Treasure trove that makes more work, but it's fun

A couple of weeks ago, I received a wonderful cache of family photos from my mum-in-law, and have been starting to sort out who's who, and learn more about identifying people. Not being an expert with years of experience like Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, a fellow Rhode Islander, I have to start from scratch. But I've learned a few things along the way that I thought I would share.

1. Know the source of the photos.
The pictures that I received were people that my mom-in-law didn't know. Why? Because they were from her husbands' family. My father-in-law died in the spring, and when she was going through all of her photos looking for pictures for the collages her grandchildren assembled, she found a box of photos she had forgotten about. And then, of course, my father-in-law wasn't there to identify them, so I know that they must be related to his family, not hers.

2. Ask surviving relatives to identify the people before it's too late.
My father-in-law has one surviving sister, so she is on my list of people I need to sit down with to identify the pictures. She will recognize most of them and if fact may have already told me who they are when we identified other photos, which brings me to the next point...

3. Compare them with photos of people you already know.
Many years ago, I took pictures of my aunt's mass card collection, the same aunt who is my father-in-law's surviving sister, and should know who's in the pictures. The mass cards had been collected by her mother over the course of her lifetime. Many of the mass cards have photos on them and I can pick out at least one of the men from my unknown photos and match it to my identified photos. From there, I can make  some pretty good guesses about the surrounding folks, based on if it's a family group photo, a wedding photo or whatever.

4. Cruise the internet
Using Ancestry.com, I was able to connect to a cousin who has a copy of the same image I have, and guess what? Hers is identified! So use the web to find pictures and make sure that you share the ones you have. It's the best kind of back-up when photos are widely distributed among disparate family members, even if they are only tangentially related. Additionally, many of the photos I received had the photographer and the location on them. Use that information correlated with what you know about a family to help you with identification. If you know the photo has a Maine photographer, track down the families you know lived in Maine at some point, and go from there.

And now, a selection of some fabulous, soon to be identified photos:

Death and Taxes

In my research into the Greene's of Coventry, one of the most wonderful caches of materials that I found was an almost continuous collection of tax books beginning in about 1756. The town has tax records for every year until the 1810s (when I stopped looking!). Some of them have been transcribed by Catherine Hey in the Rhode Island Roots special edition of "Gleanings from Rhode Island Town Records: Early Coventry Record" (RI Roots, April 2010), but her coverage is from 1756 to 1769. There were more, and the ones that I was particularly fascinated by were the ones that covered the years from 1770 to 1800. For every year, you will find two different books, a town rate book, and a state rate book, since the town was responsible for sending money collected from landowners to pay its share of state expenses, and the town also needed a separate income source for its own expenses. For some years, you may also find an estate rate book. Some of the books contain poll counts (nice for a head count of adult males that may still be living at home) and how much each person owed in taxes. It's difficult to track how much a person's estate might have grown based on the taxes paid, since the rates changed, as did the currency value, but the thing I like best about tax books is that you can see men coming of age, dying off, moving into town and buying property.

Here's the first page of the State rate book for 1785

Coventry State Tax Rate book for 1785, Coventry Town Clerk's Office, Coventry, RI.

I love the coffee mug stain on this one.

Here is the Coventry Town Rate book for 1779.

Coventry Town Rate Book for 1779, Coventry Town Clerk's Office, Coventry, RI.

The earliest ones are grouped alphabetically by the first letter of the first name, and the later are grouped by the first letter of the last name, after that it's just a seemingly random list. By looking at a series of years, though, it looks as if they used previous years tax books to write the new ones, so the lists appear very similar from year to year, with the main changes being related to people who may have died during the year, and naming their widows in the place of the men who died. It also appears that the folks may have been grouped geographically by surname, but that's just a hunch on my part.

There's one other interesting type of Coventry tax books that shows "Value of Estates." I presume that this is really more of a list of landowners and an approximate value of the property that they own, but it also lists the heirs of particular estates, so you can see who inherited the property. This is an example from 1780.

Value of Estate Book for 1780, Coventry Town Clerk's Office, Coventry, RI.

I'm off to look for a similar series of tax books for some other Rhode Island towns including Tiverton and Portsmouth for another project, hoping to solve some more brick wall problems with tax list data. Wish me luck!

Too many Greens

I've been working on a project for the surname Green/Greene in Coventry between 1750 and 1800. This is a time period in Rhode Island research that can be ridiculously challenging since there were few vital records kept, and the best way to establish relationships or identity is by using land and court records. So I toddled off the the Coventry Town Hall to look through the land records which date back to about 1748.

Does anyone know how many male Greens there are in Coventry between 1750 and 1780? Do you have any idea how many land transactions there were? I counted 34 index entries per page and about 50 pages of Greenes for grantor entries up to the year 1845 which is more than 1700 deed entries (and that's just the Grantor index). There have to be over 40 unique individuals with the surname Greene in the area during that time period. When you look at the transactions of just the males named Benjamin Greene in the Grantee Deed Index there are over 30 entries. How does one sort out who's who, how they're related, and which ones to focus on when there are so many?

I've been using 2 techniques (mind maps and spreadsheets) with moderate success for distinguishing all Greene and how they are related. Often, the men or the people taking the information identify their fathers to distinguish among the 3 James, 3 Joseph and 2 Ebenezer Green's all living concurrently in the town.  I had to start somewhere, so I used mind mapping software to help me visualize various families and how they may all be connected. Taking information from a number of different sources I consolidated it into one picture using sources for a specific time period (of course, don't ask me which information came from which source, this is just a visual to sort out who's who on a general scale, I'd have to go back to document everything.) Below is one of the mind maps I created for Greene's in Coventry in the decade between 1740 and 1750.

Mind Map of Greenes in Coventry

I then did it for a later time period when there were even more individuals. In 1778, there were more than 30 taxable inhabitants in Coventry, all with the surname of Greene. Some were women (which helps), and based on how much they were taxed, I could determine if they owned real estate or not which I color coded. This could be helpful when searching for deeds (see below).

X Map of Greenes in 1778

While I have only touched the surface of mapping, I can imagine creating a mind map for each source with all the information contained in it. I can imagine shifting the families around to then overlay them onto a map of town to determine if they group geographically. Fortunately, Coventry covers the largest amount of area of any town in Rhode Island so reconstructing land parcels using physical maps might prove useful as well. But which specific deeds should I look at?

My thought was that as I looked through the Grantee index, I could often distinguish individual land sales from the distribution of an estate by looking for "et al" or "administrator," suggesting that the land sale had something to do with a probate. While the probate records are pretty good, if someone didn't leave a will, it's often difficult to determine who the heirs were, despite the fact that the estate still had to be divided amongst the heirs. So I went through the index and chose all the grantor deeds that contained "et al" and put them into a spreadsheet that I could then sort in a number of ways.
Example of Greene Spreadsheet

Greene et al Grantor	Grantee	Vol	pg	Year
Ann  et al	Benjamine Green	9	66	1777
Benjamin	Nathaniel Green	5	5	1767
Benjamin	Thomas Stafford	6	18	1768
Caleb	Elisha Greene	5	130	1769
Caleb	John Andrews	5	308	1771
Catherine	John Matteson	7	57	1777
Cathrine	Jacob Greene	10	13	1779
Christopher et al	Griffen Greene	4	381	1770
Christopher et al	Peter Levally	7	68	1778
Christopher et al	Michael Letson	7	507	1777
Christopher et al	Jacob Greene	10	13	1779
Deborah	Charles Cook	5	209	1772
Elihu et al	Griffen Greene	4	381	1770
Elihu et al	Benjamine Vaughan	5	340	1777
Elihu et al	John Greene	5	425	1782
Elihu et al	John Matteson	7	52	1777
Elihu et al	Michael Letson	7	507	1777

There were more than 70 entries. Then, by sorting them by volume and page, I could see which individuals mentioned in an "et al" deed sorted together, were found in the same volume and page, meaning that they appeared in the same deed together and were probably related. I can later determine whether they were all related using other documentary evidence. It worked pretty well. I could also sort based on year, or grantee, to organize my research plan and focus on the years when I knew someone died, or a significant first name, or whatever.

While my Green project isn't quite finished, I hope that other folks working in towns with dozens of individuals with the same surname can use these techniques to sort out family groups to focus your research to find what you're looking for!

NERGC 2015 in Providence!

I'm totally swamped this week, getting ready for the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium Conference this week in Providence! So much fun to be had and so many fabulous talks to see by fabulous speakers like Lisa Louise Cooke and Judy Russell, not to mention D. Josh Taylor, David Lambert and ME! 

So what is my plan? First, I'll be volunteering in the exhibit hall at both the Board for Certification of Genealogists booth and the Association for Professional Genealogists New England Chapter booth, so drop by and learn about these two fabulous groups. And make sure to drop by the Rhode Island Genealogical Society's booth too! My other favorite RI genealogical society always puts together a great booth in the exhibit hall, AFGS, and they have great books and French-Canadian research goodies for sale.

I'm really looking forward to the opening session, with John McNiff portraying William Blackstone, one of the first European settlers in RI, and the social hour and society fair in the evening. I figure I can even get to some of the Thursday talks in between!

I'll be at the "Becoming a Professional Genealogist" Special Interest Group on Thursday night in Room 553B, so drop by and talk about some of the skills you need to have the BEST job in the whole world!

The biggest items on my to-do list are two talks I'm presenting on Saturday, "GPS for Genealogy: Another Kind of Navigation", about using the Genealogical Proof Standard to solve complex evidence cases and the second "Which Autosomal DNA Test is Right for YOU?" about genetic genealogy and the autosomal DNA tests offered at the 3 major testing companies.

Don't miss out on RI talks by Cherry Fletcher Bamberg, FASG and Nathaniel Lane Taylor, FASG!

Even though I only live 20 minutes away, I'm going to stay downtown at one of the conference hotels so that I don't miss out on any of the fun, impromptu meetings that happen when almost 1000 genealogists get together for 3 days. Hope to see you there!

Newpapers! Obituaries! Read all about it!!

Newspapers are great for reverse genealogy or finding living relatives, and after my trip to the Forensic Genealogy Institute (where I learned more about the application of genetic genealogy results) last week, it seems appropriate to talk about the newspapers that are available here in Rhode Island.

Obituaries have great information that can be used to track down living relatives, but also for finding out more about ancestors, such as finding funeral home and cemeteries. Military service and employment may be mentioned, leading to more sources to fill out the lives of our ancestors and families.

In Rhode Island, the best place to find newspapers is at the RI Historical Society Library. (http://www.rihs.org/) They have almost continuous collections of every newspaper published in RI. The biggest and longest running is the Providence Journal and while most recent obituaries appear in this paper, there are smaller more regional papers that are worth a look, too. Each town usually has it's own local paper, and if you can't find a death reported in the ProJo, the next step is to look for the local paper. Most local papers can be found at RIHSL or at the local public library. In fact, when the historical society was closed for a year, I trucked around the state to find newspapers in the local libraries.

 Pawtuxet Valley Daily Times, “Michele Lautieri, Natick, Dead at 59; Funeral on Tuesday” West Warwick, Rhode Island, Saturday Dec. 6, 1941, pg 6. Rhode Island Historical Society Library microfilm  “Pawtuxet Valley Daily Times, July thru Dec. 1941”.

 
And it's not just about finding obituaries. There can also be interesting stories about more prominent (or naughty!) ancestors. Here's an article related to the one above:

Pawtuxet Valley Daily Times, "Strikers Storm Natick Mill" West Warwick, RI, 1 Feb 1922, pg 1.

The man arrested who was indirectly responsible for starting the riot is the same man, Michele Lautieri, my great-grandfather, as the one in the obituary.

There are also retrospectives in some of the papers such as "25 years ago today" and "50 years ago today" and the smaller newspapers may mark significant anniversary celebrations of local people.

They may also have pictures that you can use to get a better idea of what the neighborhood was like, or what the effect of a significant world or local event had in an area. The Natick Mill fire in 1941 in West Warwick, RI, was a significant local event that had an enormous economic impact, forcing mill workers to find other jobs. Michele, who died later in 1941, had found work at the Anthony Mill after the fire as mentioned in the obituary. It was also significant to my family research, since oral family history tells of how Michele Lautieri was taken away in the night to be questioned by the police after the fire. (A rabble-rouser, sort of, he was under suspicion for arson, based on being an activist during the 1920's mill strikes, see photo above!) All this information and more can be found in newspapers!

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Naturalization Records at the RI Supreme Court Judicial Records Center

The Rhode Island Supreme Court Judicial Records Center has naturalization records from all Rhode Island county courts, including District and Superior courts in all five Rhode Island counties, Kent, Newport, Providence, Bristol and Washington. Some of the earliest naturalization records are from Newport and Providence Counties.

There is a gap in Providence County Court records. The District and Superior court records from about 1894-1917 are found at the NARA Northeast Regional Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. All the other counties have continuous records with no apparent gaps. The last records date to about 1982 when the Reagan administration changed the rules regarding naturalization record keeping.

There are typically three kinds of naturalization documents found at the Rhode Island Supreme Court Judicial Records Center; declarations of intentions, petitions for naturalizations and certificates of immigration. There are no certificate of naturalization stubs archived here.

The earliest document that I saw was from Providence County, a naturalization petition for John William Larrant of France from 1793, but I can't find the copy I made. The main components of the  petition were as follows: the name of the petitioner, his address and occupation of “gentleman”, the court petitioned, his country of origin and date of application, as well as a description of his residency in the United States. There is little information beyond that he has been “demeaning himself as a good and peaceable inhabitant of the said United States.” 

More detailed record keeping of naturalizations developed over time, and as I was researching my fascist grandmother's first papers, I checked out a bunch of the Declarations of Intentions (often referred to as "first papers") for the Superior Court of Kent County in the 1920's.

Box from RI SCJRC, Declarations of Intention, Pawtucket, RI

These bound volumes contain a single document for each person who declared they wanted to be naturalized. The information they contain includes the person's name, a physical description, date and place of birth, from where and when they emigrated, their spouses name and birthplace and a signature or mark.

While I didn't find my fascist grandmother's Declaration, I did find her mother's. My great-great-grandmother, Dorotea Marinelli, filed a declaration of intention at age 85 in 1942. There was a lot of pressure following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor for Italian immigrants to avoid discrimination by applying for citizenship.

Declaration of Intention for Dorotea Marinelli

I love these documents, because even if the individuals didn't follow through to become a naturalized citizen, there is a lot of really great genealogical information to be found on the first papers.

More RI Court Records

I mentioned last week that many of the courts in RI had changed names over time. Here's an example of a record from the "Court of Judicature Assize and General Gaol Delivery" from King's County in 1769. This court was one of the precursors to the Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

  Court of Judicature Assize and General Gaol Delivery, King's County [Washington County], RI, Vol. B, 1763-1782, April 1769, pg 202, RI Supreme Court Judicial Records Center, Pawtucket, RI.

 This case summary names William Sachem, James Niles and a variety of other Narragansett Indians in a land dispute relating to 30 acres in Charlestown. Unfortunately, many of the case files associated with these record books are inaccessible, so this is the only information related to this case. This case refers to another court record, from the Inferior Court of Common Pleas in 1768, which has more information about the dispute.

In another case from the Court of Common Pleas, James Niles, Junior, an Indian man and Cooper, sues Michael Toby for trespass, but that it was later withdrawn.

Washington County, Court of Common Pleas, Record Book H, pg 134, 1770, Niles vs. Toby. RISCJRC, Pawtucket.

By the careful use of court records, you can often find interesting information relating to an ancestor's occupation, residence, neighbors and community. In colonial Rhode Island research in particular, I have found that court records and land records are some of the best resources when establishing relationships since so few vital records are available.

Next week, some cool examples of naturalization records found at the RI Supreme Court Judicial Records Center.