52 Ancestors Week 29: A Source I Want to Understand Better

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 29:

The theme for Week 29 is “A Source I Want to Understand Better.” Some sources that we use are fairly straightforward. Others… not so much. This week, explore a source that you don’t quite understand and the ancestor that it pertains to.

Just some light reading.

    When you're out on your genealogical adventure, you're bound to find a ton of sources and many of them will be easy to understand. A census can tell you where a person lived and who their neighbors were. A birth/death record can tell you all about their parents and give you important dates in their lives. A word of caution. Do not look up certain causes of death on WebMD. Just trust me on this one. I never should have looked up black lung. There's a reason why I never became a doctor.

    Now, those sources are pretty easy to figure out, right? You look at the information, add them to a family tree and walk away. Some sources, though, tend to confuse me a little bit. My friend and fellow genealogist Melanie McComb thought I should write about finding aids and books like the Great Migration Directory. While those are great resources, it got me thinking about other books I could talk about that used to confuse me quite a bit back in the day and frankly still make me give it a second look.

    In the late 19th century there was a bit of a fad in America. And no I'm not just talking about women wearing tight corsets and men wearing monocles and ridiculous top hats. People were looking up their family histories left and right in an attempt to either connect themselves with royalty or someone who came over on the Mayflower. It was a thing and as a result hundreds and hundreds of genealogy books were published showcasing who was related to who based on the records people found. You might be saying "Wow! That's great!" and you'd be right. It does sound great.....on paper.

    Sadly, a lot of those books miss their mark by a lot. My friend Erica Howton, a genealogist on Geni.com, used to tell me how people just made stuff up and published a book in the hope that no one would notice. This was in the era of "yellow journalism" so it doesn't surprise me that some of the books were not worth the paper they were printed on. Those poor trees sacrificed their lives for something that amounts to fanfiction. I wish I was kidding. Erica showed me a few of the books and they were just horrible.

    What does all this have to do with me? Well, I do have ancestors who are in these books that were published in the 1890s to 1900s. My second great-grandparents, Wilfred Felker and Gertrude Stevens were basically my links to colonial New England. Their trees include several soldiers of the American Revolution and several people who were featured in Anderson's "Great Migration Begins" Naturally, I'd have ancestors who were featured in their own family genealogy books. These weren't family Bibles or anything. They were just books with people in them that made things seem like an early version of Wikipedia.

    Erica first showed me the book "Sargent genealogy : Hugh Sargent, of Courteenhall, Northamptonshire and his descendants in England" when I traced Gertrude Steven's line to my 4th great-grandfather John Sargent Fisher. She suggested I look for books on Archive.org that had the Fishers and the Sargents in them. This was back in 2017 or so and back then I knew Archive.org to be a place where someone could look up very old websites on the Internet. I've done that from time to time considering how long I've been a user of the web. I remember when eBay was not even close to how big it is now. Yeah, I was there when Strong Bad checked his first e-mail. That's how long I've been here.

Hi, 12th, great-grandfather. What up?

    On it's surface, the book seems pretty straightforward. It tells you all the facts you need to know about a person's life and if you're lucky you might even get a profession or two. These were people who lived a very, very long time ago and any information about their lives is priceless to me and every genealogist out there. 

    I'm lucky in that this book and the various other genealogy books I've found on Archive.org have gelled with records in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. There hasn't been anything that gave me real pause and I'm not sure why. Were the people writing these books that meticulous? Were they under the gun by some members of the various families they were reporting on? The world may never know. But it is fun to think about why these books are so accurate whereas others are not that great.

    Okay. So, now that I've introduced the book I bet you're wondering why I want to understand it better. Well, the only thing I am often curious about is why they never bothered to cover the ladies in the book very well. They just covered the men. I mean I know the reason WHY in the general sense. They wanted to focus on the male bloodlines and all of that. It just strikes me as a missed opportunity from the perspective of someone living in the 21st century. Wouldn't it have made sense to include a daughter of Joe Jones and her children?  I'm fortunate that several generations of people are mentioned in the books.  However, the second one of the ladies in my tree are mentioned, there's zero information about her and I'd have to rely on town records.

And there's my 5th great-grandmother, Sarah.

    For the Sargent family I can get to the children of Amos Sargent, my 6th great-grandfather. He was one of my dozen or so soldiers of the American Revolution and was a privateer! Not bad. 

    My 5th great-grandmother was his fourth child, Sarah and as you can see Sarah married a Fisher and as a result there'd be no mention of her descendants. She obviously had children. They just aren't mentioned in this book. You might be wondering "Was there a Fisher genealogy book, Chris?"

        Oh, yes. There definitely was a Fisher genealogy book. I'm glad you asked! That book thankfully picked up where the Sargent book left off. Unfortunately, it was more of the same. Don't get me wrong. Everything gelled with the records in Massachusetts. It just was annoying how the women were all sidelined. I know I should have accepted that reality. But it's just something to think about and it's a sharp contrast to how records were kept in Italy and in Quebec at the same time! The ladies and their families were all documented there! Maybe it was just a culture thing.

    The Fisher genealogy book is more of the same. I guess all of the authors got together and wanted to have the same format for all of these books. Makes sense if the families were intertwined like this. What's annoying is that if you published one book and your ancestor is in another book, you'd have to buy two of the books! Yay, capitalism!

    At least the books are now digitized and on the Internet for people to look at. The Fisher book also comes with a history of Malden, Massachusetts where the Sargents and Fishers all lived. That is pretty awesome. I still wish the ladies got their due in these books. I know. I know. I need to stop thinking like someone born in the 20th Century. Look. I can't help it. French-Canadian and Italian records spoiled me! They documented everybody!

    I will say this for the Fisher book. The biographies are more fleshed out than the Sargent one. I've seen some interesting stories on here that would more than flesh out any profile on your favorite genealogy program. There's a lot of great information that could be put to good use. Sadly, the problem is still there when it comes to the ladies. At least the history is still there and the information gels with records I have found. I've found several people who lived in Haverhill but they were few and far between. Having more of them would have been the icing on the genealogy cake.

    The really weird thing about this book is that it should have provided a number for readers for certain people in the family. Ideally, my fifth great-grandfather Lewis Fisher should have had an entry in the book. He should be entry number 473 instead of Salem.  I guess if you bought the Fisher book hoping to find the rest of Sarah Sargent's line you'd have been out of luck. It's just really weird how the author never went into details on Lewis's line.

    This is just another thing that really confuses me about the books. While the information is undoubtedly correct, some people are omitted for one reason or another. My guess is that they didn't have the tools we have today. Genealogy in those days meant you had to lug around heavy books and spend hours looking through them hoping to find that juicy nugget of information.

    The weird thing is that I thought I once saw my 4th great-grandfather mentioned in the book. It's like the Mandela effect where you think something was one way when in fact it's another. Maybe he was mentioned in another book? Perhaps. It's just as well. I really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. These genealogy books are a treasure trove of information and while it does bother me that the ladies aren't covered as well as the men it does go into exhaustive detail on the history of various towns in Massachusetts.

    I've been told that I'm extremely lucky that these books were well researched. I haven't really found anything wrong with them unlike some of the other books out there. Were the Massachusetts ones better? Or were records in Massachusetts just that easier to come by. Even genealogy books documenting New Hampshire were pretty decent. I guess with a little care and some digging some books were better than others. And unfortunately history repeats itself. These books were basically printed Wikipedia articles for your ancestors. Take them with a grain of salt the size of Rhode Island. You might be lucky with them like I was or you might find something that's wrong on so many levels.

See ya next time!

*  "Sargent genealogy : Hugh Sargent, of Courteenhall, Northamptonshire and his descendants in England" by Sargent, Aaron, 1822-1913; Sargent, John S., 1839- is property of Google.

*"The Fisher Genealogy: A Record of the Descendants of Joshua, Anthony, and Cornelius Fisher"

by Philip A Fisher is property of Google.