Posts
07 January 2007
23 December 2006
In Search of Unknown Generations
- Genealogy Conference
Angelina College (Lufkin, Texas); Thursday–Saturday, July 19–21, 2007
Lufkin is the hub of the East Texas region, located in the beautiful Piney Woods, on Hwy. 59 South, just two miles south of Loop 187.
Featured Speakers include:
CAROLYN EARLE BILLINGSLEY has a B.A. in history, with minors in Arkansas Studies and German, from UALR (University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She then studied at the university in Graz, Austria, for two years on a Fulbright Scholarship. Upon leaving Austria, she enrolled as a graduate student at Rice University in Houston, where she earned her M.A., then her Ph.D. in Southern History (with a field in Anthropological Kinship Theory) in 2001. Billingsley is the Coordinator for Course 3: Research in the South, at Samford University's Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research in Birmingham, Alabama; she teaches classes in genealogy and southern history at UALR; and she lectures locally and nationally. Billingsley's Ph.D. dissertation was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2004, and is titled Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier; the book won the Booker Worthen Literary Prize in 2005. She is also the author and compiler of many other books and articles, both genealogical and historical. Billingsley currently serves on the Arkansas Genealogical Society Board of Directors and is the co-editor of the monthly AGS E-zine.
Lectures: - The Formation of Kinship Groups in the South: The South was settled by kinship groups rather than individuals. But these kinship groups took time to develop, beginning with immigration to the South in the 1600s. This lecture provides understanding of how kinship groups form and operate enhance genealogist’s abilities to research their family groups.
- Kinship Theory: A Case Study: Understanding the basics of kinship is key to genealogical research. This lecture demonstrates how kinship theory advances skills in the areas of marriage, politics, economics, migration, and settlement patterns.
- Racial Mixtures in the South: In the Old South, individuals were either white or they weren't . . . and those who weren't (or those who were considered not white by neighbors) faced special problems. Their difficulties introduce problems for researchers trying to trace black, mulatto, dark-skinned, or Native American ancestors. This lecture sheds light on the background of such groups in the South, including Melungeons, Red-Bones*, and other tri-racial isolate groups. * (Lufkin is very near Louisiana Redbone territory.)
- The Real Story on Tracing Your Indian Ancestors in the South: So many southern families had Native American ancestors, but few of those ancestors signed up on the Indian Rolls. This lecture explains that the vast majority are not on those official rolls and how you can dig out the facts about your Native American ancestors when there are no official records recording them as Indian.
DESMOND WALLS ALLEN has taught genealogy classes all over the United States, and brings 20 years of teaching experience to the classroom. She holds a B.S.E. in education and her Master's degree is in history. She appeared in Public Television's Ancestor series as a guest expert, and moderated AETN's special on genealogy in Arkansas. She's the owner of Arkansas Research, Inc., a publishing company devoted to making historical information about Arkansas available to researchers. The author/compiler of more than 250 books, she's still a down-to-earth teacher interested in helping students learn.
Lectures: - Confederate military research - "Which Henry Cook?" Researching men of the same or similar names is difficult enough with traditional genealogical sources, but in Confederate records, it can be especially frustrating. This lecture presents a case study applied to the research technique of keeping a subject with a known group of associates.
- How to get the most out of death certificates. Anyone can read a document, but learning to hear documents speak is a learned skill. We'll learn how to do that using death certificates, a source common to all genealogists.
- Arkansas! Arkansas problems can make you feel like a rat eating a red onion! This lecture will help promote awareness of Arkansas records and repositories.
- Targeting cousins to learn about *your* DNA. Confused about DNA? We'll leave the scientific details to others and talk about why you want to pursue your living cousins, keeping an eye to the future of DNA testing. (This lecture is by the woman who said 15 years ago that we'd be core-sampling grandpa for his DNA sample.)
Imperial Polk Genealogy Society Seminar
Registration
Featuring Carolyn Earle Billingsley, Ph.D.
+Kinship Theory for Genealogists
+Kinship Theory: A Case Study
Featuring Carolyn Earle Billingsley, Ph.D.
+Kinship Theory for Genealogists
+Kinship Theory: A Case Study
Seminar to be Held in Lakeland, Florida on March 10 » Genealogy Blog
Seminar to be Held in Lakeland, Florida on March 10 » Genealogy Blog, featuring Carolyn Earle Billingsley.
27 October 2006
16 September 2006
14 September 2006
02 September 2006
Samford University, IGHR: Course 3
Course 3: Schedule of Classes, June 2007
Carolyn Earle Billingsley, Ph.D., Course Coordinator
Carolyn Earle Billingsley, Ph.D., Course Coordinator
21 August 2006
Amazon Review: Communities of Kinship
Major Breakthrough in Historiography, January 16, 2006
Reviewer: William R. Erwin (Durham, NC United States)
Dr. Carolyn Earle Billingsley has made a major breakthrough in American, especially Southern, historiography. She has elevated genealogy into the first rank of scholarly tools for understanding society and what springs from it. In the process she has overturned former conclusions as to how the Southern frontier was settled and developed. The core element is communities of kinship.
They have been right under our noses all along. Although writers have noted the importance of kinships episodically, they have explored them indifferently. It is common practice for biographers to devote a few pages to family background but little more. One extraordinary exception was Robert A. Caro who described President Johnson's families and environment in the Texas Hill Country in vivid detail. You could almost see little Lyndon as an incipient statesman. A friend wisely observed, though, that we do not know what cultural baggage those families brought to those hills and where they got it.
Dr. Billingsley's process opens up vast possibilities for research among families and persons for whom manuscript and printed documentation is skimpy or virtually non-existent, which is to say, most of them. As a longtime manuscript librarian I know how spotty the records are. Many a worthy in his or her time is now unknown when the opposite was the case in their own time and place.
Dr. Billingsley has not only theorized about the process but also demonstrated it in a study of a migrating, changing community of kinship, one without much documentation beyond genealogy. She has shown us how to do it. She has identified the core element of Southern society that defined its culture, politics, economics, and religion. As she noted, church history is incomplete if you are unaware of the familial interconnections of the clergy among themselves and communities of kinship.
Reading this book, I felt like I was reading about my own community of kinship, a most useful term, from Virginia and, especially South Carolina, to Alabama and westward. Our complex was quite larger and more concentrated in one region. In our principal county, the metropolis of Birmingham rose among us. Large numbers of us stayed and, having developed a rural society from scratch, participated in making a city.
Perhaps her Earles connect to our Earles in South Carolina and Alabama, two galaxies touching at the edges. One of our prominent relatives was a neighbor of her kinship community in Bibb County, Alabama. Cases in point!
Reviewer: William R. Erwin (Durham, NC United States)
Dr. Carolyn Earle Billingsley has made a major breakthrough in American, especially Southern, historiography. She has elevated genealogy into the first rank of scholarly tools for understanding society and what springs from it. In the process she has overturned former conclusions as to how the Southern frontier was settled and developed. The core element is communities of kinship.
They have been right under our noses all along. Although writers have noted the importance of kinships episodically, they have explored them indifferently. It is common practice for biographers to devote a few pages to family background but little more. One extraordinary exception was Robert A. Caro who described President Johnson's families and environment in the Texas Hill Country in vivid detail. You could almost see little Lyndon as an incipient statesman. A friend wisely observed, though, that we do not know what cultural baggage those families brought to those hills and where they got it.
Dr. Billingsley's process opens up vast possibilities for research among families and persons for whom manuscript and printed documentation is skimpy or virtually non-existent, which is to say, most of them. As a longtime manuscript librarian I know how spotty the records are. Many a worthy in his or her time is now unknown when the opposite was the case in their own time and place.
Dr. Billingsley has not only theorized about the process but also demonstrated it in a study of a migrating, changing community of kinship, one without much documentation beyond genealogy. She has shown us how to do it. She has identified the core element of Southern society that defined its culture, politics, economics, and religion. As she noted, church history is incomplete if you are unaware of the familial interconnections of the clergy among themselves and communities of kinship.
Reading this book, I felt like I was reading about my own community of kinship, a most useful term, from Virginia and, especially South Carolina, to Alabama and westward. Our complex was quite larger and more concentrated in one region. In our principal county, the metropolis of Birmingham rose among us. Large numbers of us stayed and, having developed a rural society from scratch, participated in making a city.
Perhaps her Earles connect to our Earles in South Carolina and Alabama, two galaxies touching at the edges. One of our prominent relatives was a neighbor of her kinship community in Bibb County, Alabama. Cases in point!
2006 APG Professional Management Conference
The 2006 APG Professional Management Conference
August 30, 2006 Boston
Presented by the Association of Professional Genealogist in conjuction with the annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies.
Registration Information
In order to attend the Professional Management Conference (PMC), individuals must also register for at least Wednesday’s Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) Conference. The following are the PMC rates only:
Early Member Registration (by December 31, 2005) $100
Regular Member Registration (by July 1, 2006) $110
Late Member Registration (after July 1, 2006) $150
Non-Member Registration (any date) $150
Three ways to register or order an FGS brochure:
1. Online: www.fgs.org - the FGS conference is a 4-day conference from August 30th through September 2nd. Online registration for the conference is coming soon.2. Write: Federation of Genealogical SocietiesP. O. Box 200940, Austin, TX 78720-09403. Call: 888-FGS-1500 toll free
The Schedule
Wednesday ~ Main Deck ~ All Players
Stolen Ancestors: How to Identify, Reclaim, and Protect by James Jeffrey
Kinship Theory for Genealogists by Carolyn Earle Billingsley, PHD
Print on Demand - A Publishing Option for Genealogists by Birdie Monk Holsclaw, CG, FUGA, and Jake Gehring
Wednesday - Port Side
It’s A Small Biz: Genealogy Is Just the Product You Sell by Beverly Rice, CGPricing Your Services by Kory L. Meyerink, AG, FUGAThe Part-Time Professional Genealogist: A Jekyll and Hyde Existence by Ann Mohr Osisek
Wednesday - Starboard Side
DNA for the Professional Genealogist by Thomas Shawker, MDThe Role of the 21st Century Genealogist in International Probate Research by Eileen M. O’Duill, CG, CGLSpeaking! by George G. Morgan
The Ship's Log
Stolen Ancestors: How to Identify, Reclaim, and Protect. James K. Jeffrey. Client work presents much pleasure, opportunity for professional growth and development, and—on occasion—reason to pause. Customers call upon our expertise in creating presentation pieces, to sort out confused lineages, and to break through brick walls. Discover how to quickly spot the confusion of persons, fabricated lineages, and fictional ancestors.
Kinship Theory for Genealogists. Carolyn Earle Billingsley, PhD. We as genealogists have long insisted that our field is a legitimate discipline closely akin to scholarly history, but efforts to construct a theory of genealogy have had mixed results. This lecture proffers the following: the central organizing principle in the discipline of genealogy is the reconstruction and analysis of kinship. This theoretical base defines genealogy and places the field at a point midway between, and equal in status, to history and anthropology.
Print on Demand: A Publishing Option for Genealogists. Jake Gehring and Birdie Monk Holsclaw, CG, FUGA. Learn about “print-on-demand,” a recently developed technology which can offer new publishing and marketing options for the professional genealogist. This lecture will present a description of this printing service, uses of the service by professionals, the pros and cons of the service, and vendors.
It’s a Small Biz: Genealogy Is Just the Product You Sell. Beverly Rice, CG. There is much to do and many facets to consider before you leave the world of a regular income, retirement accounts, and health insurance to become a small business owner. You must consider two separate entities that are co-dependent: the product (you and your genealogical skills) and the management of a small business, making a profit or at least not taking a loss. This lecture will focus on the balance between the two.
Pricing Your Services. Kory Meyerink, MLS, AG, FUGA. Pricing services may be the most mysterious aspect of running a business. Setting prices too high may result in not generating enough business to pay the bills and earn a decent living. Setting prices too low devalues the services offered and de-motivates the researcher, clearly an unprofitable way to run a business. Low prices will eventually bankrupt the business, especially when unexpected expenses arise.
The Part-Time Professional Genealogist: A Jekyll and Hyde Existence. Ann Mohr Osisek. This is a primer for those individuals considering careers as professional genealogists. What are the expectations, struggles, disappointments, and triumphs? This lecture will encourage others to forge ahead with their aspirations as professional genealogists and not become discouraged in the process. Balance, fortitude, and focus will be stressed. The importance of support network of family, friends, and the genealogical community will be discussed.
DNA Testing for the Professional Genealogist. Thomas Shawker, MD. This talk will explain the principles behind Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests for genealogy show how to interpret the results, and demonstrate how they can be used for genealogy. There will be a discussion, with examples, of what DNA test professionals should recommend to their clients, how the results should be interpreted, and what reference sources are available that professionals can use to advise their clients.
Role of the 21st Century Genealogist in International Probate Research. Eileen O’Duill, CG, CGL. In recent years, genealogists have become increasingly involved in the legal cases, particularly intestate matters. Identifying the nearest next-of- kin and documenting a relationship to the deceased requires research skills and determination. Rules of evidence as they apply to a genealogist’s work will be examined. Particular emphasis will be placed on ethics involved in locating the nearest next of kin.
Speaking! George G. Morgan. Breaking into the national genealogical conference speaking circuit can be frustrating but it can be done. Program chairs are looking for new ideas and perspectives about records, methodologies, and helpful electronic products and services. Learn what they are really seeking and how to break into the national conference business. This lecture also will address speaking contracts and the pros and cons of using transparencies or computer-based visual materials to excite and educate audiences.
The Crew
Carolyn Earle Billingsly, Ph.D. earned her BA (1994) in history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. After studying in Austria on a Fulbright Scholarship (1994–1996), she was awarded her MA (1998) and PhD (2001) from Rice University, in the fields of southern history and anthropological kinship theory. Her dissertation, published as Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier (University of Georgia Press, 2004), is based on a genealogical study of an extended kinship group.
Jake Gehring is a popular technology writer and lecturer and is employed with the Family and Church History Department of the LDS Church. Jake graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in genealogy/family history and is former editor of Genealogical Computing. He is a member of the APG Board of Directors.
Birdie Monk Holsclaw, CG, FUGA, has served as an officer, committee/board member, and volunteer for APG and FGS, is a former indexer of the NGSQ, and contributor to the APGQ and The Colorado Genealogist. She is a local and national lecturer, with a special interest in problem solving using neighborhood reconstruction, land and related records, and records of the deaf and blind.
James K. Jeffrey is the collection specialist in genealogy at the Denver Public Library, president of the Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England Family History Society, Trustee of the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History, and a 2004 recipient of the P. William Filby Award for Excellence in Genealogical Librarianship. He is past president of the Colorado Council of Genealogical Societies and The Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists.
Kory Meyerink, MLS, AG, FUGA, is the editor and primary author of Ancestry’s ALA award-winning, Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records. A professional researcher in Salt Lake City, he is a vice president at ProGenealogists, Inc. where he guides research, writing, and development of Internet genealogy tools. Named a Fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association in 2002, he has been accredited since 1980 (Germany, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and New England states).
George G. Morgan owns and operates Aha! Seminars, Inc., a company focusing on continuing education for U.S. library personnel and genealogists worldwide. He is the author of the “Along Those Lines ...,” online genealogy column at Ancestry.com, three highly successful books, and more than 200 articles and online columns. He is past president of ISFHWE, a director of the Genealogical Speakers Guild, and a director of the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa). He teaches online genealogy classes for MyFamily.com and was program chair for the highly acclaimed 2003 FGS Conference held in Orlando, Florida.
Eileen O’Duill, CG, CGL is a Dublin-based genealogist specializing in international probate research. Eileen has researched over 200 estates involving Irish next-of-kin worldwide and has been admitted as an expert witness at kinship hearings in five New York counties. She is a member of the Council of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland. She co-authored Irish Civil Registration: Where Do I Begin? with Steven ffeary Smyrl and is recognized as an expert on the General Register Office of Ireland.
Ann Mohr Osisek has served as managing instructor for genealogy programs at the Disney Institute in Orlando, Florida, taught genealogy classes for the Orange County, Florida Adult Education Program for fourteen years, and is a genealogy instructor at Seminole County (Florida) Community College. She is vice president of the Florida State Genealogical Society, a past president of Central Florida Genealogical Society and their long-standing education chair.
Beverly Rice, CG, has been teaching and lecturing on genealogical and historical topics for over twelve years. She has been a Family History Center volunteer librarian for fifteen years and is on the faculty of the National Institute for Genealogical Studies. Beverly is the secretary for the Association of Professional Genealogists. She has been a small business owner for over 25 years, and is currently making the change from genealogy as a “not-for-profit business” to genealogy as a “for-profit business.”
Thomas Shawker, MD, graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and works as a research physician at the National Institute of Health. His academic accomplishments include over 100 scientific publications. He is past president of the Prince George’s County (Maryland) Genealogical Society, currently serves as chairman of the NGS Family Health and Heredity Committee, and is the author of the book, Unlocking Your Genetic History in the NGS book series.
August 30, 2006 Boston
Presented by the Association of Professional Genealogist in conjuction with the annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies.
Registration Information
In order to attend the Professional Management Conference (PMC), individuals must also register for at least Wednesday’s Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) Conference. The following are the PMC rates only:
Early Member Registration (by December 31, 2005) $100
Regular Member Registration (by July 1, 2006) $110
Late Member Registration (after July 1, 2006) $150
Non-Member Registration (any date) $150
Three ways to register or order an FGS brochure:
1. Online: www.fgs.org - the FGS conference is a 4-day conference from August 30th through September 2nd. Online registration for the conference is coming soon.2. Write: Federation of Genealogical SocietiesP. O. Box 200940, Austin, TX 78720-09403. Call: 888-FGS-1500 toll free
The Schedule
Wednesday ~ Main Deck ~ All Players
Stolen Ancestors: How to Identify, Reclaim, and Protect by James Jeffrey
Kinship Theory for Genealogists by Carolyn Earle Billingsley, PHD
Print on Demand - A Publishing Option for Genealogists by Birdie Monk Holsclaw, CG, FUGA, and Jake Gehring
Wednesday - Port Side
It’s A Small Biz: Genealogy Is Just the Product You Sell by Beverly Rice, CGPricing Your Services by Kory L. Meyerink, AG, FUGAThe Part-Time Professional Genealogist: A Jekyll and Hyde Existence by Ann Mohr Osisek
Wednesday - Starboard Side
DNA for the Professional Genealogist by Thomas Shawker, MDThe Role of the 21st Century Genealogist in International Probate Research by Eileen M. O’Duill, CG, CGLSpeaking! by George G. Morgan
The Ship's Log
Stolen Ancestors: How to Identify, Reclaim, and Protect. James K. Jeffrey. Client work presents much pleasure, opportunity for professional growth and development, and—on occasion—reason to pause. Customers call upon our expertise in creating presentation pieces, to sort out confused lineages, and to break through brick walls. Discover how to quickly spot the confusion of persons, fabricated lineages, and fictional ancestors.
Kinship Theory for Genealogists. Carolyn Earle Billingsley, PhD. We as genealogists have long insisted that our field is a legitimate discipline closely akin to scholarly history, but efforts to construct a theory of genealogy have had mixed results. This lecture proffers the following: the central organizing principle in the discipline of genealogy is the reconstruction and analysis of kinship. This theoretical base defines genealogy and places the field at a point midway between, and equal in status, to history and anthropology.
Print on Demand: A Publishing Option for Genealogists. Jake Gehring and Birdie Monk Holsclaw, CG, FUGA. Learn about “print-on-demand,” a recently developed technology which can offer new publishing and marketing options for the professional genealogist. This lecture will present a description of this printing service, uses of the service by professionals, the pros and cons of the service, and vendors.
It’s a Small Biz: Genealogy Is Just the Product You Sell. Beverly Rice, CG. There is much to do and many facets to consider before you leave the world of a regular income, retirement accounts, and health insurance to become a small business owner. You must consider two separate entities that are co-dependent: the product (you and your genealogical skills) and the management of a small business, making a profit or at least not taking a loss. This lecture will focus on the balance between the two.
Pricing Your Services. Kory Meyerink, MLS, AG, FUGA. Pricing services may be the most mysterious aspect of running a business. Setting prices too high may result in not generating enough business to pay the bills and earn a decent living. Setting prices too low devalues the services offered and de-motivates the researcher, clearly an unprofitable way to run a business. Low prices will eventually bankrupt the business, especially when unexpected expenses arise.
The Part-Time Professional Genealogist: A Jekyll and Hyde Existence. Ann Mohr Osisek. This is a primer for those individuals considering careers as professional genealogists. What are the expectations, struggles, disappointments, and triumphs? This lecture will encourage others to forge ahead with their aspirations as professional genealogists and not become discouraged in the process. Balance, fortitude, and focus will be stressed. The importance of support network of family, friends, and the genealogical community will be discussed.
DNA Testing for the Professional Genealogist. Thomas Shawker, MD. This talk will explain the principles behind Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests for genealogy show how to interpret the results, and demonstrate how they can be used for genealogy. There will be a discussion, with examples, of what DNA test professionals should recommend to their clients, how the results should be interpreted, and what reference sources are available that professionals can use to advise their clients.
Role of the 21st Century Genealogist in International Probate Research. Eileen O’Duill, CG, CGL. In recent years, genealogists have become increasingly involved in the legal cases, particularly intestate matters. Identifying the nearest next-of- kin and documenting a relationship to the deceased requires research skills and determination. Rules of evidence as they apply to a genealogist’s work will be examined. Particular emphasis will be placed on ethics involved in locating the nearest next of kin.
Speaking! George G. Morgan. Breaking into the national genealogical conference speaking circuit can be frustrating but it can be done. Program chairs are looking for new ideas and perspectives about records, methodologies, and helpful electronic products and services. Learn what they are really seeking and how to break into the national conference business. This lecture also will address speaking contracts and the pros and cons of using transparencies or computer-based visual materials to excite and educate audiences.
The Crew
Carolyn Earle Billingsly, Ph.D. earned her BA (1994) in history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. After studying in Austria on a Fulbright Scholarship (1994–1996), she was awarded her MA (1998) and PhD (2001) from Rice University, in the fields of southern history and anthropological kinship theory. Her dissertation, published as Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier (University of Georgia Press, 2004), is based on a genealogical study of an extended kinship group.
Jake Gehring is a popular technology writer and lecturer and is employed with the Family and Church History Department of the LDS Church. Jake graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in genealogy/family history and is former editor of Genealogical Computing. He is a member of the APG Board of Directors.
Birdie Monk Holsclaw, CG, FUGA, has served as an officer, committee/board member, and volunteer for APG and FGS, is a former indexer of the NGSQ, and contributor to the APGQ and The Colorado Genealogist. She is a local and national lecturer, with a special interest in problem solving using neighborhood reconstruction, land and related records, and records of the deaf and blind.
James K. Jeffrey is the collection specialist in genealogy at the Denver Public Library, president of the Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England Family History Society, Trustee of the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History, and a 2004 recipient of the P. William Filby Award for Excellence in Genealogical Librarianship. He is past president of the Colorado Council of Genealogical Societies and The Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists.
Kory Meyerink, MLS, AG, FUGA, is the editor and primary author of Ancestry’s ALA award-winning, Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records. A professional researcher in Salt Lake City, he is a vice president at ProGenealogists, Inc. where he guides research, writing, and development of Internet genealogy tools. Named a Fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association in 2002, he has been accredited since 1980 (Germany, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and New England states).
George G. Morgan owns and operates Aha! Seminars, Inc., a company focusing on continuing education for U.S. library personnel and genealogists worldwide. He is the author of the “Along Those Lines ...,” online genealogy column at Ancestry.com, three highly successful books, and more than 200 articles and online columns. He is past president of ISFHWE, a director of the Genealogical Speakers Guild, and a director of the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa). He teaches online genealogy classes for MyFamily.com and was program chair for the highly acclaimed 2003 FGS Conference held in Orlando, Florida.
Eileen O’Duill, CG, CGL is a Dublin-based genealogist specializing in international probate research. Eileen has researched over 200 estates involving Irish next-of-kin worldwide and has been admitted as an expert witness at kinship hearings in five New York counties. She is a member of the Council of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland. She co-authored Irish Civil Registration: Where Do I Begin? with Steven ffeary Smyrl and is recognized as an expert on the General Register Office of Ireland.
Ann Mohr Osisek has served as managing instructor for genealogy programs at the Disney Institute in Orlando, Florida, taught genealogy classes for the Orange County, Florida Adult Education Program for fourteen years, and is a genealogy instructor at Seminole County (Florida) Community College. She is vice president of the Florida State Genealogical Society, a past president of Central Florida Genealogical Society and their long-standing education chair.
Beverly Rice, CG, has been teaching and lecturing on genealogical and historical topics for over twelve years. She has been a Family History Center volunteer librarian for fifteen years and is on the faculty of the National Institute for Genealogical Studies. Beverly is the secretary for the Association of Professional Genealogists. She has been a small business owner for over 25 years, and is currently making the change from genealogy as a “not-for-profit business” to genealogy as a “for-profit business.”
Thomas Shawker, MD, graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and works as a research physician at the National Institute of Health. His academic accomplishments include over 100 scientific publications. He is past president of the Prince George’s County (Maryland) Genealogical Society, currently serves as chairman of the NGS Family Health and Heredity Committee, and is the author of the book, Unlocking Your Genetic History in the NGS book series.
05 July 2006
Genealogists discover royal roots for all
By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer
Sat Jul 1, 5:18 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060701/ap_on_sc/every_man_a_king
Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conquerer and King Harold, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings.
Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors.
What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing — at least genealogically.
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another.
"Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs," said Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland. "The number of people with unprovable descents must be massive."
By the same token, for every king in a person's family tree there are thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births, deaths and lives went completely unrecorded by history. We'll never know about them, because until recently vital records were a rarity for all but the noble classes.
It works the other way, too. Anybody who had children more than a few hundred years ago is likely to have millions of descendants today, and quite a few famous ones.
Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, both Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), generals (Robert E. Lee), scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields). Some experts estimate that 80 percent of England's present population descends from Edward III.
A slight twist of fate could have prevented the existence of all of them. In 1312 the close adviser and probable lover of Edward II, Piers Gaveston, was murdered by a group of barons frustrated with their king's ineffectual rule. The next year the beleaguered king produced the son who became Edward III.
Had Edward II been killed along with Gaveston in 1312 — a definite possibility at the time — Edward III would never have been born. He wouldn't have produced the lines of descent that ultimately branched out to include all those presidents, writers and Hollywood stars — not to mention everybody else.
Of course, the only reason we're talking about Edward III is that history remembers him. For every medieval monarch there are countless long-dead nobodies whose intrigues, peccadilloes and luck have steered the course of history simply by determining where, when and with whom they reproduced.
The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to have today. Humphrys estimates that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears on the family tree of every person in the Western world.
Some people have actually tried to establish a documented line between Muhammad, who was born in the 6th century, and the medieval English monarchs, and thus to most if not all people of European descent. Nobody has succeeded yet, but one proposed lineage comes close. Though it runs through several strongly suspicious individuals, the line illustrates how lines of descent can wander down through the centuries, connecting famous figures of the past to most of the people living today.
The proposed genealogy runs through Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Her husband Ali, also a cousin of Muhammad, is considered by Shiite Muslims the legitimate heir to leadership of Islam.
Ali and Fatima had a son, al-Hasan, who died in 670. About three centuries later, his ninth great-grandson, Ismail, carried the line to Europe when he became Imam of Seville.
Many genealogists dispute the connection between al-Hasan and Ismail, claiming that it includes fictional characters specifically invented by medieval genealogists trying to link the Abbadid dynasty, founded by Ismail's son, to Muhammad.
The Abbadid dynasty was celebrated for making Seville a great cultural center at a time when most of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. The last emir in that dynasty was supposed to have had a daughter named Zaida, who is said to have changed her name to Isabel upon converting to Christianity and marrying Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon.
Yet there is no good evidence demonstrating that Isabel, who bore one son by Alfonso VI, is the same person as Zaida. So the line between Muhammad and the English monarchs probably breaks again at this point.
But if you give the Zaida/Isabel story the benefit of the doubt too, the line eventually leads to Isabel's fifth great-granddaughter Maria de Padilla (though it does encounter yet another potentially fictional character in the process).
Maria married another king of Castile and Leon, Peter the Cruel. Their great-great-granddaughter was Queen Isabel, who funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Her daughter Juana married a Hapsburg, and eventually gave rise to a Medici, a Bourbon and long line of Italian princes and dukes, spreading the Mohammedan line of descent all over Europe.
Finally, 43 generations from Mohammed, you reach an Italian princess named Marina Torlonia.
Her granddaughter is Brooke Shields.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Sat Jul 1, 5:18 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060701/ap_on_sc/every_man_a_king
Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conquerer and King Harold, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings.
Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors.
What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing — at least genealogically.
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another.
"Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs," said Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland. "The number of people with unprovable descents must be massive."
By the same token, for every king in a person's family tree there are thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births, deaths and lives went completely unrecorded by history. We'll never know about them, because until recently vital records were a rarity for all but the noble classes.
It works the other way, too. Anybody who had children more than a few hundred years ago is likely to have millions of descendants today, and quite a few famous ones.
Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, both Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), generals (Robert E. Lee), scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields). Some experts estimate that 80 percent of England's present population descends from Edward III.
A slight twist of fate could have prevented the existence of all of them. In 1312 the close adviser and probable lover of Edward II, Piers Gaveston, was murdered by a group of barons frustrated with their king's ineffectual rule. The next year the beleaguered king produced the son who became Edward III.
Had Edward II been killed along with Gaveston in 1312 — a definite possibility at the time — Edward III would never have been born. He wouldn't have produced the lines of descent that ultimately branched out to include all those presidents, writers and Hollywood stars — not to mention everybody else.
Of course, the only reason we're talking about Edward III is that history remembers him. For every medieval monarch there are countless long-dead nobodies whose intrigues, peccadilloes and luck have steered the course of history simply by determining where, when and with whom they reproduced.
The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to have today. Humphrys estimates that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears on the family tree of every person in the Western world.
Some people have actually tried to establish a documented line between Muhammad, who was born in the 6th century, and the medieval English monarchs, and thus to most if not all people of European descent. Nobody has succeeded yet, but one proposed lineage comes close. Though it runs through several strongly suspicious individuals, the line illustrates how lines of descent can wander down through the centuries, connecting famous figures of the past to most of the people living today.
The proposed genealogy runs through Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Her husband Ali, also a cousin of Muhammad, is considered by Shiite Muslims the legitimate heir to leadership of Islam.
Ali and Fatima had a son, al-Hasan, who died in 670. About three centuries later, his ninth great-grandson, Ismail, carried the line to Europe when he became Imam of Seville.
Many genealogists dispute the connection between al-Hasan and Ismail, claiming that it includes fictional characters specifically invented by medieval genealogists trying to link the Abbadid dynasty, founded by Ismail's son, to Muhammad.
The Abbadid dynasty was celebrated for making Seville a great cultural center at a time when most of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. The last emir in that dynasty was supposed to have had a daughter named Zaida, who is said to have changed her name to Isabel upon converting to Christianity and marrying Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon.
Yet there is no good evidence demonstrating that Isabel, who bore one son by Alfonso VI, is the same person as Zaida. So the line between Muhammad and the English monarchs probably breaks again at this point.
But if you give the Zaida/Isabel story the benefit of the doubt too, the line eventually leads to Isabel's fifth great-granddaughter Maria de Padilla (though it does encounter yet another potentially fictional character in the process).
Maria married another king of Castile and Leon, Peter the Cruel. Their great-great-granddaughter was Queen Isabel, who funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Her daughter Juana married a Hapsburg, and eventually gave rise to a Medici, a Bourbon and long line of Italian princes and dukes, spreading the Mohammedan line of descent all over Europe.
Finally, 43 generations from Mohammed, you reach an Italian princess named Marina Torlonia.
Her granddaughter is Brooke Shields.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
26 June 2006
Book Notes (unedited) written for the Journal of Southern History
The Mississippi River in 1953: A Photographic Journey from the Headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. Charles Dee Sharp, with essays by John O. Anfinson. (Santa Fe, N.M., and Stauton, Va.: Center for American Places, 2005; distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Pp. x, 222. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 1-930066-27-9.) This sumptuous volume of color and black and white photographs, along with Charles Dee Sharp’s contemporaneous journal entries accompanying the images, captures the feel, the variety, the people, the beauty, and the reality of the many aspects of the Mississippi River of a bygone era. Although the documentary film Sharp intended to make never materialized, his photographs are beautifully reproduced here. In the twenty-three-page conclusion, an essay by John O. Anfinson, an author and historian of America’s greatest river, provides historical background. This volume also includes introductory material explaining the provenance of the pictures, an appendix, which discusses the river’s geology, thirty-two pages of “Notes on the Photographs,” compiled by project director Randall B. Jones, and a selected bibliography. [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
Between Contacts and Colonies: Archaeological Perspectives on the Protohistoric Southeast. Edited by Carmeron B. Wesson and Mark A. Rees. (Tuscaloosa, and London: University of Alabama Press, 2002. Pp. x, 270, 34 illustrations. Paper $29.99, ISBN 0-8173-1167-X; Cloth $55.00, ISBN 0-8173-1253-6.) In this volume of essays, taken from presentations at a 1997 symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archeological Conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ten chapters present perspectives on Native Americans in the Southeast during the time between initial contact with Europeans and the beginning recorded history pertaining to these peoples almost two centuries later—a period referred to as the Protohistoric period (roughly the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries). The authors draw on multidisciplinary approaches, including history, archaeology, ethnohistory, and anthropology, and most of the essays are quite theoretical in style and content. The themes analyzing Native American culture include: “cultural ecology, warfare, architecture, subsistence, disease, trade, the construction of social identities, and political economy” and sites discussed include “data from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia” (p. 9). [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
Malindy’s Freedom: The Story of a Slave Family. Mildred Johnson and Theresa Delsoin; edited by Stuart Symington Jr. and Anne W. Symington. (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2005. Pp. xvi, 215. $22.95, ISBN 1-883982-53-7.) Malindy’s Freedom, beautifully crafted and illustrated, recounts the life of a young Cherokee Indian girl (born circa 1820), who became enslaved illegally in Franklin County, Missouri. As an adult slave, she married a free black man, whose heritage was mostly Irish and Native American, and gave birth to their five children, who were, like their mother, enslaved. Taken directly from the authors’s slave grandmother’s oft-told stories from her own experiences and those of her mother Malindy, this work of fictionalized oral history (actual dialogue is invented) includes well integrated historical context, albeit with only a selected bibliography instead of footnotes. As with much oral history, while containing much factual information, it is a bit marred by the tone, which all too often makes Malindy and her husband Charlie Wilson sound vaguely saint like. For example, “[Malindy’s] children were taught self-control, discipline, forbearance, respect, and honor” (p. 93). However, this is a tale powerfully told with narrative fluidity to introduce readers to a “real” story of slavery and is a good addition to the literature of slave narratives. Malindy’s Freedom is especially effective in conveying the perils of a female slave in a world where she had no control over her own body or the fate of her own children; the section where she and her children are sold is particularly affecting. Emancipation came to Malindy and her family after the Civil War, but she died only five years later, leaving her husband and grown children to complete their journey from slavery to freedom. [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
America’s Trail of Tears: A Story of Love and Betrayal. Dean W. Arnold. (Chattanooga, Tenn.: Chattanooga Historical Foundation Co., 2005. P. 274. Paper, $19.95, plus $3 shipping; available from author: PO Box 2053, Chattanooga, TN 37409. ISBN 0-9749076-0-X.) The author’s intent in writing this book is clear by the time one finishes reading it: he realized that neither the Cherokee people nor non-Native Americans were familiar with this important story of how the Cherokee were removed to present-day Oklahoma and his goal was to tell the story in an accessible way. Dean W. Arnold is a journalist and local historian, who has provided a clear narrative of the events leading up to, surrounding, and immediately after the usurpation of Cherokee lands in the Southeast. (There is very little about the actual Trail or Tears.) All the significant players are fleshed out, including John Ross, the Ridges, Elias Boudinot, Andrew Jackson, and the many clergymen who worked with religious organizations to bring their message and “civilization” to the native people, as well as supporting characters such as Chief Justice John Marshall and John C. Calhoun. Arnold is not breaking any new ground here, but he has produced a readable narrative of what happened and why during this crucial period of American history, along with explanations of South Carolina’s Nullification Act, Jackson’s motivations, the overall political climate, the culture of the times, along with illustrations, source citations, a bibliography, and a robust index. Furthermore, Arnold presents the stories from all sides in the conflict: Did Andrew Jackson have the best interests of Native Americans in mind or did he just want to open up their lands to westward expansion? Did the Ridges sell out and become the villains, or were they acting to ensure what they believed to be their people’s survival? Did Ross close his eyes to the inevitability of removal or was he a great leader for acting on behalf of the majority of his people to the very end? This is an excellent book, historically well grounded, to introduce and explain the topic to anyone who might be unfamiliar with the story in its entirety. [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
Educating the Masses: The Unfolding History of Black School Administrators in Arkansas, 1900–2000. Research Committee of the Retired Educators of Little Rock and Other Public Schools, edited by C. Calvin Smith, contributing editor Linda Walls Joshua. (Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 2003. Pp. x, 223. Cloth $29.95, ISBN 1-55728-744-9. Paper $14.95, ISBN 1-55728-806-2.) Arkansas, a poor state, has always been hard-pressed to provide public education for her white students; black students had even less funding, poorer facilities, and teachers who were paid even less than their white counterparts. This book, which begins with the advent of schools for black students during Reconstruction, lists many of the black school administrators of the twentieth century and recounts their individual and collective struggles to improve the situation of their schools and their students. [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
Between Contacts and Colonies: Archaeological Perspectives on the Protohistoric Southeast. Edited by Carmeron B. Wesson and Mark A. Rees. (Tuscaloosa, and London: University of Alabama Press, 2002. Pp. x, 270, 34 illustrations. Paper $29.99, ISBN 0-8173-1167-X; Cloth $55.00, ISBN 0-8173-1253-6.) In this volume of essays, taken from presentations at a 1997 symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archeological Conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ten chapters present perspectives on Native Americans in the Southeast during the time between initial contact with Europeans and the beginning recorded history pertaining to these peoples almost two centuries later—a period referred to as the Protohistoric period (roughly the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries). The authors draw on multidisciplinary approaches, including history, archaeology, ethnohistory, and anthropology, and most of the essays are quite theoretical in style and content. The themes analyzing Native American culture include: “cultural ecology, warfare, architecture, subsistence, disease, trade, the construction of social identities, and political economy” and sites discussed include “data from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia” (p. 9). [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
Malindy’s Freedom: The Story of a Slave Family. Mildred Johnson and Theresa Delsoin; edited by Stuart Symington Jr. and Anne W. Symington. (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2005. Pp. xvi, 215. $22.95, ISBN 1-883982-53-7.) Malindy’s Freedom, beautifully crafted and illustrated, recounts the life of a young Cherokee Indian girl (born circa 1820), who became enslaved illegally in Franklin County, Missouri. As an adult slave, she married a free black man, whose heritage was mostly Irish and Native American, and gave birth to their five children, who were, like their mother, enslaved. Taken directly from the authors’s slave grandmother’s oft-told stories from her own experiences and those of her mother Malindy, this work of fictionalized oral history (actual dialogue is invented) includes well integrated historical context, albeit with only a selected bibliography instead of footnotes. As with much oral history, while containing much factual information, it is a bit marred by the tone, which all too often makes Malindy and her husband Charlie Wilson sound vaguely saint like. For example, “[Malindy’s] children were taught self-control, discipline, forbearance, respect, and honor” (p. 93). However, this is a tale powerfully told with narrative fluidity to introduce readers to a “real” story of slavery and is a good addition to the literature of slave narratives. Malindy’s Freedom is especially effective in conveying the perils of a female slave in a world where she had no control over her own body or the fate of her own children; the section where she and her children are sold is particularly affecting. Emancipation came to Malindy and her family after the Civil War, but she died only five years later, leaving her husband and grown children to complete their journey from slavery to freedom. [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
America’s Trail of Tears: A Story of Love and Betrayal. Dean W. Arnold. (Chattanooga, Tenn.: Chattanooga Historical Foundation Co., 2005. P. 274. Paper, $19.95, plus $3 shipping; available from author: PO Box 2053, Chattanooga, TN 37409. ISBN 0-9749076-0-X.) The author’s intent in writing this book is clear by the time one finishes reading it: he realized that neither the Cherokee people nor non-Native Americans were familiar with this important story of how the Cherokee were removed to present-day Oklahoma and his goal was to tell the story in an accessible way. Dean W. Arnold is a journalist and local historian, who has provided a clear narrative of the events leading up to, surrounding, and immediately after the usurpation of Cherokee lands in the Southeast. (There is very little about the actual Trail or Tears.) All the significant players are fleshed out, including John Ross, the Ridges, Elias Boudinot, Andrew Jackson, and the many clergymen who worked with religious organizations to bring their message and “civilization” to the native people, as well as supporting characters such as Chief Justice John Marshall and John C. Calhoun. Arnold is not breaking any new ground here, but he has produced a readable narrative of what happened and why during this crucial period of American history, along with explanations of South Carolina’s Nullification Act, Jackson’s motivations, the overall political climate, the culture of the times, along with illustrations, source citations, a bibliography, and a robust index. Furthermore, Arnold presents the stories from all sides in the conflict: Did Andrew Jackson have the best interests of Native Americans in mind or did he just want to open up their lands to westward expansion? Did the Ridges sell out and become the villains, or were they acting to ensure what they believed to be their people’s survival? Did Ross close his eyes to the inevitability of removal or was he a great leader for acting on behalf of the majority of his people to the very end? This is an excellent book, historically well grounded, to introduce and explain the topic to anyone who might be unfamiliar with the story in its entirety. [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
Educating the Masses: The Unfolding History of Black School Administrators in Arkansas, 1900–2000. Research Committee of the Retired Educators of Little Rock and Other Public Schools, edited by C. Calvin Smith, contributing editor Linda Walls Joshua. (Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 2003. Pp. x, 223. Cloth $29.95, ISBN 1-55728-744-9. Paper $14.95, ISBN 1-55728-806-2.) Arkansas, a poor state, has always been hard-pressed to provide public education for her white students; black students had even less funding, poorer facilities, and teachers who were paid even less than their white counterparts. This book, which begins with the advent of schools for black students during Reconstruction, lists many of the black school administrators of the twentieth century and recounts their individual and collective struggles to improve the situation of their schools and their students. [Carolyn Earle Billingsley, University of Arkansas at Little Rock]
07 May 2006
"Oh, for a Touch of the Vanished Hand" by Dana M. Mangham
"Oh, for a Touch of the Vanished Hand": Discovering a Southern Family and the Civil War by Dana M. Mangham; Review by Carolyn Earle Billingsley; Journal of Southern History, Vol. 69, No. 1 (2003 ): 185+.
Review of All Our Relations by Lorri Glover
All Our Relations: Blood Ties and Emotional Bonds among the Early South Carolina Gentry, Review by Carolyn Earle Billingsley; Journal of Southern History, Vol. 68, No. 4 (2002).
Will of Agnes Keesee, 1829, Sumner County, Alabama
Will of Agnes Keesee (nee Agnes Terry)
Written 10 February 1829; copy of original will #191 from Sumner County,
Tennessee Archives, transcribed by Carolyn Earle Billingsley, 7 April, 1999:
I Agnes Keesee of the county of Sumner & State of Tennessee This day I make my last will feeling my Self in a reasonable State of mind I make this will in preference to all other will aforesaid or maid this my Will and Testament in the name of God the great Savior of the universe hav I desolve my Soul to and my body to it's mother dust and may this my last Will be done I pray.
That is first I leave all of my cattle & hogs & sheepe and carrage & corn & pork & some other property to pay my dets [debts] doues [dues] & de mands, where in then
1 I give in to George W. Sanders one cart and all my farming tools
2 Then I give unto Mary Sanders one Burow & one bed and all of my bedclothes, one [spinning] wheel & cards, two pots, one oven one table
third I give unto Bedience ball [Obedience Ball--Agnes's daugher Obedience "Biddy" Keesee married James Ball; and perhaps also had a daughter named Obedience] a [Deske?] one cittle [kettle?] and one roan mare
Fourth I give un to Janie Ball one cupboard
Fifth I give unto Roady Ball one looking glass & towel
Six I give unto Champnes Ball one Arm cheer [chair]
Seventh I give unto Thomas Keesee one dollar
Eight I give unto George F. Keesee one dollor
Ninth I give unto Champness Keesee one dollar
10th I give unto Louisa Smith one dollar
11th I give unto Patiance Smith one dollar
12th I give unto Rody [Rhoda] McNight one dollar
13th I give unto Agnes Lyings [Lyons] one dollar
14th I give unto Nancy Henry one dollar
15th I give unto Robert Sanders one dollar
This is my Will given to my concent and I appoint George W. Sanders and James Ball my AdminisStraters for wich we Set our hands an Seals this the 10 of Feb. 1829
Test [Dick?/A. R.? Mills?--faded copy here] her {Seal} Agness Keesee X mark {Seal} Test H. K. Shockly George W. Sanders {Seal}
State of Tennessee
Sumner County Court May Term 1829
The last will & testament of Agnes Keesee decd was [entered?] in open court for probate & was duly proved by the oath of Andrew? R Mills one of the subscribing witnesses thereto & ordered to be recorded [therefor?] James Ball one of the Exors therein named appeared in court & agreed to take upon himself the [?] of the execution thereof & together with [Ande/Andrew?] R. Mills his security entered into & acknowledged their bond to the governor & his successors in office in the sum of five hundred dollars conditioned as the Law directs & took the oath of Exor [in both cases, this word in this document seems to be Exor with " over the r] forscribed/prescribed by law & at the same time rendered into court an account of sales or a part of the sales of said decedent which is ordered to be recorded
A Copy Test
A H. Douglass Clerk
[See more on Keesee at http://www.brightok.net/~lwmac/keesee.htm]
Written 10 February 1829; copy of original will #191 from Sumner County,
Tennessee Archives, transcribed by Carolyn Earle Billingsley, 7 April, 1999:
I Agnes Keesee of the county of Sumner & State of Tennessee This day I make my last will feeling my Self in a reasonable State of mind I make this will in preference to all other will aforesaid or maid this my Will and Testament in the name of God the great Savior of the universe hav I desolve my Soul to and my body to it's mother dust and may this my last Will be done I pray.
That is first I leave all of my cattle & hogs & sheepe and carrage & corn & pork & some other property to pay my dets [debts] doues [dues] & de mands, where in then
1 I give in to George W. Sanders one cart and all my farming tools
2 Then I give unto Mary Sanders one Burow & one bed and all of my bedclothes, one [spinning] wheel & cards, two pots, one oven one table
third I give unto Bedience ball [Obedience Ball--Agnes's daugher Obedience "Biddy" Keesee married James Ball; and perhaps also had a daughter named Obedience] a [Deske?] one cittle [kettle?] and one roan mare
Fourth I give un to Janie Ball one cupboard
Fifth I give unto Roady Ball one looking glass & towel
Six I give unto Champnes Ball one Arm cheer [chair]
Seventh I give unto Thomas Keesee one dollar
Eight I give unto George F. Keesee one dollor
Ninth I give unto Champness Keesee one dollar
10th I give unto Louisa Smith one dollar
11th I give unto Patiance Smith one dollar
12th I give unto Rody [Rhoda] McNight one dollar
13th I give unto Agnes Lyings [Lyons] one dollar
14th I give unto Nancy Henry one dollar
15th I give unto Robert Sanders one dollar
This is my Will given to my concent and I appoint George W. Sanders and James Ball my AdminisStraters for wich we Set our hands an Seals this the 10 of Feb. 1829
Test [Dick?/A. R.? Mills?--faded copy here] her {Seal} Agness Keesee X mark {Seal} Test H. K. Shockly George W. Sanders {Seal}
State of Tennessee
Sumner County Court May Term 1829
The last will & testament of Agnes Keesee decd was [entered?] in open court for probate & was duly proved by the oath of Andrew? R Mills one of the subscribing witnesses thereto & ordered to be recorded [therefor?] James Ball one of the Exors therein named appeared in court & agreed to take upon himself the [?] of the execution thereof & together with [Ande/Andrew?] R. Mills his security entered into & acknowledged their bond to the governor & his successors in office in the sum of five hundred dollars conditioned as the Law directs & took the oath of Exor [in both cases, this word in this document seems to be Exor with " over the r] forscribed/prescribed by law & at the same time rendered into court an account of sales or a part of the sales of said decedent which is ordered to be recorded
A Copy Test
A H. Douglass Clerk
[See more on Keesee at http://www.brightok.net/~lwmac/keesee.htm]
Billingsley to discuss book at Batesville's Old Independence Regional Museum
Billingsley to discuss book on social, family history at museum
At noon on Wednesday, April 19, [2006] Old Independence Regional Museum will present its second springtime Brown Bag with a Book program. Historian and professional genealogist Carolyn Earle Billingsley will discuss and sign copies of her book, Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier (University of Georgia Press, 2004.) The book, a pioneering work in the fusion of social and family history, traces the migration of a network of families across the South from the Revolutionary era until the Civil War.
The author’s personal story is no less interesting than her book. A resident of central Arkansas since 1973, Billingsley spent the 1970s and '80s playing the role of suburban mom to her four children. In 1990, she enrolled at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock as a 41-year-old freshman. Graduating four years later with a B.A. in history and minor in German, she received a two-year Fulbright Scholarship to study German translation and Austrian history at Karl-Franzens Universistät in Graz, Austria. Following her study in Austria, Billingsley received a graduate fellowship to attend Rice University, where she served as an editorial intern at the Journal of Southern History and the Jefferson Davis Papers. She received the M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Rice.
Communities of Kinship is Billingsley’s revised dissertation. In addition, she has published extensively in the field of family and local history. Billingsley currently resides in Alexander, Ark., where she works as a professional genealogist and independent historian and manages her family’s land.
Bring a sack lunch to the museum (380 South 9th St.), relax, eat, and listen. Old Independence Regional Museum will provide free water and soft drinks.
At noon on Wednesday, April 19, [2006] Old Independence Regional Museum will present its second springtime Brown Bag with a Book program. Historian and professional genealogist Carolyn Earle Billingsley will discuss and sign copies of her book, Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier (University of Georgia Press, 2004.) The book, a pioneering work in the fusion of social and family history, traces the migration of a network of families across the South from the Revolutionary era until the Civil War.
The author’s personal story is no less interesting than her book. A resident of central Arkansas since 1973, Billingsley spent the 1970s and '80s playing the role of suburban mom to her four children. In 1990, she enrolled at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock as a 41-year-old freshman. Graduating four years later with a B.A. in history and minor in German, she received a two-year Fulbright Scholarship to study German translation and Austrian history at Karl-Franzens Universistät in Graz, Austria. Following her study in Austria, Billingsley received a graduate fellowship to attend Rice University, where she served as an editorial intern at the Journal of Southern History and the Jefferson Davis Papers. She received the M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Rice.
Communities of Kinship is Billingsley’s revised dissertation. In addition, she has published extensively in the field of family and local history. Billingsley currently resides in Alexander, Ark., where she works as a professional genealogist and independent historian and manages her family’s land.
Bring a sack lunch to the museum (380 South 9th St.), relax, eat, and listen. Old Independence Regional Museum will provide free water and soft drinks.
Beginner's Guide to Family History Research
Read this popular guide by Desmond Walls Allen and Carolyn Earle Billingsley free online at Arkansas Research.
Review: Communities of Kinship
Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier
Alabama Review, Jul 2005 by Glover, Lorri
Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier. By Carolyn Earle Billingsley. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. xi, 215 pp. $49.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8203-2509-0. $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8203-2510-4.
Before earning her Ph.D. in history, Carolyn Earle Billingsley worked as a professional genealogist. Communities of Kinship blends her two crafts, and with this monograph she seeks to reveal how genealogical methodologies can advance historical analysis of southern families and culture. Billingsley argues that kinship lay at the center of antebellum southern life but remains under-analyzed by scholars studying the history of the region. According to her, only by expanding their use of genealogical approaches can historians fully appreciate the power of kinship in virtually every aspect of antebellum southerners' lives.
Billingsley begins her book with an extensive exploration of the terms and theories of kinship, pointing out that while historians occasionally invoke kinship in their descriptions of the early South, they seldom rigorously reconstruct kin networks in the way that genealogists do. Few scholars, she maintains, go beyond marriage records or surname matches in their analyses of kin. And without using genealogical approaches, she posits, scholars can never fully appreciate extra-nuclear family bonds. These ties to a wide array of consanguine, affinal, and even fictive kin mattered far more in the antebellum South than in the North or in contemporary America, according to Billingsley, because fewer public institutions existed in the early South. Family, broadly conceived, fulfilled a host of functions-practical, political, and spiritual-and formed the foundation of life for most antebellum whites.
In order to test these theories, Billingsley traces the kin ties of the Keesee family, from which she is descended, from their Tidewater roots in the eighteenth century through the erosion of their family power in the postbellum Southwest. Thomas Keesee was born in Virginia in 1778 and died in Arkansas in 1861. In the intervening years, he and numerous members of his nuclear and extended families moved to Tennessee, then Alabama, and finally Arkansas. Some of his descendants eventually migrated to Texas. At every move, they traveled with and settled near kinfolk. Thus the repopulation of the Southwest by whites depended on kin support. Neighborhoods and kin networks became synonymous, as migrating southerners lived physically surrounded by relatives. On occasion, members of the family separated, with some migrating farther west and others remaining behind. But "none of their moves or changes took place outside of a group of kindred" (p. 71). Billingsley includes a number of charts of neighborhood ties and migratory maps to convey visually the information collected in her database of the Keesee family and to reinforce the point that kinship drove westward settlement. Kinship similarly lay at the heart of religious identity. As with communities, kin and congregation usually overlapped on the southern frontier. Although members of the family changed denominational affiliation, they seldom did so without kin influence.
Deeply immersed in family ties, the Keesees appear in Billingsley's narrative as acquisitive and upwardly mobile. They sought inclusion in the planter elite and achieved that status by cooperating with their relatives and pooling their resources. Members of the Keesee network understood that economic and political power went hand in hand in the early South, and they used their kinship ties, particularly strategic marriages, to rise in their communities. Kinship identity, argues Billingsley, informed social status. An individual might not own substantial land or slaves himself, but he could claim a planter identity by virtue of his family membership. Kinship thus enabled the Keesees to expand onto the southern frontier, to build communities and congregations, and to join the ranks of the dominant planter elite.
Much of this, Billingsley's final chapter explains, came undone after the Civil War. Confederate defeat ended slavery and thereby undermined the wealth and power of planter families such as the Keesees. Moreover, the South experienced greater institutionalization after the war, and larger numbers of banks, schools, and government agencies made kinship less vital in the postbellum era. Although the ideas in this chapter, as with the earlier ones, will not appear terribly innovative to most southern historians, the rigor of the research methodology is impressive.
Billingsley will probably not succeed in convincing scholars to elevate kinship to a "category of analysis complementary to and potentially as powerful as race, class, and gender" (p. 1). But her work does reveal that the Keesees (and probably all southern whites) defined family broadly and relied on kin extensively. She argues convincingly that genealogy offers some useful and underutilized tools for professional historians.
Lorri Glover
University of Tennessee
Copyright University of Alabama Press Jul 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved
http://www.looksmartfamilytree.com/p/articles/mi_qa3880/is_200507/ai_n15329048?pi=homfam
Alabama Review, Jul 2005 by Glover, Lorri
Communities of Kinship: Antebellum Families and the Settlement of the Cotton Frontier. By Carolyn Earle Billingsley. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. xi, 215 pp. $49.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8203-2509-0. $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8203-2510-4.
Before earning her Ph.D. in history, Carolyn Earle Billingsley worked as a professional genealogist. Communities of Kinship blends her two crafts, and with this monograph she seeks to reveal how genealogical methodologies can advance historical analysis of southern families and culture. Billingsley argues that kinship lay at the center of antebellum southern life but remains under-analyzed by scholars studying the history of the region. According to her, only by expanding their use of genealogical approaches can historians fully appreciate the power of kinship in virtually every aspect of antebellum southerners' lives.
Billingsley begins her book with an extensive exploration of the terms and theories of kinship, pointing out that while historians occasionally invoke kinship in their descriptions of the early South, they seldom rigorously reconstruct kin networks in the way that genealogists do. Few scholars, she maintains, go beyond marriage records or surname matches in their analyses of kin. And without using genealogical approaches, she posits, scholars can never fully appreciate extra-nuclear family bonds. These ties to a wide array of consanguine, affinal, and even fictive kin mattered far more in the antebellum South than in the North or in contemporary America, according to Billingsley, because fewer public institutions existed in the early South. Family, broadly conceived, fulfilled a host of functions-practical, political, and spiritual-and formed the foundation of life for most antebellum whites.
In order to test these theories, Billingsley traces the kin ties of the Keesee family, from which she is descended, from their Tidewater roots in the eighteenth century through the erosion of their family power in the postbellum Southwest. Thomas Keesee was born in Virginia in 1778 and died in Arkansas in 1861. In the intervening years, he and numerous members of his nuclear and extended families moved to Tennessee, then Alabama, and finally Arkansas. Some of his descendants eventually migrated to Texas. At every move, they traveled with and settled near kinfolk. Thus the repopulation of the Southwest by whites depended on kin support. Neighborhoods and kin networks became synonymous, as migrating southerners lived physically surrounded by relatives. On occasion, members of the family separated, with some migrating farther west and others remaining behind. But "none of their moves or changes took place outside of a group of kindred" (p. 71). Billingsley includes a number of charts of neighborhood ties and migratory maps to convey visually the information collected in her database of the Keesee family and to reinforce the point that kinship drove westward settlement. Kinship similarly lay at the heart of religious identity. As with communities, kin and congregation usually overlapped on the southern frontier. Although members of the family changed denominational affiliation, they seldom did so without kin influence.
Deeply immersed in family ties, the Keesees appear in Billingsley's narrative as acquisitive and upwardly mobile. They sought inclusion in the planter elite and achieved that status by cooperating with their relatives and pooling their resources. Members of the Keesee network understood that economic and political power went hand in hand in the early South, and they used their kinship ties, particularly strategic marriages, to rise in their communities. Kinship identity, argues Billingsley, informed social status. An individual might not own substantial land or slaves himself, but he could claim a planter identity by virtue of his family membership. Kinship thus enabled the Keesees to expand onto the southern frontier, to build communities and congregations, and to join the ranks of the dominant planter elite.
Much of this, Billingsley's final chapter explains, came undone after the Civil War. Confederate defeat ended slavery and thereby undermined the wealth and power of planter families such as the Keesees. Moreover, the South experienced greater institutionalization after the war, and larger numbers of banks, schools, and government agencies made kinship less vital in the postbellum era. Although the ideas in this chapter, as with the earlier ones, will not appear terribly innovative to most southern historians, the rigor of the research methodology is impressive.
Billingsley will probably not succeed in convincing scholars to elevate kinship to a "category of analysis complementary to and potentially as powerful as race, class, and gender" (p. 1). But her work does reveal that the Keesees (and probably all southern whites) defined family broadly and relied on kin extensively. She argues convincingly that genealogy offers some useful and underutilized tools for professional historians.
Lorri Glover
University of Tennessee
Copyright University of Alabama Press Jul 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved
http://www.looksmartfamilytree.com/p/articles/mi_qa3880/is_200507/ai_n15329048?pi=homfam
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