RLP 219: Southern Colonial Research – Maps and the Law

Nicole (2s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 219 Southern Colonial research Maps and the Law. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional.

Nicole (44s):
Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go. Hi everyone. And welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (47s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you today?

Nicole (49s):
I have been doing well. I’ve been working on my portfolio and I’ve got one of the elements, almost done. The easy one, the document. I just feel like I can’t do anything else until I decide my case study. So I I’ve just been making a list of different case study possibilities and trying to hone in on one. And my recent idea was to just write up three case studies and then pick one. So I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m still just trying to figure that one out once. I think I have that one chosen, everything else will fall into place, cuz I already kind of know what I wanna do for my KDP,

Diana (1m 21s):
So oh good. Which one’s going to be longest cuz you have that page limit. Is your KDP going to be longer?

Nicole (1m 27s):
I think so. Yeah. I don’t want my case study to be too long or my report. I want to leave space for the KDP, but the family I’ve chosen. Doesn’t have too many children and every generation, one of the generations has a lot of children and the other ones don’t so it shouldn’t be too bad either.

Diana (1m 44s):
That’s great. How exciting that you’re getting closer to this goal.

Nicole (1m 48s):
So what have you been working on?

Diana (1m 50s):
Well yesterday I did a fun thing. I created my very first ancestral tree on DNA Painter and it all came about because in our study group session, we were talking about choosing an objective for a research project, you know, looking at our pedigree and we, someone suggested that we look at Yvette Hoya Links level up Challenge, where you go through your pedigree and see how much research you’ve actually done on each ancestor. And you know, sometimes when we get started, we just attach dates and some sources and then we just move right back and we don’t write anything or do any really in-depth research. So it’s a way to really look and see who you need to research more.

Diana (2m 30s):
But then as part of that conversation, we talked about the DNA Painter ancestral trees as a way to look at your pedigree. And of course that has an application for DNA because you can mark your genetic Ancestors. You can mark those that you actually have genetic connections to. So I had some fun downloading my J com from family tree maker. And what you do is you export a J com. That’s just of your Ancestors. And I did do the spouses, but you just are going to use your Ancestors, your direct lines. And I did ’em all the way up to as many as I had.

Diana (3m 10s):
And you can import that load, your Jed come right into DNA, Painter, ancestral tree. And it’s so easy to do. It literally takes just a few seconds for it to load because it’s not that many people and then it will pop up your tree and it’s already color coded and you can change the colors and then you manually go in and then mark your genetic Ancestors. So it gives you a really good tool to do some of your own analysis and whether you’re using through lines or if you’re using just looking at shared matches, trying to see who you’ve got as your genetic Ancestors.

Diana (3m 51s):
And you can view it in the tree, basically your pedigree or the fan chart or just text. And the text is kind of fun too, because it shows the basic facts. It brings in your birth and death facts and just shows them right there. And then you can choose how many generations that you want to show. So anyway, I had some fun working with that. I’d encourage anybody who hasn’t done a DNA ancestral tree to give it a shot. It was, it was kind of a fun afternoon doing that.

Nicole (4m 23s):
Thank you for sharing about that. It really is inspiring. And I am going to put a link to Yvette Hoyt Inc’s blog, it’s called Six Levels of Ancestral Profiles level up Challenge. And it has different levels depending on, you know, levels, zero unidentified ancestor, level, one name only level two vital statistics, level three occupations. And then all the way up to like level six where you’ve written a full biography and sore sided and everything’s completed.

Diana (4m 51s):
I think that is such a great challenge. I love that. And so she had created an Excel spreadsheet, but then when DNA Painter came out with this ancestral tree, she’s changing her colors on her tree, which you have total control over the coloring to represent what level of research each Ancestors is at. So I think I am going to do that too. Going to use up for both the leveling up as well as looking at who is a genetic ancestor.

Nicole (5m 23s):
Yeah. It’s really good to look at our progress that we’ve made over the years and think about what we’ve accomplished on researching our own family and then what else needs to be done.

Diana (5m 33s):
It really is. And it’s a good way to choose an objective for a research project. A lot of times people will say, I just don’t know what to do. It’s so overwhelming. I have so much to do, but I think you just look at your pedigree, do something like this and see what speaks to you. That’s what I do. It’s just like, what do I really want to do? Which Ancestors is calling my name. And then I work with them.

Nicole (5m 54s):
It really is like that. That’s one of the things that’s hard for me with the portfolio is I want to work on those ones that are calling me, but then trying to choose work samples that will fit within the page limits that are good enough that are complete enough. You know what I mean? That, yeah, sometimes it’s not the favorite Ancestors that are gonna be in the portfolio. I finally resigned myself to that fact that, you know, it’s just gonna be the best work sample for that portfolio that fits in the page limits. That showcases my skills that are, you know, they’re asking to see certain skills. So that’s gonna be what it

Diana (6m 30s):
Is after you’ve worked with them. They are going to become a favorite ancestor because it never fails. Once you do the research on them, they really do have a piece of your heart. So

Nicole (6m 40s):
That’s a great point. It’s encouraging announcements. We have the next study group will be research like a Pro with DNA registration will begin December 1st. That group will go from February 1st, 2023 to May 10th and have some breaks in between, but usually it’ll be weekly. And if you want to be a peer group leader, you can have complimentary registration to this study group and you can apply on our website, join our newsletter to get any coupons.

Diana (7m 11s):
All right, well, let’s jump into our topic for the day. We are going to have some fun talking about Southern Colonial research and we have all of our Southern lines go back to the, the colonies. And So I was super excited to be able to take a course at the Institute of Genealogy and historical research with the acronym I GHR. And I took this course, this summer of 2022, and it was coordinated by mark Lowe, who is a Southern expert. And oh my goodness, it was such a fun course. I always love getting new insights and new ideas for researching my Ancestors, which is why I keep taking these classes because everyone’s got their own, take their own, twist, their own ideas.

Diana (7m 58s):
And I love learning more about any type of research in the south.

Nicole (8m 4s):
I was also in the class and I appreciated all of the expertise that mark Lowe and the other instructors imparted. And at the same time, I was kind of going to another course that I was, I was teaching. And, and so it was great that some of the lectures were recorded in advance and I could watch those on whatever timeframe was easiest. So that was a, a benefit

Diana (8m 29s):
That’s right. I’d kind of forgotten that they, mark did have everybody record their lectures before. And so we’d meet first thing in the morning to discuss the homework and just have a discussion about researching. And then we could watch the lectures whenever we wanted during the day. That was very nice. I appreciated that as well.

Nicole (8m 51s):
Well, let’s first talk about some of the challenges found in Southern United States research. The main thing that I always think of is record loss. So record loss and a lack of records is probably the first thing to think about whether it’s from the courthouse burning a natural disaster or some kind of military activity such as the civil war. So for example, our Roy in line traces back to Gloster county in Colonial Virginia and the library of Virginia categorizes Gloster as a catastrophic loss county. So that doesn’t sound very good. It was created in 1651 and the first record loss occurred in 1820 with a fire.

Nicole (9m 31s):
And then there was another fire in April of 1865 in Richmond, of course, where the records had been transferred for safekeeping during the civil war. So you’ll see a lot of Southern courthouses burned in that timeframe of the civil war, which is very sad. Another challenge to Colonial Southern research is the migration of our Ancestors. And often they were moving south and west seeking new lands. So connecting them to their previous location is a challenge. And there are typically people with the same name, unless you have a very unusual one. So our ancestor, John Carey Royston provides a good example of someone who migrated frequently. He started in Gloucester, Virginia, and then moved to Newbury district to South Carolina, then on west to oor county, Georgia.

Nicole (10m 20s):
And I’ve seen the same thing with our Welch Ancestors who were, I believe from North Carolina, but I haven’t traced them that far yet, but they did go to South Carolina and then to Georgia, Alabama, and Texas. So they just moved south and west just like you would expect.

Diana (10m 40s):
Yeah. So it is fun to look at migration because all of our Ancestors did end up in Texas and they all started somewhere as colonials. So getting ’em traced back to those actual colonies is my goal. And I know a lot of people just wanna trace them across the ocean, but I just wanna get ’em to the original colonists in Colonial times.

Nicole (11m 1s):
Yeah, it’s a goal that’s realistic because we’ve, you know, had client projects before where they wanna trace a Colonial ancestor across the ocean. And, and sometimes it is possible, but a lot of the time there is a lack of records and that was gonna be my next point is that record keeping on any type of frontier is usually less than ideal. And that includes early Colonial times. I mean, that was their frontier. And then as the colonies developed and began to be more established, the new frontier was the Western lands. And so as our Ancestors moved to the new frontier or whatever it was, whether it was moving west or moving across the ocean to the colonies, those records were not usually very complete.

Nicole (11m 46s):
And even if they were, sometimes they were lost or burned. And then if a record book does exist for that time period, your Ancestors did, or marriage might not be included in it. Sometimes it was hard for them to get to the courthouse or they went to a different courthouse that you didn’t know about, you know, in a different area to record that deed or marriage. So sometimes you’re just not gonna have a lot of records and that can be a big challenge in Colonial research.

Diana (12m 11s):
Yeah. Those are great challenges to think about why you’re not finding your people. I was thinking of one of the client projects I did where the client wanted to find their Virginia ancestor in England. And of course we, I had traced them all the way back to early 1700 ish. But when I got to the final ancestor, there were no records. And my hypothesis was that he could have been an indentured servant because they brought a lot of people over from England and settled in Virginia. And there just are not many records for them because the records were kept for the wealthy, the landowners.

Diana (12m 51s):
And so these indentured Servants were brought over to work and then eventually they were able to get their land work off their indenture. What have you, but the records of their transportation are just usually not there. However, I have heard that there might be better records in England that you could look at and maybe they’ll eventually get digitized or become more available. So I don’t think there’s a loss of hope. You know, we always hope that things will come to light that we can use, but often we kind of run into a dead end, right? At that point,

Nicole (13m 28s):
Yes, I did use a, a list of indentured Servants departing from one of the port cities in England, England, and maybe it was Liverpool. I can’t remember, but that was really helpful. They had passed a law in that city that they wanted to record children who were being sent to the colonies. And So that was one source that I had looked in to try to find one of those early indentured Servants and found one possible person. But then there was multiple people of that same name recorded in Virginia as being transported by different people. Because if you transported somebody who got more head right to land, and then sometimes I think those lists of people they transported were falsified.

Nicole (14m 9s):
And so they could get more land. So they were just using the same names over and over. And I know that that’s been found, but I don’t know how much that happened, whether it was a couple instances or more rampant.

Diana (14m 21s):
Yeah. People of the same name is a huge problem in this area. Well, it’s a problem in any of our research. So good point. Well, since we’ve been talking all about the challenges, let’s talk about the possibilities and it is absolutely possible to research in the Colonial south. And we’re just going to talk about two of my Takeaways from our course in this episode. And we can do more later, but we are going to focus for this episode on using Maps and the Law historical maps. We all know we need to turn to using maps. And we usually think of checking them for county boundary changes.

Diana (15m 3s):
But if we are using Colonial period maps, then we are going to be looking pre-state hood and there still are counties set up there, but we are going way back in time and using even older maps, those older maps are really valuable because they’re going to show us the earliest roads, the topography and communities. And so one of the things that mark Lowe mentioned several times in our class was annotating our own map. So making the map our own, depending on our Ancestors movements and their residences.

Diana (15m 45s):
So this was such a great idea. And I think anything that we can do to look at our research with fresh eyes is very, very helpful. So one of the resources that we learned about for these early maps is on the university of Houston’s digital history website. And it has very early maps of the colonies from the 15 hundreds up to 1895. And I found one that was the 1795 map of the Southern United States. And I used that one to annotate our ancestor, John Carey. Royston, he’s the same one that you mentioned, Nicole, that moved from Virginia all the way down to Georgia.

Diana (16m 25s):
So I annotated my own map and you can do an annotation several ways. You know, you can use your sniping tool or whatever you use to get a screenshot, put that into PowerPoint or Microsoft word or whatever program you have. And then I just used little star icons to star his location on top of this 1795 map of the Southern states. So the us, so what did I learn? Well, it was really interesting because in my mind, when I was thinking of him leaving Virginia and coming all the way down to Georgia, I just thought he was, you know, harnessing up the horses and bringing the wagon down.

Diana (17m 6s):
But when I really looked at that map, I realized he probably came by sea because Gloucester county is right on the coast of Virginia. And why wouldn’t he just take a boat all the way down to South Carolina and then travel inland from there? Doesn’t that make so much more sense when you look at the map? Absolutely. It’s funny how we get these things in our minds. You know, a sea voyage, would’ve probably just taken a couple days, whereas Overland, because there weren’t good roads, you know, we’re talking 1790s and that would’ve taken weeks. So I am hypothesizing that. I Don know if there are some records I could ever find to show that that could be possible future research, but for now I have my map and I see how he would have come down to Charleston, South Carolina, then he could have gone Overland to Newberry.

Diana (18m 2s):
And then from Newberry to oor, which is inland of Georgia, it’s about 250 miles on today’s roads. So I can continue to look for trails that he might have followed using these historic maps, which lay that out. It was a fun exercise

Nicole (18m 20s):
That is really helpful. And sometimes we think about these place names and don’t go to the map right away to figure them out. And that would make our lives so much easier. It would be nice to just actually look at the map, get a, get your bearings, and then map out where they could have gone to. And then you have far more places to search, to find relevant records instead of just searching in the same place over and over and getting frustrated.

Diana (18m 46s):
Yeah. And I would recommend, you know, that you do this, you annotate your map and you can even put notes to yourself on that map, you know, do a text box and write a note. He appeared here by 1803, you know, give yourself some reminders and notes and then put that map in your folder, your digital folder for your ancestor, maybe put a link to it in your project document. You know, if you’re doing a project on this ancestor or put it right in your project document, you know, we recommend keeping all your research as you’re working on your objective together So that you can just keep referring to it, you know, do something that is going to be lasting for your research even more so than just looking at the map.

Diana (19m 30s):
So this whole idea of annotating a map and putting research notes on a map, I think is really valuable.

Nicole (19m 37s):
Absolutely. Yes. Annotating maps. Good suggestion. The next tip we have to help with the challenges of Colonial Southern research is to know the laws. So if you’ve ever come across one of those deeds or probate records, that was a little bit challenging to understand the whole situation, maybe left you feeling a little bit puzzled about why things happen that way. The really great thing to do is look at the legal context and that can really help you understand what was actually happening in that legal record. One thing to keep in mind that we learned from this course on Colonial Southern research is that when the colonies became states after the revolutionary war, there were a lot of changes in the law at that time.

Nicole (20m 23s):
So when working with Colonial research, it’s really important to learn about the colonies formation and the law that governed the early years. And then when it became a state learn about the new laws that came into being at that time, one resource to spotlight is Bowling green state university. And they have pulled together sources for laws of the original 13 colonies to help you access those. And so we’ll put some information in the show notes to help you find that, but a general principle for using the law to gain more insight into those records is to look at the situations of the family and consider how the law affected them and then correlate the law with the records that you are finding,

Diana (21m 12s):
Right, and correlate their actions with the records and the law. So our ancestor that we’re using throughout this episode, John Kerry Royston, he was one of our Ancestors that left so many records more than anybody else. He had deeds lawsuits, equity suits, marriages, and divorce, and more. And so it’s interesting to see how some Ancestors left a lot of records behind and others did not leave so many, but one of the ones that I think is so fascinating is the divorce record from his, we think it’s his third wife.

Diana (21m 53s):
We don’t have records cuz Gloucester county had that catastrophic loss of a marriage for him in Virginia, but he had another marriage in South Carolina. And then he married Polly baker, Cessna who our line comes through. And in 1814 she filed for, and was granted a divorce based on his abandonment of herself and their three children. So I wanted to go look for the law. And I found through the Bowling green state university site, the Georgia statutes of 1802. And they stated that for a divorce to be granted by the state legislature, a petition had to be filed stating the cause.

Diana (22m 34s):
So yes, you heard that, right? The divorce had to be granted by the state legislature, which was the case in a lot of the early states and colonies and finding that petition for a divorce was so full of information for me. So let me recap a little bit of that Pauly Royston formerly poly Sisk on or about the day of February, 1800 and three, your petitioner and her present husband, John Royston were married. John have totally withdrawn from your petitioner. His love esteem, confidence and affection half for the last six years, without any kind of just reason or provocation withdrawn himself entirely from the bed and board of your petitioner, leaving her with three small children to support and educate without any kind of aid or assistance from him.

Diana (23m 24s):
He will never again live with your petitioner or ever again, perform the duties of a husband and hath removed himself to parts entirely unknown to your petitioner. At the time of her intermarriage with the said, John, she has good reason to believe from statements and reports that have since time come to her knowledge that the said John had another wife living in the state of either north or South Carolina. So you can see that as I was reading that petition for the first time, I was pretty interested in all the information I was getting about this Gallaway, John Kerry Royston and it did turn out, he did have another wife in South Carolina, but she had died and there was a whole slew of documents there, lawsuits and different things about him in that state.

Diana (24m 10s):
So, you know, when you, you look into the law, you discover so many interesting things about your Ancestors.

Nicole (24m 18s):
So what was the order of you finding all of this information? Do you remember?

Diana (24m 22s):
Oh, it was a winding path. Another researcher had contacted me, Betty Royston Brooks and she’s since, you know, passed away. This was years and years ago. And she had been researching this family for a long time and she told me about this petition, but I think she sent me a photocopy that was completely illegible. And So I, you know, went to work when things became more digitized and finally found the actual copy of it online and subsequently learned about the law. Our research very seldom is, is just like very linear. Right. So right. And so if you do have somebody that contacts you and, and tells you that they have a record, it’s always really good to follow up on that.

Diana (25m 9s):
And that’s a clue that they found something once and it’s out there somewhere. And you want to try to get your hands on a better copy.

Nicole (25m 15s):
Yeah. I’ve done that a lot where you’re trying to find the original of something that was shared with you and it it’s always exciting to get that original

Diana (25m 25s):
Document.

Nicole (25m 26s):
Yeah. Well, how do you go about finding this information about the law? One thing to start with is a Google search and you can put in the state and the approximate year of interest or the name of the colony that would become a state. And then sometimes that will pull up websites like a university of Georgia. Their school of law has historical Georgia digestion codes and other websites like that. Once you’ve found a good reference, then you can add a link to it, to your locality guide for that state to remember for future access. And then one thing to do with those digest is to look for the statute that was enacted close to the time of the event, because often they will have, you know, history of all of the statutes and how they developed over time.

Nicole (26m 7s):
So for the 1814 divorce, Diana used Clayton’s compilation of 1813. And to search within these compilations, you can use the OCR and search terms like tax or divorce to help you get the right statute. As you read the laws, it’s going to be important to understand the meaning of the terms and the laws as they relate to that time. And often you’ll need to find dictionaries that were published around then as well. And sometimes there will be Latin words like in the divorce petition, it included the term VIN Mamo, and that is a Latin term, meaning from the chains of Mamo and which has come to mean a complete divorce as opposed to a legal separation.

Nicole (26m 54s):
And so Paul was granted the divorce in 1815, separating her from John Carey. Royston completely.

Diana (27m 1s):
The last record I have of him is I believe about 18, 14, 18, 15 in a whole different county in bull county. And he was trying to get somewhere land. So he obviously had taken off and was going elsewhere and I’ve never been able to find any sign of him dying or any other records after that. So he continues to be a bit elusive with what happened to him in the end,

Nicole (27m 29s):
But at least you have developed that time period of his divorce. And when he was around poly, you’ve really figured that part out, which is helpful,

Diana (27m 36s):
Right? And Paul didn’t leave any records with her name in them as poly Cessna Royston after this divorce, but I do have some records. I think that are her. I think she went back to using her name of Cessna and have her with her children. Anyway, it’s, it’s tricky, you know, in these very early years when women are not named in many records, but I can learn more about her. I’m really interested in learning more about a woman’s rights during this era. So some of the questions I have now is how did this affect Paul’s property rights with this divorce was John required to provide any support for those children.

Diana (28m 19s):
And I’m also curious about what the divorce law was before this act, did they even have divorce in the law? So, so many things that we sometimes get a record and we think that that’s it. But I think every record should give us many more questions about what to do next. So I’m excited to learn more about poly. I have some clues about who her possible father might have been. And I’m excited now that I have these resources of these laws and this new insight into the laws about continuing the research on her.

Nicole (28m 56s):
Well, Thank you for sharing that case study of Pauly and John Carey. Royston from Colonial times into statehood times and about using maps and laws to help us understand what was happening and really round out those historical documents that we find. So that was fun.

Diana (29m 15s):
Yeah. It’s always fun to revisit our research. You know, this is some of the first research I did this family line and I love going back and deepening my understanding of what was happening to them when they were living there in those early times.

Nicole (29m 30s):
Absolutely. And I had earlier in the episode, mentioned a list of immigrants from Colonial times coming from England. And I wanted to share, I pulled it up So I could share the exact reference in case anyone’s interested, but it’s from Bristol. So people leaving Bristol in the 16 hundreds. So this is available on FamilySearch under Bristol and cloud sister. Sure. England, and it’s called Servants to Foreign Plantations. And So I had searched that for a reference that somebody else had sided on like a roots web message board about the research subject for our client project. And So I wanted to find the original of it and analyze that and stuff.

Nicole (30m 11s):
What I ended up finding was that that reference that they had thought was for our research subject. I decided it was for somebody else. All it has is their name. I mean, it’s really difficult. It doesn’t even say where they’re going in Virginia. And it was people going to all kinds of Foreign Plantations, including Barbados in Virginia. So all it said was William going to Virginia bound to Robert Blair in 1669. So you really don’t have a lot of identifying information there.

Diana (30m 37s):
Now you don’t, unless I guess you would research Robert Blair. Yeah. See what happened to

Nicole (30m 41s):
Him? Not that I had been. So that was an interesting record set to use. And the handwriting was very different. It took a long time to really figure out what each letter was.

Diana (30m 54s):
Oh wow. Yeah. Some early script. Yeah. That’s cool.

Nicole (30m 56s):
16 hundreds. So that can be something fun to check out if you’re just curious about Colonial times.

Diana (31m 1s):
Right? Well, it’s been so fun to talk about our Ancestors and these concepts of research. You know, that’s why we love what we do. There’s always something new to learn something new to try. So we hope everybody enjoyed this episode. And if you’ve got some Colonial Ancestors, maybe we gave you some ideas about how to research them.

Nicole (31m 22s):
All right, everybody. We’ll talk to you again next week. Bye

Diana (31m 25s):
Bye. Bye.

Nicole (31m 26s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.