Genealogy Journals need Writers and Readers

This morning Dick Eastman again did what he does so well. He focused attention on an issue that has potential to reshape the genealogy world. He asked: "Are genealogy journals too expensive?" (Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, 27 April 2012). It is a question I've been thinking about as managing editor of the Minnesota Genealogical Society's quarterly journal, Minnesota Genealogist.


Minnesota Genealogist is a 2nd- or 3rd-tier journal that has been produced for many years as a membership benefit. Apart from rent for our library and offices, it is one of our largest single expenses, costing about $10 per member per year to print and mail. (Authors, editor and proofreaders are not paid; we do pay a small stipend to a layout and design editor).

Eastman made a strong pitch for converting society newsletters and journals to digital distribution. There is no doubt: digital distribution is cheaper than paper and post distribution. MGS went digital with its newsletter a couple of years ago. An electronic newsletter makes sense on more than cost grounds. A newsletter deals with news, and requires timely distribution. An electronic newsletter takes much less time to prepare and distribute, making on-time monthly issues possible.

Our journal fills a different niche. I think of it as a contribution to our genealogical education mission. While we include some society news in the journal, it is mostly devoted to research articles, teaching articles and other features that help our members be better genealogists. As part of our education program, it is reasonable to invest in its production. But, it does cost money.

How much it is worth may depend in part on how many people read it. If only a small percentage of members read more than one article, it might not be worth the cost. We have talked about a couple of options. First, we could go digital and reduce annual dues by several dollars (perhaps still delivering a print copy to those who opt to pay a small surcharge). Second, we could unbundle the journal from our membership benefit package, and distribute it only to individuals (members and non-members) who find it worth subscribing to.

But, it is important to think about more than money. I think there are other good reasons to publish a journal. A quality journal reflects well on a genealogy society. It says: "we know genealogy and you can get help here." And, I think there is merit in giving researchers a place to publish, and thus disseminate and preserve, their research. We want people to write up their research, and the chance to publish may give a little motivation.

It all comes down to knowing why you are publishing a journal and what it is worth to your genealogy society. With answers to these questions, you will be prepared to choose between print and digital publication. These are hard questions, and their are no cookie-cutter answers. I will be leading a discussion on these questions at the Federation of Genealogical Society conference in Birmingham, Alabama, in August. I look forward to seeing many of you there.

Genealogy as a Conversation-starter

As we pulled away from Gate G15 at MSP, I pulled out my copy of Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity and Community by Eviatar Zerubavel. Some of you might recall that it created a bit of a stir in the genealogy community when it was published earlier this year. The middle-aged businessman in seat 35A looked over and said, "That looks interesting." I said, "Yes," and explained that I was a genealogist. He actually knew what genealogy is. He proceeded to tell me that he had traced his Visser family back to the area of Sneek in Friesland. How interesting, I thought, and told him that I was flying to Yakima to give a couple of talks on Dutch and Fries genealogy. He thought that was pretty cool. He said he was flying home -- he had grown up in Whatcom County, Washington. "Oh," I said. "I know where that is. I've got some Dutch-Frisian relatives in Whatcom County. But, I couldn't remember the name. I started going through the alphabet, starting with "A," trying to think of familiar Dutch-Frisian surnames starting with each letter in hopes of recalling the forgotten name. When I got to "Z," it hit me: Zylstra. "Zylstra!" he said. "I went to school with some Zylstras." Well, that's cool, I thought. I started to remember more. "I think my Dad's cousin had twins," I said. The guy in 35C says, "I had a friend named Peter Zylstra. I think he had sisters who were twins." Yep, the guy in 35C was a schoolmate of my Dad's cousin's kids in Sumas, Washington. The Zylstras moved from Sioux County, Iowa, to Whatcom County, Washington, about 1920, as I recall. The guy in 35C says, "Oh, then they were the 'Old Dutch'." He explained that, in Whatcom County, the "Old Dutch" came before the Depression; the "New Dutch" came after. It turns out the nice guy in 35C lived for several years in Sioux County, Iowa, where my Fonkert relatives lived. Andy Visser still works for a company in Rock Valley, Iowa, but he commutes back and forth from his home on the Olympic Peninsula across Puget Sound from Seattle. Oh yes, about the book: the Zerubavel book is provocative. It's not really about genealogy as we know it, but more about how people identify in regards to race, ethnicity, and nationality. I'm going to blog about the book in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Dutch Treat: Finding Dutch Ancestors

I've been brushing up on my Dutch and Frisian genealogy in advance of my lectures next weekend at the Yakima Valley (WA) Genealogical Society. I love Dutch genealogy mostly because I'm Dutch (My wife and I dance in wooden shoes), but also because the research resources are so great. Today, I'd like to endorse three great sources.

First, my friend Rob van Drie recently published an English-language guide to Dutch genealogy research. Rob van Drie and Suzanne Needs, Dutch Roots: Finding Your Ancestors in The Netherlands is available as an e-book from Amazon.com (may soon be available in the Apple Store). This richly illustrated book covers both the basics -- civil registration, population registers and church records -- and more advanced sources like military, guardianship and court records. Rob is Deputy Director of the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague.

Did I say Dutch genealogy is easy? Well, the basics really are. If you don't believe me, check out Genlias. At Genlias, you can not only learn about Dutch civil registration records, but search for your Dutch ancestors' birth, marriage and death records. Although civil registration began a bit earlier in some southern Netherlands areas, it began in most of the country in 1811, with the arrival of Napoleon. Civil registration records are especially productive for genealogists because both marriage and death records commonly give ages, birth places, and parents' names. With a little ingenuity, you can identify ancestry back to the late 1700s.

Finally, I urge you to check out Digital Bronbewerkingen Nederland and Belgie (Digital Resources Netherlands and Belgium) at GeneaKnowHow.net. This site will link to you an amazing number of Internet resources for Dutch and Belgian genealogy. Just pick a province and start exploring.

So, put on your wooden shoes and take a Dutch genealogy hike. And, let me know what you find.

Sources and Cargo Ships

If you've attended many genealogy workshops or conferences, you've heard people talk about different kinds of sources, evidence and information. It can all sound a bit academic at times. If you want to get to the bottom of this, you will want to visit Elizabeth Shown Mills' new website, Evidence Explained: Historical Analysis, Citation and Source Usage (http://www.evidenceexplained.com).

I especially want aspiring genealogists to think about the difference between sources and information. As genealogists, we prospect for information about past lives and events that we weren't around to witness. We must rely on accounts or records created by those who were there. The sought-after information may be about birth dates, addresses, family relationships or life events. The information that we find may or not be accurate.

That's the information. Think of genealogical information as precious cargo transported to us by a source. A source -- be it a document, photograph, gravestone or other artifact -- is a vehicle that carries the information through time to us. A source is an information-transport vehicle. I like to compare a source to a cargo ship transporting raw material to a factory. The factory adds value by using energy to mix the raw materials and mold them into a marketable product.

In the genealogy industry, the genealogist is both factory and factory manager. The genealogist unloads raw information from sources, applies mental energy, and recombines the information as evidence that can support a marketable product: a genealogical conclusion.

Just as a steel factory manager worries about the quality of the ore he receives, a genealogist worries about the quality of information he or she receives. The steel factory manager needs to know where the ore was mined and how it was handled. Similarly, the genealogist wants to know about the provenance and quality of the information. Who provided it? Did the informant have primary knowledge of events? Could the informant be trusted? Was any of the information lost or altered during transit?

This is what genealogy is all about: finding and evaluating historical information and recombining it to answer a genealogical question. If you use good raw materials and process them with care, you will produce a valuable family history product.

Genealogies can be more than Social Constructs

I've just become aware of what sounds like an interesting book: Eviatar Zerubavel, Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity and Community. A Boston Globe review states that the Rutger sociologist "pulls back the curtain on the genealogical obsession."

I haven't seen the book, so I don't know how accurate the reviewer's description is. According to the review, Zerubavel objects that genealogists create pleasing genealogies by choosing which ancestral lines to follow (and which to ignore)and by cutting and pasting from other similarly biased genealogies. As anyone who has read Greenwood, Akenson,or Mills, or who has attended IGHR or studied the Genealogical Proof Standard knows, the curtain was pulled back a long time ago.

Yes, it is easy to produce biased and family histories. We do choose which ancestors to follow. Historians, sociologists and other researchers also choose where to focus their attention. A degree of bias is unavoidable, but an effort at neutrality is possible. This is why we promote standards and train genealogists to be disciplined researchers and analysts.

Finally, according to the review, Zerubavel asks: do we really care about our distant ancestors? No, not in the same way that we care about our living siblings and parents. But, we can find our ancestors very interesting. Do historians really care about the Roman Empire? I don't know, but I would bet they find it interesting, and that they believe that studying and understanding it has some value for us today.

Don't feel guilty about your obsession with genealogy!

Thanks to Harold Henderson for making me aware of this book. Harold's comment on Christy Fillerup's Facebook post led me to the Boston Globe review. Now, I need to lay my hands on a copy of Zerubavel's book.

Genealogy and Science

From time to time, an interesting discussion erupts on genealogy mail lists about whether genealogy is a “science.” This is a tough question, and I think I am fully capable of oversimplifying it. It is also a good question, but, I think, the wrong question.

For starters, genealogy is indeed non-fiction. At least, its aims to be. Genealogists aim to ascertain chains of kinship, whether forward or backward in time. We do this by determining parent-child relationships. Hezekiah either was or wasn’t your ancestor.

That said, proof is often difficult. No matter how diligently we adhere to the Genealogical Proof Standard, we often can not state our conclusions with total certainty. DNA evidence can enhance our confidence, but we often must qualify our conclusions with words like “almost certainly,” “probably,” or “possibly.”

“Science” is commonly defined to involve observation, experimental investigation, testing of hypotheses and development of laws about the behavior of natural phenomena. When we think of science, we typically think of the physical sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. But, broadly defined, the phrase “natural phenomena” can be extended to humans, and thus we sometimes talk of “social sciences” – sociology, psychology, political science, etc.

Most people don’t consider genealogy a science. Perhaps the most important reason is that genealogy is not experimental and is not concerned with establishing scientific laws – that is generalizations about relationships among phenomena that hold true under specified conditions (paraphrased from the American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition). History comes a bit closer to the extent that historians try to understand patterns in social, political or economic events, but the subject matter is so complex and the conditions so varied that historians find it hard to conclude that if A happens, B will follow.

So, genealogy is not a science. Who cares? For me, the more interesting question is: how do genealogical research methods compare to scientific method. Genealogists don’t run experiments in the same way scientists do, but they do observe data, develop hypotheses and draw conclusions. Many of the same rules of logic apply.

A famous philosopher of science (yes, there is such a thing), Karl Popper, said that a theory can not be scientific unless it is falsifiable. The basic idea is that, because it is so difficult to prove many things with certainty, we can approach truth by proving alternative theories false. Scientists posit a “null hypothesis,” and then set out to disprove it. If evidence suggests rejection of a null hypothesis, then the theory can be accepted with some confidence. For example, if a researcher hypothesized that all sheep are white, but null hypothesis would be that some sheep are not white. Because a researcher can never be certain that he has observed all sheep in the world, he can never prove that all sheep are white. That is, the all are white theory is not falsifiable. However, a null hypothesis that all sheep are not white can be proved with a single observation.

This principle applies to genealogy. Our research might lead us to hypothesize that the Hezekiah Hercules of was the father of Herky Hercules. We may never be able to prove the relationship, but we might be able to disprove it. If we can reject a series of hypothesized relationships, we may be left with only one plausible relationship standing.

Another principle of science is that of conceptual economy – that is, a preference for the simplest explanation among a set of competing theories with comparable explanatory power. Any particular theory may eventually be rejected, but this principle advises not making explanations more complicated than they need be. This problem arises often in genealogy. Many possible explanations, some of them Rube-Goldberg-complicated, may be available to explain why Great-Grandma Grace lived with her Aunt Alicia, but don’t dream up more complicated explanations than necessary. Unless you can disprove the simple explanation, it likely is true.

So, no, genealogy is not a science. But both scientists and genealogists make careful observations, develop theories about relationships, and draw defensible conclusions. This is what matters: skilled genealogists do their research with much the same care as scientists. I think we should worry less about whether we are a science, and more about how we do our research and write our proof arguments.

Braided Migration: Fawkners and Low Dutch

When I teach about migration, I like to compare migration streams to braided streams. Most maps of migration routes show generalized migration streams along major routes. These maps give us an idea of the major flows, but don't tell us much about individual families.

The reality is that individual families, while following the general flow, often diverted from these major routes. They wandered off the main flow, but still moved "downstream" in the same general direction, often returning to the main stream further on -- much like a river spread outs into several smaller streams that diverge and converge in a flood plain. If you are having trouble visualizing this, you might want to look at an aerial photograph of a braided stream -- you will find many on Google Images.

One of my favorite migration stories involves a New York Dutch community that spread to southeastern Pennsylvania, and then transplanted itself from Conewego, Pennsylvnia, to Kentucky around 1780. (You can read about the Kentucky Low Dutch at www.sweet-home-spun.com/historytrust.htm). The Low Dutch community held together in Kentucky for several decades before the lure of western lands pulled many families away. A sizable contingent moved northwest into Indiana.

Hendricks County, Indiana, is where I picked up the trail of John C. Fawkner. He died there in 1839, leaving behind his wife Ann Faulconer and her five children, including James C. Fawkner, who will reappear shortly. All was well, until a reading of John's probate revealed apparent heirs from earlier marriages, including a son named Cornelius.

To make a long story a bit shorter, I was able to establish that John C. Fawkner married Ida Cozine in 1817 in Mercer County, Kentucky. Ida's father was Cornelius Cozine of the Low Dutch community. (A more complete account of this story will hopefully appear in print later this year).

Hendrick County court records included an 1846 indenture in which Cornelius Fawkner of Lee County, Iowa, released his claim to his father's land in Indiana. In short order, I found Cornelius in the Mississippi River town of Montrose, where he lived with the William Owens family in 1850. I always look a few pages forward and backward in the census, and in this case, I found a William Dorland family two pages earlier. I knew that the Kentucky Low Dutch included Dorlands, and wondered what was going on. I surmised that Cornelius was somehow acquainted with the Dorlands through the Low Dutch. Another researcher threw cold water on the idea, noting that Cornelius Fawkner was born in Indiana and the Dorlands in New York. I'm still not sure who the Dorlands were; I think they might have been the William Dorland, aged 50-60, with an apparent wife aged 40-50, living in King's County (Brooklyn), New York, in 1840.

But, I knew something the other researcher didn't know: Cornelius was born in Kentucky, almost certainly to John C. Fawkner and Ida Cozine. I also knew he was a half-brother of James C. Fawkner, who showed up in the same small Iowa town in 1856. Living where? Next door to the same William Owens family that Cornelius lived with.

Was this mere coincidence or something more? I started to think "more" when I noticed John Vanarsdal, his wife Mary, and an apparent widow Ann Vanarsdal, as well as the David Westerfield family living in Montrose in 1856. The Vanarsdals and Westerfields were also from the Kentucky Low Dutch community. Also in Montrose in 1856 was the Henry Vanarsdale family from Ohio. As I was writing this blog, I received an email from Low Dutch researcher Carolyn Leonard noting that some Conewego Low Dutch families opted out of the Kentucky migration and instead went to Warren, Preble and Butler Counties in Ohio. In fact, the Henry Vanarsdale family was in Preble County, Ohio, in 1850.

Despite their variant migration paths, I have little doubt that these families were all connected in some way. I know a few things: John Vanarsdal's wife Mary was a Westerfield; her sister Ann (the Montrose widow) married, first, Peter Vanarsdal, and second, Isaac Vanarsdal; and their father was James Cozine Westerfield. They all were of the Mercer County Low Dutch. They surely knew, or were related to, Ida Cozine's family.


I have not been able to unravel the whole story, but I have a hypothesis. Ida Cozine won a divorce from John C. Fawkner in 1826. From trial testimony, I know she had two young children, but I don't know what happened to Ida or the children after the divorce. Ida might have remarried, or died young; another Low Dutch family might have taken her children in. Ida's brother married Phebe Vanarsdal. Based on all this, I suspect Cornelius Fawkner went to Montrose because families close to his mother Ida were there. He may have been related to the Dorlands, Vanarsdals, or Westerfields, but I don't yet know how.

I'm not sure what path the Dorlands took from New York to Iowa, but the odds of them accidentally landing in the same small Mississippi River town as Cornelius Fawkner, the Vanarsdals, and the Westerfields are too rare for it to be mere coincidence. As good genealogists, we know that coincidence is not sufficient proof of association or relationship, but in this case, the explanation probably lies in something more than chance. I think we have a migration resembling a braided stream.

Note: This essay is not intended as a genealogical report meeting citation and proof standards of the profession. Researchers interested in sources for this essay are invited to contact the author.