving turkey / Alfcamp, Elizabeth, N.J. (c1900), Alfred S. Campbell.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c00216]

[Buying Thanksgiving turkey (between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915. Bain News Service, publisher.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print]

[Thanksgiving turkey (between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915). Bain News Service, publisher.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print]

[Thanksgiving - taking home turkies from raffle (1912), Bain News Service.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b18267]

[Thanksgiving, 1919, National Photo Company.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/npcc.00888 ]

[Thanksgiving, 1919, National Photo Company.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/npcc.00890]

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.


© 2024 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip: Genealogy's Star Reminds You To Use the National Union Catalog and OCLC WorldCat

I was reminded once again of the importance of using the Library of Congress's National Union Catalog (NUC) and National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) for genealogy research, this time by James Tanner at Genealogy's Star.

Whether researching genealogy, or any other discipline, Tanner observes that most library patrons (in Utah, probably the greatest genealogical record hotbed in the world, no less!) tend to use electronic records almost exclusively, and "ignore the vast resources in the books surrounding them."  Sadly, I'm guilty of this myself.

He makes a great point:

One symptom of this lack of awareness of genealogical resources is the surprise I get from those who attend my classes when I mention the OCLC WorldCat.org online catalog. The WorldCat.org is the world's largest library catalog. This lack of awareness of the WorldCat.org catalog is strange since the FamilySearch.org Catalog now links almost every entry to the WorldCat.org catalog.

If you want to up your genealogy research game, I suggest you check out his post.






© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Book Shelf: Coronado Beach, San Diego, 1900

This 40-page promotional brochure touted the attractions of Coronado Beach (especially The Hotel Del Coronado) in 1900.

[Coronado Beach, California. Source: Internet Archive, Contributor: Library of Congress, Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation]

Note that hunting and fishing were prominently listed among the activities available to visitors.

And golf.

[Coronado Beach, California. Source: Internet Archive, Contributor: Library of Congress, Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation]

To read more about the Hotel Del Coronado, here is the Wikipedia entry.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.