Ancestry Magazine

When we move beyond the basics in our search to know our ancestors, we often have to conduct research in less familiar places. If you feel certain that your great-great-grandmother was able to read and write, you may be able to find letters and/or diaries that she left behind. If your ancestor was a commissioned officer in a state militia, you might be able to find a copy of his commission. You may even be able to find business records for an ancestor who bought and sold a store.

All of these records, and others like them, are considered manuscript materials. Webster defines a manuscript as “a written or typewritten composition or document as distinguished from a printed copy.” Much of the surviving day-to-day history kept by our forefathers is still in manuscript form. Often it is held in repositories as wide ranging as the National Archives and the small local historical societies that dot the landscape. Whether it is on a single page or in a collection of documents, some of your family’s history may have been preserved in manuscript form. It is even possible to locate privately held manuscripts, if you do your digging exhaustively.

About twenty years ago, I had a burning desire to become a member of the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). At that time, the only ancestor that I knew had fought in the Revolution was John McGaughey, a private from Pennsylvania. He was already a proven DAR patriot, but no one who descended from his son, Thomas, had yet been accepted for membership. My difficulty was that Thomas had died in 1843, before every-name censuses and mandatory birth and death records were created. I needed to prove that my ancestor, Mary Jane McGaughey, was Thomas’s daughter.

A friend recommended I contact the courthouse where he resided for guardianship papers—a source I was unfamiliar with at the time. Guardianship of minor children often had to be determined by the court if the father died, even if the mother was alive to watch the children. I wrote to the clerk of the Shelby County, Kentucky, courthouse with my request. What I got back was an amazing work of analysis conducted by a part-time clerk in the Old Records Division there. She not only found the guardian records for Thomas’s six children—including Mary Jane (see Figure 1)—but she also charted all of the McGaughey transactions she found in records between 1795 and 1850! Eventually I was able to obtain copies of all of the various land and court transactions that pertained to my ancestors. The guardian papers bridged the generation gap and allowed me to join the DAR. The land transactions gave me insight into the activities of the McGaugheys in Shelby County.

Manuscripts can illuminate many facets of people’s lives, or they can fill in historical background for some of our brick-wall research problems. Historians use manuscripts to document specific periods of time, to discover trends, and to make aggregate statements about events that happened long ago. Family historians seeking to understand fully why an ancestor participated in an uprising, committed a crime, or even chose his occupation might seek answers in the myriad types of manuscript materials tucked away on musty shelves.

Examples of Manuscript Materials
In her book Hidden Sources, Laura Szucs Pfeiffer provides examples of more than one-hundred types of manuscript sources that may be of use to family historians. Among the examples are alien registration records; American Medical Association records; applications, appointment papers, and commissions; bankruptcies; coroner’s inquests, diaries and journals; fire insurance maps; letters; library guides; occupational records; prison records; territorial records; and voter registration records.

The astute family historian will look in his or her own family papers for clues that will lead to the use of manuscript materials. The clues you seek are the ones that leave you with unanswered questions. For instance, among my family papers is a small newspaper clipping declaring the bankruptcy of my grandfather Walter Albert Kelley. The clipping is undated, but the notice contains the date 3 May 1937 and the place Green Bay, Wisconsin (see Figure 2). Since my father was about twelve at the time, I asked him if he remembered the bankruptcy. He did not. So I tried to find a copy of the file. Bankruptcy is a federal matter, so I turned to the National Archives’ website for guidance. The Archives provides information on finding bankruptcy records at its regional facilities. Since this bankruptcy was apparently filed in Wisconsin, NARA’s Great Lakes Region in Chicago holds the records. After contacting them, I was able to obtain a copy of the file for a reasonable fee (see Figure 3). The file is interesting in that it contains receipts of items purchased during the filing period, but it doesn’t give any other reason for the bankruptcy other than being broke.

Another example from my family papers is a handwritten obituary for my great-grandmother, indicating her husband, Richard Finlay, was a doctor in Dakota Territory in 1890. With that information, I was able to contact the American Medical Association and get a copy of the card they had for my great-grandfather (see Figure 4). The AMA records are now housed at the National Genealogical Society. For more information on obtaining these records, click here. The AMA card gave Richard’s date of death and the school from which he graduated. I was then able to obtain a copy of his death certificate. But I was also able to get a copy of the commencement catalogue for 1880–81 from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (formerly the Medical College of Ohio, Cincinnati) (see Figure 5). The latter example shows how finding one manuscript document often can lead to a trail of other documents. Later I contacted a historian in Centerville, South Dakota, and she sent me a couple original prescriptions written by my great-grandfather! She has a number of local historical items in her possession that she has collected over the years (see Figure 6).

Finding Doc uments
So the hunt is on for the document that will answer that nagging question. Where do you begin? If you have access to the Internet, that’s the place to start. If you don’t have access, you might consider visiting your public library to get on the Internet from the terminals there. This is one example where using the Internet can point you in the right direction and save you time in your research.

If you’re looking for a school graduation catalog, such as the one I found for Richard Finlay, start with a search engine such as Google. If you know the name of the school at the time, type that in to Google, and, even if the name has changed, you should be able to find a reference to the old name and its current equivalent. Once you find the school, search through its Web pages for a library or archives. In the case of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, on its home page there is a link for Technology/Libraries. Selecting that link gives several choices, among them Library Services, which leads to History Resources, which leads to Collections. The Collections page discusses the various items in the university’s archives, including graduation catalogs and photos of medical graduates.

It is more common now to find a university’s collections listed on the Internet, but you may also find items in university catalogs. Many universities have historical collections, where the scope of the collections can be as diverse as Americana, pre-1900, regional, or subject oriented—such as organized labor. For example, the website for the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan states that the library “collects primary source materials in all formats relating to the history of America prior to the mid-twentieth century. The holdings are particularly strong in the intellectual, cultural, and military history of the late colonial period, the Early Republic, and the 19th century, but are very broad and richly interconnected.” Historians love the Clements Library because of its strengths in the pre–Civil War time period of American history. But the collection is more than Americana. Surprisingly, the library has a sizable collection of the British War Office’s “A List of all the Officers of the Army and Marines on Full and Half-Pay”—sources that researchers might expect to find only in England. The library also houses city directories from around the United States.

If you think that a certain university library would house a collection you’re interested in, you should look for the page on its website that describes its collecting scope. While the Clements Library’s scope is very broad, the other historical library on the campus of the University of Michigan, the Bentley Historical Library, confines its collecting to the state of Michigan and former U of M students. Visiting the Bentley for miscellaneous items pertaining to Wisconsin would likely be a waste of time. However, items in the collections of both libraries are listed both in the library catalog and in online finding aids. These online finding aids—becoming ever more popular on archival repository websites—would be found during a Google search.

Another way to find manuscripts using online tools is through NUCMC (National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections). NUCMC’s purpose is to catalog “records for collections in the custody of repositories located throughout the United States which are open on a regular basis to researchers and which are unable to contribute national-level cataloging to a national computer database such as OCLC or RLIN.” NUCMC, a program of the Library of Congress, has been cataloging manuscript collections since 1959. The printed volumes covering 1959–85 are not included in the online catalog and need to be searched separately. These can be found at major libraries throughout the country. The online version contains entries from 1986 to the present, but don’t let the dates fool you. These are cataloging dates, not the dates covered in the collections. Some universities are included in the online version of NUCMC, but their online catalogs may be more up-to-date than the NUCMC entries.

There are two different databases to search from the NUCMC search page: the NUCMC RLG catalog and the OCLC catalog. It is advisable to search both as different repositories input their collections into one or both of the catalogs.

In the RLG search, you should start with the “easy” search to see what results you get; once you’ve gotten used to the search mechanism, you can used the advanced search. Use your imagination with the search terms you use. Try family surnames, place names, business names, events, and anything else that might bring the results you seek. I chose to search on the name “Hatch” and received 308 hits. Looking through the various entries, I found one of a whaling vessel voyage to the Pacific from Falmouth, Massachusetts. The item cataloged is a logbook kept during the voyage (see Figure 7). Looking toward the bottom of the document will show you the location of the item.

In the OCLC catalog search, you have two choices for a “simple” search: “titles, notes, and subject fields”; or “all names” fields. I selected the “all names” fields and searched again on “Hatch” and received eighty-eight hits. Sometimes the items found will contain a hyperlink to a finding aid on the website of the repository that owns the item.

Obtaining Copies
Once you find an item you believe will benefit your research, how do you get a copy? Of course there’s the old-fashioned method of writing to the repository and requesting a copy. If you do this, be sure to include all of the information you have found on the item so you won’t have to be involved in a long, drawn-out letter-writing campaign. Sometimes repositories will send the copy and ask you for payment; other repositories will let you know the cost and will send the copy upon receiving payment; still other repositories will send the copy without expecting payment. In any case, if you’re sending a letter, always include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. The repository may or may not use it, but it’s a sign of good faith on your part.

If what you’re seeking has been found through an Internet search, there’s a good chance that the repository will respond to e-mail requests. Most archival repositories put their e-mail policy on their websites, so look carefully for this information. I’ve had great success e-mailing the staff at the New Jersey State Archives. The Archives has some helpful finding aids on its website, and, by using those, I was able to e-mail specific requests to the archivists. They kindly searched their collections there and let me know, in a day or two, if they had what I was seeking. If they had the item, they sent it on and requested payment later. Beware, however, that many archives are short-staffed and, while the website may indicate it accepts e-mail requests, the staff may be slow in responding. Always be polite in your requests and give specific details. Don’t ask the archivist to find, for example, everything available on John Smith.

Some archives will also accept phone requests. If you try this approach, you’ll find out quickly whether this is feasible because you’ll be talking to a live person.

Of course, the most desirable option for finding manuscript materials is often to visit the repository in person. While this is not always possible, the benefit to you is that you can look at the material within its collection, possibly finding other items of interest. You would also be able to ask questions of the archivist, which may help you better understand the collection.

Conclusion
Finding manuscript materials that relate to your family can be exciting, rewarding, and a lot of fun. While some discoveries might not provide much information, others may provide the missing pieces to your family jigsaw puzzle. 