Mary Alice Dell - Genealogical Society of Kendall
County
The lives of my two grandmothers were so different they
might have been born on different planets.
One was born in 1870 in
the Appalachian Mountains in Letcher County Kentucky; the other in 1884 in
a small town in Callaway County Missouri.
Mary Potter Newsom, who
in 1940 lived in Southern Ohio not Kentucky, still lived in a house with
no electricity or running water and heated an iron on a wood burning stove
to remove wrinkles from her clothing.
Nellie
Mann Willis had retired by 1940 from her nursing job in bustling modern
Chicago to live in Metropolis Illinois, a small town on the Ohio
River.
One grandmother could only slowly read her Bible and scrawl
her name; the other read voraciously on a wide range of subjects. They
were not equally educated, but equally intelligent.
How does one
tell the story of two such diverse women that led such different lives?
That is often the challenge of a family historian as he looks at the
collection of names and dates and locations he has amassed. How do you
convey the stories of the lives of your ancestors so they have meaning to
others?
Simple! You need figuratively to walk in their shoes. That
means you have to understand the physical surroundings in which your
ancestors lived, the culture of their society, and their status in the
community. What was happening historically in their area and in the
greater world that was affecting their lives?
What were the mores
of that period? At the same time that a man and woman in New England would
be ostracized for living together without the benefit of matrimony, it was
accepted on the frontier where no minister was available to perform a
ceremony. Where people were wearing Parisian fashions in eastern cities;
buckskins and gingham dresses were the standard in other parts of the
country. Whereas in some places having a slave as a house servant or farm
hand was acceptable and normal; other places an English butler or maid was
the standard. To write about your ancestor, you must understand the time
and place in which he or she personally lived. It is impossible to walk in
your ancestor’s shoes and write his story without studying
history.
To understand the documents that we find pertaining to an
ancestor’s life, we need to be aware of the meaning of words as they were
used in that time period, not as used today. One of my ancestors has been
described in a biography written in the late 1800’s as being a “gay
fellow, popular with the ladies”. Were that description written today, it
would have a total different meaning than it did at the time that it was
written.
Court records tell of orphaned infants that
were “bound out” to a particular man. That did not mean the man had just
acquired a slave, but rather that he had assumed the responsibility of
teaching that young person his trade.
An infant was any female
under the age of 18 or male under the age of 21. An orphan was an infant
without a father, as the mother who might still be living, had no status
as a legal entity.
That is another illustration of words having
different meaning in different places and times.
As you read a
family history written by a sincere person, but one who did not understand
the meaning of words and customs of a time period, you begin to understand
why the genealogy he or she is presenting is often not
accurate.
For example, in early America, the English law of
primogeniture existed here in some of the Colonies (even after the
Revolution). The eldest son inherited the land or perhaps a “double
portion”. That inheritance did not need to be mentioned in a will which a
man might write leaving other pieces of land to other sons or
daughter.
The unknowledgeable might assume, and record in a family
history, that the eldest son had been disinherited, or was dead.
Generations of descendants and later genealogist might accept that and
propagate that untrue story.
Who were the important people in your
ancestor’s life? Obviously the parents and spouse and the children for
whom he was responsible played a role in his life. But, how about aunts
and uncles and siblings and cousins? Do you know who they were and how
they may have influenced your ancestor? Who were the in-laws? When we find
our ancestor moving to a new undeveloped area and don’t recognize any of
the names of the neighbors, it is time to return to the previous area and
find out who married that ancestor’s siblings.
He may have moved
west with his sister and her husband and family, or his wife’s
brother.
What role did your ancestor play in the community? With
whom did he associate? What church did he attend? What did he own when he
died? County probate records will often have an inventory of his
possessions at death.
You may need a guide to understand what some
objects were as the names of such things as piggins ( a small wooden pail)
and stelers (steelyards or scales) may be unfamiliar. The significance of
pewter plates or a sugar box may not be apparent to someone who has not
studied the customs of that time period.
Where do you get this
historical information?
County histories will often reveal events
happening in the lives of your ancestor at the time they lived there, such
as the New Madrid earthquake or a cholera epidemic. A good history of the
United States, or of the country from which your ancestor emigrated, will
relate the wars, depressions, and other national events that affected your
ancestor.
Visits to museums in the communities in which your
ancestor lived may give you insight into their lives and give a history of
the area. Kendall County, with its rich German heritage, has been
negligent in not developing a museum to tell that story to its children
and visitors.
The deteriorating Kuhlman-King House does not replace
the lack of a museum with modern display methods.
So, are you ready
to tell your family’s story? Start with yourself, write about what your
early life was like, who influenced you, what events influenced you. Then
tell the story of your parents. Work your way back generation by
generation painting the lives of your ancestors in the setting of their
time.