A Black Mark On the US Census

I had a genealogy query this week regarding an African American line of the Carr family. It always startles me afresh that I can't find someone in the 1860 census because they were considered property at the time, not people, due to their race. As you go back in time, the census records for African Americans slide over into the 1860 Slave Census, where individual slaves are listed under their owner's name by age and gender only. The query requested the name of Charlie Carr's father. Eleven-year-old Charlie was living with his mother Sarah in the 1870 census in Red River, Arkansas. Charlie and his parents are likely listed among the slaves owned by H A Hawkins of Red River, Arkansas in the 1860 slave census. I'm not sure how to prove it, though. (Photo is of slaves on a plantation in nearby Mississippi during the Civil War)

A link to Wikipedia in all of this? Red River, Arkansas was in Sevier County until 1867, when it joined Little River County. This wasn't noted in the article on Little River County, so I added the text as well as an external link to Arkansas Formation Maps, which shows all of the changes in county designations in the State of Arkansas by year. It is a pressing need for Wikipedians to update all county articles that lack formation information.

Pack Rat

In many aspects of my life I am a pack rat. I just never know when some stray item might come in handy. I grew up collecting stamps and coins and post cards. Now my genealogy hobby is the enabler, allowing me to keep old books and important family papers and do all sorts of "keeping of old stuff." The whole mess is barely tolerated in my household and I'm often persona non grata because of my hobbies.

Well, anyway, I've recently discovered yet another way to keep old stuff -- on Wikipedia. I'm not the most religious person, but apparently I can now be linked to two Wiki-ish cults: Inclusionism and Eventualism. Oh, my.
* Inclusionists like to hold onto articles and pieces of information because they can imagine a use for them or see no particular harm in keeping them.
* Eventualists like to hold onto info just in case they can find a use for it someday.

The Economist wrote a related article in March 2008 called The Battle for Wikipedia's Soul. It deals specifically with the fight over content between inclusionists and deletionists. The war really rages at times. And I've fired more than my fair share of volleys in support of adding, keeping, preserving.

So, how does this obsession manifest itself in my day-to-day Wiki world? Well, I can say that most airport articles don't suit my packrat nature. Look at London's Heathrow as an example. The gates and airlines are all current, like an airport webpage. Seems to me that someone doing research on airport growth and decline since the beginning of the use of smaller jets and airline hubs would be sorely out of luck if he/she tried to use Wikipedia. Deletionists are careful to quickly remove all signs of former airlines and gates when changes to flight schedules or airline bankruptcies occur. This is true for most articles about airports, which are overseen by WikiProject Airports.

This all came up because someone recently edited the Erie Water Works article to change the source of water for an Erie reservoir. The correcting editor is fixing the encyclopedia article about the current water works, while the article may actually refer to historic information about the sources of water used in Erie. My eventualist tendencies say to preserve the historic information in case a more complex article can be formulated that includes the history of EWW's water sources. I think Wiki is big enough to hold these extra facts and it's always best to proceed cautiously to avoid losing useful information.

Briefly Found Relatives

Genealogy time and time again offers the chance to bridge the gaps between generations in order to tie up loose ends in a family's history or to fill the hole in a family's heart.

I located my father's long lost aunt through a serendipitous phone call to the funeral home where relatives were preparing for her imminent death. My father and his sister rushed to the aunt's bedside and held her hand in her final hours. She was unconscious, but my father and aunt were quite moved to be able to say some final words to her anyway.

On my wife's side, the family left New York with the coming of the railroads circa 1855 and headed west, half to Bloody Kansas and the other half to Wisconsin. The Wisconsin crew left Fond du Lac and went on to the Dakota Territory, but Yankton proved inhospitable. Half of the Dakota crew went to Oregon while my wife's line amazingly returned east to farm just outside of Washington, DC in the Maryland countryside. Well over a hundred years after the family split up, I located the Oregon and Kansas lines and had some nice family history-filled letters from the matriarch of the Oregon side of the family before she died only a few years later. She lived long enough to see the genealogy I published and to get her own copy.

I found my great aunt just before she died. She wrote that her line had come to the US from Germany but turned around and went back! They left a couple of sons in Buffalo and hopped aboard a ship back to Europe. How do you find out that sort of story except by personal accounts?! My follow up letter was returned by her daughter, with regrets upon the passing of her mother.

I'm hoping to find the descendants of my paternal grandfather's siblings here in New Jersey. Chances are that too much time has passed for me to find an ancient ancestor with all of the answers. I'm just hoping I discover a line with at least one family historian who will understand what is needed.

Persistence in your research is important because time marches on. You may not have the chance you have today to find something out or to mend fences. Dates of death are usually in the realm of history, but once in a while they are tomorrow or next week.