Names Crossed Off Passenger List

First and second pages of NY passenger list of Taormina
with names crossed off, Jan 28, 1914

I've recently seen a couple misunderstandings about what it means when someone's name is crossed off a passenger list. The first was that it means the individual died while on board. This is sometimes true but not always. The other assumption was that it means the individual never got on board to begin with. Also sometimes true, but again, not always.

What it really meant was that the person did not get off the ship. As mentioned, that could be because the person died on board, or because they never got on board to begin with, it could also mean that the individual didn't get off the ship at that port of arrival but rather remained on board until disembarking at a secondary port of call. This was the case with some of my ancestors, who arrived in New York on January 28, 1914 on board the Taormina - their names are crossed off so they didn't got off the ship there. There is then a second passenger list from their arrival in Philadelphia a couple days later on January 30, 1914 where their names were not crossed off.

Meanwhile, I have an infant relative in my tree who was born and died on board a ship in 1880 but her name is not crossed off the passenger list on her arrival. It does note "died" beside her details but she's not crossed off (see below). I see the crossing off more commonly in 20th century passenger lists.

Australia Domenica Scioli was born and died on board the ship she was
named after in 1880 - while it notes she died, her name is not crossed off

First and second pages of Philadelphia passenger list of
Taormina with names of those crossed off in NY,
Jan 30, 1914

The ship had a record of who boarded at the departure port and then the immigration officers at the port of arrival made a copy of those lists, crossing off the people on their copy who didn't disembark at that port. The passenger lists we see are usually the copies that were made at the port of arrival from the ship's records. The immigration officers probably didn't care why an individual on the passenger list didn't disembark and therefore didn't always note whether it was due to an on-board death, or whether they were just carrying onto the next port of call, or whether they never boarded to begin with. Their job was probably just to record who disembarked at their port of call.

So if you see an ancestor or relative whose name is crossed off on a passenger list, don't assume they died on board, or never boarded to begin with. Do some more investigating to see if the ship carried onto another port of call where they might have disembarked. If you're not finding anything by searching for the person's name, try searching by the arrival year and the ship's name. The arrival port officers were working off of the ship's records, which meant the handwriting could sometimes be misinterpreted and copied incorrectly (this doesn't mean a misspelling was a permanent name change). And of course, there's always the digital transcription which could be incorrect too and preventing you from finding the record by the individual's name. This also works for when you may have gotten an individual's immigration data from a naturalization record but can't find the passenger list by searching by name. Of course, by the time of naturalization, the individual may have been misremembering the exact details of their immigration so if you don't find the passenger list by the arrival date and ship name, you may need to make use of wildcards in the name. You can use a '?' in place of a letter, or an '*' in place of several letters but you must have at least three real letters in there for it to work.

Happy searching!

Dating Old Photographs

Example of cabinet card with
photographer's details - this photog'
was at this address 1879-1887

Like me, you may have a collection of old photographs handed down to you with no knowledge of who the portraits are of, or even when they were taken. Here's a few tips to help you out.

1. The Photographer. Many photos may be printed on paper and mounted to stiff cardstock and stamped with the photographer's name and address in the margin or on the back. Using directory records, you can track when that photographer was working at that particular address, narrowing down the time period in which the photo must have been taken. More details on this can be found here: Mystery Photos.
2. The Fashion. Get to know the clothing and hairstyle fashions of different eras. This article from SheKnows has many useful links to websites that detail fashion from the 19th and 20th centuries. I make the most use out of the University of Vermont guide which also has info on dating photos based on all different topics, not just fashion. Don't be fooled into thinking people in rural areas didn't receive the latest fashions from magazines and catalogs, or that older people didn't stay up to date with modern fashions. See the common myths on this website. Pinterest can also be a useful source to finding images of popular fashions from different decades.
3. The Format. The materials used to create the original image (watch out for copies made from the original in much later eras) can be very useful in dating them:
• Daguerreotypes. The first publicly available photographs were daguerreotypes from 1839 until about 1860. Peaked in popularity in the 1840s and early to mid 1850s. A positive image was produced on a sheet of silver plated copper polished to a mirror finish and mounted in a protective hard case. More info.
• Calotypes. Available from 1841, the process produced a translucent negative on paper, allowing positive prints to be created from the negative. This created a softer image, often desirable for portraits. Despite these advantages over the daguerreotype, the calotype did not replace it and both processes remained popular until about the late 1850s/early 1860s. More info.
• Albumen print. A paper photograph with a positive image created from a negative (typically a negative from a collodion process which created a negative image on glass). Invented in 1850 but not popular until 1855 when it became the dominant form photographic positives. Peaked in popularity from the 1860s to 1890s when used for carte de vista and cabinet cards (see below). More info.
• Ambrotypes/collodion positive. First available from 1854 and popular for a brief period of time in the late 1850s/early 1860s before superseded by tintypes. You likely won't see any after 1865. They created a positive image on glass. Required mounting in protective hard case. More info.

  

  A tintype, probably from the late 1880s

• Tintypes. A positive image produced on a thin sheet of metal, no mounting required but sometimes mounted in a paper mat. Available from 1856 and most popular during the 1860s and 1870s, but still remained in use up to the early 20th century, though by that point it was considered a novelty. More info.
• Carte de Visite. A small albumen print (54.0 mm/2.125 in by 89 mm/3.5 in) typically mounted on thicker card measuring 64 mm/2.5 in by 100 mm/4 in). Patented in 1854 but not popular until 1859 and remained so throughout the 1860s and 1870s until the larger cabinet cards eventually replaced them. They were popular as calling cards to be traded among friends and visitors. More info.
• Cabinet Cards. A larger paper photograph (originally albumen but later processes used other types of paper) mounted on thick cardstock measuring 108 by 165 mm (4¼ by 6½ inches). Introduced in 1866 and most popular during the 1870s and 1880s, beginning to decline in the 1890s, though they did not completely disappear until the 1930s but were rare by that point. A cabinet card with a true black and white photo (not sepia) was likely produced in the 1890s or later. Those photos with the photographer's name and address stamped on the margin or back (such as discussed above) were usually Cabinet Cards. More info.
• Film/Paper. The first translucent negative sheet film was produced in 1885, with rolls of film as we know it today available from 1888. In 1900, the first Kodak Brownie was released and sold for only $1 (about $28 today), with the film for it costing only 15c, making photography affordable for the masses and giving birth to the "snapshot". Positive images were produced on simple, unmounted paper. 

There is an excellent and more advanced guide to print types available at PhotoTree.com.

The Horse in Motion, 1878

Misconceptions and Myths.

I see a lot of misunderstandings about photography in history and perhaps dispelling them will also help people understand the time period in which a photo might have been taken. 

Exposure times. Many people seem to think that in history, the length of time required to take or expose a photograph was so long, one wasn't able to smile or move. This was true in the very early days of photography, but not by the late 19th century. The first daguerreotypes and calotypes in the 1840s had exposure times as short as 5 minutes in optimal conditions but later their exposure times were reduced to only a few seconds by 1864 with the invention of the collodion process in 1851 followed by improvements on it which increased sensitivity to light. Granted, this was in optimal (bright sunlight) conditions, but I have photographs of small children starting from the 1860s (shown below), which wouldn't be possible without exposure times measured in seconds because we all know small children won't hold still very long (and I don't care what time period they were from, small children still had little patience or self control). By 1871, the gelatin dry plate method made exposure times short enough that cameras could be hand held (ie, fraction of a second).

Small child, circa 1867

By 1878, technology shortened exposure times to a fraction of a second, about 1/25th of a second. Have you ever seen "The Horse in Motion", a sequence of photographs of a horse and rider at a gallop, analyzing it's gait frame by frame (shown above)? That was done in 1878. Without getting too technical, anything that is fast enough to capture and freeze the motion of a galloping horse is more than fast enough to capture a smile or movement of a human being.

Of course, it's reasonable to assume that not all photographers had the most advanced equipment the moment it became available. But it's also reasonable to assume it wasn't too long after 1878 before most photographers were using equipment that allowed them to photograph with exposures of at least only a few seconds, or even a fraction of a second.

So why aren't there more photographs of people smiling or moving around from the late 19th century? It's probably due to the fact that until about 1885 or 1900 at the latest, photography was not affordable to the masses and the processing could be complex. Therefore, the industry was very much controlled by professional photographers and that meant that getting one's photograph taken was a formal event. The concept of the candid photograph didn't really exist yet, and people's only basis for a formal image of themselves stemmed from paintings, where there was no smiling or moving around. So the idea of this as a formal portrait carried over into photography until the advent of the candid photograph. There are examples of candids in the 1880s and 1890s, but it really took off in 1900 with the introduction of the Kodak Brownie, which practically anyone could afford.

Detail. Many people also seem to think that pre-20th century, photographs didn't have much fine detail to them. And while it's true that many surviving photographs from the 19th century don't have much fine detail, that doesn't mean the technology didn't exist to capture it. Just look at some of the photographs of US presidents dating the 1850s and 1860s! While these were probably taken by some of the best photographers in the country, that doesn't mean such detail was exclusive to the best of the best photographers. Take for example the image to the right, which was likely from the 1870s or early 1880s. Note the fine detail in the strands of his hair and mustache.

Sources:

• History of Photography
• Timeline of Photography Technology
• Photographic Exposure Calculations - A History
• Black and White Photographs - University of Vermont
• Phototree.com
• And, you know... being a professional photographer...

Genealogy Myths

I've already discussed in the past about the myth of "My family name was changed at Ellis Island", as well as the one about how most people in history married in their teens, but I thought it might be useful to go over some other common myths associated with genealogy as well.

1. The Family Crest/Coat of Arms
I see many people adding family crests to ancestor's in their tree but the fact is, there is no such thing (sorry, Mom). A crest or coat of arms (technically two different things but I'll leave that one for now) is given to an individual by the Crown and only that individual or their descendants in the direct male line are entitled to use it. And since not everyone with the same family name is descended from that one person who was probably granted their coat of arms in medieval times or later, not everyone with the same family name is entitled to use the crest. Unless you've done the research and traced your direct lineage back to the person who was granted that specific crest, then it probably has nothing to do with your particular family. Of course, there's no crest/coat of arms police who are going to come after you to posting it to your tree, but to me, it's like attaching the wrong record to someone in my tree.

This is also the reason why you might find more than one crest for the same family name. If different individuals with the same name were granted a crest/coat of arms (and they might be a part of the same family, they might not), there will be more than one crest associated with that name. For my maiden name, there's at least six or seven different crests I could pick from, but I have no evidence my ancestors were associated with any of them.

The idea of everyone having a family crest was created during Victorian times to sell personalized letterheads with your family crest on them, and the practice continues to this day with companies selling all kinds of products branded with your personal family crest. People are so taken with this myth, I've even seen some who have had their so-called family crest tattooed on them. Let's hope they never read this, huh?

Sources:
College of Arms FAQ
Crest (Heraldy)

2. The term Pennsylvania "Dutch" is a corruption of the German word for Germans "Deutsche".
An understandable common misconception given the similarity of the words but it's untrue regardless. Lots of people like to point out how the Pennsylvania Dutch are not actually Dutch but German. This is true, within the context of the current usage of the word Dutch to mean people from the Netherlands. But in the past, "Dutch" was a much more vague term that did not necessarily apply only to people from the Netherlands, it also included people from Germany and Switzerland, especially those from along the Rhine, as many Pennsylvania Dutch were. The Rhine River is mostly in Germany but also parts of the Netherlands and Switzerland. Since the term Pennsylvania Dutch was coined in colonial times, it makes sense that the more generic term for people from a range of Germanic lands was used and it has simply stuck, despite the fact that the term "Dutch" now more specifically refers to people from the Netherlands (or, if you're Joey from Friends "the make believe place where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell come from").

Wikipedia addresses this with the following:

The origins of the word Dutch, a borrowing from Middle Dutch, ultimately go back to Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of all Germanic languages, *þeudiskaz (meaning "popular/vernacular", as opposed to Latin); akin to Old Dutch dietsc, Old High German diutsch, Old English þeodisc, all meaning "(of) the common (Germanic) people". As the tribes among the Germanic peoples began to differentiate, its meaning began to change. On the continent *þeudiskaz evolved into two ways: Diets (meaning "Dutch (people)" (archaic/poetic)[3] and Deutsch (German, meaning "German (people)"). At first the English language used (the contemporary form of) Dutch to refer to any or all of the Germanic speakers on the European mainland (e.g., the Dutch, the Frisians and the various Germans). Gradually its meaning shifted to the Germanic people they had most contact with, both because of their geographical proximity, but also because of the rivalry in trade and overseas territories: the modern Dutch of the Netherlands. 

The word Dutch is also sometimes interpreted as a corruption of the Pennsylvania Dutch endonym Deitsch, which is itself a local variant of the modern German endonym Deutsch, meaning German. This folk etymology is however not supported by the historical record.

And cites it's sources as the following:

 www.etymonline.com (English) and Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Dutch) entries "Dutch" and "Diets".

Fogleman, Aaron Spencer (1996). Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-0812215489. "The term "Dutch," often considered a corruption of "Deutsch", which means German, was actually not a corruption at all. It was a legitimate, well-known term used by the English in the early modern period to describe the people who lived along the Rhine. The "Low Dutch" came from the area of the present Netherlands, while the "High Dutch" came from the area of the middle and upper Rhine."

3. I have a royal/Native American ancestor.
It's not impossible, some people can legitimately trace links to such claims. And there is something to be said about pedigree collapse and the idea that all European descendants are descended from Charlemagne. But when it comes to genealogy, we're talking about traceable ancestors here, and we need reliable documents to prove descent from a particular member of the royal family or Native American. There are many bogus tree links into royal families out there, as well as many false stories about Native American ancestors. Even going back to colonial times, genealogy was riddled with fake claims to royalty, especially in the south, as detailed in Family Life in 17th- and 18th-Century America (Family Life through History) by James M. Volo, Dorothy Denneen Volo:

To maintain the integrity of the family structure, the female relatives would gather to trace the family tree from long before the rise of the Stuart kings. Intermarriage between second and third cousins was promoted to strengthen the connections within the extended family. Nowhere else in colonial American was the status of an extended family of cousins more closely followed or revered.

Yet few in the southern master's social class actually had aristocratic roots, and for some of the gentry, the need to maintain a large body of servants was greatly intensified by the lack of blood ties to some genuine form of royalty. Planters with an English heritage might claim their descent from the Cavaliers of the English Civil Wars of the 1640s. No mere followers of the Stuart kings, their planter ancestry might be derived from dukes, earls, knights, and loyal squires who had ridden at Nasby. This claim helped the planters to define themselves in historically acceptable terms. There were enough southern families with legitimate family trees of this sort-the Lees, the Fairfaxes, and the Randolphs, for instance-to maintain the "truth" of the wider fiction.

4. I possess this old photograph of my x-times great grandparent, therefore I own it and anyone who attaches a copy of it to their tree is "stealing" from me.
Unfortunately, possession is not always nine tens of the law. The truth is that unless either you or one of your ancestors who died less than 70 years ago took the photo, it is not yours. The copyrights of photographs are retained by the photographer for the duration of their life and for 70 years after their death. Upon their death, the copyright ownership is transferred to either their next of kin or whoever they might name in their will (and so on to the next generation if necessary). So unless it was a family snapshot that grandpa took of mommy (or your ancestor also happened to be a professional photographer), you probably don't own the copyright and if it's been less than 70 years since the death of the photographer who did take it, you may actually be the one breaking copyright laws. If it's be more than 70 years since the death of the photographer, the copyright has expired and the photo is actually in the public domain, so no one owns the copyright.

In the genealogy world, it's unlikely the descendant of the photographer would come after you for posting a photograph taken by their ancestor. They would have to know that this particular photo of your ancestor was taken by their ancestor who died less than 70 years ago, and be able to prove it in court. However, it is technically possible and more importantly, ethically, if one is going to get on a high horse about other people "stealing" photos from them, one better be absolutely sure they are not accidentally breaking copyright laws themselves first!

More info at The Legal Genealogist.

A Spinster's Chance in Hell of Marrying

Think an "old" spinster in history didn't have a chance in hell of ever marrying? Often I see people with this misconception, that in history, once a woman was passed a certain age, she had little to no hope of ever marrying and would be considered an old maid. The specified age varies, some people seem to think it was as low as 18! Others are a little more realistic and put it around early to mid 20s.

In my experience, the average age at first marriage for women was actually in the early to mid-20s and therefore an unmarried woman of this age would not necessarily be considered an old maid, doomed to a barren, solitary life. Though there are plenty of examples of women who married for the first time aged 30+, this is closer to the age group I would label "old maid" or "spinster" since this is the smallest age group of women marrying for the first time. But it was certainly not unheard of. Consider the fact that childbirth took many female lives and left widowers with young children and no mother to take care of them. Often, a man might be pleased to take an older, never before married second wife to look after his children. It would mean he wouldn't have to take in her fatherless children from a previous marriage and since he already had children by his first wife, he would not have been as concerned about whether his second wife was still young enough to bare children or not. Of course, plenty of women then and now are able to start having children well into their 30s and even 40s but it does become less and less likely as time goes on.

But take, for example, my recent venture into studying the marriages of Butler County, Pennsylvania. I have ancestry there, mostly around the mid 19th century, and for the purpose of my family history writings, I wanted to get an idea of the average age that a woman would marry for the first time in this location during this time period, and also at what age the local law said a woman could marry without a parent's or guardian's consent. Unfortunately, the Pennsylvania County Marriages collection at FamilySearch.org only have marriage records for Butler County going back to 1885 but it was as close as I was going to get to the mid-1800s. Here are the results, I hope you find the stats as interesting as I do, though please keep in mind that different locations and different time periods may have different results, particularly regarding the age at which one can marry without consent of a parent or guardian needed. However, I would not be surprised if at least most of Pennsylvania had similar results, just based on my general experience doing genealogy research. If I had the time, I would do this for each available county in PA but for now, I sampled 300 records (out of about 630, basically the first half of folder 004811571) of the 1885-1886 records to get these stats.

In Butler County, PA, anyone under the age of 21, male or female, needed consent from a parent or guardian to marry. While this doesn't mean that marrying under 21 was unusual, especially for women, it does go against our idea that children grew up faster and married significantly younger, as teenagers. Needing consent to marry before the age of 21 suggests that people under this age were viewed as too young to make their own decisions without guidance and approval. In fact, the term "filia" was often used to refer to those under 21, which is a legal term for a child or minor. Compared to today's laws where people reach the age of majority and can marry without consent from the age of 18, the laws from the 1880s seem very conservative.

84% of men were marrying for the first time, while 95% of women were marrying for the first time.

The average age of men at their first marriage was 26. Only 4% of men married under the age of 21 and therefore required parent or guardian consent. This is not unusual in a time when a husband was expected to support his wife and children so men were encouraged to wait until they had either steady work, set up their own shop, or established their own farm before they married and began having children. The youngest men married at 18 years old so there were no cases of men marrying under 18 at all. This suggests men were not able to marry under the age of 18 even with consent of a parent. The oldest age at which a man married for the first time was 47.

The average age of women at their first marriages was 23 and 30% of women married under the age of 21, requiring their parent's or guardian's consent. This means the majority of women certainly did not marry as teenagers, but that it wasn't unheard of, with 22% of women marrying under 20. The lowest age at first marriage for a woman was 15, suggesting girls under this age could not at all, even with consent. The highest age at which a woman first married was 49 years. Take that, spinsterhood!

Now let's look at some of the age differences between the bride and groom, since there also seems to be a misconception that it was very common for a teenage girl to be married off to a 30+ year old man. Again, not unheard of but also not the norm. In 88% of cases, the bride and groom were within an age difference of 10 or fewer years. In fact, in 10%, the bride was actually older than the groom! Of the remaining cases in which there was a higher age difference of 11 or more years, 30% of them had a teenage bride (or in other words, 4% out of the total had an age gap of higher than 10 and included a teenage bride). The largest age different was 25 years, the groom being 47 and the bride 22.

Lastly, I did record some data from second (or third) marriages as well. The average age for a man at the time of a second (or third) marriage was 41, with the youngest age being 25 and the oldest 64. For a woman, the average was 40, with the youngest being 23 and the oldest 50. Divorce was certainly taboo but don't kid yourself that it never happened or that it was illegal - there were 4 cases where the groom remarrying had divorced his first wife and one case where the bride had divorced her first husband.

Today, the average age at first marriage for men across the U.S. is 29 and for women, it's 27. So while it's true that people tended to marry younger in the past, it was not so drastic as some people seem to think, with the averages instead being around 26 and 23 respectively (at least for Butler County, PA). I recall once hearing someone say that in the past, if one wasn't married by 18, they were "done", or had no hope of marrying. Hopefully, with these examples, I have helped to dispel these kinds of myths.

Update: I have since compiled another 225 marriage records from 1891, also in Butler County, Pennsylvania, just to be sure the previous year I calculated wasn't some kind of fluke and found the stats were very similar.

• Average age at first marriage for men: 26
• Average age at first marriage for women: 22
• Oldest man marrying for the first time: 49
• Youngest man marrying for the first time: 19
• Oldest woman marrying for the first time: 45
• Youngest woman marrying for the first time: 15
• 4% of men married under the age of 21 and therefore required parental consent
• 32% of women married under 21 and required parental consent
• 89% of men were marrying for the first time
• 95% of women were marrying for the first time
• Average age of men marrying for 2nd or 3rd time: 38
• Average age of women marrying for 2nd or 3rd time: 34
• 25% of men marrying for the 2nd/3rd time had been divorced
• 17% of women marrying for the 2nd/3rd time had been divorced

The 'Not-So-Once-in-a-Lifetime' Immigration Trip

When we think of our ancestors stepping on a boat and taking an enduring trip across the Atlantic that could take weeks or even months before stepping off again in a new land, a place of unparalleled opportunity, we tend to assume that this was a one-way journey, leaving behind their home country, culture, and sometimes even family. But actually, by around the turn of the century, it was not unusual for people from certain cultures to make several trips back and forth between their home land and America. For Italians, this was especially true.

The Lahn, the ship which Angelo returned to the U.S. on
in 1903.

Over two million Italians immigrated to America during the 1910s, with a total of 5.3 million between the years 1880 and 1920 but about a third of them actually returned to Italy after an average of about five years of working in the United States. They went to America for the work and would return to Italy, sometimes briefly, sometimes permanently, for various reasons. One reason was for marriage. Many Italian males who were working in the US would return to Italy to find a bride who would later follow him back to America. This was probably because many Italian immigrants were males looking for work and although some of them were in the process of moving their family, including unmarried daughters or sisters, over to the U.S. with them, many had not. Many were young, unmarried males and the "dating pool" of unmarried, young Italian females was probably much bigger back home in Italy. My 19 year old Italian 2nd great grandfather Angelo Scioli found himself in this situation when he traveled from Philadelphia to Monteroduni where he married Josephine Biello in January of 1903. Angelo quickly returned to Philadelphia and Josephine joined him there later in the year.

So it's important to remember that our ancestor's immigration was not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime trip and that by this period of time, it was not unusual to see a few back and forth travels, especially among Italians. Keep this in mind during your research so you're not overlooking passenger lists and immigration records or looking for a marriage record in the wrong country.

The "Our Name Was Changed at Ellis Island" Myth

I am not the first one to write an article on this. But it's an important issue and therefore needs to be covered. One of the most persistent myths in American culture is the one of family names being altered and Americanised at Ellis Island by ignorant and lazy immigration officers who couldn't understand foreign names and didn't care enough to get they them right. We grow up hearing this and it becomes something we all just accept as a universal truth. We don't question it. I've even seen big name authors (ahem, Janet Evanovich) use it in novels.

But I guarantee that Stephanie Plum's family name was not shortened from Plumerri by an "overworked immigration clerk." It's true that many of our ancestor's names, both given and family, were Anglicized in order to integrate into U.S. society. However, it's a myth that it happened at Ellis Island (or other ports of entry) by immigration officers.

For starters, passenger lists in the late 19th and early 20th century were recorded at the port of departure, usually in the passenger's native country, and immigration officers at the port of entry worked off of it. Secondly, most immigration officers were multilingual or made use of internal translators, just like they do today. I won't deny there's a lot of errors on passenger lists, but that doesn't mean their name was changed at that point. Every genealogist will come to realize that any kind of document had the potential to mangled names and that it didn't mean their name was changed. This includes, but is not limited to passenger lists. Additionally, it's important to remember that in history, the concept of a legal, official name didn't always exist. Official birth certificates in the U.S. didn't even exist until around 1900, give or take depending on the state, and Society Security wasn't around until 1937, so who was to say how exactly your name was supposed to be spelled? Name spellings could be a fluid concept and it wasn't a big deal to spell it the wrong way on documentation, if there even was considered a "wrong" way to spell it to begin with.

If your family name was Anglicized, it was probably done so after immigration, and probably by choice of your own ancestor. Many people simply assumed an Anglicized version because, again, the concept of a "legal" name did not yet fully exist. Today, we take pride in our heritages but the truth is that in the golden era of immigration, people came to America to be American, to shed their former cultures and embrace the society that they felt offered them so much more opportunity. My Sicilian great grandfather went from Giovanni D'Amore to John Demore, and legend has it that when my Nan began speaking Italian as a baby, he said "No, we are American now, we speak English." So from that day on, only English was spoken in the house and my Nan soon forgot how to speak Italian. Today, this seems a shame to us. We even encouraged her to see a hypnotists in hopes that she might remember some Italian.

I won't ignore that a large part of an immigrant's choice to change their name and integrate into society was likely due to prejudice they might have experienced. But the fact of the matter remains that in all probability it did not happen against their will by ignorant immigration workers. Since the topic has already been so extensively covered elsewhere (and since this blog is more about my personal journey and experiences through genealogy), I will merely refer you to some of them for details:

Our Name Was Changed at Ellis Island - Dispelling the Myth of Ellis Island Name Changes
Truth v. Myth: "My family's name was changed at Ellis Island"
The Myth of Ellis Island and Other Tales of Origin
They Changed Our Name at Ellis Island
No, Family Names Were Not Changed at Ellis Island
Immigrant Name Changes - USCIS

Even the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says:

"...the idea that an entire family's name was changed by one clerk--especially one at Ellis Island--is seldom supported by historical research and analysis. American name change stories tend to be apocryphal, that is, they developed later to explain events shrouded in the mist of time. Given the facts of US immigration procedure at Ellis Island, the above story becomes suspect."

If you're interested in more reading on the subject, check out American Passage: The History of Ellis Island by Vincent J. Cannato. The myth is so ingrained in us, that one reviewer on Amazon still finds the truth hard to believe even after reading the book! He seems to think that just because his family name was changed, it must have happened at Ellis Island. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the very real fact that the name was changed after immigration by the choice of your ancestor. I'll bet if the reviewer did the research and found his ancestor's immigration papers, he'd find the name was not changed at the port of entry, and that if it was spelling incorrectly, it was just an error.

I have the records to prove that my Italian ancestors didn't change their family name until well after immigration and I'll bet if you look hard enough, you'll probably find it's the same case for you. Happy searching!

Don't Make Assumptions

It's very important in genealogy research to not make assumptions. Speculations and hunches can lead you in the right direction but assumptions can lead to tunnel vision.

A great example of this is my paternal grandfather's parents. My great grandmother was born and raised in Lisbon, Ohio. My great grandfather was born and raised in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, they were married in Hancock County, West Virginia. Neither of them ever lived in or had family ties to Hancock County but it is almost exactly a midway point between Lisbon and Pittsburgh so it makes some sense that they were married here. But had I not already known that this is where they were married, I probably would have gotten tunnel vision in restricting my searches of their marriage record to Ohio or Pennsylvania. 

So keep an open mind - if you can't find what you're looking for in the places you expected it to be, open your search to other possibilities, even if it seems unlikely! 

There are plenty of other examples of how my assumptions did in fact lead me to some brick walls. There was the incorrect assumption that my great grandfather had no sibling which caused me to dismiss several census records. There was the assumption that a census record who reported an individual as male was correct, leading me to fruitless searches of this male in other census records until I finally discovered the individual was actually female. There were endless empty searches of Ellis Island's records for my great grandfather's arrival when it turns out that his port of entry was actually Philadelphia, not New York (or New Jersey, if you're one of those). This is an important note since it seems to be a common assumption among newcomers to genealogy that Ellis Island was the only port of entry into the US which was not true.

Another thing to consider is address changes. Just because your ancestors had a change in address doesn't necessarily mean they moved house. I got very confused when some of my ancestors were reported alternatively as living at four different addresses on two streets which were next to each other. While it's not unlikely for people to move about within the same township, to move only down the road a little ways or just one street away seemed silly to me. But it must be true because there are the addresses listed, right? Wrong! As it turns out, my ancestor owned property that bordered each of the two streets and therefore his name is attributed to both addresses. On top of this, both streets were at some point renumbered, making it look like they had moved to a new address just down the road when they hadn't. 

What assumptions have you made that led you in the wrong directions? 

Beginners

I thought I would share some of the things I've learn in my genealogy journey that might help others. To many, these may be well known facts but I remember being a total newcomer to genealogy search and having to learn these things on my own.

First and foremost, gather what information you can from living relatives, preferably the oldest members of your family. As I've mentioned before, I started with a wealth of knowledge already having been collected by my maternal grandmother and it was highly beneficial for me. But keep in mind that family stories and information can be wrong too. You might not think someone could get details about their own parents or grandparents wrong but it's possible. Be wary of family legends too, like "We have Native America blood" or "We're descended from royalty!" These are common claims that often wind up being false (though not always). In my family, there was a legend that my third great grandfather hired a lawyer to trace his genealogy and was told he was related to Dutch royalty. However, in the past, it was not unusual for unscrupulous characters to falsify trees with royal connections for easy money and as I have found no such ties, I suspect my third great grandfather was sadly dupped by one of these frauds. Other family stories can be distorted simply by time and accident. Ever play "Whisper Down the Lane" (or more offensively known as "Chinese Whispers")? It doesn't take a family history expert to realize how quickly and easily stories get distorted. So take what you hear by word of mouth with a grain of salt but it is still your best starting point.

Once you have a basis of knowledge to start with, you can begin looking for records. I first recommend using free sources like FamilySearch.org, which has probably the largest free records database on the internet. Through FamilySearch, you can also lookup available microfilm collections and find LDS centers where you can order microfilm not yet transcribed on the website. Find A Grave is also a good resource but be aware that the content is user submitted and therefore the information is only as reliable as the individuals reading and reporting the grave sites. If an entry has a readable photograph attached, you can be sure it's reliable. There are potentially also a lot of other free websites with more local sources, the trick is tracking them down. For example, I found a great resource for Pennsylvania documents at Access Pennsylvania Digital Repository. I was able to find references to several of my ancestors in the Ambler Gazette collection. And I found some obituaries at Montgomery County PAGen. With a bit of Googling, you can find some good local sources for other parts of the country or world too. I have listed some of my favorite resources on the right of the blog but they are specific to the regions I research in the most. But don't get overwhelmed, start with FamilySearch, then look elsewhere.

When you feel like you've exhausted all the free sources you can find, you should seriously consider joining Ancestry.com. I know, I know, it's not cheap. But it really is the biggest records database on the internet and they are regularly adding new collections. Try the 14 day trial, if you feel like you wouldn't be getting your money's worth, you can always cancel before they charge you at the end of the 14 days (I know, I'm not fond of this practise either but it's the way of the world).

In your searches, you will inevitably come across family trees that other people have hosted on the internet. It's important to understand that anyone can put anything in their tree - that does not necessarily make it accurate. You will be shocked and amazed by the carelessness of other so-called researchers and their nonsensical data. People resurrected 50 years after their death. Children born when their mother is 5 years old. Sadly, some people just don't care enough about it to get it right. All you can do is focus on your own tree and make sure it's as accurate as possible. Of course, we all make mistakes. I know I've had some in my tree. But none so careless as this. The point is, do not take the information in other people's trees as fact and do not add their information to your tree unless you can otherwise confirm it to be true. These trees can serve as good clues or leads if they have records attached to them which you can analyze yourself and confirm that they are attributed to the correct individual.

Lastly, I will leave you with possibly the number one most important understanding of genealogy research: records can and will be wrong. Census records in particular are frequently incorrect, ranging from slightly off to not even close. Censuses are taken for demographic purposes only and so enumerators typically aren't that interested in getting the fine details, like names, accurate. But anything on a census record can be incorrect too. Ages, locations, martial status and, believe it or not, even genders can be recorded inaccurately. The reason for this lies not only in seemingly careless enumerators but also in who was supplying the information. It could have been a 10 year old child or a forgetful gran who answered the door. It could have been no one at all, in which case even a neighbor might have supplied the details that they may have been foggy on.

Other types of records can be incorrect as well. Death records, for example, usually contain information collected from a next of kin. And again, although you may find it hard to believe that a next of kin could get it wrong, it's not that uncommon. Many genealogists don't consider a fact confirmed until they have at least three sources all saying the same thing. Always consider the source, understand what it is and judge it's reliability accordingly.

So if you can't trust what other people say and you can't trust records, how on earth do you know what's accurate?! Welcome to genealogy! That's what makes it so difficult and frustrating sometimes. But that's also what makes piecing information together rewarding and exciting too.

There are other important tips that might be beneficial for newcomers but I'll leave them for other entries. For now, I hope I haven't overwhelmed you!