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There are times when historians and genealogy researchers hit a brick wall, such as in tracing the steps back to the exact city, town or village that a relative was from. With all the name changes, misspellings, translations or mis-indexed translations it’s no wonder why some relatives become untraceable. These historians and other researchers are rummaging through FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage and many more places. After all avenues are picked through and the passenger lists and immigration documents are coming up empty this is when to consider the Historical Records Series Available From the Genealogy Program through the USCIS Genealogy Program. USCIS Genealogy Program is a fee-based service offering family historians and other researchers with timely and accurate access to historical immigration and naturalization records. Full of RICH information! The USCIS Genealogy Program is authorized to make five (5) series of the agency’s historical records available to requesters. They are:
1) Naturalization Certificate Files (C-Files), September 27, 1906 to March 31, 1956 2) Alien Registration Forms (Form AR-2), August 1940 to March 1944 3) Visa Files, July 1, 1924 to March 31, 1944 4) Registry Files, March 1929 to March 31, 1944 5) A-Files, April 1, 1944 to May 1, 1951 Check it out if your needing that link to your ancestors native lands and have turn over every other leaf first. In the midst of the Industrial revolution, between the 18th and 19th centuries, the sensations of the railroads in the U.S. sparked change within the social, economic and political arenas. The railroad became the main mode of transportation for millions of people as the years went by. Railroads were originally revealed in Great Britain. In the dark depths of the coal mines, in the 1820s, was a man by the name of George Stephenson. George Stephenson, was a pioneer of the railway who invented the “Rocket,” the most famous and best designed early railway steam locomotive. While researching my mother’s paternal Grandfather I uncovered that he worked for the Colorado and Southern Railway (C & S Rwy), back around 1900 in Trinidad, Colorado. Researching railroad records from way back then can be daunting. Once you discover that your ancestor was employed by the railroad, determine where he lived during the time of his railroad employment. Remember not to just focus on the ancestor’s name. Other ways of researching your railroad ancestors, or any ancestor for that fact, is to research those that were his neighbors on censuses, witnesses for marriages, nationalization witnesses, the ancestor’s children’s records, published histories, names of associates, religious documents, trade newspapers associated with their occupations and historical maps are all wonderful sources for finding your ancestor’s migration history.
Once you identify where your ancestors have lived, you can check city directories from each location which occasionally identifies where the person worked or what the person’s occupation was. If the city directory can’t be found, you will need to poke around into the history of the particular railroads for each area to track down present owners and establish whether employee records still exist for the time in question and where they are held. Once you locate the present-day owners of the railroad, you can contact the company’s record's repositories. But beware of records not reflecting the railroad companies’ name at the historical time but rather they may reflect the name of the company at the time of deposit. Depending on if your ancestor was senior enough, you may also want to check the railroad directories. Railroad map collections at the Library of Congress and the National Archives can be viewed online. Additionally, when an employee or passenger was injured, sometimes civil case lawsuits were filed against the railroad in the US District Court or US Circuit Court. Within the case file one might find reports pertaining to the incident and the injured party, where surprising information could be found. The challenge then becomes finding a file among all other files filed with the courts. The court indexes sometimes perished or didn’t make it to the National Archives for one reason or another. These indexes were often handwritten into large books and alphabetized by the letter of the name associated with the case, so details can be easily missed or mistaken when browsing hundreds of pages of lists of parties. And sometimes these cases weren’t always filed. Both court records can be found in record group 21. If you aren’t so lucky to find an index, there should be a docket that is organized in chronological order by date filed (beware filing date could be several years after the accident). Contact the National Archives closest to the Federal court to where the accident took place, as well as where the railroad was headquartered. Remember that in some cases they may be able to help you via telephone or email, but in most cases you will either need to go the Archives to conduct a more thorough review yourself or hire a researcher. Here are some websites that can be of great value: Familysearch Wiki Locating Railroad Employee Records Genealogy / RRB.Gov – Railroad Retirement Board National Archives of Atlanta Railroads in North America Erie Railroad Internet Employee Archives Records Relating to the Railroads in the Cartographic Section Burlington Northern, The West’s First Mega Railroad Reference Information Papers Virginia Tech University Libraries ImageBase Search for “Railroad”. This will provide you with images of employees and other images related to the railroad industry. The Norfolk and Western Historical Society Great Northern Railway Historical Society A Federal Railroad Adventure: Andrews’ Raiders Colorado and Southern Railway Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum – Chinese American Contribution to the transcontinental Railroad B & O Railroad Museum – Hays T. Watkins Research Library Irish and German Immigration The Rise of Industrial America, 1877 - 1900 Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers in the United States, 1870 – 1930 Encyclopedia of Chicago Railroads Guide to the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen Records, 1883 - 1973 I’ve been asked to describe the process of how I found a surname of a man that used an alias name and was of Jewish descent to boot. Number one thing to have is patience and lots of it. Number two is curiosity. Curiosity is what drives me and helps me to think outside the box. And number three thing to have is determination. Without these, this process can become daunting and frustrating.
When beginning a journey such as this, you always begin with family members and what they know. Unfortunately, both my mother and my aunt didn’t know of their biological paternal grandfather. They had always believed that their step grandfather was their grandfather and knew no different. Something that started so innocently by my cousin as to building a family tree lead to a mystery of intrigue for me. In April of 2017 I wrote a blog called “The Genealogical and Genetic Hunt for Alias ‘John Wallace’”. This blog talks about the documents that were available regarding this man “John Wallace” and the trail of clues left behind. Then on May 6, 2017 I wrote another blog called “DNA Expert & the Search for Alias John Wallace”, where Diahan Southard, a DNA expert, spoke with me regarding what to look for and how to utilize the DNA information provided by AncestryDNA, 23andme and FTDNA. This article provides detailed information that can be of great importance. During this time, I had to think about when you have an endogamous population, an endogamy or pedigree collapse can manifest. Endogamy is a tradition of marriage within the boundaries of cultural, social, religious, ethnic or tribal community in accordance with custom or law. Thus, ensuring in an endogamous community everyone will stem from the same small DNA pool. Pedigree collapse arises when two people share an ancestor that in turn causes the number of precise ancestors in the family tree of their children to be smaller than it could otherwise be. Examples of populations affected include: Ashkenazi Jews, French Canadians, Gottscheers and parts of Mexico. All of which I have within my family from both my parents. Pedigree collapse doesn’t automatically mean endogamy. As I have come to learn all endogamy populations differ from one another. However, for the Ashkenazi Jews the DNA relationship predictions compel a percentage of 2% or more for accuracy. And with at least 150 cM (centimorgans) to even be considered being looked at. As my luck would have it, I didn’t have those DNA matches yet. 2018 came in with trepidation and sadness because a sweet little boy of 15, my nephew, lost his battle to Leukemia in Nov 2017 and now my beautiful mother had been diagnosed with cancer. July came and a little sunshine shined for a few moments. Even though my mother was losing her fight to cancer maybe I could at least provide her with the knowledge of her true maiden name, that she had never known but was curious to know. On July 19th I noticed for the first time a 1st – 2nd cousin match on Ancestry with 388 cM (centimorgans) across 16 segments of DNA. Were my eyes deceiving me? This is where the blog called “Finding the Family Name” picks up the story. What I can say from this point is that when you are looking for an unknown person always get each and every document you can find out there, not just indexes. Use the indexes to find the documents. Then analyze the documents for clues to find other information. Documents if closely analyzed can provide more information than one can imagine. The article called “Analyzing A Document” will provide you with how to go about analyzing the documents. I am a fanatic about documentation and I’ll nit pick a document to death. As you are analyzing remember to think outside the box and do not limit yourself to where a document can lead to. Also trust your gut feelings. When you are looking for a DNA match that has no trees connected to their DNA then these websites can be of use. First you need to learn how to use google to benefit you the most. Digging Up Deep Roots on Facebook shared a great video on how to utilize Google. With this knowledge I went on to find everything that I could find on every website that had this person’s name. List of websites that I used:
With the help of these websites and gut feelings and one DNA match that would not talk and one DNA match that so thankfully listed their parents I was able to recreate a tree and find their connection allowing me to finally discover the true maiden name of my mother and aunt. |
Penny Alvarez-KellerGraduated from Arkansas Tech University with a degree in Management / Marketing and a degree in Economics / Finance Archives
February 2023
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