Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"Think how many lives we carry around with us. Everything that they learned, everything that wounded them, everything that made them stronger, everything that made them happy, we carry in our little corporeal selves." Meryl Streep

Several people told me earlier in the year that I should see Faces of America, the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. genealogy series that ran on public television. I agreed with them that the series appeared to be something that I would enjoy, but many months later I still have not viewed it. It is among the many books and DVDs still on my "someday" list. I did, however, find the companion book sitting on the library's new book shelf just before Christmas when I needed something to read. I have now read about the ancestors of twelve prominent Americans whom Gates chose to represent as a cross section of our country. The book seems to tell a pretty complete story, so I may not need to see the series now, but I have placed a library request. The stories were good and merit a bit more of my attention. Someday will come soon.

It is hard to say which of the stories in Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts I liked best. It might have been the last, in which Gates reports on his research into the ancestry of actress Eva Longoria, who grew up in south Texas on land that her family has held for centuries. Having grown up in Texas myself, I know that some historically-ill-informed Anglos think all Hispanics are recent arrivals in the United States, but the Longorias have been in Texas since 1749, when the area was part of New Spain. Like many early settlers, they had to defend their legal holdings against the later arriving land hungry Anglos. As he does with each case but one, Gates adds DNA testing. The surprise for Longoria is that she is mostly European genetically - she had suspected more Native American ancestry - and she has common ancestors with Meryl Streep and Yo-Yo Ma. Ma's ancestry is totally Asian but so is the DNA of most Native Americans.

Anyone who has spent time looking up family trees, discovering the prominent citizens and criminals in their ancestral past will appreciate the stories Gates tells, as he reveals the individuals with the context of their times. Most of his subjects report feeling more connected to history after getting the documentary and DNA reports. An appendix further explains the DNA testing for those who might like to try the process themselves.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts. New York University Press, 2010. ISBN 9780814732649.

ricklibrarian's Short Guide to Family History on the Web

I created this short list of websites of interest to family historians for my workshop at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. The workshop was focused on using Heritage Quest, to which the library subscribes, but I wanted to provide further resources that may be useful to novices and experienced amateur genealogists. I have added these links to the Library's website. Here I expand and get more personal with the reflections.

Local Resources

Cook County Clerk's Office - Genealogy Online: Search for birth, death, and marriage records from Cook County, Illinois. You will have to register, but registration is free. Due to privacy laws, none of the data is recent.

The Newberry Library's Chicagoancestors.org: In addition to the Newberry Library files, there are links to many Chicago area genealogy and history websites. Of course, a trip to the Newberry is even better. I found much about my ancestors in New England through books in the Library's collection.

Western Springs Historical Society: Network of Western Springs residents interested in local history and genealogy. Information about the society's collections, programs, and events.

Illinois State Archives: Links to a variety of Illinois records of interest to family historians, including vital records, court records, and military service records.

National Archives - Great Lakes Region: Describes resources of the National Archives with visiting hours and contact information. It used to be difficult to get an appointment to use the microform readers at the National Archives. With so many people now on the Internet, there are plenty of openings to use the equipment.

General Resources

Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet: A portal to over 240,000 websites of interest to family historians.

Family History Archives: A combined catalog of family histories and local history books from leading libraries and archives across the country. Hosted by Brigham Young University.

Family Search: Internet access to some of the genealogy resources of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints.

Find a Grave: A searchable database of grave records from across the country. Use the search link in the body of the page, not the rectagular ad at the top of the site's pages.

Mike's Index: Found on the Fox Valley Genealogical Society's website, Mike's Index searches 243 genealogy periodicals.

The USGenWeb Project: Volunteers from counties all over the United States are putting their files up on the Internet to help family historians. I think this is one of the most interesting projects on the web. I have often found interesting lists on the county level webpages. Cemetary records are a strength of this resource.

Google Books: With so many books about local history scanned as part of the Google Books project, it is a great source for genealogy. The books not under copyright have full text viewing. Knowing about the other books, allows researchers to identify books to borrow through interlibrary loan or view at genealogy libraries. I found sources about many of my New England, Maryland, and Texas ancestors here.

Microsoft Live Book Search for Genealogy

Knowing that Microsoft Live Book Search searches many older books out of copyright, I wondered whether it would be useful for genealogy questions. So I tested it with a few of the names from my own family tree.

First I tried Tipton Coulter, a great grandfather who was born in Honey Grove, Texas, and was according to the 1900 Census an apiarist (beekeeper). I tried various combinations of his name and the places I know that he lived without success.

Second I tried Wiley Hamilton Roach, a great great grandfather who was born in Georgia and died from gunshot wounds after the Battle of Missionary Ridge in the Civil War. Again I found nothing.

Augusta Penn, an ancestor born in Ohio in 1824, was my next try. She is said to descend from the Penns of Pennsylvania. As with Coulter and Roach above, I found nothing.

Next I tried a search for my ancestor Richard Henry Alvey (1826-1906), who was a justice on the Maryland Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals in Washington, D. C. After finding nothing by searching his full name, I found a few tidbits by searching the phrase “Judge Alvey.” (I learned this trick when searching the Washington Post’s historical database.)

The first hit was in The Literary Guillotine by Charles Battell Loomis, published 1902, which, despite its title, seems to be legal commentaries. On page 52, the author comments on a patent law opinion that my ancestor expressed in the 1900 case Christensen v. Noyes.

Book 2 in the results list notes a legal decree concerning the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company penned by Judge Alvey in 1890.

The third book notes that my ancestor was appointed by President Grover Cleveland to the commission to settle a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana.

The next book, Recollections and Reflections by Wharton Jackson Green, was the most interesting item found in this search. Green was a Confederate lieutenant colonel from North Carolina in the Civil War. On page 173 of his memoir, he recalls being warmly invited into the judge’s home in Hagerstown, Maryland after bringing his troops across the Potomac River from Virginia in 1862. This is a very interesting story as there is a debate about how strong Judge Alvey’s southern sympathies were.

I next searched together “Alvey" and "Hagerstown” (not a phrase) to see if I would find anything else. I did.

The first item was Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary of the United States. On page 206 the profile for Louis Emory McComas says that he studied law with "Chief-Justice R. H. Alvey of Hagerstown."

The fifth item on the list was again Lamb’s Biographical Dictionary. This time it showed page 6, which had the “Alvey, Richard Henry” entry. This had a short summation of Alvey’s career.

The seventh item was the item previously found about Alvey being appointed to the commission to settle the South American boundary.

The other eleven items were false hits. “Alvey” and “Hagerstown” were terms on separated pages in the books.

I redid the search as the phrase "Alvey Richard" and retrived the Lamb's Biographical Dictionary and Harpers Encyclopedia of United States History from 458 A.D. to 1909, somehow published in 1905 according to the short bibliographic entry.

My Conclusion

Microsoft Live Book Search would be greatly improved by an advanced proximity search so the researcher could require terms to be within a specified range of words or within a paragraph.

I did like the green highlighting of search words in the display of text. Finding the text was easy.

Microsoft Live Book Search is not especially good for genealogy yet, as there is still not enough content. Ancestors who are not famous are unlikely to be found. However, it is easy to do a search, so genealogists should try anyway. They might find something really interesting like an ancestor entertaining Confederate officers.

Genealogy Blog Search: A Customized Google Search Engine

I just learned from Jack Simpson's genealogy blog at the Newberry Library in Chicago about Genealogy Blog Search. Christopher Dunham of the Genealogue created a custom Google search engine that draws from 150 genealogy blogs that he has identified. I tried several family names before I found one that returned results, but I got good results on state searches in my trial. As Dunham adds more sources to search, the handmade tool will become more useful to genealogists searching for what other genealogists are doing and reporting.

The Google Custom Search Engine looks pretty easy to use if you have an idea. I might make an engine to search book reviewing blogs, or one to search regional bird watching websites. A customized search engine using my favorite gardening websites could be handy. Of course, I could make one with the blogs that I read regularly to make refinding a post I remember easier.
Google has a webpage showing some sample customized search engines. It looks like the possibilities are endless.