Research Paths and Byways
Early American Life
by Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG

Each Early American Life article has presented a detailed look at a tiny piece of our ancestors' lives. Each investigation to research the article revealed that there was far more to a simple topic than expected. Juliana has been generous about letting me write long articles, but I've still had to leave out many things I learned during the research, including alternative information (especially when I felt it was somewhat inaccurate). The material I most often omitted tended to be not quite general enough, given the wide diversity of the interests of the readers of Ancestry Daily News.

Readers have occasionally told me of interesting tidbits that I failed to discover or hadn't considered, which indicates that there is always more for us to learn. This doesn't surprise me at all. And, occasionally, I make mistakes. So, I apologize to any reader who was trying to find the book by David Cressy that I mentioned in the previous column (on provisioning), erroneously spelling his name Cressey.

One thing that has been highlighted in comments from readers is that although I've been writing about an amorphous time period that I have been calling "early America," many of the things I've written about continued into the twentieth century. They just aren't widely known.

Researching On Your Own
This will be my last in a series of columns on early-American life, so I want to give you some tips on continuing the exploration on your own.

Unlike genealogical research, where we are looking for one definitive source, for research on history, material culture, and social history it is better to get viewpoints from many different sources. I begin with a dictionary, followed by my ancient Encyclopedia Brittanica. (It has more in-depth, scholarly articles than modern encyclopedias.)

I explore the Web, visiting many sites (as with genealogy, there is plenty of misinformation available on early-American life) to learn about tools or specific trades.

I search online catalogs for library books at both public and college libraries. Once I've identified the call numbers for books of interest, I browse nearby shelves for additional books that I hadn't found in searching the catalog. In any book, I check bibliographies and footnotes and often seek out books mentioned there. As I've mentioned before, Interlibrary Loan is very helpful, allowing access to books in institutions far distant from where we live.

Like many researchers, I haunt used-book stores and library de-accessioning sales, building my personal inventory of books for "background reading." Gift shops at historical sites, national parks, state parks, and museums are great places to find a broad range of books on the daily lives of our ancestors, ranging from simple publications for children to scholarly tomes.

Living history sites and museums are wonderful opportunities. Many are on the East Coast, such as Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. There are others around the country, such Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska, which I visited with my parents many decades ago.

Don't neglect smaller places, such as a Colorado silver mine, a historic farm, or one of the many preserved mills around the country that were used for everything from grinding grain to running manufacturing equipment.

Some locations let you try your hand at the tasks they are demonstrating. I suspect that many farm tasks, such as milking cows by hand, are rapidly entering the realm of "early America."

Craft guilds are active in many communities and may sponsor exhibits and demonstrations. Several of my friends have had looms set up in their living rooms and at least one friend could spin with a hand spindle. I still treasure the Christmas tree ornament she made, with its tiny baskets of wool, a miniature spindle, and the resulting ball of yarn.

When museums stage special exhibits, they often publish accompanying catalogs or articles related to the topic. You may find some of them online. One example is the Museum of Early Trades and Crafts. It has a virtual museum, with images of some of their holdings with explanatory notes, and a section on special exhibits.

Conferences in fields other than genealogy offer another path for learning. One of these is the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, under the auspices of Boston University. Each year it focuses on a single topic, such as tombstones, textiles, foodways, speech, children, furniture, and public gatherings. The papers presented each year are then published as the Annual Proceedings. I attended one of the textile seminars and found it very interesting. This year's topic is In Our Own Words: New England Diaries, 1600 to the Present. For information on past and future conferences and publications, see www.bu.edu/dublinseminar.

There are many opportunities for you to do your own explorations of the details of the everyday lives of your ancestors. Good luck!

Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG, is an instructor, and professional genealogist. Her oft-migrating ancestors lived in all of the original colonies prior to 1800 and in seventeen other states, presenting her with highly varied research problems and forcing her to acquire techniques and tools that help solve tough problems. She is the author of Producing a Quality Family History.

Copyright 2006, MyFamily.com.

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Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree

It's time for this week's Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree! Thanks to everyone who has sent in a Quick Tip. Please keep them coming so that we can keep this tradition going. You can send your tips to: ADNeditor@ancestry.com.

Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Daily News and Ancestry Weekly Digest, please state so clearly in your message.

Have a great day!
Juliana

More Movies That Inspire Family History

A few weeks ago, in response to a tip we received about a movie inspiring an exchange of memories and information within a family, I followed up with an article. The response to both has been overwhelming and I am following up with a few more. As we mentioned in last Wednesday's Ancestry Daily News, we will be moving to a weekly format with an accompanying online blog. (For those of you who aren't familiar with blogs, they're just websites with reverse chronological posts, with the most recent post listed at the top.)
Because of the great response we've received to these tips, as part of the blog, I plan to start a book and movie corner where we can all exchange reviews for books and movies that have evoked memories or given us a greater insight and appreciation of our ancestors.

For those of you who missed the original posts, here are the links:

Click here for the first tip from Susan Hopkins.
Click here for some follow-up suggestions ran in last week's QT Jamboree.
Click here for the follow-up column.

And to whet your appetite for just a taste of what's to come on the blog, here are a few more!

Enjoy!

Juliana

Ryan's Daughter and The Lost Battalion

Family legend has it that my third great-grandmother had the audacity to fall in love with a British soldier. Her family shamed her by shearing off her hair just as they did in the movie Ryan's Daughter. My grandmother ran away with her British soldier to prevent him from killing her uncle that did the shearing. I did not think much of the legend until I saw that movie. They were married in 1820. It gives my research into their lives a bit more grit.

Another movie that hit close to home was The Lost Battalion (A&E) with Rick Schroeder. My grandfather would only write of the horrors that his unit encountered as they went into the Argonne forest with the allied forces following this horrible standoff of soldiers. He told how he as part of the "clean-up crew" worked long hours burying the dead and how they were fed some of the finest meals using dead horse meat. My heart went out to my grandfather for the horrors that he had witnessed.

L.J. in Arizona

Fiddler on the Roof

Although I am not of Jewish heritage, I love the movie Fiddler on the Roof, because it shows to a degree, what my German ancestors went through in the 1800s, as they lived in the Volga Region of Russia. The arranged marriages, the peasant farm life, the raids by the Russian Cossacks and other marauding tribes . . . the anguish of leaving their homes. They immigrated to America in 1907. Thanks be to God!

Suzanne Heinitz-Dodge

Tree of the Wooden Clogs

I recommend Tree of the Wooden Clogs. The setting is northern Italy about the turn of the century (19th/20th). It's perfectly charming and follows the trials and successes of four families. The movie may be difficult to find because it didn't receive wide circulation at the time, but it received a Cannes film festival award. Movie was made circa 1980.

Cena Bessolo

Fried Green Tomatoes and Places in the Heart

I've been reading all of the other suggestions of movies that have inspired conversations with their relatives and am surprised that no one has mentioned Fried Green Tomatoes. The entire movie is terrific! The scene that really tugged on the heart strings and brought back memories for the older people in my family was when Sipsey (played by Cicely Tyson) stopped the clocks and covered them with sheets when Ruth died. That was something that everyone did back in the day.

Also, Places in the Heart, starring Sally Field. It opens a door to the past and tells the story of the struggles of a widow in the South in the 1930s. It shows how women and blacks were treated as second-class citizens with little or no rights.

Thanks for the great newsletter.

Miriam Parker
Alabama

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Clipping of the Day
New York Herald (New York, New York), 14 March 1870, page 8:

Emigration

The Exodus from Europe and Where the People Go

Pauperism in the Old World

The Popular Rush to America

The British Colonial Emigration a Failure

Value of the Emigration to the United States

The Cash Remitted From America.
. . . .

The longer I remain in England the more I am impressed with the wonderful reproductive capacity of the Anglo-Saxon race, and its marvelous power of development. These little islands, from which half the civilized world has been drawing its blood, bone, muscle and sinew for the past half century--from which a tide of emigration such as the world never saw has been flowing to all parts of the earth-- far from showing any sign of exhaustion, much less of depletion offer to-day a larger surplus of unemployed labor and perforce a larger percentage of the emigrating classes than at any former period in their whole history. There can be found but one period n which the number of emigrants offering can in any way be compared with it, viz., that embraced in the years 1852, 1853 and 1854. The causes operating at that time were widely different if not wholly anomalous, to wit, the potato rot and famine in Ireland. Already--fully thirty days in advance of former years--every county, shire, township, village and hamlet in the kingdom is contributing its quota of laborers to swell the grand aggregate which will soon set forth from this and other seaports to the land of golden promise n the West. In my last communication on this subject I laid before the readers of the Herald a statement of the numbers of paupers and unemployed in the several districts of London. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that the cry of emigration is heard throughout the land, or that legislators opposed to such a measure on national and politico-economical grounds and anxious to retain labor at home are striving to devise some other more beneficial, if less easy, mode of relief. . . . .

MONEY FROM AMERICA

As the remittances from America both in the shape of prepaid passages and money, amounted in 1868 to ... $2,750,000, nearly as much as in 1867 and much more than in the preceding six years, it may be safely assumed that the falling off in the number of Irish emigrants did not arise from want of means to pay passages. It more probably arose from the gradual improvement in the condition of the people, which the excessive emigration of previous years could scarcely fail to effect.

WHERE THEY GO

It would be most interesting in this connection to note the respective districts in which these large bodies of labor were finally located and the influence which they respectively exercised upon the labor market and production of such localities; but lack of space and the absence of the necessary data for such compilation alike forbid the attempt. While the tendency of foreign emigration, more particularly Scandinavian, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, has been to the Western States and largely to agricultural pursuits, the almost uniform direction of Irish emigration has been to the large cities of the Atlantic seaboard. How large a proportion of the latter might be induced to continue on westward where good homes and cheap lands are open to them under the beneficent operation of the United States Homestead law, it is, of course, impossible to determine; but undoubtedly it would be very considerable were the necessary steps taken by the government cooperating with the New York and other State boards. . . .

ADN Editor's Note: This article goes on to discuss the contribution these emigrants have made and the following article discusses "How the Nationalities Are Represented Among the Emigrants--Skilled and Unskilled Labor." We'll run these in tomorrow's newsletter.

Members with access to the Historical Newspapers Collection can view this clipping here.

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Fast Fact
Basic German Genealogy Class
06 April 2006 with Janelle Bair

This beginning class on how to research your German ancestors will help you determine where in Germany your ancestors came from, and how to begin the research. You will also learn how to read key German words and phrases and old German script (Frakturschrift). Learn how to find, search, and interpret the different types of records to find your German family roots. Sign up online today.

Product Spotlights

		Producing a Quality Family History by Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG Normally, this book retails for $19.95, but today you can buy it in the Shops@Ancestry.com for $14.95.

Thought for Today
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.