Ancestry Magazine

A bountiful harvest of relationships and background material await the careful researcher who investigates published family histories.

Genealogy librarians immediately recognize someone new to family history research when they’re asked, “Do you have the book about my family?”

There are two problems with this question. The first is that unless you write the book yourself, there really is no single book about your family. Each of us is a product of many different families. The second is that genealogy is not so simple. You won’t find just one book and have all your work done. It would not only take away the fun of the hunt, but many of the books we depend upon for historical data have reliability issues, especially the seemingly ancient tomes from the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it is customary for genealogists at any level to look for a published genealogy covering the surname they’re researching.

For all their faults and virtues, published genealogies are recognized as sources to be studied and dissected in order to harvest the relationships and background material as fuel for our own work.

Early Compiled Genealogies
The compiled genealogies we are so familiar with today first appeared about 150 years ago. Many were published in the period leading up to and including the centennial of the United States, extending into the early years of the twentieth century.

The majority of these publications were written by men with some time and family data on their hands. They produced exceptional tomes for their posterity. But the books contain no citations, rely on data collected via inquiries to distant relatives, and include facts based upon oral traditions. Still, we cannot fault the authors for a lack of scholarly principles since there were no defined standards at the time.

When the compiler introduces data from original records, it is typically a mystery to the reader to figure out which sources were used. There are exceptions, however, as when the author’s introduction points the reader to a general list of references. But it is up to us to determine which data was gleaned from which source.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t quality publications from this period. There are many remarkable works done by notable and trustworthy individuals. Despite their age, these published genealogies continue to provide a backbone for our work today and, arguably, may at times be more useful because they reflect information about, and often by, those living closer to the original immigrant’s time.

The Thrill of the Search
Finding a book about your family is alluring. It draws many new people into studying family histo ry. It was my family’s book, The Prescott Memorial by William Prescott, that germinated the seeds of genealogy in me when I was a sophomore at Dartmouth College.

As a history major, I had a habit of wandering through the library’s open stacks to discover interesting material. One afternoon, I accidentally strolled into the genealogy section and felt like a kid in a candy store as I read shelf after shelf of surnames, listed alphabetically. It was a little like finding the history of America in the white pages of a phone book.

The narrow-minded focus of a twenty-year-old led me to the only name I thought counted—Prescott. I found my father’s grandfather’s name immediately—misspelled but attached to an accurate birth date and the proper set of parents. From that discovery I was able to trace my paternal line back to an immigrant ancestor and, with subsequent study, back to England.

It is a circumstance that can launch anyone into the never-ending quest that is both a bane and a passion for many of us.

The initial reaction we feel when we make a connection like this is heartening and personal. This is my family! The power of a book and the printed word leads us to adopt the tome as our own with nary a second thought. Caveat lector! Reader beware. Prove all data yourself and, when citations exist, check those as well. The follow-up literature to older genealogies is extensive and rewarding. It is imperative to seek out corrections and additions made by others to ensure that the materials you are working with are timely and accurate.

More recent genealogies, those published in the last few decades, are familiar, yet different. With some exceptions, very little of the outward appearance of a published genealogy has changed. The books continue to be heavy and thick, with hundreds of pages of text, relationships connected via a logical numbering system, and interesting particulars on the more prominent or col orful individuals. Yet the underlying research is more accurate and well-documented, it relies upon a great number of sources, and the format is generally easier to read and follow. Artwork, images, maps, and tables are also used more widely today.

The work that sparked the idea behind this column’s topic is the recently published Dr. John Durand (1664—1727) of Derby, Connecticut (Newbury Street Press, 2003) by Alvy Ray Smith. The attractive cover alone led me to open it and delve into its contents. It is an ambitious and elaborate work as indicated by the subtitle: His family through four generations featuring the branch of his youngest son Ebenezer Durand through ten generations to 2003. Before exploring this book, let’s review some of the more evident changes reflected in modern genealogies.

Evolution and Leaps Forward
As with any modern mechanism, improvement is made over time and sometimes in leaps. There are several differences between genealogies of old and today’s works. Some are subtle, others are obvious.

Gary Boyd Roberts, senior research scholar at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) explains the primary difference as “the number of sources looked at and the exactitude of documentation.”

He notes that it is a heavy burden to today’s researchers as they are compelled to uncover “everything knowable” about the people in their genealogies. Standards built up over time have brought us to a point where we explore the lives of all people sharing a family with the primary person in our book. Fortunately, it is much easier today to locate hard-to-find people in censuses, city directories, and town reports, as well as other resources unavailable to earlier compilers like federal records and well-indexed court records.

In addition to better access records, several pioneers introduced methods that are considered essential today. Among them a re Mary Lovering Holman and her daughter Winifred Lovering Holman who set the standard for using wills and deeds in the 1930s, and Donald Lines Jacobus who researched outside immediate families, looking at entire towns and neighboring towns for records and answers to relationship puzzles.

Genealogists from earlier periods spent time where the immigrant settled and became familiar with any available town records. Names were culled from city directories and letters were written to anyone around the country who shared a surname. People at a distance were willing to copy Bibles and transcribe epitaphs for the author. They also mailed back firsthand and secondhand accounts of their ancestors. While earlier authors were masters of letter writing, today’s are masters of digging into primary records. A lot of the original accounts may be correct, but because we have no way to validate the authenticity, much of remains suspect.

Citation
Unless we find the letters and notes of these early compilers, we have no way to check their conclusions and data. One example of this is the third volume of History of Martha’s Vineyard, in which Charles Edward Banks includes the genealogies of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, families from 1641 through the early nineteenth century.

There is not a footnote, endnote, or citation within the entire text, but at the beginning of the volume, in a section called Source of Information, Banks notes that the “basis of [the genealogies is] the town record of births, marriages, and deaths” and that “church records are the next most valuable source of information,” followed by probate records. There are twenty-five volumes of Banks’ records, clippings, and notes archived in special collections at NEHGS, taking several families forward one more generation than in the published work.

In the early twentieth century, scholarly genealogical journals began to encourage and event ually require citation of evidence. With the advent of The American Genealogist (TAG) in 1922, its founder and editor, Donald Lines Jacobus, launched a leap forward by impressing on readers that genealogy was a scientific study, based on facts from which logical conclusions could be drawn. In part because of his profound influence on the profession, the American Society of Genealogists created the Donald Lines Jacobus Award in 1972 to “encourage sound scholarship in genealogical writing.” On its website at www.fasg.org/jacobus_award.html, the award is defined as “presented to a model genealogy published within the previous five years.” Twenty-four books have received the award to date.

Where once we had no citations, we now find footnotes on every page. Alternatives include endnotes (citations at the end of a chapter, article, or section) and even references written within the text itself. The Ancestry of Emily Jane Angell, 1844—1910, a Jacobus Award winner in 1993, is an example of this. The author, Dean Crawford Smith, referenced every point of fact with a detailed parenthetical citation to one of more than 160 references listed in the beginning of the book. Even with all the inserted sources, the genealogy is very readable.

Images and Tables
Today, personal computers reliably link our data and produce more appealing books by incorporating charts, boxes, and friendlier layouts. One of the techniques employed in another Jacobus Award winner, Jonathan Watson of Dover, New Hampshire, by David Watson Kruger, includes attractively formatted supporting data in pertinent areas.

Jane Fletcher Fiske, in her forward to this genealogy, describes it as “truly remarkable in the way it combines the best of both worlds, merging classic standards of thorough genealogical research with the latest capability in computer data gathering and word-proces sing.” She adds that Kruger “found ways to present all of the background information without destroying the flow of the genealogical accounts” through his use of tables and chronological sections.

The aforementioned Durand genealogy by Alvy Ray Smith includes color plates, ninety-six illustrations, a twenty-four-page bibliography, and nearly 2,000 footnotes in its 429 pages. Yet in addition to its visual appeal, the work incorporates vivid historical references and is based on sound scholarship. In the jacket notes, Dr. Ralph Crandall writes, “This is a classic, a superb analytical genealogy, that also introduces the reader to the Durand family through beautifully written biographical profiles and myriad examples from their writings, artwork, and other family objects.”

In “How I Was Inspired to Publish a Family History,” an article published in the Holiday 2003 issue of New England Ancestors magazine, Smith provides intriguing background information on his work. One device employed by Smith is the most modern twist of all, something that is likely to become a part of any new compiled genealogy. He refers readers to his website at alvyray.com/Durand for corrections, additions, and additional images. This cutting-edge addition to how we review and keep a compiled genealogy accurate and current is sure to be seen with greater frequency in future works.

What’s in It for You?
Why would an average genealogist care about these books? Especially if nobody in his or her family is mentioned? Does it matter that there are such things as genealogical standards and scholarship?

In “Recognizing Scholarly Genealogy and Its Importance to Genealogists and Historians,” by Harry Macy Jr. (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, January 1996), Macy writes that “hobbyists benefit greatly from scholarly work. Many people who are able to trace ancestr y to colonial roots can probably do so only because someone has already researched the relevant families at a scholarly level.”

It is worth reading the entire twenty-two-page article to understand the history of genealogical writing and why studying genealogies can make us all better researchers and compilers.

The evolution of the compiled genealogy continues. Because of contributions made by those mentioned here plus dozens, if not hundreds, of others, the “book” about your family can be attractive and readable, and meet the high standards of reliability expected in genealogy today. Best of all, with many of the modern trends available today, your book could very likely be a good read as well.

Laura G. Prescott is the membership campaign director for the New England Historic Genealogical Society.