Branching Out Witches, pirates, crazy grandmothers, English royalty, celebrities and bank robbers. You never know what will show up when you start digging into your family history. Joanne Thyken, a retired business writer who lives in Fountain Hills, grew up hearing the family story about how pirates attacked Great-grandmother Catherine in New Orleans. Pirates waylaid the boat arriving from Germany, according to the story. Giving up on ransoming the immigrants, the pirates took the passengers toward shore on a small boat and left them to wade in. “One of my ancestors was a witch who was hung in Salem in 1682.” Says Janna Larson, a professional genealogist from Scottsdale. Thyken, who, like Larson, teaches classes in genealogy, says, “The trouble with the stories (is) you don’t know how true they are.” Still, she believes that family stories are the best place to start your genealogical search. “No matter how fantastic a story might be, don’t discard it entirely. There is probably a kernel of truth in there somewhere.” “Sometimes the skeletons you find in the closet are more interesting than those boring old farmers,” adds Larson. Instead of hearing family stories, Larson got started because of blank lines. “One of the things that piqued my interest was a page in my baby book that had a family tree in it,” says Larson. “My mother had filled it out, and there were empty spots in it. One of the comments was ‘the Harrisons and Abbotts were pioneer settlers of South Dakota’ and I said, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’” “Well, that’s all I know about that,” her mother said. “There were just these glimmers of interest in things I felt I could follow up on,” says Larson. People who want to find out how to follow up on those glimmers have many resources in Arizona. Community Colleges, the YWCA and YMCA, Parks Departments and Senior Centers and libraries frequently offer classes. Those who don’t take a class may “run out of steam because they don’t know what to do,” says Thyken. “You can’t just go to the computer and type in a name and it will all roll out.” Many organizations also help beginners and more experienced researchers learn the best and most efficient ways to track down and keep track of information. The Arizona Family History Society, 550 members strong, has six chapters in Maricopa County. The Arizona State Genealogical Society concentrates in Pima County. Despite their titles, neither is statewide. Both offer newsletters and/or journals, meetings with speakers and workshops. To find a local group or a special interest group dedicated to a particular period, or state or country, go to the web site called AZGab (www.azgab.org). The Arizona Genealogical Advisory Board lists dozens of organizations in Arizona from the well-known Daughters of the American Revolution to the lesser known American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. Start with your own history.
This is called citing your sources. “Pretend that you are writing a college or high school term paper,” advises Jacqueline Dauer of Rio Verde. “We have a saying, ‘If it is undocumented, it is a fairy tale.’”
Practice your interviewing technique. It may be helpful to give the person a list of questions in advance so they have time to think about your mutual ancestors. Note who gave you the information and when you collected it. Verify the information anyone tells you, Jim Morey, President of the Family History Society, warns.
Primary sources are birth certificates, death certificates, land records and other official documents. Secondary sources are those where someone has interpreted information, as for instance in a newspaper article or book.
“In my grandfather’s obituary, many places are misspelled and even his birth date is wrong,” says Morey.
Computer software programs help you keep track of your information and allow you to share it with others. Among the possibilities, three are very popular. Family Tree Maker: Morey likes this one because it is fairly easy to learn, allows you to put in extensive notes and information about medical histories, more than one spouse and other useful things. Personal Ancestral File: Free software available through the Church of the Latter Day Saints web site, familysearch.com The current version is PAF5 and although it is rather basic, the genealogists say it is being improved all the time. Master Genealogist: This is the one that Dauer uses because she likes its flexibility and ability to handle complex information. “However, the learning curve is greater,” she says. Once you have interviewed family members and built as much of a database as possible with information at hand, you are ready to venture out to libraries and the Internet, and perhaps travel to remote locations for first-hand research. Start with dates of birth, death and marriage and know the places that events took place. Then gather your information and questions and go talk to a librarian. The Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) holds an immense collection of genealogical materials. While their central facility is in Salt Lake City, all of their holdings are accessible through branches located throughout Arizona. Mesa is home to the largest LDS genealogy library in the state. The LDS Family History Centers are open and free to all. They hold information such as census records, church records (all denominations), passenger lists of ships, and history books that have been written of counties or towns throughout the world. A web site provides quick access to their catalogue and guidance on searching. (www.familysearch.org) Another excellent source in our state is the Arizona Library, Archives and Public Records, housed in the State Capitol Building in downtown Phoenix. While their Arizona information is understandably very complete, they also have information from other states as well, and librarians specially trained to aid in genealogical research. The Arizona Historical Society with libraries in Tucson, Tempe, Yuma and Flagstaff, the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott and many small libraries and museums throughout the state may also be of help. The Internet, described by Pat Dunford of Tucson as “the boon and the bane of research” drives researchers to ecstasy or despair. “It is wonderful to have such resources, including state archives, various society’s archives, as well as now commercial companies such as Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, Heritage Quest and others posting information.” And the bane? “Many people do not filter what they post on the web. Vast quantities of inaccurate information are out there,” she says. On the other hand, almost every researcher who has been using the Internet for any time tells stories about distant cousins they did not know they had and the many new friendships that have flourished as people share information about mutual ancestors. Sometimes travel helps. Pat Dunford says “I’ve been traveling all over the country on scavenger hunts through cemeteries, courthouses, fields and churches. And, in fact, to England, to find some olde bones there.” Joanne Thyken learned from his naturalization papers, that her great grandfather arrived in New York in June of 1885. At the National Archives in Washington D.C. she looked at passenger lists for that month. Proud of having narrowed the search to a particular time, she cringed to find there were 187 ships arriving in New York that month. Plowing through thousands of names, she found the name of the ship and also a source for pictures of immigrant ships. Jim Morey and his wife Shirley (an active member of the American Society of Germans in Russia) plan to go on a tour to the British Isles led by a professional genealogist. He will lead Morey to churches and societies that have information collections. The Moreys have already been to Iowa where he found his great-grandfather’s name. In a small town museum he found a set of index cards from a mortician. When he found his grandfather’s card, it listed that man’s father and mother. He learned that his great grandmother was buried nearby and later located his great grandfather’s grave in Colorado. Judy Curtis of Tempe experienced a warm “homecoming” in Maryland. In 1885, her grandfather Elbourn and his brother left the family life of fishing and oystering in the Chesapeake Bay. They went to Nebraska, married and became farmers. Eventually a third brother joined them. In 1967, Curtis visited Rock Hall, Maryland, called up one of the many Elbourns in the phone book and was invited to visit. “The oldest living relative at that time was the widow of one of my grandfather’s brothers. We sat around her kitchen table as I asked her to tell me of the Elbourn family, and she, with tears running down her cheeks, wanted to learn what I could tell her about the three brothers who left so long ago,” Curtis says. “Economics of the time put limitations on travel and communication way across the country, and for all those many years, the Elbourn family members in Maryland didn’t know what had happened to the three who left so many years before—but they still cared and wanted to know.” Sometimes travel does not yield facts—just atmosphere. Jacqueline Dauer believes that along with facts, you understand more when you see the countryside and frame your ancestors in their place and time, “..so they are people, not just boring dead guys.” It is necessary she says, to put them in context of what is going on politically, medically, and internationally. More and more genealogy is merging with history. People who collect only names and dates are just “train spotters,” says Pat. Like those Englishmen who have the hobby of collecting lists of names of locomotives, people who collect only names and dates are missing the essence. In fact it is “about putting the flesh on those ancestors and other relatives, and perhaps gaining a cautionary tale or two to share with our children and other captive audiences.” Oh, yes. About those pirates and witches. When she followed up on the story about Grandma Catherine, Joanne Thyken learned that the activity of pirates around the mouth of the Mississippi had ended by the time her grandmother arrived in the United States. However, before railroad service was fully developed, many German immigrants came to the United States by ship and sailed up the Mississippi to fertile farmland available in the mid-West. She speculates that the ship actually floundered near New Orleans and the story improved with age. Janna Larson had never paid much attention to history, but when she learned that the Puritans really did hang her ancestor as a witch, it sparked an interest in early American history. Since then her ancestors have led her to explore the Civil War and the American Revolution, too. Free lance writer Vera Marie (Kaser) Badertscher dedicates this article to Ohio adventurer Jesse Morgan, her great-great grandfather, who was shot and killed by the Mayor of Sacramento in 1849.
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