Michigan Genealogy

If you know who you are... You will know where to go...

If you have ever walked in a cemetery and stopped to stand in front of and look at a tombstone, you probably never knew the person buried there. There's a name that may or may not mean anything to you even if it is your last name. The dates are recognized only as being in the past 1845-1909. And while you think it is fitting to mark the beginning and end of the life of this individual whose tombstone you are now staring at, it is the hyphen in those dates that makes all the difference.

Ancestry was one of the earliest multi-database resources to appear online and is a huge conglomerate (in genealogical terms) that includes nearly a dozen previously separate database sites, plus Family Tree Maker and Ancestry Publishing. The Ancestry site itself includes more than 23,000 databases and transcribed books, with many more being added all of the time. The company has provided the online researcher the service of making these database templates nearly identical as it gives access to it’s user/members.

On the Ancestry website you will find;

• Census records
• images of birth certificates
•  shared images of your ancestors
• marriage certificates
• and death certificates
• immigration documents and history
•  directories
• membership lists
• newspapers and periodicals
•  court records
• land and military records
• PERSI. maps
• local and family histories

You will also find;

• Family to connect with that you never knew before.
• Family that will share information, images and stories.
• Family to share and receive database information.
• Grandparents you never knew existed, their stories and pictures.
• Revolutionary War, Civil War and other family members who participated in our country's history.

If you visit my personal website at Michigan Genealogy you will see some of my family discoveries. If you want help in building a personal website I will help you at no charge.

Finding and using the Ancestry Learning Center (lots of freebies here), will show you how to most efficiently spend your money as the Ancestry Store reveals your family. Having the ability to print to PDF copies will save you money as some images are available in a pay-for status which can be bypassed with photo editing software.

Never forget that Ancestry is a business and it is not a free research service. If you live in a small town far away from large research libraries, and especially if you need to do research in a far corner of the country, a subscription is going to be far cheaper than gasoline and the time it takes to drive. Plus, you can work online at any time of the day or night. But also don't forget that in many states, the state library makes available a subscription to Ancestry to city and county libraries all around the state, and that anyone with a library card can access any database at Ancestry for free by visiting their local library.

That said, libraries will charge you to make copies of your discoveries so bring a lot of coin change for the copy machines.

People say that a lot of what is available on the Ancestry website can be discovered simply by "walking or driving around." This is true in a way but time, gas and wear and tear on your car is an expense avoided by staying home and doing your work online and it is probably better for the environment if you stay home while doing your research.

Ancestry would make a wonderful gift to give to someone in your family as a gift subscription to Ancestry for birthdays and Christmas. As we age, family becomes more important to us and we want to discover our ancestors and learn how they lived.

If you decide to take the journey by driving to locations, you will need to know;

• WHEN the county was created?
• WHERE the probate records are/were kept?
• WHAT the migration patterns were?
• IF there are surviving church records of christening, marriage and burial?
• HOW the county boundaries changed over the years?

You will hit many "brick walls" -- those situations in which the courthouse records have disappeared, or no census record can be found, or there are four people with the same common name in the same neighborhood at the same time, not to mention people whom we come to suspect must have landed by flying saucer.

Begin carefully evaluating evidence and really thinking through problems associated with conflicting information, burned counties, brick walls etc. The "thinking" in this reveals examples of alternative sources you may not be familiar with and what is outstanding or hidden in the scenario.

The most common types of brick walls and the best ways to deal with them:

• The lack of vital records in the period before mandatory civil registration,
• The best use of the census (especially before 1850),
• The need to analyze collateral family members and community networks (what's called "cluster genealogy"),
•  Finding a replacement for the infamous "burned courthouse,"
•  And separating individuals of the same name.

After failing to find an obvious solution, the inclination often is to throw up one's hands and shift attention to an easier branch of the family.

Evaluate a research model that will focus your work, from reminding you of the distinction between "search" and "research," and identify the problem blocking the way (which actually may not be what you assume it is), to reevaluating the data you already have (you may simply not have recognized the answer), to identifying the specific evidence you need to solve your problem.

Studying old photos is one of the more fascinating aspects of family research, the military uniforms, hats, parlor furniture, automobiles, urban scenes, and especially the faces and their expressions, are like a kind of time travel, allowing you to peer back into someone's past.

Your Polaroid snapshots are fading as you read this. Those "magnetic" photo albums with the adhesive pages are gassing your family pictures to crumbs. Your digital images may not be viewable by your great grandchildren. But don't give up hope - take action. Building a website that houses these fading images in a virtual setting that is “self-supporting” could forever preserve the images. They will also become a treasured, open resource for future generations. This can be done for much less than $100 a year.

Things to think about - Examine the class of records that are "official and public"

Official;

• Vital records (how accurate are they, really?)
• Irregular and common law marriages
• Civil and criminal court records
• Land records
• And the federal census

Then come…."unofficial" records including;

• Published family histories,
• Church records,
• Bible records,
• Monuments and memorials (especially in cemeteries),
• Newspaper articles
• Notices.

There are many myths about surnames and between 1607 and 1840 many immigrants arrived in America without a surname (they simply picked one upon arrival, given that surnames were expected in America).

Think about;

• Derivation of surnames
• Claims of royal lineage
• And heraldry
• It is exceedingly rare for anyone to be able to trace their ancestry earlier than 1600

Our Rathbun family ancestors had slaves that they set free and these former slaves adopted the Rathbun family name. Our family also played a prominent role with the underground railroad as former slaves escaped through Michigan into Canada.

Visiting the Images of Michigan website will reveal old stories of what Michigan was like as it was discovered, homesteaded and developed.

I know that in my family the Rathbun/Rathburn/Rathbone names were often misspelled even by my 4th Great Grandfather who due to these misspellings is buried in the Nashville National Cemetery as Ebenezer Rathbone, his wife my grandmother who in all every census while alive as Rathburn, is buried as Rathbone in the cemetery she is buried in. Their son, Girden Clark Rathbun (8th Michigan Infantry) is listed as Rathbun in the military documents. Ebenezer

Between World War I and the presidency of Richard Nixon, some six million black Americans fled the indignities and oppression they grew up with in the American south and headed north or west in search of freedom.

Some found at least a modicum of it. Some did not. This mass migration - unplanned, haphazard and often resented - has affected our laws, our politics and our social relations in all kinds of ways.

Some for the better, some not.

It now seems that the migration (all races) may be going back to the south in search of jobs and better weather.