Author: FHadmin

Translating “Old Speak”

Posted on by FHadmin

Most things that I encounter in genealogy require some level of translation or interpretation.  The obvious is when a record is in German or French.  However, there are other things in genealogy research that require translating and interpreting. One of the most challenging is translating “old speak” into something understandable by  the general public today.

 

Old Speak?

 

What do I mean by “old speak?”  This is a term that I use for words and phraseology that are very rarely used today if at all, but which occur in old documents.  Old speak is most likely to become an issue when reading old free form documents, such as wills and church records.  Newspapers also may contain words or phrases unfamiliar to most people today. On the other hand, census records and other things that are standardized at the state or federal level are less likely to contain unfamiliar language, but are not immune to such language.

 

General Terms

 

One will that caught my attention was that of Christian Stetler Sr. (Klinefelter line).  In his will, he indicated what was to happen to his plantation.  This raised questions to me because he lived in Montgomery County Pennsylvania only a short distance from Philadelphia.  Not only did I not associate plantations with Pennsylvania, I hadn’t found him to be overly wealthy.  One record indicated that he had 125 acres, but many men in the area owned more land.  With research, I found that at that time  (early 1800s), a plantation was simply another name for farm.  It did not necessarily imply wealth, or acreage.

 

Another word that shows up a lot in old records is “instant.”  It basically means “next” except that it comes after the word it modifies in sentences.  For example, “Thursday instant” means “next Thursday.”  Similarly, instead of saying, “last August,” back in the day they would have used “August last.”

 

Now, this one may make you scratch your head. 4-great grandfather William Bassett’s records of  his service were lost (that is a whole other story) and he had to provide an account of his service along with other evidence to receive a pension. In those records, he refers to the term “skiner” This term referred to the British using the end of their bayonets to injure the people fighting for America’s independence.

 

Medical Terms

 

The first words that come to mind as old speak are medical terms.  Many old death records that included a cause of death use terms that are unfamiliar to most people.  For example, Joseph P. Ellis, son of Joseph Andrew Ellis (great-grandma Rosa’s brother) died of consumption.  Today, we would say that he died of Tuberculosis.  In this case, the information appeared in a newspaper article and said enough that without a medical dictionary or the internet, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out that it was at a minimum a chronic disease that would have resulted in someone moving in hopes of improved health.

 

Another example that can’t be as easily determined as to the exact cause of death is the case of great-great-great Grandmother Sally (Cox) Peelle.  She died at age 56 of bilious fever, which is a term no longer used by medical professionals.  Research shows that this was often associated with what we would consider Malaria, but some cases may have been from a form of hepatitis or from sepsis. 

 

Interesting Meanings

 

A newspaper from the 1700’s mentions that William Hurrie would not be responsible for the debts of his wife.  At first I did not realize the social and legal consequences of such a statement.  It didn’t simply mean that he thought she was spending irresponsibly or that she had separate finances.  Stating publicly that he would not be financially responsible constituted what is called self-divorce.  He was basically stating that their marriage was over.  No paper work needed to be filed as it had been openly stated.

 

Of course, before you can even interpret the old words, you have to be able to read the handwriting and get passed the nuances of handwriting at various times.

 

 

Image Source: Newspapers.com

 

 

 

No Grandpas

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Grandpa Together-we-are-strong pixabay.com

I never knew either of my grandfathers.  Similarly, my dad didn’t know his grandfathers and my mom didn’t know her grandmothers.  It is like a piece of your life is missing when you don’t have the opportunity to know a parent or a grandparent.  All I know is what I learned from family, primarily from my parents, about them.

 

Grandpa McCracken

 

Grandpa McCracken died when I was about a month old. From things I have heard about him, I know he  was very intelligent, had high expectations for his children,  did not put up with anyone saying “can’t,” and was loved by his kids and grandkids. 

A few quick stories . . .

  • Joe McCracken
  • Grandpa Joe didn’t think his kids needed to do homework.  He thought school work was very important, but he believed school was for school work and homework was things like feeding chickens, doing dishes, etc.
  • He didn’t think people needed a lot of paper as he could “figure” things in his head.  One night he sat down and was quiet.  After some time, he had Dad get a paper and pencil.  He proceeded to give him a list of lumber to buy along with how much it would cost.  He had designed the building in his head.  Determined how much of each type of board was needed. And, then calculated the cost without writing down anything.
  • He  gave orders to each of his sets of boys by telling the oldest one of the set and then expecting the younger one to do what the older one told them to do.
  • He was semi-ambidextrous.  He did somethings right-handed and some things left-handed.  Therefore, he had some right-handed tools and some left-handed tools.  But, he couldn’t just switch back and forth doing the same task.  And, he didn’t understand why other people couldn’t use both their hands like he could.  He was proud of Ruby for being left-handed.
  • He once shot a rat that was outside the house from inside right through the screen door.
  • Grandpa liked his coffee very, very strong.  His daughters teased him about it and even got a spoon that melted in hot liquid as a joke.
  • Although Grandpa trained to do mechanical work, he didn’t have the patience to do it.
  • Dad always said that Dewey was like Grandpa and Dewey always said that Dad was like Grandpa.

 

I have been told at times that I am like Grandpa, but that is only when I was doing something that likely annoyed my dad (e.g. I wasn’t being patient). 

Grandpa Pellett

 

I was six when Grandpa Pellett passed away.  However, he had been in a VA hospital in Iowa for a very long time.  Thus, I had never met him.  He is more of a mystery to me than Grandpa McCracken as Mom didn’t spend very many years with him herself and Grandma never told me about him either.  The little I know about him is as follows . . .

  • Grandpa Pellett served in the Kansas 353rd Infantry Regiment  in WWI in France.  Seventy-five people welcomed him home.
  • He had perfect attendance multiple times when in grammar school.
  • When he was a teenager, he was seriously injured when kicked by a mule.
  • He was baptized in Buck Run Creek in 1916 (he would have been about 21).
  • When picking pecans, he fell and was injured.  His injury combined with what was likely PTSD  landed him in the VA hospital starting in the early 1940s through the rest of his life.

 

Writing this makes me realize just how little I know about Grandpa Pellett. It really makes me wonder how my life would have been different if my grandpas would have been a part of it.

 

Identification Complications

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Identifying a person’s ancestors isn’t always easy even with records and DNA.  I have worked a quite a few confusing lines in my own families and other people’s families where family information, records, and DNA didn’t all align.  And, in some cases, almost no information seemed to exist.

 

Louisiana

 

One of those cases was my great-great grandmother Louisiana Matteer.  My part of the family always believed that her name was Louisiana Johnson and I spent many years researching that name without success.  One day I came in contact with a researcher that said that another researcher that he had a lot of confidence in had found that her name was Louisiana Mattser.  Well, there was no one with that last name in any record in the area where she lived leading up to the time she married.  However, it got me looking at records differently. 

 

With some digging I found the record that the person read as Mattser.  Based on the handwriting, that appeared to be the name.  Yet, Mattser did not match anyone.  Eventually,  I found more records and determined that her name was really Louisiana (or Louisanna) Matteer.  Once I searched with this name, I was able to piece together more of her story and find DNA matches to people in that family line.

 

Adoptions & More

 

Despite the research on Louisiana taking several years, it isn’t the most complex cases of identity that I have worked.  Helping people who have been adopted or do not know an ancestor for some reason has presented me with far more challenging circumstances to research.  Imagine people that don’t know who their parents are and no paperwork was ever filed on their under the table adoption.  Imagine cases that take you coast to coast and even to multiple continents.  And, others are at a known locale, but there is lots of intermarrying in the area and separating family lines becomes difficult.

 

The Extreme

 

I am still working on an extremely difficult case.  In this case, not only is the person adopted, but so is the father.  Add to that at least two other  close ancestors whose birth was the result of an affair.  The case Includes multiple countries, multiple languages, and many of the families intermarried over and over.  Now, that makes identifying ancestors a challenge!

 

 

Turn That Picture To The Wall

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Some year ago, my uncle sent my family an article about General George Henry Thomas.  He was a well known and well respected general for the North in the Civil War.  Thus, my uncle really wanted him to be a member of our family.  After all, the names George and Henry both show up in our ancestry.

 

North Or South

 

George was from Virginia.  He had trained at West Point and  was against slavery.  When the Civil War was imminent, he decided that he would fight for the North.  His family back in Virginia was very upset by this decision as they felt he was turning his back on his home state.  Therefore, the article claimed that his family turned his photo to the wall.  They continued to be upset with him after the war.  When he died, it was said that a member of his family stated that he had died when he decided to fight for the North!

 

Relation or Not?

 

Although he was born only a few miles from the Virginia-North Carolina border, no evidence has been found tying the general to our Thomas family in North Carolina, .  However, when we heard the story, we thought it was definitely possible that his family was related to us as our Thomas family was  strong in their beliefs and they stuck  together. We could  see the Thomas family turning their back on someone that they thought had turned their back on them.

 

 

 

What’s Happening?

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Today when we want to know what is happening with somebody, we check their social media accounts.  If you aren’t connected to a person, it can be a bit challenging to find out what is going on in their life. 

 

Local Items

 

Back in the day, it was common to print items  in small town newspapers about people from different neighborhoods.  In this case, you could check up on anyone.  However, you were limited by the other person’s connection to the person that wrote the local items.  So, if someone in your family wrote the local items or was tightly connected to the person who wrote them, your family would show up in the newspaper a lot.  On the other hand, if you weren’t connected, you might never show up.

 

Local Items For Genealogy

 

Items written in the newspaper are a far cry from a primary source for genealogy.  However, they can be invaluable in your research.   They have helped me find people that weren’t where they were expected, learn about schools and churches that are long gone, find unknown family members etc.  But more than anything, they bring these characters in my genealogy to life with details and stories that go beyond basic facts.

 

Ten Specific Stories

 

The following are a few of the things  that I learned about by read reading local items or other small articles in newspapers.  Some were exciting new information that led to additional research, while others were just fun tidbits of information.

 

  1. My gg-grandfather Lemuel McCracken’s birth date is  April 12, 1831.  Records showed April 1831, but no day had been found until an article that talked about his birthday party.
  2. My husband’s grandmother Minnie (Kutzner) Helm had two half sisters that she knew, but apparently never told her daughters about.
  3. My ggg-grandfather Abel John Pellett voted for General Harrison in 1836 and 1840.
  4. At age 16, my g-uncle Oren Thomas was run over by a wagon when the team of horses ran away.  They thought at first that the injuries might be fatal.  He survived and died at age 70.
  5. My husband’s g-grandparents Herbert & Blanche (Klinefelter) Thomson met in Colorado at a train station in the early 1930’s.  Blanche lived in Pennsylvania and Herbert lived in Nebraska.  So, it must have been meant to be.
  6. The Jury family arrived in Fort Scott, Kansas from Oxford, Canada  in November 1869, staying at the Western House Hotel in Fort Scott.
  7. John Peelle, brother to my ggg-grandfather William Peelle, was quite a story teller.  He would get up at the Old Settlers Picnic in Indiana and tell stories of picking cotton in North Carolina, swapping pants with another man at a log rolling, marrying his wife, and witches in “North Caroliner.”
  8. Williamsburg, Indiana was named after my gggg-grandfather William Johnson.
  9. In 1916, my grandpa Joe McCracken decided to move into Farlington.  He had a sale (selling cattle, farm implements, etc.) as he was quitting farming (which he returned only a few years later). 
  10. My gg-grandmother Mary (Portwood) Conner was seriously hurt when she was thrown from a horse she was riding (she was 40 years old at the time).