Extracting Social History from Genealogy Documents

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I was talking with a friend this weekend about some of the genealogy-related talks that I give, and what constitutes social history. I tried to explain a little bit to her that one lens through which to view social history is to take common documents that we use for names, dates, places and relationships and try to wring out additional information from those documents that can give us insight into the life of the ancestor. She replied, “I found in an obituary that my ancestor was a doctor and I used the census to confirm that he was a dentist. Is that what you mean?”

I replied that it was definitely a start, but social history would go further than that. It would involve learning about what it was like to be a dentist in the time period, how people viewed the dentist, what tools he used, etc. For example (keep in mind that I know nothing about the history of dentistry in the US, so the following example may be flawed in some ways), did he live in a time when people mostly came to the dentist if they needed a tooth pulled or if they had tooth pain? He might be viewed differently by the community (and dreaded even more) than a visit to the dentist today.

One of my favorite uses of documents to learn more about the social history is covered in three posts in my levisavage blog, starting with this one. Government documents and a president’s personal papers, along with correspondence from church representatives, lay out the formation of the Mormon Battalion in 1846. The government documents present a different side to the story, one that I had never heard. Reading through them helped me understand better the feelings and attitudes of people on both sides, and why the government came to ask the Mormons to join the military a few months after they had been forced out of their homes.

What are some favorite pieces of social history you have pulled out of some records–either those commonly used for genealogy and those that are not used as often as they should be?

Fall Social History Events in Greater Boston

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With the start of the new school year comes many opportunities to explore social history through the offerings of local history and genealogy societies, living history villages, and repositories.

A great way to meet new people and be exposed to all aspects of genealogy and history, including records you can use in your social history research, is to join a local history or genealogy society. Here is a list of historical societies and genealogy societies in Massachusetts.

The Mass Moments website publishes an article each day on something significant in Massachusetts history that occurred on that day.

The Boston Public Library’s fall local and family history series is on Colonial Research. Two talks per month are scheduled on Wednesday evenings.

The American Antiquarian Society is sponsoring a one-woman show portraying boarding house life in Lowell in 1843. Check out this site for other upcoming events.

The Massachusetts Historical Society sponsors brown bag lunches, speaking events and seminars throughout the year. Most are free and open to the public. They also offer 5 seminars that are free and open to the public over the 2013-14 semesters. If you pay $25 you have access to the reading in advance. More information can be found here. The 5 seminars are: Early American History, Environmental History, Immigration and Urban History, and History of Women and Gender. All are focused on the Boston area.

There are several living history villages in the area that have fall programming. I have always wanted to go to the Harvest Dinner with the Pilgrims at Plimoth. Maybe this will be the year that I will make it down there.
Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH
Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, MA
Historic Deerfield in Deerfield, MA
Plimoth Plantation just outside of Plymouth, MA
Olde Mistic Village in Mystic, CT

Fleshing out a Family History Story

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My earliest memory is sitting on the basement stairs and laughing at my dad as he is trying to catch frogs in a bucket. They keep jumping out and I think it is so funny. It’s kind of a vague memory and that is all I remember. My own memories make for an amusing story, but leave more questions unanswered than are answered. The biggest unanswered question is why the frogs were in our basement. I don’t know the answer to that from my memory.

After discussing with my mom and dad I have a much fuller picture. When I first brought it up to my dad he remembered the event but said there were no frogs, only tadpoles. I remember frogs so was fairly insistent that jumping frogs were involved. Luckily my dad is a good journal keeper so he went back to his journals. There were frogs, although he didn’t write anything about them jumping. This journal entry is from August 4, 1975. “Also caught a whole bunch of frogs in the basement. The packers will be here tomorrow and the movers on Wednesday. Then it’s home Utah here we come.” Here is the fuller story revealed through another peek into my dad’s journal earlier in the summer and the collective memory of my parents and me.

My dad joined the Air Force as a medical tech, in part to avoid being drafted. He served at a military base in Montana and my parents bought a house there. We lived close to the Missouri River and because the water table was so high we had a sump pump to keep the basement from flooding. In August of 1975 my father was released from service and headed back to BYU to work on a master’s degree. As part of trying to clean up the house and sell it he mentions painting and working on the trim, and getting the frogs out of the basement.

Why were the frogs in the basement? In June he wrote about some severe flooding in the area. It was severe enough that several homes were almost completely underwater.  After describing the flooding he writes that “the frogs by the thousands can be heard all night long.” Our home was fine and we were not affected by the floods, but the explosion in the frog population affected us. On the day my dad wrote in his journal, baby frogs started coming out of the sump pump into our basement. There were at least 20. My dad caught the frogs in a bucket or paper sack, and I had my own little plastic bucket on the stairs.

By having the date that this occurred from my dad’s journals, I can tell how old I was (I turned three a few months later). My mom said that she let me save a couple of frogs, but they died pretty quickly and we had to throw them out.

I share this story to show how you can flesh out your own memories by talking with other people who participated who might remember things slightly differently. By putting together all the accounts you can come up with a more full story of what was really going on. You can still separate your memories from those of other participants, especially if they have very different memories of the same event, while keeping the context of the larger picture.

What are your favorite memories, or first memories? How has talking with others about those memories helped expand them or give you a sense of the bigger picture?

Court Records are Another Window into Social History

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A few weeks ago I attended a conference where Judy Russell (the Legal Genealogist) was the guest speaker. She gave several wonderful talks, but the one I was most looking forward to was the one about using court records to learn more about your ancestors and social history. I was not disappointed. She showed many examples of how court records can tell much about our ancestors even if our ancestors never appear by name. Probate records can give a sense of the wealth of the town, criminal records can show the most likely punishment for common offenses such as stealing, adultery or fornication in colonial times, etc., for a given locale and time period. She even showed cases where people in the town were reimbursed for caring for the poor, giving us a sense of what the going rate was for various services. My favorite example was one which highlighted the medical theories of the time in a homicide case.

Diane Rapaport is another professional genealogist with a law background. Her “Tales from the Courthouse”, a popular column which ran for several years in the the American Ancestors magazine, provided a humorous way to look at court records and gain insight into the society in which they were produced. Her book, The Naked Quaker, uses court records from colonial New England to examine societal norms and common (or uncommon relationships) between parents and children, neighbors, and society and slaves and servants.

I haven’t used court records yet, but will add them to my list of resources. What sorts of social history information have you found in court records?

The Power of Music to Bring History to Life

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I was struck today while listening to a special musical number at church how the words of the song helped bring the experiences of our ancestors to life. While I love both music and history, I had never made this connection before.

The song was “Come, Come, Ye Saints” (you can listen to it here). This song was written in 1846 by William Clayton. The Mormons were forced out of their homes in Nauvoo, Illinois and started leaving in February, 1846. It was bitterly cold and the trek across Iowa was miserable. It was a wet and muddy spring and the Mormons suffered greatly from exposure and lack of food. William was in one of the first groups to leave and had to leave behind his pregnant wife who was unable to travel. When word reached him in April that she had delivered a son, he was overjoyed and wrote a song he called “All is Well”.(1)

This hymn, now called “Come, Come, Ye Saints” quickly became a favorite among the wagon companies traveling west. I believe this quote sums up best how this hymn is viewed today. “In the minds of many members of the Church, “Come, Come, Ye Saints” is the hymn that more than any other connotes the heritage and spirit of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The unforgettable words of this hymn allow us to pay tribute to the unflinching courage of the early Saints and to relate that commitment to our own lives.”(1)

As I was listening to the music today and singing the words in my mind, I had a strong picture of the struggles, challenges and heartache that my ancestors faced as they moved west, as well as the strong faith that carried them forward.

How can you use music to identify with your ancestors? Perhaps it is a folk tune, or a religious hymn or music song during the various wars. Please share with us in the comments.

1. Davidson, Karen Lynn. Our Latter-day Hymns: The Stories and the Messages, pp. 58-59