Eureka!

Well, it's been a while but I finally found something new to blog about. After taking a break from genealogy for several months, I recently got back to working on my family history book. For the past week or two I've been researching farm life. The second chapter of my book is about James Hickey's time as a farm laborer on the farm of John Fox (who would later become his father-in-law). I wanted to have an idea of what life was like for James and his future in-laws.

I was able to find quite a bit of information about farming in Maryland in 1850, but I also wanted to know more about the setting of John Fox's farm (the layout of the land, etc.). To do that, I needed to know where the farm was located.

A few years ago I had found an entry from 1843, in the Baltimore County land records, which detailed John's original purchase of over 200 acres. I knew the property was located near Perry Hall, just south of the Gunpowder River. Pinpointing the exact location on a modern map, though, proved quite a challenge.

I knew that John Fox had died in 1872 and that his wife had died five years later in 1877. However, in spite of years of searching, I had never been able to locate a will or any probate records for John.

Two years before his death, he was listed in the census as a farmer with property valued at $8000. If he had been in possession of that much property at his death, there should have been an estate to settle. No such luck, though.

If he didn't have the property when he died, then he must have disposed of it sometime before his death. A thorough search of the land records, though, revealed no such transaction. I tried searching under John's name, his wife's name, even his sons' names. Nothing.

Last night I decided to look back at the original land transaction to see if I could get some new clues. First, though, I decided to look back over some notes written years ago by a distant cousin. She also had done extensive research on the Fox property. I had looked at the notes before and followed up on some leads, but had not found what I was looking for. This time, though, I hit the jackpot. It's like I said in a previous blog: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

After several hours of backtracking through land records, I came across a deed from April 1872 (two months before John's death) which explained everything. The deed was from H. C. Wysham, trustee, to Emma Renshaw. Since John Fox was neither the grantor nor the grantee in the transaction, his name did not show up in any indexes. However, John and his wife are mentioned in the deed. It seems that John and Mary had a mortgage on the property which was not repaid, so they lost possession of their land, which was being sold to satisfy the debt.

Now that I knew what had become of the property, I still wanted to know where it was located. Since Emma Renshaw was now the owner of the property, I searched for her name in the land record index and came across an entry which showed that she sold the property in 1881. There was a notation in the 1881 deed that the property would thereafter be known as Rockland.

With this new piece of information I tried a Google search for Rockland near Perry Hall, Maryland. Eureka! To my delight, I discovered that Rockland Farm (also known as the Spamer Homestead) is on the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties. I followed the link on the Maryland Historical Trust website and located a 19-page PDF file about the property. A line in the first paragraph particularly caught my eye: "The 1850 Sidney map denotes the Spamer Homestead as belonging to John Fox." The PDF file contains a history of the property, a USGS map showing its location, and photos of the house which was built in the early 1800's.

If you'd like to take a look at the PDF file, follow this link:
http://www.mdihp.net/dsp_county.cfm?search=county&criteria1=R&criteria2=BA&criteria3=&id=3365&viewer=true

Family "hi-story"

When I first started homeschooling over 20 years ago, I used a "boxed" curriculum. (That is, all the materials came in a box: textbooks, lesson plans, even pens and pencils.) Since this was a new experience for me and I had no teaching experience, having lessons already planned out for me had its advantages. The disadvantage, though, was that the person planning the lessons did not know my children and did not necessarily have the same teaching style as I did.

After several years of this approach I found myself becoming more and more frustrated with the lesson plans. I was especially frustrated with the curriculum supplier's approach to history. There was a big emphasis on memorizing names and dates. Yes, I know it's important to know when certain events occurred, but I was more concerned that my kids understood what made those events or people important, and how they affected the lives of ordinary people. After all, history is really just a story (hence the title of this blog, emphasizing the "story" in history).

After 3 years of homeschooling, I discontinued the boxed program and put together my own curriculum. For history we read biographies, historical fiction, and the lives of the saints. We looked at how the people lived during a particular time period: the clothes they wore, the foods they ate, the houses they lived in, etc. The kids created beautiful, illustrated timelines to place events and people in context. Instead of taking tests, they applied what they learned by writing historical newspapers. By this method, I hope that I instilled in my children a lifelong love of history.

In the same way, genealogy is not just about names and dates. It is family history, the story of a family. Many genealogists get so caught up in the search for names and dates that they miss out on the most exciting aspect of genealogy; that is, walking in their ancestors' footsteps and getting to "know" them. I'll admit that I get pretty excited when my "sleuthing" leads me to discover a new name or date in my family tree. However, it's even more exciting for me to find a story in a newspaper about a family member, because it gives me another little glimpse into his or her life.

Since I started "doing" genealogy over 10 years ago, I have always wanted to write a fully annotated family history to pass on to future generations. I want my children and their children to know the story of those who came before them.

Many of the published genealogies that can be found at libraries or historical societies are collections of charts with names and dates. They can be of great value to other genealogists, but they are not the types of books you sit down and read.

I wanted my family history to be different, to be a "story" that my family would want to read, but how to do it was the challenge. I am not one of those people who was blessed with a diary or letters written by my ancestors.

In recent years, I came across 2 books that showed me how to write a family history as a story. You Can Write Your Family History and Bringing Your Family History to Life Through Social History both explain how to fill in the gaps in a family history.

So for the past few months I have been reading up on things that would have impacted my ancestors (the Irish potato famine, daily life in the 19th century, etc.). I have visited some of the places where my ancestors lived and worked. I have also done a lot of research in old newspapers. Little by little, I feel like I'm getting a picture of what my ancestors' lives were like.

I hope that within the next year or two I will be able to complete a book about the Hickey family. So far, I have written the first chapter, which is about the Irish potato famine and James Hickey's journey to America. The next chapter will be about Sarah Fox and her family, about life on her father's farm, and about her meeting and falling in love with James Hickey. The rest of the book will be about James and Sarah's life together and about each of their children and their families.

So wish me luck with my project and help me to stay on task.