Fun in the N.C. State Archives

I went to both the North Carolina State Archives and the North Carolina State Library on my trip to Raleigh this past week. I had a listing of documents that I needed to get from the archives and files at the Archives. As I began to look, I was having a time finding one document as it was cited. It was getting near the end of the time I was spending there that day, so I decided to run to the library and double-check the citation before returning to the archives the next morning. I discovered that I had not really written down anything incorrectly so I went back upstairs and began looking around the microfilm room again. Those numbers for the film just didn't seem to correspond to anything in the room. I finally went up to the desk. They immediately recognized that number as an "old" number. Apparently someone had gone through and renumbered that portion of the archives at some point since the book had been published. One of the ladies who had worked in the archives a long time ago was able to find the originals which had the new number as well as the old on it. They also had a note saying they were too fragile to use and that the microfilm should be used. When they checked their finding aids, the number that was listed corresponded to something else. I'll make a long story short at this point and say that we finally located the film about an hour after I'd begun looking that morning. I was able to get my copies of the records I was seeking and several other colonial period items that I was seeking. After discovering that it took the archivists that long to find that item, I didn't feel so badly that I'd had trouble finding it! I suspect there are other who have stories about difficulties finding items after finding aids have been published when archives renumber items. I recall hearing about archives being renumbered a time or two when I've been in sessions at some of the national conferences. It would be nice if they made some sort of note to stick in the front of the published books in the state library so that those using those records will know the new classification the archives is using for the items instead of spending all that time trying to track them down!

The answer's out there . . . somewhere

Earlier this evening, I was working with a student who was checking out some books on the Witch Inquisition in England. I mentioned to him that I had an 8th great grand aunt who was one of the Salem Witches. He said that he had wanted to do his paper on the Salem witch trials but couldn't find enough information. As someone who has used our library to find information on this subject, particularly as it applies to my 8th great grand-aunt, I was astonished he "couldn't find anything" because we have quite a bit of information. (Of course, it's possible that someone else had those books checked out, but we have so many that I'd think some would have been available.) So often students think that "the library doesn't have anything on that" when it may simply be that they aren't using the terminology that catalogers use to describe items or because they aren't looking at broader, narrower, and related terms. Sometimes they aren't aware of additional sources that may be wonderful resources such as the Evans Early American Imprints database which would have given him some wonderful resources, some of them dating to the time of the trials.

I began to wonder how many genealogical researchers give up simply because they can't find something. We hear of courthouses making discoveries of old documents that they didn't know they had from time to time. Perhaps that record we needed was among those undiscovered documents. Perhaps we think we are looking in the right place, but we didn't realize that location was in a different county at the time or perhaps the records were transferred to a different location.

As genealogical researchers, we must not give up on the quest. We need to ask the right questions of the right people to find the results we need.

I was a county coordinator and state coordinator for the USGenWeb Project for many years. I could always tell who the newby researchers were because their queries lacked focus. We need to learn to be specific about the information we are seeking. Perhaps we need to say, "I'm trying to determine the year that Great Uncle Bob moved from County X to County Y. He was here in the yyyy census, but not the yyyy one. I thought the land records might show me when he moved." Perhaps the records will cooperate and tell us the information we need to know, but the person you ask might say: "If you don't find it there, you might want to check the tax lists" or "Did you know that County Y was a part of County X until yyyy? Perhaps your ancestor never moved." If the researcher had just said "I need to look at land records," he might not have received the helpful piece of advice from the other person.

We'll probably still have a lot of unsolved mysteries, but we can keep pursuing the truth.

Worthless Message Boards and Mailing Lists

I have gotten fed up with the Rootsweb mailing list and Genforum message board for a certain county in which a lot of my ancestors lived. Why? Because there are some resident data collectors there. Now, I know that they are trying to be helpful; however, they are causing more harm than good. How is that? It's because the data that they are collecting is not documented. They can't tell you where they got it. Sometimes it came from an undocumented GEDCOM file. Is the data they are collecting correct? According to local experts, they have connected wrong individuals with the wrong families in at least half, if not 60% of the cases. Here's how these data collectors operate. Someone posts a query to the county. Instead of waiting on someone who is really researching that family to post a reply based on their research (which is documented), these data collectors go to their database, find an individual that matches at least part of the query and report back with a family group sheet or short descendants report with names, dates, spouses, and SSNs from the SSDI. These data collectors are people who've never grown to appreciate true family research. The "head data collector" lives all the way across the country from the county in question. As far as the people with the historical society and the persons who have worked in the county courthouse for years know, he has never set foot in the county. Why is he even collecting the info? What does he really plan to do with it?

If that isn't enough, there is one guy who posts current obituaries all the time to the message boards. The bad thing here is that the privacy of living individuals is being compromised. Some would argue that they are already online at the papers; however, most newspapers only keep that info available online for a short period of time after which it is either removed or after which it is moved to the paid archives. There's a reason for this. If I am really interested in an obituary, I'll pay the $3 to get it if I missed it during it's free period. I've done that very thing. Furthermore, there is a potential copyright issue here. Some newspapers claim copyright to obituaries; others don't. The reason some don't is because the info in them comes from family members so they actually say that the family owns the copyright or that it is based on facts which can't be copyrighted. The problem here is that there are some things which are more creative in an obituary which are not necessarily common knowledge so it's not necessarily free of copyright. There is widespread copyright infringement on this message board. Genforum was contacted a few years ago about the problem but refused to do anything about it. Now their message board is totally useless. All that is there are undocumented family group sheets and current obituaries. People who are truly looking for real help will not find it through those channels because all they'll receive is poor research. The true researchers quit visiting years ago. In fact, when the true researchers visit the county, they often comment on the worthlessness of Genforum for that county. It's truly a sad state of affairs.