Arlene Eakle’s Kentucky Blog

In 1801, Cane Ridge, Bourbon County Kentucky hosted a non-sectarian camp meeting.  Ministers from Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist Churches preached from stumps throughout the grounds.

20,000 to 30,000 people attended–from Tennessee, from Pennsylvania, from Ohio, they came.  They arrived on foot, on horseback, in wagons, and carriages filled with supplies for the six-day event.  From as far away as NC!

In 1804, the Cane Ridge Disciples of Christ was organized.

Let me share a strategy with you that can lead you to the origins of your Kentucky ancestors–follow the minister.  Your ancestors frequently emigrated from Ireland in a group of “saints” on their way to “Zion.” Lead by a clergyman they had already followed.

If your ancestor was…– or you suspect he was–a Presbyterian, check the Fasti of the Irish Presbyterian Church, 1613-1840, compiled by James McConnell.  304 pages, printed in 1936.  See The Genealogists’ Magazine (1936-37) for a short review.

There are many other Fasti for both Ireland and Scotland, as well as those published in America for ministers of the American churches.  Some are contemporary with the time your ancestors emigrated to America, some are compiled from church records by modern scholars like:

Fasti  of seceder ministers ordained or installed in Ireland 1746-1948,
arranged and edited by W D Bailie and L S Kirkpatrick. [Belfast, Northern Ireland] : Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland, 2005. Includes
short biographical sketches of ministers of various groups which seceded from the Presbyterian Church starting in 1733: Anti-burgher ministers 1747-1818, Burgher ministers 1749-1818, United Synod ministers 1818-1840, Other Seceder ministers 1816-1948.

If you do a key word search in the Family History Library Catalog for Fasti, you can review a major list of these publications. Copies are available on fiche, film, and in print through the Library and its branches.  Use the FHL Catalog as a finding tool for titles, then check your local library environment for copies that you can access close to home in person or on loan.

Google these titles to see if the older ones are already scanned online at books.google.com.  Also run the titles of interest onWorldcat which gives you the nearest library to you where a copy is on deposit.

Look also for ministers’ diaries, journals, memo books, and correspondence–where they might keep a record of persons they baptized or visited or persuaded to attend their own congregations.

It is such an amazement when a book or article provides a list of clergymen who served particular churches.  And I examine their footnotes and lists of sources.  These personal records may not be cited–I find them in library and archive catalogs, first.  Then I try to locate copies or search them when I am in the vicinity of that library or archive.  Do you?

Camp meetings provided contact points for young people seeking a husband or wife–the meetings ran morning, noon, and night.  And the families camped at the meeting grounds or stayed with relatives who lived nearby.  So there was plenty of opportunity for young people to meet.

Have you ever speculated where your ancestors met each other?  In Ohio?  In Pennsylvania?  in Kentucky?  You can see from the places of birth in census entries that family members were there.  What if…?  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://arleneeakle.com

PS  Local county histories and heritage books may also list the ministers.  And they are identified in the census–problem:  when you only search online census entries, you need a name.  The census used to be the first place you got the name of a local churchman.  Oh well…progress requires adaptation.  Right?

An article appearing in Diggin’ for Davises 16 (Feb 2010), entitled “What are your Plans to Preserve your Research Data?” started me thinking.

As I drove the long miles, from flooded Kentucky where I had planned to do research for a week or more, to my home in Tremonton UT, I thought about that article–talking of the impermanence of today’s acid-based paper, and toner ink from cartridges on computer printers which fades in 10-20 years, and early computer discs–called floppies–which can only be read on the machines that generated them, and the laptops of great 20th-century writers like John Updike and Norman Mailer with uncertain storage dates, and the NASA photos of US moon landings stored on magnetic tapes assembled on huge pallets and the enormous size of the machine that had to read them, and on, and on, and on.

It is still a little too early to get a full assessment of water and subsequent mold damage to records that may have been in the paths of the flooding rivers in Kentucky and Tennessee.  The water rose so quickly and almost without warning–Did we lose records for which there are no copies?  No digital scans?  No printed versions?  Still too early to tell.

My husband Alma and I started the Genealogy Library Center, Inc. with the idea that your personal genealogy files could have a permanent home if family members decided they could not preserve them.

Actually, the GLC was begun as much more selfish and narrow idea–the preservation of my own collections of data.  My genealogy,  Alma’s genealogy, my mother’s antique music collections, Alma’s mother’s antique music collections, my 15,000 genealogy books, my 22 file cabinets of historical, social, and genealogical materials–my own stuff!

Then it expanded to files of no longer active of all my 600 genealogy research clients and over 400 consulting clients–also my stuff!

Then it expanded to include the files of clients and their relatives who had no place to put their stuff.  So I began to collect these.

Then it expanded to any collection that needed a home.

NOW, I want to solicit Kentucky genealogy and history books, magazines and periodicals, newspapers, family Bibles and their family data pages, wherever they are currently stored–WHEREVER THESE PRECIOUS RECORDS OF THE PAST ARE IN DANGER OF DESTRUCTION!

Gentle Readers–your Kentucky cannot be traced online alone.  Nor can it be traced in records currently on microfilm–there or in the Family History Library’s Granite-Mountain Storage Vaults alone.

My recent trip–when I couldn’t get to Kentucky, I stopped at the Midwest Genealogy Center, part of the Mid-Continent Public Library in Independence MO.  This new genealogy facility is two-stories filled with ancestors.  I reviewed the Kentucky collection–and as good as it is–you can’t depend on it alone.

I also visited the Dallas Public Library Genealogy Collection on the 8th floor.  Newly re-organized to make searching and finding much more efficient and sure–and as good as it is–you can’t depend on it alone.

An interesting observation–every library has a different collection of Kentucky research materials.  It is the darndest thing!  Also an exciting discovery–by mixing and matching, you can trace a lot of genealogy.

So what is your favorite Kentucky genealogist to do?

Ask for donations–

1. From libraries running out of shelves.
2. From local genealogical societies who are willing to share copies of their quarterlies and the duplicates donated to them.
3. From specific genealogists and historians who have collected stuff over the years–that no one wants anymore in hard copy because “everything is being digitized and posted online.”
4. From map stores who replace their atlases and maps with new imagery and often dump their old-out-of-date maps because they are no longer current.
5. From government agencies who no longer have shelf room for inactive and non-current records they are not required by law to keep.

My Genealogy Library Center, Inc., is a non-profit facility, purchased especially to house such records.  (See my Home Page for a picture and description of collections already received–about to be updated with three times the entries.)

Please consider what Kentucky stuff you are not using and donate those items to the GLC.  You will provide a legacy for years to come.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle    http://arleneeakle.com

PS  At the Kansas City Family History EXPO 30-31 July 2010, I will compare KY lineages within my Southern States Curriculm–4 classes on Southern Ancestry?  You could come!

For many years my seminar presentation on American Migration Patterns has remained one the most popular sessions I offer.  And I separated out a section which I titled Migration into the Central United States which includes all those areas “west of ye Laurel Hills.”  (The Laurel Hills form a short boundary line in western Pennsylvania and Maryland. )   And that session has proven as popular as the more encompassing presentation.

Two or more  times a year you will find me somewhere speaking on these topics.  They are fun to do.  Not only do I get to share some of my choicest research examples,  there are always people in attendance who have an “Ah Ha!” experience during the session.  And head for home determined to capture their hardest-to-find ancestor with these new insights.

Now, to these presentations, I can add details that are finally documented by scholars who study why people of different ages and genders move.  Where they go.  What they do.  And when or if they are likely to return to their origins.  So here goes:

  Disclaimer:  Since I am writing this at the Family History Library without my list of references, you will have to tune in to the next episode for these).

1. Up to 45% of families enumerated in the census have persons living in their households who are not “father-mother-all the kids.”   And these persons are usually related by blood or marriage.  If your family has emigrated from Europe or the British Isles within the last two generations, these persons come from the same  local place of origin or nearby.
2. Young people, who are related by blood or marriage, form the first choice “work force”  regardless of occupation.   Relatives with a business to run seek young family members to build an employee base.  If your family is Scottish, they will only employ kin–they believe they have the capacity to control the honesty, the dependability, the focused commitment of the person hired.  Whether there is salary or just room and board along with training in specific skills–employee is tied to employer.
3. Women of all ages living  in someone else’s household–from as low as age 5 years–are related by blood, or marriage, or close community ties.  These ties remain constant over the lifetime of your ladies.  The census enumerator did not have to report relationship until the 1880 census.  Even then, there are females named in the household you can later  prove had a connection to those living in the family–whether you recognize their surnames as related to begin with or not.
4. Young children, generally under age 12, are related regardless of their names.  Even when you later find formal adoption papers–collateral relationships exist.
5. The average time for a family member to work without returning home, is one to five years.  Have you read the census every ten years, or even every five years where extra state and local censuses were taken, and found a gap?  Your ancestor is there, then gone, then there again, then gone.

These are just a few of the demographic trends that determine whether you put your family together correctly or not . 

Let the work of other professionals help you build a family tree based on the evidence–whatever that evidence is, or was, or whatever…

While it is true that more Kentuckians descend from Virginia than any other place–after all, Kentucky was a Virginia county– 

1. They also descend from North Carolinians–whole wagon-loads left Wilkes county and Burke county and settled in eastern Kentucky.  They went from one set of mountains to another to live.  And you can often name every person in the group because their names have been held in remembrance all these years or published in county histories and genealogical periodicals.
2. And Marylanders–central Kentucky became the home of Roman Catholics who no longer felt safe in Maryland.  These migrations are well-documented too.
3. And Pennsylvanians–who moved easily up the Potomac River drainage valleys.  Even today, You can travel more easily on the Interstate road system through those valleys than any other route into or out of Pennsylvania.  And the people who settled in the lower [Delaware] counties found their way into Pennsylvania first, then Kentucky second.
4. And New Yorkers–actually New York originally claimed some of the choicest parts of Kentucky among its western lands.  And sent its sons (and daughters) out West for new beginnings.   There is also a focused migration from the area of old Genesee county with offers of land exchanges, especially for Irish who sought a new life and new fortune.
5. And Vermonters–genealogists who always considered their pedigree to be pure South are shocked to discover that their origins are Vermont.  Vermont was (and in some ways still is) a difficult state to live in.  Your ancestor could leave the craggy mountains with too little area to farm and a harsh climate both summer and winter for the lush green-covered countryside of the Blue Grass–where horses could swish their tails unattended all year long.

When you analyze your pedigree for places of origin, don’t be mislead by the surnames you find there.  People from many backgrounds can share surnames.  And Americanized surnames can be espcially troublesome–for people from different origins can have the same name.  Or your ancestor could emigrate to America 100 years behind earlier relatives, and share the same naming patterns.  These ancestors present a special challenge.  And beware of genealogical studies that purport the same origins shared by the same names–many not be so!   Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle.   http://arleneeakle.com

PS  My next turn to speak on Migration into the Central United States is at the Southern California Jamboree, 11-13 June 2010.  You can join in the fun by registering at Jamboree 2010.  New this year–registration on Thursday evening, 10 June; bloggers and Google Earth mini-courses using your own laptops, free sessions and workshops as well as paid admission–and although not new, ME.

A few weeks ago, I consulted the early Kentucky land patents databases online.  And ran head-on into some of the most difficult problems of indexing records for digital recall.

1. Multiple spellings of surnames.  You know the importance of watching for other spellings of your surname of interest.  Anticipating those spellings enables you to search databases more completely.  And while some online programing, like Ancestry’s online census access, includes a variety of surnames alternates, some does not.
2. Indexing the principal parties in a document vs every-name indexes.  If one record series has an every-name index, do all the record series include every name?  When these indexes are merged into a single index, the gap may not be obvious.  It takes use to spot the problem.
3. Are multiple entries for the same name on the same page all individually indexed?  The typist may conclude that seeing the multiple names as they appear on the page is enough.  The index does not have to be expanded to a separate entry for each instance of the same name.

What the Kentucky government has done is extraordinary.  Twelve (12) different record categories are now indexed online:

__Kentucky Cities

__Virginia and Old Kentucky Patent Series (called Virginia Surveys                             and Grants)

__Revolutionary War Warrants

__West of Tennessee River (Jackson Purchase) Military Patents

__Certificates of Settlement and Preemption Warrants

__Virginia Treasury Warrants Database

__Lincoln Entries  (Lincoln County)

__County Court Order Patents

__Jackson Purchase Database

__West of Tennessee Non-Military Patents

__Wills included with Land Patent Files

__County Formations and Boundary Changes Database

And when you request a name in the search screen, the pages where that name appears are links.  When you clkick the links, the name you requested appears on the page highlighted in yellow for easy spotting.

Just be very careful that you request, separately,  all the different spellings for your surname of interest.

For example:  I requested Isaac Ruddell in the search screen.  Yellow highlights appeared  on two pages–as Isaac Ross and as Isaac Ruddell.

Then I requested Isaac Ruddle.  Yellow highlight appeared on one entry for Isaac Ruddle. Immediately above the Isaac Ruddle entry, was an entry for Isaac Ruddell, not highlighted.  Nor was it found in the Ruddell search.

Since the entries are alphabetical by surname, I then checked under the alpha spelling of Ruddle–Bingo!  Two more Isaac Ruddle entries that did not appear in the index search.  AND:  two entries for George Ruddle, one entry for James Ruddle, four entries for John Ruddle, Heirs of and listing James Ruddle & Heirs as the grantee for each of those four entries.  Also discovered were two entries for Cornelius Ruddell, in the alpha list for that spelling.

The four grantee entries for James Ruddle were lost–since they were not in the alpha section, where they could be easily retrieved.  And no entries appeared for Stephen Ruddle/Ruddell, although he was a resident of Woodford County KY where he died about 1800.

My recommendations:

1. Check under each and every spelling of your surname of interest.
2. Search the alpha arrangement to spot additional entries not yet found.
3. Note other persons named in the entries with your surnames.  And check each of their entries by index and by alpha arrangement.  Often, men had partners as they applied for land.

This way you have a greater chance of finding all the entries.  And when you are trying to fit everyone into family units eventually, you need everyone identified in the record series.

This is not a commentary meant to question the integrity of the indexes.  It is a commentary to ensure that you find all the entries that concern your ancestry.  Online indexing is an art, not a science.  So is research.  And you and I both need to invest extra time when we use digital indexes.

Too many genealogy/family conclusions are based on shallow use of indexes.  And those conclusions are too often faulty.  Break your losing streak!  Invest the time to find the entries.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://arleneeakle.com

PS  I am planning a genealogy research trip into KY and TN the first week in May 2010–I have a conference in Dallas TX then and I will have time to do the research.  If you have research problem that you have not been able to solve–let me take a crack at it–in the field–in records you have had access to.  I am often able to get your research going again.  So let me know by email of your interest!

Question: What gives  sports greats like Michael Jordan and Ron Jaworski, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, their athletic value?  Why are they worth the gigantic contract payments they command?

Answer: “Muscle memory”–they have drilled their bodies in the same motion until their muscles (and other body parts) respond without conscious thought or deviation.  Jaworski threw the same pass, to master the perfect throw, more than 20,000 times!

The Utah Jazz, a basketball team who has fielded some incredible players, could never get it right.  There is a point in many games when, as a team,  they falter.  They tire.  They lose focus. They slow down.  And they lose.

In Kentucky genealogy research, “muscle memory” is needed–perhaps more than any other state.  The ability to recognize data gaps and determine which substitute sources and records will fill in the missing data must be honed to a science.  Not just an occasional show of brilliance; a constant, over and over understanding is required.

Kentucky ancestors are difficult to trace–

• through other Kentucky counties
• into and through North and South Carolina
• back to Virginia, and Maryland, and into Delaware, but mostly to Virginia.

Who are these ancestors?  Who flow like water cascading down a chasm into the mountain valleys of Eastern Kentucky?

In A Darkness at Dawn:  Appalachian Kentucky and the Future, Harry M. Caudill poses such a question. This is just a little book.  Part of the Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf published 1976 by the University of Kentucky Press in Lexington.  A small companion piece to his other perceptive studies of Kentucky:  Night Comes to the Cumberland, Dark Hills to Westward, and My Land is Dying.

Most of the family names that sound in the Kentucky hills today were already in America, mainly in Virginia, a full century before Thomas Jefferson took up his quill pen to write the Declaration of  Independence.

I am, of course, aware that many careful students, including the eminently respectable genealogist, William C. Kozee hold to the view that the Scotch-Irish is the predominant strain in Appalachia.  There is a possibility that they are right, but other evidence is against them.

Caudill makes a compelling argument:  the structured religion of the Scotch-Irish, accepted by covenant in Scotland and carried like a banner with these people through Ireland into America.  By the beginning of the Revolutionary War, one-sixth of the total population was of this stock, clinging passionately to their Presbyterianism.

Not so in eastern Kentucky.  When the tireless Presbyterian evangelist, E.O. Guerrant traveled through the Kentucky hills, he found 90% of the people unchurched! Although only 10% belonged to the Baptist faith, almost the entire population considered themselves to be Baptist.  Presbyterianism was nowhere to be found.

Another circumstance that argues against the notion of Scotch-Irish predominance among the settlers of Appalachian Kentucky was their persistent illiteracy.  The Ulstermen were, in the main, well schooled by the standards of the time, with a deeply rooted insistence on an educated clergy.

Few [Kentucky] counties had a school of any kind a half-century after settlers began to arrive. Notwithstanding the rough terrain and the distances between families, it is hard to suppose a populace strongly influenced by Scotch-Irish would have lapsed into the unrelieved illiteracy and general ignorance that gripped the region when the “mission teachers” began to arrive eighty years ago.

More than 90% of Scotch-Irish signed their names to documents, petitions, and other written instruments.  Few made a mark.

These circumstances reflect an original populace that was essentially rootless, deprived by their history of church, schooling, and other established cultural facets.  It was a populace that wanted mostly to be left alone and was significantly lacking in the ambition for worldly gain that drove the Scotch-Irish, Huguenots, and Germans, and later the Jews, from Europe’s ghettos.

What we need is more practice.  More study.  More in-depth contact with the ancestors who resided in eastern Kentucky, and whose descendants are still to be found there today.  So that we can recognize, with “cultural memory” just who these ancestors are and where they originate.  The last word for Appalachian Kentucky has not been written.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle   http://arleneeakle.com

PS  My apologies for the gap in Kentucky blog entries:  My entire communications system failed in mid-September and was not restored until early December.  There is a lane along the edge of my property line.  It is being used by large construction equipment to re-build the county high school.  As nearly as we can figure out, a large machine took out the whole system.  My provider company had to re-run the line and supply a new modem.  Satellite television sets still do not work correctly.  So those modems may have to be replaced too.

PPS  A warning:  I live at the end of the world.  No kidding, I’m serious.  And the state-wide power company is installing a new power grid through the Northern part of the state of Utah–with power poles the likes of which we have never seen.  Objective:  to prevent power outages and brown-outs.  That will be wonderful.  Until it is all up and working well, we still have frequent outages.  So my system may fail again.  I will have a wireless laptop later this month–and it may be able to fill in.

Sometimes I feel a kinship with those worthy ancestors in Appalachian Kentucky!

Webmaster Kathryn here to let you know that’s why she’s missing in action.

An article caught my attention in the New Yorker, 21 Sep 1998, written by Tony Earley, “The Quare Gene.”  So I clipped it and filed it with my genealogy files.

Quare is an adjective the Scots-Irish used to mean queer, eccentric.  Most dictionaries say the word is archaic and obsolete.  Earley reported that as spoken around his mother’s dining table, the word quare “is as current as the breath that produces it, as pointed as a sharpened stick.”  It means suspicious, odd, unusual, strange as well as queer.  [Not to mention what modern English has done to the word queer.]

Words like peaked, trifling, poke, were words Earley grew up with and took for granted.  “I heard them around me, and I breathed them in like air,” he writes.  He was embarrassed and ashamed of his speech, when corrected by classmates.  When he entered college and took an Appalachian-studies class, he learned that he and his family spoke a dialect.

This Appalachian dialect is considered a sign of ignorance and stupidity.  Earley learned the dialect as his mother tongue.  Standard English he learned as a second language.  Teachers and even family members consider this speech to be “colorful.”

It was in Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders, written in 1904, that Earley discovered that his primary language was as close to the Elizabethan English that Shakespeare used or the Middle English of Chaucer.  And in the high mountain valleys of North Carolina and Kentucky, where the population was largely isolated until the building of roads, the mailing of the Sears Roebuck catalog, and the penetration of the hills by American radio,  the speech patterns of the Highlanders didn’t change.

This makes Southern language up to 800 years or more old!

These precious words represent the history and migration of these peoples across parts of Europe, the British Isles, and into the American South.

I invite you to go to your nearest Public Library and read or borrow on interlibrary loan Earley’s article and read it all. He talks of his ancient great-grandfather, Paw Womack, who placed him in his family lineage.  Then sat in quiet companionship and acceptance with him on the porch.  “I’m Reba’s boy, Clara Mae’s grandson, Tom Womack’s great-grandson.”

And he mourns the loss of the word quare and its contained history that will take place with his generation.  And although he does not try to make a case for ethnic integrity–you will wish as I do, that the culture and history represented in this word could continue down the generations.

Earley recognizes that no language is static forever.  “Words and blood are the double helix that connect us to our past.”

You will want to make it a part of your Scots-Irish tradition brought from North Carolina on the wagon trains that wound their way into the mountains of eastern Kentucky.  So I invite you again to get the whole article and read it–pp. 80-85.   Then you too will find a sense of belonging.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://arleneeakle.com

PS  Language can unlock the secrets of your heritage only as you study the history behind the words.  If you do, it will give new meaning to your ancestry.

PPS  I am getting ready to launch my Scots-Irish blog–stay tuned.

Virginia Land Records in Kentucky and Ohio

These records are not conveniently located in one archive with one index.  Nor are they complete, yet, online through one archive with one index.  They are scattered around–and they still exist.

Richard Clough Anderson Collection.Anderson was Registrar of the Virginia Land Office and his son-in-law, Allen Latham assisted him at Chillicothe, OH to 1822.

1. Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois, Urbana.  Ledger Book A (as written on spine and in archive inventory.)  Ledger Book 5, Cash Account Book, 1784-1799.  There is an alpha list of names with year and page # in “Virginia Land Grants in Kentucky and Ohio, 1784-99,” Clifford Neal Smith, National Genealogical Society Quarterly 61 (1973): 16-27. 10,000 items, large ledgers.  These include records from both the French and Indian Wars and the American Revolution.
2. Archives Division, Virginia Library, Richmond VA.  2,500 items.

Virginia Bounty-Land Warrants. Western Reserve Historical Society Collection, Cleveland OH, 5 linear feet of archival material, 4,000 warrants.

Virginia Land Office, Kentucky.  16,000 bounty-land warrants, Kentucky.  Land grants in the Virginia Military District of OH.  Published:  Kentucky Land Grants. 2 vols.  1925.  Willard Rouse Jillson, Filson Club Publications, #33-34 and Federal Land Series, Vol. IV:  Grants in the Virginia Military Land District. 1982-86.  Clifford Neal Smith,  American Library Association.  Also published Catalogue of Revolutionary Soldiers and Sailors of the Commonwealth of Virginia to Whom Bounty-Land Warrants were Granted for Virginia Military Services in the War for Independence. Edited by Samuel M. Wilson.  Reprint of 1913 Year Book of the Kentucky Society of the SAR and 1917 Year Bookof Society of Colonial Wars in Kentucky.  1994.  Southern Historical Press, PO Box 1267, Greenville SC 29602.  Includes new index and both warrants and surveys by bundle.

These documents have now been put online by the Kentucky State Archives:  http://www.sos.ky.gov/land/search/

Early Kentucky Land Records, 1773-1780.1992.  Neal O. Hammon.  Filson Club Publications.  A new readingof the original warrants, surveys, and military claims.  Using computer property-mapping software, Hammon also provides land ownership maps for these early claims.  Hammon has also written a series of articles on the early land records and settlers of Kentucky.

Kentucky Land Lotteries, 1789-1800.  Advertised in newspapers throughout the East, offered 40,000 acres for sale in 150-acre lots for $15.00 per ticket.

These compilations and original documents list watercourses, including the larger bodies of water into which smaller streams and rivers emptied.  You can coordinate this data with topographical maps showing exactly where the lands are located.  With a GPS system in your vehicle, you can navigate to the lands themselves.

The records provide the name of the grantee and identifying terms to separate and distinguish persons of the same name in the same set of records.  The clerk had to keep the men straight, and you can use the same key words to identify your ancestors in other records as well.

Many of  these records are also microfilmed so you can read the original words yourself.  This course of action I recommend whenever possible.  Some times misinterpretation of property description, spelling of surnames and locations can lead you astray.  Besides there is an excitement in the original records that cannot be duplicated by a printed extract. Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

Sources to document early Kentucky are rather extensive–most are available on microfilm which you can borrow from the Family History Library or from the archives and libraries in Kentucky or from the Mid-Continent Public Library Genealogy Section, Independence MO.  Let me describe two large collections:

1. The Draper Papers. Dr. Lyman Draper was the Director of the Wisconsin Historical Society.  He was determined to document the early settlement of what was called the Trans-Mississippi West–including Kentucky. Draper was at work when the Revolutionary War soldiers were still alive.  And when early settlers, although they were now elderly, could still be interviewed and questioned about where they came from, when they migrated into Kentucky, who came with them, where they settled, and what their lives were like.  These interviews and their accompanying questionnaires are invaluable for linking your ancestors to their kinship networks and places of origin.
2. Shane Collections. The Rev. John D. Shane was a Presbyterian minister and he saw his life’s work as compiling a complete history of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky–including family histories of those families within the faith who settled early Kentucky.  Shane recorded the military engagements of the Scots-Irish Presbyterians, the local events they participated in, who they were related to, what contribution they made to the Presbyterian movement in America.  When Rev. Shane died, his collection survived in three separate and distinct sections:  1) The Presbyterian Historical Collection, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort KY.  2) Shane Manuscript Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia PA.  3) Shane Collection for Kentucky and Ohio, acquired by Dr. Lyman C. Draper and integrated into his work.

These men were contemporaries and knew each other fairly well.  They corresponded back and forth on mutual, historical and genealogical interests.  All the above collections, except the Presbyterian Historical Collection at the Kentucky Historical Society , can be borrowed on film to read wherever it is convenient for you.

See Arlene H. Eakle and Linda E. Brinkerhoff, Tennessee and Kentucky:  Twin Gateways to the South. 2007. (Genealogical Institute, PO Box 129, Tremonton UT 84337-0129).  Descriptions, microfilm reel numbers and contents, lists of family and congregation histories included in both men’s works are included.

In my opinion, the materials Draper and Shane collected are essential to identify Kentucky ancestors and trace them to their origins–in Virginia, in Maryland, in North Carolina, in South Carolina, and in Pennsylvania and points east.  Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle  http://www.arleneeakle.com

PS  Would you believe it?  Access to my TN blog is now blocked by Windows Security as a threat?  What happened?  I am in shock!  And I will keep you posted.

As I was studying Harriette Simpson Arnow’s book, Seedtime on the Cumberland, published some time ago by Macmillan Company of New York, I came across these paragraphs:

Many families in this general region (Upper Cumberland Valley), particularly up on the Big South Fork, have hand-me-down stories of Baptist ancestors who instead of stopping in East Tennessee or going down to Natchez, slipped into this part of Kentucky.  Still others tell of Tories, unable to escape to Canada, settled in some out of the way valley on a branch of the Cumberland.  There are, too, stories of forted farms and fights with Indians, but save for the depositions, given twenty-five to thirty years later, usually in connection with a lawsuit over land, little is known of the early history of the southeastern part of Kentucky drained by the Cumberland.

Lists of early land grants in Kentucky help not at all.  First, few Kentuckians had any knowledge whatever of the southern part of the state, and secondly, land grants were almost always located by water courses, but seldom did the surveyor and almost never did those who listed his work take the trouble to name the larger body of water into which the creek or branch flowed.  There was for example, a Stinking Creek of Cumberland and a Stinking Creek of Rockcastle…

The name of the grantee is not always of much help.  It was a small world with most of the early settlers on the Cumberland coming from a relatively small part of this world–southwestern Virginia and North Carolina.  Thus, many bore the same name.  Daniel Smith was, for example, a leading citizen of Middle Tennessee.  Contemporaneous with him over in East Tennessee was another Daniel Smith who made John Redd a pair of leather breeches.  John Buchanan was a first settler on the Cumberland, and his son John built a fort, while still another John Buchanan was killed in the Revolution.

I have taken the liberty of italicising specific problems with Kentucky research.  And early Kentucky research is a challenge–no question.  We do, however, live in the 21st century with tools and indexes and abstracts and knowledge of where the original records can be found which Ms Arnow did not have access to–although her research for this book is exceptional and her maps are extraordinary.

In the next blogs, I will address these problems with answers and solutions–so if you run into these specific challenges, you will have what you need to solve them.

1. Hand-me-down stories. Check out the DAR collection (on microfilm through your nearest Family History Center, call numbers available at FamilySearch.org. Then write the local public library genealogy collections in the areas where your ancestors reside for a check of their family files.  The correspondence in these files often recounts the stories.  Finally,  check the Kentucky Historical Society with the same request.  The secret of the Family Files is that few repositories sort their files–you will get all the Daniel Smiths and John Buchanans filed together.  You will be the one to sort them out–ensuring that you don’t miss out on the one that belongs to you.
2. Slipped into this part of Kentucky–Cumberland Valley.  The entre to the Cumberland Valley for most early ancestors was through eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia.  Still is.  Check out a current road map.  The flow of the mountains and the directions of the water courses and valleys is shown on most current road maps.  Compare with a topographical map from your nearest federal Map Store–or order the right section online.  A careful map study before you actually research is always a good idea–and a time-saver.
3. Tories who settled in out of the way valleys.  If your ancestor appears to have parachuted into a Kentucky County–with little track of their origins–search the Tory lists from the American Revolution for  North Carolina, first.  Don’t spin your wheels aimlessly checking local sources.  They hid their origins–it was illegal and treason to be a Tory!
4. Forted farms.  Virginia, the original jurisdiction for southeastern Kentucky, awarded 600 acres of land to any settler willing to build a fort or stockade for protection from the Indians and allowing neighbors to use this same safety station.   See Arlene H. Eakle and Linda E. Brinkerhoff, Kentucky, Volume I (Family History World, PO Box 129, Tremonton UT 84337 or online on my Home Page Catalog link) for a working list of early Kentucky stations  with lists of their settlers.  This is a list in progress with regular updates.  Lots of new information appears as I continue to research forted farms and stations.
5. Fights with Indians.  Military service in Kentucky was your ancestor’s day job!  He served at the fort or on muster or in the field for his shift.  Then went home to his family and farm when he was not on duty.  I am working on a list of early militias and soldiers who served at forts–official posts as well as stations.  I’ll keep you posted as I get the names together.
6. Lawsuits over land.  Kentucky created a big mess in land titles–your ancestor was most likely to be involved in one or more of these before he gave up and left the state for a better life in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, or Missouri.  And finally Kansas.   Overlapping land titles, unrecorded claims, land rights barred from descent to heirs–all these and more.  Stay tuned for where to look and how to use this evidence to your advantage.

Your favorite Kentucky genealogist, Arlene Eakle   http://www.arleneeakle.com