I just finished a great read: Unwelcome Americans: Living on the Margin in Early New England, by Ruth Wallis Herndon, 2001. I had no clue about this part of Colonial history!  Here’s what I learned:

In 18^th century America, there was no Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance or old age pensions, no welfare of any sort…… “no colony or state created and maintained a safety net for those unable to support themselves.” Thousands of our ancestors living on the margins due to injury, health, discrimination, or poor choices had an extremely rough time just staying alive.” Each local government administered “poor relief” to its own inhabitants and almshouses or poorhouses were constructed so that needy people could be grouped together and helped.

In New England, town officials met regularly to raise taxes due to the high cost of poor relief. This was especially true when the Revolutionary War, with tremendous expenses, loomed.  One method sought to resolve this tension was the “warning-out” system. This was the way town authorities sent away from their towns those people who had no legal claim on the town treasury. Through warnings-out, towns avoided the greater costs of supporting frail, ill, or injured people long term.

One facet of this system was that such needy people were shunted back to the town of their birth; being born in XX town, it was XX town’s responsibility to care for them. Sometimes this meant dividing up families! If a family of five were all needy and candidates for being sent elsewhere, they could be sent to five different towns, regardless of the children’s ages.

The book is 200 pages of carefully researched case studies that really brought this situation, this problem, to life for me. Cost for the paperback was under $7 via Amazon books. If you have New England ancestry who were not among the well-off, this might be good history for you.

June is my only daughter’s birthday month. She was born in June and I remember well her naming story. Looking through a women’s magazine, I spotted an ad for Ivory Soap. It was not this exact one (below) but I could not find “the real” one. It showed a baby in a bubbly bath and the words were something like “Jane Elizabeth enjoys her Ivory soap bath.”  Well!  Husbnd’s mother was Esther Mary, so we quickly fell in love with Jane Esther and that’s what she became. And that’s how we found her name.

My name is Donna Ruth; I was named after my Aunt Ruth. Four years earlier, Aunt Ruth had a daughter she named June Ellen, after my mother, June.  And the Donna part? From a 1942 novel by Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman’s Creek. How do I know? I asked mom!

My dentist used to be Frank Vedelago. His partner dentist in the same building was Stephen Carnell. They were brothers! Deciding to go into dental practice together but with separate practices in the same building, they realized that with two Dr. Vedelagos there would be confusion. So they tossed a coin and Stephen took their mother’s maiden name, Carnell. And his children all went by that surname too. 

Years ago, in one of my classes, a young woman had a seriously difficult family history problem. The family looked every bit Italian, dark hair and eyes and beautiful olive skin. But the great-grandfather’s name was Lars Swenson. What? (This was obviously before DNA.) On his deathbed, Grandpa Lars told the truth: When he was a newly arrived immigrant, he got drunk, was rolled and his money and papers stolen. Realizing the situation, and seeing another fellow drunk in the corner, “Lars” took that fellow’s papers and became in name, if not in fact, Lars Swenson. And on the point of death, he could not remember his real, Italian, surname. True story.

How did your parents pick your name? If you have folks to ask, ASK! And realize, when researching your family tree and come up against a seemingly impossible brick wall, remember that our ancestors were survivors……..and that’s why we’re here today.

Picture this scenario, if you will please.  James Brown is 55 years old and a Methodist circuit rider in very rural Wisconsin in about 1870. He felt “called” and loaded up his saddle bags on Old Nellie and set off to preach the gospel.  When Grandpa James was 75, and was a widower and getting somewhat feeble, he went to live with his daughter in St. Louis, Missouri. He had kept all his saddle-bag-books of his sermon notes and the baptisms and marriages he performed.  When he died, Daughter gathered up all his stuff (at his insistence) and carted them off, along with him, to her home in St.Louis. Years pass, James’ books and papers get “lost” in a box somewhere. Finally in about 1995, a granddaughter, who is very interested in her family history, stumbled upon the box and is delighted beyond words! Records written in her gggg-grandfather’s own hand! 

After the gggg-daughter enjoys and extracts information from Grandpa Brown’s records, she realizes the importance of them. They must be preserved and made available, she reasons. Ans she’s right. So she gives them to her local genealogical society and they publish abstracts from the records in their (Missouri) periodical. Obviously, far from Wisconsin! 

Why am I sharing this scenario/story? Because if James Brown was YOUR ancestor and you never knew where he died, and, more importantly, what happened to his religious records, you would be so happy to find out, wouldn’t you? 

The above image is from a family surname periodical, the Adams Agenda, this issue published in 1979. This publication contained mostly Adams-surname information but there were other goodies. I know you cannot read it, but catch this: “Genealogy of Capt. John Johnson,” or “Norris, Hackett, Prescott & Allied Families.” Or “Some Descendants of Philip Sherman.”

While a surname-oriented periodical might not be your best “bingo,” I know there is a St. Louis Genealogical Society which has a periodic publication. Might/could have James Brown’s Wisconsin records be published there, in St.Louis, Missouri? And, most importantly, would you think to look there for that information?

I really urge you to learn about PERSI (Periodical Source Index) and use it. This is where you’ll find indexed all the genealogy-related periodicals that the Allen County Public Library (aka Fort Wayne) could/can locate. Click to the FamilySearch.org/WIKI and ask for PERSI. Self-education will bring great rewards, I guarantee.