Letters and family history

 

                                                                     Family letters can fill in some of the gaps

Letters can be a wonderful window into ancestor's lives. I'm lucky enough to have access to two collections of correspondence; one from my maternal grandparents and one from a 3 x great uncle, also one of my mother's relatives. Both sets of letters were one sided though. There were no copies kept of the answering letters. Still, there was enough information to fill in some blanks about their lives.

Placing them in context can make their actions more understandable. It can also lend depth to the narrative of their stories. My current task being, of course, getting one correspondent's tale down on paper. Readers of this blog will know I'm working on Alexander Matheson's story. He was my 3 x great uncle and led an interesting life. He outlined some of it to his sister, Margaret, after he finally discovered where she was living after 40 years. She must have kept those letters that he wrote.

He started writing to his sister in 1895 but I know from his correspondence that his use of the postal system started much earlier than that. In his letters to her, he mentioned the different post masters he had written to in Canada seeking news of the family he had lost. He was in a different country because, when he couldn't find his family, he moved across the border to the US in the late 1850s. 

But, although we now take postal service for granted, even call it disparagingly "snail mail", back in the 1850s it wasn't the same as it is now. So, as part of the research for Alexander's story, I decided to find out more about the postal system while Alex was using it. Not only was that the US postal system but also the postal system in Canada as well.

In Canada, new post offices tended to pop up where the rail lines went. It took a while for the railways to head west. The US had other events that opened up their postal system. According to a book that I read about that country's postal system, it really expanded with the California Gold Rush, followed a few years later by the US Civil War. Apparently, many soldiers kept up regular correspondence. Which makes me wonder who Alex wrote to while he was fighting in the Union Army. That correspondence would be an interesting find if it still exists. 

Sources:

Correspondence of Alexander Matheson – 1895-1920

Gendreau, Bianca; Willis, John; Brousseau, Francine, Special Delivery: Canada’s Postal Heritage, Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, N.B., 2000

Henkin, David M., The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006 

Researching ancestors lives and other subjects

 

                             Interior of Dr Williams Library in London where I researched my Congregational minister

In depth research into an ancestor can take you a lot of places. For some, there is the need to find out about the places where they lived and/or the occupations that they had. That information can inform the researcher about the reasons for some of their actions and, in turn, provide a better understanding of what they lived through. As someone who loves history, I enjoy trying to picture my ancestors in time and place. I've even been lucky enough to find information written about particular ancestors.

In the case of my ancestor, Thomas Strange, who lived from 1723 to 1784, I was even more fortunate to find something that he had written. He was a nonconformist minister in Kilsby, Northamptonshire, so a learned man. I was lucky enough to find information about him at Dr. Williams Library in London which included some of the sermons he had written. They were long! I wouldn't have wanted to sit through one especially as, according to one of the accounts written about him, he had a speech impediment.

The Reverend Thomas Strange would be an interesting ancestor to write about. At the moment, I'm focusing on another relative. One closer in time. Alexander Matheson, who fought in the US Civil War. There has been a lot written about that war, so the main problem with finding out information is weeding through all that is out there.

There was another aspect to Alexander's story besides the war, however. That was his search for his family, his father and siblings. It was a search that took place from another country because he had last seen them in Canada. It meant that he had to search by mail. Can you imagine? Only, it wasn't quite the mail service we know today. Which leads me to more research, this time about the postal service in two countries during the time of his 40 year search. It's strange the places that family history can take a researcher. 

Mapping timelines in a family's history

 

                                               Some maps and timelines from my collection

Timelines, I have quite an assortment throughout my family history collection. I often draw one up when about to embark on a research trip, especially one to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. The list reminds me of the family lines I want to concentrate on during that trip. But it does more than that. Not only does it pinpoint an ancestor or ancestral family in time but it also shows gaps that need more research. Timelines also serve as an excellent backbone when piecing together a family history story. A case in point is the story of my 3x great uncle, Alexander Matheson. I was able to weave together a timeline of his movements from his letters and military records. Those movements showed the important events in his life which underpin the framework of his story.

I'm looking forward to adding the data from his timeline to my Family Historian software so that I can use their mapping technology to follow his movements. That should prove interesting. Unfortunately, the places are just pinned on the map of the world, there appears to be no line that indicates the person going from point A to point B. Not that I've gotten far with my inputting. I'm still working on the first person I've entered, which is me. I'm one individual whose timeline would benefit from lines going from one place to the other to show how many times I've moved back and forth from place to place. Still, showing where a person has been, adds a sense of whether they lived their life in one community or many. If they put down firm roots or drifted from place to place. 

Even better than maps, of course, is on the ground research; actually visiting the places where ancestors lived. It gives a better idea of the lay of the land and how long it presently takes to get from one place to another. If you know when your family made the move and you do a bit of digging into the available transport at the time, that should give you a better idea of the effort to get from the initial spot to the next. Having a timeline with the date, might also be able to give you a head start when looking for a reason to up stakes when you plug the family's dates in to the history of the locality. Timelines and maps really complement each other when you add in the history they were living through. 

Getting my family tree back in order

 

                                                                             My family history binders

At times I think I'm really slow at getting stuff done, especially when it involves my family history. But, sometime between dealing with fixing my travel ticket to my upcoming writers retreat as the airline had decided to nix one of the flights I'd booked and updating the list of all the deadlines and to do items necessary before I leave, I realized that I have so many things on my plate that it's a wonder anything gets done at all.

A case in point is using family tree software to enter my tree the right way instead of the slap dash method I employed before. I downloaded the Family Historian Trial which allows you to try out the software for a 30 day period. The user has the choice of downloading a GEDCOM file to Family Historian or entering individuals one at a time. I've decided on the one at a time method to finally get everything recorded the right way. Yesterday, I finally entered the first person in the tree, me. But, if I want to start as I mean to go on, I need to find the document to cite to verify the information I know off by heart.

I'm hoping data entry will be easier with more immediate relatives. But I think that things will get trickier as I go along. I'll need to pull information from my family history binders, the research logs I've kept from various trips, the photos of records on my phone and those unlabeled thumb drives with family data that I've brought home over the years. It looks like it will be something to chip away at over time which means I should probably buy the software before I invest too much time into it. But, exploring the software further, it has maps and timelines which makes me wonder if that means a person can be tracked over time and space through their life. That would be so cool, especially with my family who weren't known for staying in one place. That would take the timelines I've drawn up to the next level!

 

Sources:

Family Historian software https://www.family-historian.co.uk