Most family historians have a companion interest in world history.
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| Ktrinko, world map made with
natural earth data, eckert 4 projection, central meridian 10 ° east, Wikimedia. |
And our interest starts with ourselves. We are intrigued by the outside events
that have shaped our own lives. A natural extension of our desire to know what
historical events have impacted our lives is to also know what happenings
affected the lives of our ancestors. Creating family trees with dates and
locations for our forebears is necessary as a first step in organizing our
family history. But if we stop there, we
will have only a list of facts. In order to understand our ancestors’ lives, we
need to find out what was happening around them – locally, regionally,
nationally and internationally. We want to uncover what was influencing their
daily lives: their decisions to move, to leave the farm, to go to another state
or country.
In my post of Sept 16, 2012, I touched upon the need to put flesh on
the bones of our ancestors by finding out how they lived and what the world was
like during their lifetimes. Let’s see what professionals in the field have to
say on this subject.
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| Anchor.svg, Open Clip Art Library, Wikimedia. |
The genealogist Kimberly Powell is the author of The Everything Family Tree Book and a writer for about.com. One of the topics Ms. Powell covers in both her book and her on-line pieces is
the need to anchor our ancestors in time. In her book, Ms. Powell states:
“One of the first, most important steps in family history
research is to gain an understanding of the history of the location and time
period in which your ancestors lived.”1 (p. 175)
Where can we go to
gain this understanding? Be sure to check sources such as archives, libraries, historical
societies, and local genealogical societies. Many of these institutions have
excellent web sites with on-line catalogs, so that you can find out what
materials are available. Also search
books.google.com and scholar.google.com in addition to regular google.com as you hunt for information about the times
in which your ancestors lived. Search for experts in the time period that you
are interested in. Read their books.
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An about.com piece (no author name given), Historical Research – Researching the DailyLives of Your Ancestors, provides many suggestions and on-line links where you can find information on
disasters, epidemics, clothing styles, and much more.
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lmproulx, 31
August 2011,
Utilisé pour le site du Crieur-public.org, Wikimedia.
|
One type of historical web search site is based on what
happened in the world on any given month and day, such as the Scopes Systems site. Another type, including the dMarie site, let’s
you enter day, month and year and then gives you a lengthy report on historical
happenings. I have listed just two sites, but you can find many more on Google.
A genealogy blog by FamilyTree.com spotlights some of the kinds of historical events that can influence our
ancestors’ lives, such as wars, inventions, legislation, and mineral
discoveries.
Epidemics, another type of historical event, can have devastating
effects on people’s lives. I was familiar with the Black Death in Europe from 1348 to 1350, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918
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1918, St.
Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty Oct. 1918 Influenza epidemic,
Library of
Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
|
and the polio epidemics in America and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s , and I know that these events
likely touched the lives of many of our ancestors. But there are many more
plagues that have happened throughout the world over time that can be
investigated. For a list see the website “List of Epidemics”.
A plague that struck America several times, the worst
episode being in 1878, was only vaguely familiar to me. Molly Caldwell Crosby,
in her book
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| Cover scan used by permission of author |
reveals the horrific history of Yellow Fever which struck America
so often that it earned the name The
American Plague, also the title of the book. I want to use this epidemic as
an example of how an event like this can change people’s lives.
My great
grandfather, Johannes (John) Ulrich Kreis, was living with his family in New
Orleans in 1878,
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Kruseman & Tjeenk, 1877, Canal Street,
New Orleans, in
the 1870s, Wikimedia.
|
a fact that is corroborated by his filing of an application
for naturalization on Oct 10, 1878. To see this document, please check my post
of July 23, 2012. This was John’s second time in New Orleans as he had landed there in 1866 when
he emigrated from Switzerland. Between 1866 and 1878 John had been first
farming in LaSalle County, IL and then living in St. Louis, MO. I can time his
arrival in New Orleans by the birth of his second son, George Kreis, in June of
1876. Because of Crosby’s research on the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878, I now assume
must have been a contributing factor to John Kreis’ leaving New Orleans once
again.
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New Orleans,
1905: Screened horse-drawn ambulance
during outbreak of Yellow Fever, the last
to strike the city, Wikimedia.
|
The fever touched many countries in the Americas as noted by Ms. Crosby:
“The 1878 epidemic had stretched from Brazil to Ohio….the
final death toll in the Mississippi Valley would prove to be 20,000 lives and
the financial loss close to $200 million.” (p. 74)
The horror of the fever caused mass exodus from places where
it struck, such as Memphis, Tennessee. Again, Ms. Crosby describes the grim
scene that met the refugees as they tried to flee:
“Nearby farms locked their gates and doors, with shotguns
ready. Public roads were wrecked and bridges burned to prevent travel. Many
cities and towns refused admittance in fear of the dreaded fever.” (p.
47)
I don’t know exactly when John Kreis and his family left New
Orleans; I only know that he showed up in the 1880 Ottawa, LaSalle, Illinois US
Census.
So far, we have discussed why it is important to learn about
the historical events that affected the lives of our ancestors. But how can we
record what we find so that we might better be able to analyze, understand, and
explain our findings?
Once you have gathered details about what was going on in
the world of your ancestors, you need to be able to organize this information. In
the words of Kimberly Powell:
Ms. Powell gives a helpful suggestion on how to begin thinking about a timeline:
“To create your own ancestral timeline, begin with a simple timeline of the major events in your ancestor’s life. Then use history books and pieces from historical … timelines to add in local and world events that took place during the same time period.” (Timelines & Your Ancestors)
Lynn Palermo, The Armchair Genealogist, presents an interesting framework based on categories for setting up a basic timeline in Word or Excel in Four Steps to a Family Timeline.
One of my favorite articles about timelines is one written
by Diane L. Richard for archives.com,
Timelines as Genealogical Research Tools.
I like how Ms. Richard uses Excel to build a tabular timeline model and how she
integrates personal and historical events in an ancestor’s life.
After reading Ms. Richard’s article, I was inspired to follow her model and try my hand at a timeline for John Ulrich Kreis:
I first filled in the personal details, with dates, of John
Kreis’ life: birth, leaving Switzerland to go to America, landing in America,
working as a farm laborer, getting married and having children, moving from
Illinois to Missouri to Louisiana and back to Illinois. Then I began
researching to find historical events that may have shaped some of John’s decisions.
These I highlighted in green.
I saw several things as I created the timeline that I had
not seen before. First, I realized that John had landed in New Orleans when he
emigrated so he was familiar with the city and that was one reason he chose to
return ten years later. When I explored land records and legislation in the
mid-1800s and learned more about the Homestead Acts, I realized how that
affected John. On the FamilySearch.org wiki, Illinois Land and Property, I read that:
“Illinois was
a “federal-land” state, where unclaimed land was surveyed, then granted or sold by the
government through federal and state land offices.”
John worked as a laborer on a farm in LaSalle County,
Illinois when he first arrived in America. But by the early 1870s he had
married, had children and moved first to St. Louis and then to New Orleans. All
of these places are close to that great water highway, the Mississippi River.
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| Lee Russell, 1937,
Detail of an abandoned farmhouse. Miller Township, LaSalle County, Illinois, |
The Second Industrial Revolution explains the movement from farm to city that John and many other Americans followed in the late 1800s through the twentieth century.
Finally, I came upon Molly Caldwell Crosby’s book on Yellow Fever quite by accident. I was reading another book she had written and saw a reference to The American Plague on the book jacket. This book proved to hold the explanation of John’s move from New Orleans. And it gives me chills to think that he and his family lived through the great 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic that killed so many.
In conclusion, genealogy is so much more than lists of names
and dates. When you add historical background to your ancestral stories, you
learn so much more about the lives of your forebears. Once you have researched
and gathered your historical events, you can organize them with a timeline, and
you never know what will jump out at you.
Notes & Bibliography:
- Kimberly Powell, The Everything Family Tree Book. Avon, Massachusetts: Adams Media, 2006.
- Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague. New York: The Berkeley Publishing Group, 2006.
- New York. Kimberly Powell, Timelines and Your Ancestors. Online <http://genealogy.about.com/od/timelines/a/timeline.htm> Material downloaded November 2013.
- Cafferty, Pastora San Juan, Barry R. Chiswick and Andrew M. Greeley. The Dilemma of American Immigration: Beyond the Golden Door. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1983. Material downloaded November 2013.
- Washington. National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, About the Homestead Act. Online < http://www.nps.gov/home/historyculture/abouthomesteadactlaw.htm>. Material downloaded November 2013.
- Florida. Wikimedia Foundation. Conclusion of the American War, Online < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conclusion_of_the_American_Civil_War>. Material downloaded November 2013.
- Florida. Wikimedia Foundation. Second Industrial Revolution, Online <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution>. Material downloaded November 2013.
- Utah. FamilySearch.org. Online <http://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Illinois_Land_and_Property> Material downloaded November 2013.
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