Category: Family History

Finding the Yeomans

2+ years of research on one of our stubborn bricks walls fell with the discovery of a single record

Finding the Yeomans <h4>2+ years of research on one of our stubborn bricks walls fell with the discovery of a single record</h3>

A few years ago it was time to tackle the brick wall of who were the parents of Andrew and Hannah (Yeomans) Place. The Place family history after they arrived in Wisconsin is well known to us. They were some of the first 50 or so Americans to arrive in the Wisconsin Territory during the summer of 1835, and their arrival and early experiences were documented years later by Charles Dyer in a 1871 speech to the for the Old Settlers Society of Racine County (Link). However, despite their Great-Granddaughter Myra (Tradewell) Morse (1870-1960) being the first great historian of our family, she never documented her Great-grandparents.

Family tree showing Hannah Yeomans descendants to Catherine (Morse) Leonard
Andrew and Hannah (Yeomans) Place’s descendants to Michael’s Great Grandmother Catherine (Morse) Leonard

Starting with Andrew Place’s parents

Andrew Thomas Place (1793-1837) was known to have traveled with his wife and 6 children by Ox cart from Greene County, NY, however not much before that has been documented. Searching for Place families and birth/marriage/death records for him produced no results.

The Hudson River valley in New York between the end of the Revolutionary War and the beginning of the Civil War is a well known dead zone for genealogical records (Suffering the Black Hole of Hudson River Valley Genealogy). For whatever reason(s) collection of church records are spotty at best, governmental records weren’t kept until later, and the Morman Church’s microfilm projects capturing this area’s civil records has large holes. Combine that with this area being very transitory over a few generations, with families moving in from Massachusetts and Connecticut soon after the Revolution, and their children/grandchildren moving West as they reached adulthood. Our ancestors didn’t leave as much of a paper trail in this region, and few of those papers have been digitized and indexed compared to other parts of the country.

Using Greene County as a jumping off point we built a table of each of the Place family entries in the 1790 US Census for there and the surrounding counties. Repeating the same process for the 1800-1830 census’ built a decent map of the original Place settlers and their children who stayed in the area.

The first item that popped out was an entry in the 1820 Census, in Greenville, Greene County, NY for Andrew T Place. The known birthdates of Hannah and their children matched the 1820 entry for Andrew, which was a strong lead that he was from the Greenville area. Assuming he might have bought his farm near his parents, we found a Thomas Place in Greenville, and these were the only 2 Places listed in Greene County. Searching the 1810 Census there was no entry for any Place family, but going manually through the entries for Greenville we found Thomas Place indexed under the wrong last name.

There is that 3 minutes of bliss when you realize all those years of research just paid off, out of the blue, and you just made a link that no one has ever made before…But very quickly the bliss fades and you ask the inevitable question: “I wonder who THEIR parents were?”

Now that we had a good lead that Andrew’s father was Thomas and they resided in Greenville, NY we searched Ancestry for records that match him. There were several hits for various parts of Thomas’ Will/Probate in 1848, but nothing that spelled out his children other than his son and executor, Jeramiah Place. Using those records, we went to FamilySearch and browsed the Probate records for Greene Co. We found his Will, but his wife and 2 surviving children were the only ones listed. It’s not surprising, but frustrating nonetheless!

Given that Thomas is a much more common name than Jeremiah, we tried a newspaper search on his name, narrowing down to 1848, and we hit paydirt! As a part of Thomas’ Probate process Jeremiah published a Notice of Hearing for the commissioner, calling out the heirs of Thomas specifically which included: “children of Andrew Place, a deceased son, all of Racine, Wisconsin Territory”. It also listed the other siblings of Andrew, which we’d established previously. With that we’d firmly proven that Thomas and Phoebe Place from Greenville, NY were Andrew’s parents.

It was on next to establish Hannah (Yeomans) Place’s parents, and while it took just a few weeks for Andrew, it would take over 2 years to break through and find hers.

Finding Hannah’s parents

Since we now knew that Andrew as raised and likely married in Greenville, NY, we started searching for Hannah’s parents in Greene County. There were 3 Yeomans registered in the 1810 US Census for Greene Co., and all 3 had a daughter Hannah’s age listed in the census. Next, as we did with Andrew, we built out tables for the 1790-1820 Census for every Yeoman in the counties bordering Greene, and tried to establish patterns of which children might be associated with which parents, and from that built 9 working trees to flesh out the people and families we were discovering.

Excel spreadsheet cells listing values from the 1790-1830 US Census and the Yeoman family names that match each value
Our makeshift pre-1850 US Census tables, used to align the generic numbers from the census to the known family members we’re researching, to visually identify the gaps and narrow down if there’s a match. Green means the census value matches a known family member, Yellow means the value is within 2 years of a known family member

Right away we hit that Hudson Valley wall and kept running into dead ends as we searched Ancestry and accepted as many shaky leaf hints as we could. We started searching for any Greene Co. Yeomans in member trees, and in a Public tree we found Elisha B Yeoman (1814-1850). The person didn’t have any facts attached in the tree but when we searched we found an index page for Greene County Probate Records from 1850, and we could see his probate was recorded on page 55. We switched over to FamilySearch, which had the Probate books microfilmed, and guessed which book to check based on his death year.

In Book H of the Greene County “Record of Wills” we found Elisha’s will recorded and it listed his location as Greenville, which puts him in the same town/time as Andrew Place…and likely Hannah. Unusually, his heirs weren’t just his wife and children. Elisha also listed 4 siblings as back-ups in-case his children didn’t survive to adulthood to collect their share: Leonard, William I, George C, and Catherine. We added the siblings to our tree and searched for birth/marriage/death records for each helped flesh out the tree, and it gave us more data points to track as we compared various Yeomans in the area to the families in the 1790-1820 US Census.

Still focusing on the 1810 US Census (knowing it should list Hannah in her father’s home for the last time), and breaking out all of Yeoman/Youman/Yumans in Greene and surrounding counties, 3 families came into focus: James and Jeremiah Yumans in Coeymans, Albany County and William Yeoman in Greenville. William would seem the most likely patriarch, being in Greene County, however the Coeymans and Greenville townships (Greenville is in New Baltimore) abut each other separated by the country border. The areas both families lived in were likely less than 10 miles from each other, which makes it reasonable Hannah could have been a part of any of them.

Old map of Albany and Greene County New York
Map from 1875 showing the proximity of Coeyman’s Hollow and Green Ville, where our 3 target Yeomans/Yumans families were located

During this time we also found a cluster of Yeomans that could have been the father and siblings of Hannah, except they were in Delaware County, NY (about 55 miles west of Greenville/Coeymans). William Yeomans (1773-1857) census info matched what we knew for the most part, but it wasn’t a complete match. We found Delaware County William’s Probate and it listed 7 of his children. Those children didn’t overlap Hannah’s known siblings, but we couldn’t rule him out because at this time we only knew of a cluster of 5 siblings in Greene County that didn’t even include Hannah. FindaGrave had a record in Delaware for “William” that seemed to match William I, but that was the only record to go on.

All attempts to research the James and Jeremiah families in Albany County were a dead end. The few Albany County land and probate records are almost entirely unindexed, and most of them are missing from any online microfilm collections.

From Dead Ends to Breadcrumbs

Since we had run into dead-ends in Albany, Greene and Delaware counties we expanded our search for any Yeomans to surrounding counties, which is where we hit our next big breakthrough. We found the will of an unmarried woman, Emaline Yeomans (1806-1849), who died in Union Vale, Dutchess County, NY which is 75 miles from Greenville and across the Hudson River. She died with no heirs, but a substantial estate. Since she had no heirs-in-law she left her estate to her 8 siblings, including the 5 Yeoman siblings in Elisha B’s will, also Hannah (positively identified as “Hannah Place, wife of the late Andrew Place of Wisconsin”) and 2 new sisters: Lucinda and Annis.

Emaline’s will is probably our favorite probate document we’ve found! You can only glean hints at personality and family dynamics from dry vital records documents, but her will speaks volumes. First, she had 3 nieces name Emaline, and she bequeathed each $50 to be paid on their 21st birthday. To her 4 brothers (Leonard, Elisha, George and Williams) and her sister (Catherine, also listed in Elisha B’s will) she bequeathed to each of them one of her rocking chairs (their choice) worth between $12 and $15 each. The remainder of her estate was to be split between the 3 other sisters (Hannah, Lucinda and Annis), who each received about $250. There clearly was a schism between the two groups of siblings, as Elisha would pass away only a year later and leave nothing to the sisters who received the bulk of Emaline’s estate while rewarding all those who received rocking chairs. She also must have been beloved, with 3 of her sisters naming children after her…at least amongst one faction.

Diagram showing the siblings of Hannah Yeomans and which were mentioned in each others' wills

Armed with the entire, confirmed list of Yeoman siblings, we were able to confirm that both the Coeymans and Greenville patriarch’s 1810 Census entries still matched the ages of these 9 children. However, we were then able to eliminate the Delaware William as a potential father.

The trail went completely cold after this. Searching for the Probate records of each sibling lead to no new leads on their parentage. Even more frustratingly, even with a known death date for William I we could not find his probate/will.

This stalemate lasted for almost a year, and while we found more information to flesh out the spouses and children of the 8 of the 9 siblings (William I was still a mystery), there was nothing on the 3 possible patriarchs of these families.

Breakthrough!

Our focus had turned entirely to researching William I Yeoman, as he was the one sibling we had no records for. While searching for anything William Yeomans related in Ancestry one Saturday we found an image attached as a profile picture in a Public Tree that came from one of the vanity books published around the first Centennial that listed important people in a county. These books were largely self-sourced, where the subjects would pay a fee to be listed, so they often are nearly first-person family/history descriptions even if it overestimates the subject’s “importance”. Reviewing the image for William listed his wife as Mary and a son Henry J who lived in Dutchess County.

Searching Ancestry trees for Henry J Yeomans of Dutchess County, NY broke the brick wall down completely. Again, someone had attached an image to their Public tree as a profile pic for Henry J. It was an entry in another vanity book where Henry J was the subject, and it was a gold mine. It was much longer than most such entries, and it described details about his father Henry Ira who was born in Greene County and was a lifelong resident of Greenville. Just like that we’d gathered William Ira’s birth date, place, and marriage details!

Paragraph detailing the life of Henry J Yeomans

But even more amazingly the write-up (which usually wouldn’t include parents information) went further and detailed William Ira’s parents! William Yeomans (1782-) and Lucinda (Blackmer) Yeomans (1762-1819) were William I’s parents, and through the transitive properties Emaline’s, and thus Hannah’s, parents was well!

Just like that, the wall was gone. We knew the identity of Hannah’s parents! 2+ years of research had paid off and we’d moved her tree back one generation.

There is that 3 minutes of bliss when you realize all those years of research just paid off, out of the blue, and you just made a link that no one has ever made before, even your ancestor genealogists who were researching 100+ years ago. But very quickly the bliss fades and you ask the inevitable question: “I wonder who THEIR parents were?”

We can report we have no idea who their parents were…yet. It’s the same issue as when we started: there are very few records from that area, fewer are indexed, and other researchers haven’t made the links we’d build off of yet. We searched on the text of Henry J’s write up, so we could properly identify and cite it, make sure we had all of the facts of what was a working tree cited and proper, and then attached it to our main tree so that anyone else who’s been struggling with this line can now build off our research.

Family tree diagram showing Andrew and Hannah (Yeomans) Place's parents
Our final family tree after researching back one generation

Food and Family History

Emily's Casserole and Culinary Genealogy

Food and Family History <h4>Emily's Casserole and Culinary Genealogy</h3>

Quite some time ago I was a guest on the podcast for Ancestor’s Alive’s (AncestorsAlive!) “From Paper to People” podcast, discussing the connection we can establish with our family tree by cooking our ancestor’s recipes (Episode 26: Emily’s Casserole). It was a pleasure to discuss culinary genealogy, and if you’re not listening to Carolynn’s show you should be (subscribe in all the usual places) as she’s one of the few genealogy podcasts that’s really caught our attention.

She came to our attention with a previous episode on a family recipe that helped tell a story from her family’s history (Episode 23: Johnny Mazetti, or is it Marzetti?), at the end of which she put out a call for others who had similar stories. While ours doesn’t trace actual family history, and in fact technically doesn’t come from our direct family per se, it really does tell a story, so we reached out and Carolynn invited us on.

The episode discusses a casserole that was made by family “friend” Emeline “Emily” Ott (1908-1992). Emily was “adopted” by Michael’s 2x great grandparents E.A. and Myra (Tradewell) Morse in Antigo, as told by family lore. Apparently E.A. owned rental properties and happened to see the conditions she was being raised in and brought her home to live with his family. She’s listed as as servant in the 1930 US Census and she would continue that role when E.A. and Myra’s only child Catherine (1911-1991) married, took over the Morse home, and have 5 sons. Emily was a key presence in Catherine’s home, essentially serving as a nanny for the 5 boys. She lived with Catherine long after the children moved out, and we all grew up with Emily as a constant in Catherine’s home. Each of the boys were deeply attached to her and we all visited her in assisted living apartment after Catherine sold the home and moved to her lake cottage in the 1980’s.

Emily’s Casserole
3 lbs. thin sliced potatoes
1 bad of carrots, sliced
1 medium-large sliced onion
1 ½ lbs. ground beef, browned*
1 can Cream of Celery soup
1 can of milk
Directions:
Butter dutch oven, and layer in potatoes, carrots, onions and ground beef. Mix soup with milk, and pour over top. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for an hour and a half.

Emily’s casserole was a staple for Michael’s dad growing up. It was a favorite of his father’s and mom got the recipe from Emily knowing it was always enjoyed, and easy to make. It became a part of his comfort food repertoire, just like it had been for his father, and it’s now a part of his children’s. (Editor’s Note: In the interest of transparency, the subject of this blog is not a big fan of this casserole and it’s not as regular in our family dinner rotation as it once was…but it we keep trying!)

Another historical recipe, taken from the boxes of recipe cards inherited when Michael’s Grandmother Mandy passed away, detailing her grandmother’s sourdough starter…with potatoes!

That a dish named for Emily was one of the comfort foods for Michael’s grandfather and great uncles when they were children tells us a lot about our family history. Emily was like a sister to Grandma Leonard, but never too much like a sister. She was always an employee from her first day in the household, first for the Morse family, and then for their daughter who was very close in-age. It was an interesting dynamic that wasn’t fully apparent to the grandchildren of Catherine, but it runs deeply through the fabric of today. She had a deep, emotional impact on us, but she wasn’t family…but she was, even if she was an employee.

We’ll feature Emily in more detail in a future post, but today take a listen to Carolynn’s amazing podcast, where she helps pull the details of this story out…and shows how sometimes a casserole isn’t just a casserole!

Suffering the Black Hole of Hudson River Valley Genealogy

A Bermuda Triangle of Genealogical Research

Suffering the Black Hole of Hudson River Valley Genealogy <h4>A Bermuda Triangle of Genealogical Research</h3>

We’re willing to bet every family historian and genealogist has stories of areas where there isn’t the level of documents you’d find in other areas. Sometimes it’s a County where there was a devastating fire at the courthouse that destroyed every Vital Record and Probate/Property record before a certain date. Or it’s societal like if you’re searching for African American Vital Records in the South before 1905 or so, there was a concerted effort post-Reconstruction to focus on white records only. Other times it can be the “Manifest Destiny” states had European settlers long before any Federal/State government was established, and then when the States were formed formal Vital Record collection often lagged. 

For our family there is no area in the United States that’s a more pernicious, more complete, black hole than the Upper Hudson River valley of New York from 1780-1840. When you’re looking for records in Greene, Ulster, Dutchess, Columbia, Albany, Rensselaer, Schoharie and Delaware County, every one found can feel like a miracle. 

as Grandpa Ken Mandy the Charter Captain would always say, “That’s why they call it fishing not catching”. We guess this is fun because it’s not easy!

Contributing factors 

There’s not a lot of empirical research on what causes this gap. It’s known to other researchers, but there’s no consensus on why. In our experience, there seems to be several unique factors that created this void of information: 

Late collection of Vital Records on the County/State level 

While the area was partially settled by Europeans going back to the 1600’s, when the Dutch left and Americans started their migration around the Revolutionary War. Migration picked up with the Mohawk Wars pushing Native residents off their land in the late 1700’s, but you see counties like Greene not collecting birth and death information until it becomes a statewide requirement in 1880. That’s true for most of these counties, and they didn’t capture all “required” records until 20-30 years after that. By then they had over 100 years of settlement with no centralized record collection. By comparison, our home county of Racine in Wisconsin was first settled in 1835 and Marriage records were collected by 1837, Deaths by 1853, and Births by 1876. 

The area was often a migration waypoint 

A pattern we see repeatedly is a family born in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Downstate New York migrate to the region around 1780-1800, establish a farm and then several of their children (or Grandchildren) migrate further West to Ohio, Michigan, or Wisconsin and establish their family histories in the new location. Almost invariably their records like oral histories, family bibles, etc. omit details of their Eastern families and the few church records, etc. will maybe list a birth/baptism record in an area in New York, but nothing further because marriages and deaths occur in other states. 

Churches were numerous, and consolidation of records seems rare 

New York in the late 18th and early 19th Century was a hotbed for the Second Great Awakening in American religion (Link), and while it doesn’t seem that “new” churches/denominations were as prevalent in this area as Western New York, it does appear that every village had it’s own congregation of each of the more established faiths (Dutch Reformed, Congregationalist, Methodist, etc.) but as these communities grew and contracted, the local church seems more likely to end than to merge with a neighboring congregation. This leaves a lot of records that were lost to history, or which were locally held and not collected in larger Church records. The Family Search library is full of these small congregational records, often collected by amateur family historians and published locally…which limits their availability. 

Cover page of a collection of church records from the Gilboa Reformed and Blenheim Reformed Churches in Schoharie County, NY c. 1918
An example of the fragmented church records from the Hudson River Valley: a list of Vital Records from two Schoharie County, NY churches, collected in 1918, typed and indexed in 1999, and only available at the LDS FamilySearch library in Salt Lake City, Utah

The interest in genealogy by the public at-large started a Generation after the children/Grandchildren of the original European settlers in this area had moved on 

Many of the self-published Family Histories that become more common in the mid-1870’s (tying in with the US Centennial) and remained a Genealogy staple into the 1940’s. These were compiled long after many of the children/grandchildren of the late 1700’s settlers had moved out of the area. The popularization of Genealogy as a hobby really kicked off with the ubiquitous “vanity” publications that became a staple starting around 1876. You start to see books like “History of Greene County, New York : with biographical sketches of prominent men” (published in 1884) which were collections of publicly available Vital/Historical records, knitted together as a narrative (often by local historians hired by the publisher), and included biographies of any “notable” family that paid the requisite fee to have their family history published (that they themselves drafted and submitted to the publisher). Because the biographies were self-submitted, they are often a wonderful almost first-hand listing of parents, marriages, and children but only for the families of means that stayed in that area. Similar books were published in the locations these New York children/grandchildren migrated to, but they rarely list more than the county of their birth (at best) and we’ve never found one that listed details on their parents of siblings back home. 

Another way this manifested is that during this rise in interest of family histories, there’s numerous examples of individuals who dedicated years to collecting various local records into what now might be the only surviving data on birth/marriage/deaths. Lists like the Barbour Collection and James Arnold’s 21 volume “Vital records of Rhode Island 1636-1850″ largely don’t exist for this region. Part of that is because there are no central collections to reference, part of that is because by 1880 most County local historians don’t have the experience or people to provide pre-1840 information about the area. Additionally Vital Records were just starting to be gathered by governments. 

An example 

Many of our most stubborn brick walls are related to families that migrated to Wisconsin from this area of New York, and we have little to no information on them before the migration. Our Tradewell, Yeoman, Place, and Blackmar lines all dead-end in the Mohawk Valley and have resisted our best efforts.  

Our most recent example is the Blackmar line, which we discovered after we were able to prove our Yeoman line back one generation after 2 years of research (story coming soon!)  

Once we broke through the Yeoman brick wall and first identified William and Lucinda (Blackmar) Yeoman from Greene County, New York as our 6th GGP we celebrated for about 3 minutes before we wondered “who are their parents?”.  

Screen cap of Lucinda Blackmar and her siblings, but no parent listed

Given the pain we had on the Yeoman line, we knew breaking down William’s parents was going to be a major challenge, but we decided that “Blackmar” was unique enough of a last name to take a quick look and see if we could identify her lineage. But, we’re searching in the Hudson River Valley Black Hole so of course we found literally nothing.  

The only Blackmar from New York in right timeframe was Cain Blackmar who is in the 1790 US Census living in Dutchess County. We found Cain in the 1800 US Census, as well as the Federal tax records for 1801 and 1802 and that’s it. There is no records of his family, his wife, or his children in New York. It’s a hot lead that Lucinda likely is Cain’s daughter, but it can be nothing but a guess.  

Searching Ancestry for Cain Blackmar immediately brought up one of the self-published family histories that, as we mentioned above, were pretty common in New England. We eventually found two, both published in the early 1930’s, whose authors both traveled the region and found 1000’s of local records from Massachusetts and Rhode Island then published detailed (but unsourced) family trees. Just like that we were able to back from Cain to his ancestors going back to arrivals in 1630. We can go back 6 generations from Cain in Rhode Island, but we have essentially nothing on Cain or his children in New York.  

Screen cap of Cain Blackmar's ancestors

We had a complete line back to Hannah Yeoman (1796-1865) as soon we started charting our family tree. But getting from Hannah to her mom took 10 years, including 2 years of intensive research given the limited resources from the Hudson River Valley. After another 6 months of research we have only a guess on her father. There are zero records relating to that father’s wife (FamilySearch’s global, single Family Tree has his spouse listed as “Mrs. Cain Blackmar”), but since he’s from Rhode Island we can effortlessly trace him back to his English ancestors in the 1590’s.  

Screen cap showing Cain Blackmar and Mrs. Cain Blackmar from the FamilySearch global family tree
This does not meet the Genealogical Proof Standard

This leaves us with a new brick wall merely because this family was in the Hudson River Valley in the early 1800’s. Just one generation in upstate New York and this branch became impenetrable. But, as Grandpa Mandy the Charter Captain would always say, “That’s why they call it fishing not catching”. We guess this is fun because it’s not easy!

Local historians bring a one-of-a-kind collection to the public eye

Local historians bring a one-of-a-kind collection to the public eye

The Wisconsin Historical Society published an amazing collection 2018 that is essential if you’re researching your family history in Southeastern Wisconsin (Eugene Leach collection). Beyond an amazing repository, it’s also highlights the really cool story of how the public came together to preserve and publish some priceless records It’s also a perfect example of how our personal research can mushroom over time, how we need to be aware of the impact of that research can have over time, and how we need to ensure that our records survive us in a meaningful way.

“To a chosen few historically minded persons in each generation is given the privilege of collecting and preserving the sacred facts of history, that they may not be lost to future generations.”

Eugene Walter Leach

Eugene Walter Leach (1857-1938) was born in Minnesota, but moved to Racine as a toddler and lived there the rest of his life. He was largely a private citizen who took it upon himself to collect, catalog, and publish the history of Racine, Wisconsin. He published 3 books during his lifetime, and was appointed as Racine’s official historian and Custodian of the Racine History Museum 4 years before his death. But his magnum opus was a book (The Story of Racine County – A History) that was not completed at the time he died, and which is now publicly available for the first time.

Capture-leach1

His research for the book filled 14 archival boxes, and the manuscript itself was over 1300 pages. Leach had spent decades collecting the stories of earlier settlers to Racine County. Just a quick review of about ½ of the collection showed me that he was visiting nursing homes, sending out questionnaires, reaching out to surviving family members for recollections, and being very active in gathering information about his subjects. All of this was preserved when he died in 1938, but largely lost to history.

Around 2008 a volunteer at the Racine Heritage Museum, John Magerus, PHD, was considering various projects when he came across an entry on the Wisconsin State Historical Society’s website referencing the papers of “Leach, a Racine, Wis. historian and curator of the Racine County Museum, including an unpublished manuscript.” Further digging led to discovering Leach’s papers were stored locally at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and Magerus published portions of the manuscript in 2010.

Local history buff Todd Wallace began working with the Wisconsin Historical Society and UWP to digitize the collection, which lead to a GoFundMe campaign in 2016 to pay for the digitation. That digitization effort culminated in the WHS releasing the collection digitally in 2018.

The collection is fascinating, and a true treasure. We’ve gone through and skimmed about half of the documents, and while there isn’t much directly related to our family, it’s still a wonderful read.

Reviewing the collection, a few thoughts popped out at us:

We all start out as family historians and make the transition to historians/genealogists if we’re serious about this hobby 

My 1C1R Peggy is the historian of the Leonard family, and her collection of artifacts and documents is amazing. It was her Family Reunion book from the early 1980’s that got us started on this journey. But it’s a classic collection of great stuff and stories, with no attribution, or citations, or publication. As we all start collecting our information, we will reach a point like Leach where we become keepers of unique and irreplaceable knowledge. As you go longer in this hobby it’s natural to start being more organized, more formal, and more interested in publishing what you’ve found. Reading through this collection it feels a lot like what I hope my work will be 20 years from now, and I can see how my work could progress much like his…from amateur historian, to a historian.

The best part of genealogy is the stories, not the facts 

We knew when we first got into this hobby that we cared about the stories much more than the facts, and this just further demonstrates that truth. We, of course, recognize the utility, and value, of the facts he’s presented, but we’ve spent most of my time consuming the stories of these settlers of Racine County, and of how the community sprang up. I can’t imagine how excited the descendants of these subjects must be to find the stories of their family told.

Digital research has it’s place, but the most valuable work is often what you go out and discover offline 

Many of the vital records, and even most of the newspaper articles, that are a part of these archives available to us today. The most valuable parts of the collection are the research he did with living people, the letters, finding and copying old diaries (that are likely long since lost), visiting nursing homes for interviews, etc. are nothing short of treasures. I was especially impressed by his work with sending out hundreds of pre-printed questionnaires, which led to impressive results. We spend a lot of time looking at our screens for answers, but we need to spend more time out in the field gathering the pieces of this puzzle that can’t be found online.

Capture-leach2

Make sure you have a formal plan to pass your research on when you’re gone 

We’ve published on this previously (To Save Our Archives We Have to Give Them Away) but have added a formal Codicil to our Will that details how to process our genealogical work. We’ve also already reached out to historical museums to make arrangements to donate objects we have that are priceless, and that we can’t maintain to the level they deserve to be. We’ve made digital copies, so we’ll be able to

Store your research archivally 

Building off the previous point, we started from day one using archival paper, folders, storage boxes, ink, sleeves, etc. to store our documents. They are never stored in the basement, and they should easily survive us. We’ve had friends who received the trunk of family photos and documents when Grandmother passed away, that were soon destroyed when the basement flooded. Looking at Leach’s collection, I shudder to think how easily it could have been lost and to think of how many similar collections were lost due to family who didn’t care about these things as much as we did.

Get involved in your local historical societies 

Eugene Leach’s work eventually BECAME the local historical society. This collection is seeing the light of day this month because a local historian volunteered at the Racine Historical Society, and took it upon himself to dig the collection up, and other local historians raised funds to have it digitized. We can have a huge impact, and it can’t help but further your research as well.

Give back wherever you can

You see sharing across this entire story. Leach built his work off the work of various historians who preceded him. 100’s of relatives of early Racine settles shared stories and artifacts with Leach, which in turn have now been shared with us. Local historians banded together to share money so the collection could be digitized. We approach this work collectively, and no one builds their research on their work alone. We stand on the shoulders of others as we build our family histories, and we have a duty to share our work freely so that others will build on our work and take it further than us.

Thank you so much to everyone who worked on this collection, and I can’t wait to read all the way through these amazing!

In Remembrance – Daniel Walter Leonard (1868-1924)

In Remembrance – Daniel Walter Leonard (1868-1924)

Today we remember Michael’s 2xGGF Daniel Walter Leonard, who died on this date in 1924.

Dan (as he was known) was born in Algoma Township, Wisconsin on 12 May 1868 to John Leonard (1829-1891) and Louisa (Phalen) Leonard (1840-1925). He was the 5th of 11 children born to John and Louisa, and he was raised on the Leonard farm just outside Oshkosh on Lake Butte des Morts. Unlike his brothers, and most of his sisters, Dan didn’t continue farming as an adult, instead focusing on physical labor.

Newspaper article describing the death of Sheriff Dan Leonard, with a photo of him

He was still living at home when he wed Emma Marrion Kupps (1879-1953) on 29 Oct 1902, although family lore is he met Emma when she was a waitress in Antigo, Wisconsin. Emma was known as one of the first European children born in Langlade County. Dan moved to Antigo after they married, and in 1903 the first of their 8 children was born. In 1904, after 2 huge fires in Antigo within 10 days of each other, the city voted to pay their firefighters, and Dan was named the first paid Fire Chief. By 1910 he was listed as a laborer doing odd jobs, and by 1920 he was a teamster for a logging company.

Dan ran, as a Democrat, for Langlade County Sheriff in 1922 and he was elected to a 2 year term. The role of sheriff, beyond just law enforcement, also encompassed management of the County Jail which would usually have prisoners not just waiting trial, but also those serving sentences less than a year. The Sheriff, and usually his wife, would be responsible for the feeding and laundry of those prisoners and usually they would live on-site to provide needed services 24 hours a day. Their youngest child was 4 when Dan was elected, so they moved into the jail as a family. Just over a year into his term Dan became sick with what would be diagnosed as stomach cancer. He was seen in Oshkosh for treatment, and went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota as well, but with no success. He was moved from a hospital in Oshkosh to his home, but died the next day, 11 Mar 1924 at age 55.

Soon after Dan’s death, Emma was appointed Sheriff to complete Dan’s term by Governor John Blaine, making her the first woman to be a Sheriff in Wisconsin history. As she had effectively executing all of the functions of the office for the 6 months before her husband’s death Gov. Blaine felt she’d be the best candidate. Emma would go on to sell insurance for the Morse Tradewell Company in Antigo, where her 4th child Gerald Francis Leonard (1908-1967) would meet the owner’s daughter Catherine Suzette Morse (1911-1990), and they would wed in 1937.