My Joshua Tree, Part III

So far, working backwards from my grandfather Frank Maxwell Perry (1910-1970) to my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884), I’ve used a combination of census records and death certificates to document the relationship of Frank to his father John I Perry (1878-1956) and his first wife Lyda E [Maxwell] Perry (1890-1922).  Only two generations to go until I hit my brick wall.

 I have family members’ notes, but I also have John I. Perry’s death certificate, which indicates that his parents were William Preston Perry and Elizabeth Margaret Cutts, and that he was born in Edison, [Calhoun County], Georgia, on 10 October 1878.  A quick search of census records in Ancestry.com gives me the census records I need, covering 1900, 1880, 1870.  I’m continuing to work backwards from what I know, as is recommended by all the experts.  I work on multiple lines simultaneously, which isn’t recommended, though.  Remember the 1890 census records were destroyed by fire in 1921.

Looking at the 1900 census, the household includes the following: William P Perry, age 60, born May 1840, wife Elizabeth M, 46, b Jun 1854, son John J [sic], 21, b Oct 1878, daughter Roser L, 19, b Oct 1880, son Jessee [sic] G, 17, b Jun 1883, daughter Annie B, 14, b Dec 1885, daughter Kittie C, 13, b Jun 1887, daughter Betha M, 11, b Feb 1889, and daughter Ella B, 2, b Oct 1897.  Additionally, William P and Elizabeth M had been married for 29 years, and Elizabeth had 12 children, 9 of whom were still living.

On the 1880 census the family consisted of W.P. Perry, age 40, wife Elizabeth, 26, son Willie, 11, son Frank A, 7, son Henry, 5, son Charlie, 4, son John, 2, and mother Lovisa, age 74.  And on the 1870 census it was William P Perry, 30, Louvisa A, 64, Francis M, 23, and William T, 1.

This could be confusing, but I’m cheating here.  I’m trying to verify a family history that says Frank Maxwell’s father was John Isaiah and John Isaiah’s father was William Preston and William Preston’s father was Joshua.  Additionally, I know who they married. William Preston is said to have married two sisters, Georgia F. Cutts, who died young, and then her sister Elizabeth Margrette Cutts.  But as we discovered last week, there are no death certificates in Calhoun County, Georgia, prior to 1918, and no birth certificates either.  I went looking for marriage certificates and ran into a familiar problem: Calhoun County was created from Early County in 1854, and the Calhoun County Courthouse burned down twice, in 1888 and again in 1920.  While this usually does not result in a total loss of records, it appears that marriage records were particularly affected in one of these fires, because the first ones I can find for Calhoun County date from 1878.

One source of documentation we haven’t yet looked at is wills.  Many types of courthouse records exist beyond the marriage licenses I’ve already become familiar with.  Most of those are not yet available on-line, though.  So I went to my local Family History Center and ordered a microfilm from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.  This is a wonderful resource, and the volunteers are very helpful.  I’m not talking here about the standard Family Search, that lets you search for records on an individual, but about the library of county records.  Here’s a link to the county records for Calhoun County, Georgia.  From here I found the film containing the documents I wanted to review or covering the years I wanted to search, and ordered them through my local Family History Center (soon to be renamed Family Search Centers; you’ll also be able to order and pay for microfilms directly through the Family Search website later this year, and have them shipped to your local Center).

In this case, I had found out about a will for Isabella Cutts that mentioned my great-great grandmother Elizabeth by Googling her name.  This led me to a posting on GenForum from Genealogy.com at http://genforum.genealogy.com/ga/calhoun/messages/39.html that consists of will abstracts of Calhoun County wills.  One thing to remember about will books is that they are transcriptions by a clerk of the court of the original document, and thus should be treated with caution.  However, they are much more reliable generally than an abstraction or a further transcription into print.  In this case, the document, as hard as it is to read, says in part “One share to Mary J. Joiner wife of W. B. Joiner to be hers absolutely and one to Elizabeth W. [sic] Perry wife of W. P. Perry to be hers absolutely” and a little further down it’s made clear that Elizabeth is her daughter, “…... one share shall be given as herein before mentioned to my said daughters each to wit One to Amanda One to Mary J and One to Elizabeth.”

One last point in this rather long post.  I used the wonderful resources at FindAGrave.com to search for William P. Perry and both of his wives.  I found William and Georgia, the first wife, right away, in the Salem Cemetery in Edison, Calhoun County, Georgia.  And there were pictures of their tombstones.  On Georgia’s tombstone it says, “In Memory of Georgia F. Wife of W. P. Perry, Born Nov,. 10, 1849, Died Oct. 21, 1869”.  Secondary and circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but it adds to the weight of the body of evidence.  Elizabeth’s tombstone is actually in Sale City, in Mitchell County.  I’ll have to follow that thread, and deal with Joshua’s tombstone, in the next installment.

Here’s your summary:

• The Family History Center, the Family History Library and Family Search, a closely related set of resources from LDS, are invaluable.  You should find your local Center, and get to know both the individual search and the library search.  The volunteers at your local Center will be glad to help you.
• There is a compiled list of Georgia courthouse disasters available from a USGenNet page, among other places, Destruction of Georgia Courthouses at http://www.usgennet.org/usa/region/southeast/gajackson/destchse.html.  This list is based on information available from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• Accurate official vital records are pretty much a 20^th century invention in Georgia, and enforcement of the requirements was lax until the late 1920’s.  Nevertheless, with perseverance many documents that qualify as primary sources can be found.
• Don’t forget to Google your ancestors’ names.  Yes, you’ll get a lot of chaff, but if you learn to use Advanced Search, and add keywords and place restrictions, you’ll be surprised at what you can find.  Remember, even if you can’t use an index as a primary source it’s still a valuable pointer to the sources themselves.
• FindAGrave.com is an excellent resource online, not only for locating the place of burial, but particularly for obtaining pictures of your dearly departed.  It's all done by volunteers, so  if you make extensive use of the pictures, please consider volunteering in your own area to take cemetery pictures for others.  And always give credit for any pictures you use in your research.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

My Joshua Tree, Part II

We’re exploring the children and grandchildren of my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884).  Joshua is currently one of my “brick walls” in my family history, showing how I trace my family roots back to him and why I can’t get any farther back.

So far, using the 1920 and 1930 census records, we’ve seen that my grandfather, Frank Maxwell Perry (1910-1970) was living with his father John I Perry, Sr. (1878-1956) and siblings John I Perry, Jr, Ruth Perry and William P Perry.  The 1920 census shows that my great-grandmother Lyda E [Maxwell] Perry (1890-1922) was living with her family, but that by the 1930 census John Sr was married to Lulamae [Mullis] Perry (1902-1963).

Death certificates are a key type of primary source record.  They establish name and place and date of death.  They are valuable secondary sources for birth and marriage and sometimes a pointer to parentage.  The name, birth date and place, and the names (and possibly birth places) of the parents are supplied by an “informant”, usually a person close to the deceased, ideally a close relative, but the information cannot be regarded as infallible..  At best, use this information as a pointer to finding additional sources, or as additional confirmation of facts that can be sourced elsewhere.

State law did not required death certificates in Georgia until 1914, and it was 1919 before most counties were complying with the law.  But not until 1928 did compliance become universal.  The counties maintain death records; copies began to be filed with the state in 1928.  So you can write the county vital records office directly if you are positive in which county your ancestor died, or you can write the Georgia Division of Public Health.  Their web address is http://health.state.ga.us/programs/vitalrecords/death.asp.  The fee is currently $25 for a certified copy of a death certificate, and there is no option to order a non-certified (genealogical) copy as in some states. 

For relatives who died between 1914 and 1927, a possible alternative source is the website Georgia’s Virtual Vault from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  As with marriage records, the exact dates covered vary by county, and the quality of the digitized images varies as well.  There are two links on the left side of the screen for death certificates: Georgia Death Certificates and Georgia Non-Indexed Death Certificates, 1928-1930 .  There are the usual pages with sources details and a search section at the bottom.  Of the two, the Georgia Death Certificates (covering 1914-1927) is easier to search as there are a number of search options.  Searcing the 1928-1930 images is basically like a digital microfilm search; there is minimal indexing in the images themselves and you almost have to view each image to find the one you are looking for.  The advantage is that you can do this at home in your PJs.  Read the source details pages carefully.  Neither of these image databases is a complete record of extant death certificates.  They are merely copies of the records on file with the state for the covered years.

I used the Georgia’s Virtual Vault web site to find my great-grandmother Lyda Perry’s death certificate (above). It gives her name, age and death, confirming “common family knowledge” that she died in 1922.  She was the wife of John I. Perry, who provided the information on the certificate.  He knew here maiden name (father’s last name) was Maxwell, again a confirmation of what I already knew through family lore, since that is also my grandfather’s middle name (as well as the middle name of one of my brothers).  Unfortunately, for mother’s maiden name they “doo not no” [sic].  She died of “apoplexy” in Sale City, Mitchell County, Georgia on 8 Jan 1922, and was buried in Sale City the next day.  The doctor and undertaker signed the certificate as well.  So there’s a great deal of information here, but also much that is missing.  As you can see by the spaces provided there is much more they could have filled in.  Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t.

I was luckier with my great-grandfather’s death certificate (right).  My mother’s cousin Barbara already had a certified copy obtained from Fulton County and was kind enough to share it with me.  As you can see, the form has changed, but the basic fields are still there, and compliance with the filling out of the form is much improved.  His son William P. Perry (my great uncle Bill) was the informant, and he knew John’s date of birth and his parents names.  John was living in the Atlanta area, died of multiple causes (basically heart attack and pneumonia) at the Army hospital at Ft. McPherson on 7 March 1956.  

As further corroborating evidence, to consider when evaluating the death certificates, you can search out your ancestors' tombstones or grave markers.  I was lucky enough to find the tombstones for both John & Lyda Perry.  Most of the dates on the tombstones agree with the information on the death certificates.  The exception is Lyda’s birthday.  The death certificate gives her age as 31, but the gravestone says she was born in October 1886, which would have made her 35 years old in January 1922.  These two sources aren’t enough to resolve that question, so we’ll have to look for the answer elsewhere.  Both of these gravestone images are from FindAGrave.com, a wonderful resource for locating burial sites around the world, many with pictures of the tombs and gravestones.  There is also the ability to request pictures of volunteers, who graciously help you fill in the blanks in your family records when it’s difficult for you to obtain the pictures yourself.  These pictures of my great-grandparents graves were taken by  Sue Edwards and can be found on the FindAGrave.com website in the Sale City Cemetery, Sale City, Mitchell, Georgia, USA.

So death certificates are available in Georgia for most of the 20^th century.  Just don’t get your hopes up if you’ve done research in other states.  It’s still possible to find them, and there are even a few available for free.  And it doesn't hurt to add burial information from the graves of your relatives.  As we go back prior to the start of the last century, though, documentation gets scarcer, and a great deal of detective work is required.  I’ll continue with my Joshua tree in the next installment.

Here’s your summary:

• Georgia’s Virtual Vault is a digital document resource from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  In it you can find a number of documents that qualify as primary sources of information.
• There is a compiled list of Georgia courthouse disasters available from a USGenNet page, among other places, Destruction of Georgia Courthouses at http://www.usgennet.org/usa/region/southeast/gajackson/destchse.html.  This list is based on information available from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• Accurate official vital records are pretty much a 20^th century invention in Georgia, and enforcement of the requirements was lax until the late 1920’s.  Nevertheless, with perseverance many documents that qualify as primary sources can be found.
• FindAGrave.com is an excellent resource online, not only for locating the place of burial, but particularly for obtaining pictures of your dearly departed.  It's all done by volunteers, so  if you make extensive use of the pictures, please consider volunteering in your own area to take cemetery pictures for others.  And always give credit for any pictures you use in your research.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim

My Joshua Tree, Part I

Last week I mentioned my great-great-great grandfather Joshua Perry (1805-1866) & his wife Louvicia Anne Wade Perry (1806-1884).  Joshua is currently one of my “brick walls” in my family history.  I’ll come back to him again and again, so I’ll start with what I’ve found out that leads me back to him and why I can’t get any farther back.

My grandfather was Frank Maxwell Perry (1910-1970).  Though I haven’t yet gotten copies of my parents birth certificates from them (they are still living), I have little doubt of this.  So though I haven’t yet documented this link, it’s a given.  And starting with my grandfather we immediately come up against a problem in researching family history in Georgia.  The state of Georgia did not require birth and death certificates until 1919, and compliance was spotty until at least 1928, and not universal until the 1930’s (Red book: American state, county & town sources by Alice Eichholz;1992, Ancestry Publishing, p 147; link is to Google Books).  There were a few larger cities who required birth and/or death certificates as early as 1880’s, but my Perry clan lived in rural southwest Georgia.  Another great source would be family Bibles with contemporaneously recorded births and deaths, but so far I’ve had no luck locating such volumes.

This leaves me with secondary sources.  My initial guide for the ancestors of my grandfather were family memories of my mother and her cousin, and some family trees put together early in the 20^th century by some of their aunts and great-aunts.  Since I can’t document these relationships with primary sources I am forced to rely on secondary sources, census records, marriage records, tombstones and newspaper accounts.  In the case of my Perry family the census records have proved invaluable.  The census is of course not 100% reliable, but when you add the weight of multiple census years to your other sources you can come to some pretty reliable conclusions about lines of descent. 

I can find my grandfather on both the 1930 and 1920 censuses; he was born after the 1910 census was taken.  From these two I can get his siblings’ names (John I Jr, Ruth and William P; Uncle Bill was listed as William T in the 1920 census, but that’s a perfect example of how you must treat information on the census forms as valuable, but in need of verification).  From these two forms I also get confirmation of the fact that my great-grandmother (Lyda) was living in 1920, but that my grandfather had remarried by 1930 (to Lula M).  If I go back one more decade I can find my great-grandparents living together on the 1910 census.  I happen to know that great-grandmother Lyda had in fact died and that my great-grandfather John Isaiah Perry married Lula Mae Mullis.  Proving it becomes interesting.

(Remember, you can click on these images to see a larger one.)

I’ve mentioned before the website Georgia’s Virtual Vault from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  In addition to the Confederate Pension records we looked at last week they have digitized copies of most of the surviving marriage books from the State of Georgia through the early 1900’s.  The exact dates covered vary by county, and the quality of the digitized images varies as well.  But it does save a lot of driving (or writing) to obtain copies of the marriage records registered with the county offices.  

 Just click on the Marriage Records from Microfilm link on the left side of the screen.  This brings up the page with an explanation of the sources of the microfilmed books and a search section at the bottom.  These books are not digitally indexed, so the Advanced Search isn’t useful here.  I generally select the county I want to look in and click Search, which brings me to a page listing all the marriage books available for the selected county.  Drawing on family history again, I know that my Lyda Ellen Maxwell (my great-grandmother) was from Decatur County, so that is where I believe she was married.  The problem is that the Decatur County marriage books on the Virtual Vault website end with 1905.  Checking into Mitchell County, I can see marriage books for 1867 through 1928 for White residents (1909-1924 for African American licenses), but though I’ve searched I can’t find a license issued to John I Perry for either marriage in Mitchell County.  So I’ll have to order these licenses or wait until I can go search for them myself.

There are a couple of things to notice here.  First, white and African American (or “colored”) marriage licenses were recorded in separate books in most counties well into the 20^th century.  This is another legacy of the Civil War, and evidence of the legal segregation practiced throughout much of society after the War ended.  Second, the microfilms of the marriage books in Mitchell County don’t start until 1867.  One reason could be that the books just weren’t microfilmed when the others were.  Often you can find indexes to these books, and in some cases you can find the microfilms on the Family History Library website and order them through your local Family History Center.  But sometimes the records simply no longer exist.  Every state has counties that have suffered the loss of records because of fire or flood at the county courthouse.  In the South, however, particularly in Georgia, fire is a particularly pervasive cause of the loss of county records.  In a few instances it was the actions of Union troops, but there have been reports and suppositions that some residents of some counties burned the records themselves, figuring that the Yankees couldn’t tax what they didn’t know about!

In Part II of My Joshua Tree, I’ll look at Death Certificates.

Here’s your summary:

• Georgia’s Virtual Vault is a digital document resource from the Georgia Archives and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.  In it you can find a number of documents that qualify as primary sources of information.
• Google Books can be a great resource.  They have digitized many genealogy books, and even if only part of the book is searchable it can save you a trip to a library or a purchase/search if you can check whether the book contains information pertinent to your search.  The also sell digital copies of many books, provide links to purchasing sources, and link to WorldCat to make a library search quick and convenient.
• There is a compiled list of Georgia courthouse disasters available from a USGenNet page, among other places, Destruction of Georgia Courthouses at http://www.usgennet.org/usa/region/southeast/gajackson/destchse.html.  This list is based on information available from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
• I'm not doing a "Genealogy 101" because many other do the introductory teaching so much better.  There are many books, but I've also been enjoying the pod casts from Lisa Louise Cooke, Family History: Genealogy Made Easy.  They are very informative, even if you've been involved in family history for a while.  For internet research tips, I've been reading Genealogy Online, Eighth Edition, by Elizabeth Powell Crowe (2008, McGraw Hill) and can highly recommend it.  I got my copy from the local Barnes & Nobel, but Amazon.com also has it.

Later y’all,

*GeorgiaTim