1790: The first U.S. Census

(Wikipedia) ... Censuses had been taken prior to the Constitution's ratification; in the early 17th century, a census was taken in Virginia, and people were counted in nearly all of the British colonies that became the United States.
Throughout the years, the country's needs and interests became more complex. This meant that statistics were needed to help people understand what was happening and have a basis for planning. The content of the decennial census changed accordingly. In 1810, the first inquiry on manufactures, quantity and value of products occurred; in 1840, inquiries on fisheries were added; and in 1850, the census included inquiries on social issues, such as taxation, churches, pauperism, and crime.
The censuses also spread geographically, to new states and territories added to the Union, as well as to other areas under U.S. sovereignty or jurisdiction. There were so many more inquiries of all kinds in the census of 1880 that almost a full decade was needed to publish all the results. Continued

Baltimore's oldest black cemetery finally restored, with help of inmates

(Baltimore Sun) ... Founded in 1872, when blacks could not be interred next to whites, Mount Auburn was known as "The City of the Dead for Colored People." The cemetery, which overlooks the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, became the final resting place for many pioneers of Baltimore's black community.

They include Lillie May Carroll Jackson, who led the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP for 35 years; Carl J. Murphy, a leading voice of the civil rights movement, and his father, John Henry Murphy, the founder of the Afro-American newspaper; and Joseph Gans, the first lightweight boxing champion.

"Successive generations of colored people around the Baltimore area have been buried at this site," said the Rev. Douglas B. Sands Sr., an area pastor who was been involved with efforts to restore the cemetery. Continued 

Bible Documentation Day draws people with family histories written in their Good Books

(YDR) York, PA - Marsha Smyser is "the Bible keeper."

The East Manchester Township woman lugged a satchel filled with four Bibles to the York County Heritage Trust on Sunday for its second Bible Documentation Day.

Representatives from the heritage trust and the South Central Pennsylvania Genealogical Society documented information from the Bibles and answered questions during the three-hour event. Continued

History Research: It’s a New Ball Game as Free Websites Provide Digital Copies of Wills, Maps, Newspapers, and Photos

(WoCCP) In this rapidly expanding world of online information, lots of helpful data is often just a few keystrokes away. The amount is exploding exponentially as a number of for-profit digital publishers, such as Ancestry and GenealogyBank, have taken the lead in making vast amounts of material available instantly. Beyond these excellent data aggregators, there are some free, open source repositories which are helpful too. Since they’re not as well-known, we thought we’d mention a few here in case you’re struggling with fee-based research overload. Continued

Photo: Photograph documenting WPA Project Number 272. Typed text on label on back of photograph reads: Works Progress Administration of Maryland, Division of Operations. Havre de Grace, Harford County. Resurfacing city streets - showing section of Washington St. completed, curb, gutter, and surfacing. (Pratt Library)

Written in stone

This is one of my favorite local tombstones. The deceased has had as much of his war record as possible inscribed on the front of his marker. I wish he'd used the back to explain why.
If he had died shortly after the end of the war, I could understand it; he may have been afraid, as a Confederate veteran, that the history may have been lost or covered up. But by 1901, the history (and myth), of the Lost Cause was well established, even flourishing. The United Confederate Veterans was a large and robust organization, The Southern Historical Society Papers had been published, and the "OR" (the Official Records of the American Civil War) was just wrapping up its first publishing run. Even the mayor of Baltimore, Thomas Gordon Hayes, was a Confederate veteran.
However, there are two things that may have prompted Brooke Pleasants to set his record in stone. First, the 7th Regiment, Mississippi Cavalry (under the command of writer William Faulkner's great-grandfather), was a unit of "Partisan Rangers," which automatically made them suspect in the eyes of some. Secondly, the unit was under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest at the time of the Fort Pillow Massacre, though it looks to me like the 7th* wasn't at the actual battle, judging by this account: "When Chalmers and Forrest made their famous raid through Tennessee, in April following, the First Partisans, under Major Park, and McGuirk's Regiment, made a demonstration toward Memphis, reporting that General Lee was advancing that way, thus securing more freedom of movement for the capture of Fort Pillow."

It may have been Pleasants' intention to distance himself from the massacre by placing the facts on his tombstone. He wasn't the only former partisan ranger living in Baltimore County back then, but more on that later. The tombstone reads as follows:

In memory of
BROOKE PLEASANTS
Son of Thomas Snowden
Pleasants and his wife
Eliza Brooke. Born in
Goochland Co. Va. Feb. 17. 1829.
Died in Baltimore Md. Aug. 4
1901. Enlisted June 15. 1861
at Memphis Tenn. as Private
in Co, E. 6th Battalion 7th Tenn
Cavalry C.S.A. Capt. J.S. White.
Afterwards transferred to Co.
K. 7th Miss. Cavalry C.S.A.
Was surrendered with others
at Citronelle Ala. by Lieut.
Genl. Richard Taylor C.S.A. to
Major Genl. Canby U.S.A.
May 4. 1865. Paroled at
Grenada Miss. May 19. 1865.
May he rest in Peace.

*Nor was the 7th Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry (Duckworth's) at Fort Pillow according to this source and this.

Photo of tombstone taken at St. Johns Church, Hydes, Maryland with a Canon EOS 40D & EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens

1790: The first US Census

(Wikipedia) ... Censuses had been taken prior to the Constitution's ratification; in the early 17th century, a census was taken in Virginia, and people were counted in nearly all of the British colonies that became the United States.
Throughout the years, the country's needs and interests became more complex. This meant that statistics were needed to help people understand what was happening and have a basis for planning. The content of the decennial census changed accordingly. In 1810, the first inquiry on manufactures, quantity and value of products occurred; in 1840, inquiries on fisheries were added; and in 1850, the census included inquiries on social issues, such as taxation, churches, pauperism, and crime.
The censuses also spread geographically, to new states and territories added to the Union, as well as to other areas under U.S. sovereignty or jurisdiction. There were so many more inquiries of all kinds in the census of 1880 that almost a full decade was needed to publish all the results. Continued

Group restores neglected North Codorus cemetery

(YDR) Tucked away off a back road in North Codorus Township lies rolling hills and endless wheat fields surrounding the Snyder family farm. A small grove of trees in the middle of a field holds more history than many would have imagined.
The Fockenroth cemetery, also known as Folkenroth or Volkenroth, lies among the brush -- home to the graves of at least 14 people who lived and died in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
But the cemetery wasn't always easy to reach. Continued

York County set to digitize veterans records as old as 18th century

York, PA (YDR) York County has its share of veterans' memorials. But the most comprehensive one is never seen by the public.
It resides in a walk-in safe in a locked room of the York County Department of Veterans Affairs. And it consists of tens of thousands of index cards, each one of which bears the name of a deceased York County veteran.
The veterans listed on those cards fought in conflicts ranging from the 18th century's French and Indian War all the way up to modern engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to York County Director of Veterans Affairs Phil Palandro.
Soon, the county will start on a project that will involve scanning all of those cards and putting them in digital form. Continued

Photo: Old veterans playing cribbage at Soldiers' Home, Washington, D.C., ca. 1900 (Library of Congress).

Heritage trust event adds vital records information from family Bibles

York, PA (YDR) The picture was one she knew nothing about.
It was of a 3-year-old boy who was "somebody that mattered to a Miller," her father's side of the family, Elizabeth Singley said.
The faded photo was one of many in the Miller family Bible that Singley brought with her Saturday to the York County Heritage Trust. She also brought the King family Bible, from her mother's side of the family.
The 67-year-old traveled from Virginia to meet up with her cousin Helen Lehman, 77, to learn more about family history. Continued

Princess-to-be Kate Middleton has Maryland family ties

(Baltimore Sun) Soon-to-be princess Kate Middleton has a few prominent Marylanders — and American celebrities — in her family tree. Middleton, a commoner who marries Prince William on Friday, is a distant cousin of "The Star-Spangled Banner" author Francis Scott Key, talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres and Colonial Maryland governor Sir Thomas Bladen, the namesake of Bladensburg, according to "The Ancestry of Catherine Middleton." Continued

Photo: Mrs. Mary T. Key-McBlair, granddaughter of Francis Scott-Key, 5/1/25 (Library of Congress).

Local African-American cemeteries topic of program

(YDR) Small cemeteries dot the York County landscape, some attached to country churches, others small family plots on ancestral farmland.
The York County Heritage Trust is presenting a program about African-American cemeteries at 5 p.m. Saturday in York.
The Beatty family cemetery -- sometimes called the Batty's Chapel, River Hills Cemetery or Black Diamond -- is different because it is one of the few African-American cemeteries throughout the county. Continued

Photo by Kim Choate

Genealogy Detectives: Tracing Your Family Roots

(WoCCP) If you are interested in looking for your family roots, you will definitely want to attend Genealogy Detectives: Tracing Your Family Roots, a “how-to” primer on many of the resources available for tracing your family tree, Wednesday, November 17 at 7pm at the Elkton Branch of the Cecil County Public Library. Continued

Cleanup takes place at neglected cemetery in Clifton Park

(Baltimore Sun) After more than a week of hacking away at underbrush and weedy trees, landscape workers have tamed nearly 30 years of neglect at one of Baltimore's oldest Roman Catholic cemeteries.The 7-acre St. Vincent DePaul Cemetery, which is surrounded by Clifton Park, has emerged from its first cleanup since it officially closed in the 1980s. Workers cleared away tall grasses, unruly trees and nearly five tons of debris around four sections of askew grave markers and upturned headstones. Their work revealed the names, incised into limestone, of old Irish, Italian and German families who were members of the downtown Baltimore parish located near the main post office. Continued

Founding fathers of Historical Society of Harford County

(Aegis) The following alphabetical list represents the 33 founding fathers of the Historical Society of Harford County in 1885.
According to genealogist and local historian Henry Peden, while not all shared equal prominence in the society's formation, they all were involved in one way or another during September 1885 while the society was being created under the leadership of Rev. George Armistead Leakin of the Maryland Historical Society: Continued

Descendants want unmarked cemetery to be maintained

(Baltimore Sun) Under a hillside of thistle and milkweed secluded within Northeast Baltimore's Clifton Park rests an unmarked neighborhood of the dead.
Hidden from view and overtaken by nature, the mid-19th-century St. Vincent DePaul Church Cemetery is the burial ground for some 2,000 Baltimoreans. But only a few broken limestone markers remain.
The descendants of the Irish, German and Italian families buried here, using Internet message boards, are joining forces to bring recognition to the graveyard troubled by criminal, financial and maintenance issues for the past 65 years. Continued

‘Genealogy tourists’ flock to Salt Lake City

(AP) When Jan Gow makes her annual pilgrimage from New Zealand to Salt Lake City, it's not to enjoy Utah's ski resorts, red rock canyons or five national parks. It's for the ribbons of microfilm and endless volumes of maps, cemetery and property records tucked inside the Family History Library.
The library, owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1894, is visited by some 700,000 people annually and is widely considered the world's largest repository of genealogy records. Continued

The last 100 children of Civil War soldiers fading fast

(Scripps Howard) Jim Brown grew up in the Civil War's shadow, listening to stories of the fighting from a father who lived it.
"He was in it from the beginning at Manassas to the end at Appomattox," Brown said. "He'd be amazed to see the changes today."
At 98, Brown's part of an exclusive group -- the surviving children of Civil War soldiers, removed by a single generation from the nation's bloodiest conflict. Continued

Genealogy Basics Workshop, Jan. 16

(HSoCC) While you have your snow shovel out this winter, think about digging up a little history with the Historical Society of Cecil County’s winter programs. You can start digging at 9 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 16 by uncovering your roots with a program entitled ”Getting Started With Your Family history: An Introduction to Genealogy.” This three-hour workshop will introduce you to the basics of genealogical research. You will learn about the online resources available to you , as well as the records at our local historical society and the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The Society has access to records and databases you might not know about.This workshop is intended for everyone even if you don’t have Cecil County family roots. The workshop is free for members of the Society and is $5 for non-members. The program will be held at the historical Society at 135 E. Main Street, Elkton. Link

Photo: My great-grandmother standing in front of her parents' portraits, circa 1950.

The National Day of Listening

(StoryCorps) On the day after Thanksgiving, set aside one hour to record a conversation with someone important to you. You can interview anyone you choose: an older relative, a friend, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood.
You can preserve the interview using recording equipment readily available in most homes, such as cell phones, tape recorders, computers, or even pen and paper. Our free Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide is easy to use and will prepare you and your interview partner to record a memorable conversation, no matter which recording method you choose.
Make a yearly tradition of listening to and preserving a loved one’s story. The stories you collect will become treasured keepsakes that grow more valuable with each passing generation. Continued

Photo: Library of Congress

1881 census reveals the stories of Jack the Ripper’s victims

(findmypast.com) - The gruesome ‘Jack the Ripper’ slayings of 1888 sparked a pandemic of panic and fear, unlike any London had seen before. The identity of the killer still perplexes and fascinates history buffs today. But despite a wealth of conspiracy theories and numerous investigative books, it seems we’re still no closer to discovering who was responsible.
To mark the 121-year anniversary of the murders, and to separate the myths from the facts, findmypast.com has turned to the newly-completed 1881 census, which offers a snapshot of the victims’ lives just seven years before they met their tragic end. Continued

Photo: Wikipedia