Today however, if I were a visitor from another world and looked at our cable television landscape. I would see a July 4th Gem extravaganza, news channels honed in on the Casey Anthony trial, somewhere there are sitcoms packaged into a Fourth of July luaghathon. Yesterday there were Star Wars movies in a “Force of July” marathon…. On most channels though it’s just a regular day with their usual, day to day scheduling. The history channel is the only place that I seem to find some acknowledgement that there is something special about this day (outside of a special opportunity to sell jewelry…) History International is where I find their great documentary series “The Revolution” running. I appreciate that, but must it only be on History INTERNATIONAL where we find some introspection on the significance of this day?

The domestic branded History Channel is running a “How the States got their Shapes” marathon. For which, I suppose they have earned partial credit. Certainly there we should find some references throughout the day to the history in the years surrounding 1776.

Yes, certainly there are barbecues and gatherings all over this country. Fireworks displays, ball games, etc. But where are we reminded about that national narrative of liberty for all people. Liberty. I have said before is such a stirring word. Our liberty and mere existence here is miraculous. Regardless of your religious beliefs I would hope that most all would recognize that by right, this country should not exist. We broke away from THE world superpower of it’s time. It was the midst of extraordinary circumstances and time and time again we had great fortune on our side. We could have seen King George of England replaced by King George of the house of Washington. But, to our great fortune he wisely knew that we had just fought to rid ourselves of monarchy.

We had many opportunities to fall apart quibbling and quarreling along the way. There were compromises, but along the way we have always struggled to extend the original idea of freedom and liberty.

There was a recent survey that indicated that 25% of American’s could not identify the year that we declared our independence. Further about that many cannot identify from which country we declared our independence. Sadly as I looked at the polls demographic breakdown, it was clear that being older, white, college educated male made you more likely to correctly identify the answers. Has our public educational system failed us this badly? This is shameful.

It has led me down many paths of thought. First, about the goal of public education. I suppose most today would say that public education should have as its goal preparing students for the workforce or for higher education. I would argue that the primary goal of public education SHOULD be to prepare people for citizenship. They should learn of our history, not blindly memorizing dates with no goal other than to exercise their memory. Concepts of our founding, arguments of the construction of our constitution. It seems to me that a republic such as ours is in danger when our citizens are not well educated. I recall having ONE class in high school that was divided between civics and economics. I recall two things from that class. One is the teacher singling me out because I wasn’t familiar with a song that was getting a lot of radio at the time and forcing the entire class (amidst their groans) to listen for my benefit. The second was an unfortunate incident with an upperclassman that left a paper airplane hanging in his freshly curled hair…. Yes, it was an effective course….

I also marvel at historical figures the likes of Frederick Douglass who, after escaping slavery, teaching HIMSELF to read, then proceeded to study the constitution and ALL of the arguments surrounding it’s creation. Many would argue that he was brilliant, I certainly cannot argue against that. But I would argue that he had ambition, he had thirst for knowledge. These days we seem to be far from experiencing any such thirst.

Maybe complacency has taken over our existence. We don’t feel as though our freedoms are threatened, all is comfortable. History should teach us that we can never be complacent when it comes to our liberties. There have only rarely been brief windows of liberty in the entire history of humankind. We are blessed to be in quite a large window of such freedom.

Maybe the last few decades we have focused too much on the failures, foibles and problems of our founders. I remember the intense interest in Thomas Jefferson for instance and how quickly many are to point out that the founders were mostly slaveholders. Yes, they were. Certainly I would guess that a vast majority of the wealthy of the time likely were slaveholders. Does that invalidate all they did? The original draft of the declaration of independence held a paragraph admonishing the King of England for crimes against nature by bringing a people to sell as slaves into the colonies. It is reported that Thomas Jefferson was bitter about the removal of that paragraph for the rest of his life.

Why was the paragraph removed? For the benefit of having South Carolina and Georgia join in the declaration.

Slavery was also a point of debate in the drafting of the constitution. While many like to claim that people wanting to return to a strict interpretation of the constitution wish to count blacks as three fifths of a person, the truth of that “three-fifths” provision is a bit different. The southern slave states desperately wanted their slaves to count as 1 person each. The more people they had in the census, the more representatives and the more representatives, the stronger the voice the pro-slavery states would hold. What the text actually says is “whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. ” Free persons – doesn’t specify black or white. Yes, there were free blacks and the argument was thus: Free your slaves and they can count as a whole person for the purpose of representation, but if they are kept as slaves they will only count as 3/5 of a person.

Again, this was a compromise. Certainly the anti-slave states could have held their ground and denied any representation based on slave populations or even outright banned slavery from the outset, but had that been the case we likely wouldn’t have made it this far. The compromise was made because it was better than what we had before and it kept us together, united. Of course, the issue of slavery reared it’s head again for the country and tore it apart.

One of the things we forget is that our founders had disagreements, they didn’t just share the same ideas and act as one. There were disputes, there was anger, frustration. Just as today people didn’t just get along all the time in their political discussions.

These last few years I’ve been studying spanish. Unfortunately, I feel like this is a politically charged choice, or could be interpreted as such. The truth is our cable service had several spanish language channels, I had studied in High School and have always wanted to know more than one language. It has been with great sadness that I’ve seen all of the turmoil and terror that Mexico has experienced these last few years in their struggle with the drug cartels. It has been going on much longer than US media has reported and has been much more terrible than any of us in the United States can imagine. Yet, in watching the news on Mexico’s equivalent of independence day. I see such great national pride that it makes me wonder why we don’t seem to have that same love for the IDEA of our nation. I didn’t see someone come on and talk about all of the troubles going on, the mistakes that Mexico has made and how it was hard to be proud given the checkered past. NO! It was pure allegiance, pride at the GOOD that was their country.

Recent news has cited a study from Harvard essentially proposing a strong link between Fourth of July activities and Republican voting patterns. They essentially proposed that for politicians that were Democrats should see these festivities as a lose-lose proposition. Participation likely would not gain supporters and might even lose supporters.

Have our parties grown THAT far apart? Is that why there seems to be such a void of retrospective on our founding in the media today? If so, I am afraid our freedoms may be at more risk than any time in our past.

Our unity has in large part been thanks to our shared narrative. Whether or not it’s a partisan split, or a cultural split, we need to claim our SHARED heritage of freedom, liberty that our forefathers drafted for us. No they were not perfect, nor are we. They managed to overcome their imperfections and create something that is remarkable. Something that urges us to the higher ideals of humanity. Something to be proud of! Our founding fathers were not just white men. There were free black men, there were women. The tapestry of our founding is more complex than we have been taught in school. Unfortunately a few pages in a textbook talking about the Revolutionary War period is not enough to detail the complexities and diversity of participants in that struggle. What is liberating though is that this country gives us the freedom to grow beyond what we are taught and educate ourselves as Frederick Douglass and countless others dared to do. We can undertake such self education more easily today than ever before.

So, left and right, young and old, male and female, black, white and all spectrum of skin color, ALL who are citizens of these great United States of America: Please take the opportunity of this day to celebrate our Independence and to learn of our founding, to educate yourselves more and be proud and vigilant of our liberty! It is the most important legacy we can pass along to future generations.

A references that may interest you:

Writing the declaration of independence – from eyewitnesstohistory.com

Had D-Day failed where would the twentieth century have run, what depths of evil would we have seen? Would there have been a will to try again and again until the Atlantic Wall was finally breached? Would that failure have cemented and paved the way for further German advancements (and atrocities). How different would our world look if it were not for those brave souls that ran headlong into hell on earth. It’s remarkable even miraculous that the operation succeeded and unthinkable that we could live with a world where it failed.

Several days ago I saw a bumper sticker that said “war sucks, why fight it?” While it’s a trite little quote and I’m sure it’s a popular thought, the person that has affixed that to their car is in desperate need of a history lesson. No one in their right mind likes war. It is merciless, does not discriminate victims, the innocent and the guilty can suffer in disproportionate ways with the innocent and blameless usually seeing the worst effects while the guilty perpetrators live the high life. I worry for our future though when there are many people that don’t realize that sometimes there are times that a free society HAS to stand up and fight because as terrible as war is, the consequences of NOT fighting are unimaginable. The fight against Germany in World War II was that kind of fight, the consequences of failure to stop them were unthinkable.

Today we are fighting extremism of a different kind, but it is the kind that has far reaching goals. Religious extremism from what some people term islamic fascists has among it’s goals the restructuring of our world order where their vision of Islam rules and those that don’t follow their religious path are killed or subservient to their worldview. Do you remember in the 1990′s the Talibans rule of Afghanistan? Now, imagine a world governed by those rules. Unthinkable. Now, I know that all Muslims do not think as the extremists do. Our war is not against a religion, but against fanatics that have used this religion to further their own power in an attempt to mold the world into their dim and narrow view of how things should be. Our war is against those that would direct teenagers and younger to blow themselves up at checkpoints and shopping centers, pizza places and dance clubs.

The extremists terrorists of today do not count on the vast armies and weapons stores that Germany in 1944 did and perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to be indifferent. It’s certainly easy to fear the power of a giant with a large build and towering muscles, todays jihadist’s certainly don’t appear to be sweeping over parts of the world as German armies did in the 30s and 40s. My concern though is that indifference will lead to their opportunity and the world may in the not so distant future again face the unimaginable. We may yet again face a world wide war against those that wish to impose their will upon ALL free nations. Would we today be able to rise up and face that?

The years after World War II, there was a mantra of never letting such a thing happen again and while certainly there have been wars, there have not been any on the scope and destruction of the Second World War. May we pray that we never again see such a spilling of blood, but may we also pray that we be prepared to make the same sacrifices in the cause of liberty and freedom for future generations if our fates demand it. The consequences of losing our freedoms and liberties are truly unimaginable.

I would like to express the greatest and deepest thanks to all of those that, over the many years have risen to the task to save our society, as vapid, self absorbed and narcissistic as we many times are. I notice today that Google which many times changes their logo on their search engine to commemorate a memorable day, today is commemorating the 25th anniversary of the game Tetris…. The fact that we have the freedoms to be so trivial as well as to reach such great heights as we have in the 65 years since D-Day would be impossible to imagine without great sacrifices such as those in Normandy 65 years ago today. I suppose in many ways it’s fitting that it is just another day to so many people. That is, I suspect, EXACTLY what those people were fighting for, so that life would be about a picnic, or working in the garden, reading a book, going to work or simply playing a game. Really, they fought that day, as strange as it sounds, so that we, today, could have peace.

Basically, I’m thinking along the lines of historical fiction. If you’ve ever read historical fiction you’ll know that it usually blurs the lines between what happened and what may have happened. Real historical events are interspersed with the writers imagination of the things that could have been. But you don’t want to fabricate your family history!

Here’s what I would suggest: take the family stories you have and write them as you have them and they have been passed down. Mark these as the “appendix” to your work. Write a short page to precede these detailing that the stories that you’ve written are based on these stories that have been handed down through the family history. If your family history is lean on passed down stories, then this appendix section can have names and dates of certain individuals and a citation of historical events that happened in their lives.

Write a prelude along the lines that the stories that follow are fabricated with a historical context. There is a nugget of truth to the stories. For those interested in weeding what is known from what is imagined or speculate or just plain old made up, see the appendix. Then start designing your narratives. Basically write interesting stories using the periods of time that your ancestors lived through as a backdrop, or the family stories that have been passed down as a launching point to embellish and expand.

Some ideas for structuring it and getting the imaginative juices flowing would be to ask yourself what happened before and after the stories that you’ve already got. Would larger historical events have played any role in the story or the lives of those involved? What other interesting aspects of this story taking place in the time it did are there that you could expand on?

You know, society and culture has changed over the years, but many things about people haven’t. Above all, use your imagination as you craft your stories. Also make sure that you give people the “original” so that they can create their own stories in time.

The property tax is perhaps the next most common that we’re familiar with. The idea here is that ones property is enumerated and they pay a certain amount on that property, sometimes a percentage, sometimes a fee per item. I remember in touring an older home somewhere once being told that they had a tax on windows and so the style at the time was for floor length windows that were actually doors and so they sidestepped the “window” tax by claiming they in fact had several doors in the room. (Looks like loopholes have been around as long as taxes…)

Property taxes could be on live stock, real estate, these days is on vehicles, but at one time could have been on slaves. Our ancestors had a variety of taxes to face just as we do.

The poll tax is somewhat misunderstood today. The earliest poll taxes had nothing to do with voting but were a per person tax. The word poll here was derived from an earlier english word meaning “head”. It was not uncommon to see households taxed per adult male. So, the tax rate would be based on the men older than age 18 in the household. It wasn’t until later years of the 19th and 20th centuries that term poll tax came to mean a tax at the voting booth. This idea was seen by many (most importantly by the courts) as a means of discouraging minority and poor voters and has been abolished.

So, I guess as we’ve finished our taxes we should at least take some comfort in the fact that we are not the first generation to be taxed, this unfortunately is a certainty of life that most of our ancestors faced as well.

Fortunately these things have been well documented and many of the old tax records do survive and can fill in a lot of the “in between” census year gaps. So, remember the old tax records as possibilities in your genealogy and family history research.

The first thing I would like to suggest is using an audio recording device like the Zoom H4, admittedly this device might be overkill for interviewing your family, but it’s flexible and offers a lot of easy to use options for recording directly to mp3 or wav (great for archiving to cd.) I know some will use a camcorder to record their interviews, this is yet another great idea.

Before you show up on someone’s doorstep with a camcorder or audio recorder and say I’m here to ask questions about the family history… you need to think things out first. First off, make a list of your older relatives that you know of and think would be able to talk with you about your family history. Then call the first one on the list and ask if they would mind chatting some time about the family history. Tell them that you’d like to record it so you don’t have to sit writing the whole time and set a date.

Before you go make a good list of questions that you want to work through. Have the questions handy “Just in case”, but let the conversation flow, I certainly wouldn’t force myself to keep to a script if you start uncovering neat stories about someone you didn’t expect to ask about. I think one of the most important ideas here is to set a time limit for yourself. It’s too easy when we’re excited about something to dive in and immerse ourselves in it for hours on end. Try not to inflict this on your relatives …. Set a reasonable time limit and ask if you can revisit sometime to talk more. They’ll appreciate it and you’ll appreciate the chance to look through or listen through the interview and come up with other ideas for the follow up visit.

In some cases, you may be lucky enough to be able to make several visits and glean a good amount of information.

While most family trees are lists of names, dates and places, try to focus in on some of the more interesting details, those stories…. what did he/she do? why did they move here, where did they live? What do you remember about your parents, what were their favorite songs, what was a typical day like? Were there any special traditions that you observed? etc.

Hopefully that will be a good starting point for your first interviews of family members about the family history. Good luck.

I don’t know how many times I’ve visited a genealogy forum and seen a post along the following lines:

subject:Joe Green
Anyone else researching Joe Green born in the 1800s?

Amazingly enough these messages many times get no responses. Now admittedly by choosing the best place to post your query you’ve narrowed things down well. So, starting by finding a good relevant forum to post to is great. If you think Joe Green was born in Buncombe County, NC then a forum related to Buncombe County, NC queries would be an excellent spot to post. But let’s look at the query again… the subject probably could be phrased a bit better with a birthyear (or estimate.)

Yes, the content said 1800′s, but that’s fairly vague, we need to try and find out a bit more. Say for instance, that we know that Joe Green was born before 1814 (let’s suppose we found he was married in 1830.) Let’s also suppose that from the census we’re able to figure that he was born between 1810-1820, which really narrows our range from 1810-1814… ok let’s try the post again…

Subject:Looking for Joe Green, b. bet. 1810-1814 Buncombe, NC
Looking for any information on Joe Green, he was married in 1830 to Sally White in Buncombe County. From the 1840 census it looks as though he was born between 1810-1820, so I assume he was likely born between 1810-1814. The census also shows three children, I am researching his child Frank. who was born in 1832.

Notice how much more specific this is? Now you might be thinking, if I know all that much, why post a query, but obviously there is a lot more information we could develop on this individual (parents names, other children than Frank, where the family moved to/what happened next, Sally’s family information, Joe’s siblings, etc.)

The bottom line is use ALL the information you have available to try to HELP anyone potentially answering to find the match, you want to give as much information as you can, not just so they can glance and say, “aha!” that’s my great-great-great -grandfather Joe Green…, you also want to make it easy for any kind of search engine to have plenty of information there to be found when someone is searching for ["joe green" "sally white"]

With such things, usually the better the question asked, the better the answer received….

Other newspapers are including more archived information online. In fact, via google news it’s possible to search a fair amount of older content that predates “the age of the internet”. There are many others, though. Many online genealogy and ancestry sites include archived newspapers as part of the fee. The coverage varies by service.

One standalone service is Newspaper Archive.com, they have a fair list of sources. (In North Carolina, I see several Statesville and Burlington, Rocky Mount, High Point papers.) It is disappointing that the coverage is not greater.

The Library of Congress keeps a listing of online newspaper archives. This listing identifies which services charge a fee and gives a fairly comprehensive listing.

Among the other services are Readex.com, PQ archiver.com (Proquest), and SmallTownPapers.com. This last one focuses on papers up to the current time.

Probably my biggest disappointment with this is the fragmentation of so many sources and the variations in the search. It’s a shame that ALL of these searches aren’t searchable through a third party search. Maybe at some point in the future we’ll see easier access, we’ve certainly come a long ways to the current day.

Yes, there are. In addition to just setting up your own site (which, if you think about it will likely not last much past your own life unless it’s a business that can be transferred), there are other approaches to this. A site called AncientFaces.com allows free submissions of quite a bit of material from family stories, to pictures. You can tag and identify the faces in the pictures and share them for all.

Sites like Flikr have been around for a good while and my family.com is another photo sharing site geared towards having family pages with pictures. Judging by the site, this is geared more towards current pictures, but could certainly be used for posting the historical family photos as well. (They also allow audio although it’s unclear if you can upload audio, it looks as though you simply record through their web page.)

Next there is Amiglia.com which is a site for uploading and connecting pictures, videos, and calendars to a family tree structure. This creates a browsable family tree with attached media files.

Finally, there is Ancestor Archive, which is a free Genealogy Database of Vintage Family Photos. It’s free to search or submit photos. Each submitter of photos get’s a URL to give as links that shows all the photos they’ve submitted.

In addition to the above, it’s certainly possible to post your pictures in genealogy related forums. Many of these have a forum dedicated to picture uploads.

I know there’s a lot to be said for warm weather, but when it comes to researching in cemeteries I’ve found yellowjackets, sprained my ankle, I think I missed out on poison ivy, but I’ve seen weeds and thorns prevent access to some cemetery areas. Now that I’m thinking about it THIS is the perfect time of year to go out and research in the cemeteries. Get out there before the first growth is on the weeds and briars, before the snakes start crawling and bees start flying. Also, going out this time of year makes it easier to spot ankle-sprainer holes and divots.

Some things to think about as you go out on your cemetery search. Sometimes you’ll find a cemetery within site of a caretakers house and you might have someone stop by and see what you’re up to. This is fine and normal, be cordial and explain what you’re doing. They’re not trying to cause trouble, they’re concerned YOU might be out to cause trouble.

Take a number of useful things with you. Some artists paper and crayons are great for making rubbings of stones. (Make sure not to mark on the stone.) They can help you read otherwise difficult or impossible transcriptions. Also, take a digital camera with plenty of room on your memory card so you can document each stone. Some people like to take a pad for mapping purposes to (as well as a gps device if possible.)

If you have the time and interest, you might find it worthwhile to take a census of the cemetery while you’re there. Simply record the inscriptions of names, birth and death dates as you go through the cemetery. Try to be methodical. If it’s a place that you are relatively close to and don’t have to make oto large a trip, you might break it up into a few visits. Once you get everything recorded consider submitting the information online for other people to use.

First off, buy a batch of manilla file folders. For printouts I organize by last name. In fact, I have a plastic “milk crate” that the current collection is in. (I really need a second crate.) Extra filing cabinet space will do as well though. Some will want to organize the last names alphabetically, others might like to organize it by branch of the family. I’ve done the later up until now, but I’m beginning to think the alphabetical approach makes more sense. When I’m away from my research for a while I have a hard time remembering where in the tree my 2nd great grandmothers family fit in, so I’d suggest going alphabetical.

OK. Rome wasn’t built in a day and your printed data won’t be either. Take it in small doses. You could try spending a few minutes a day sorting census records and other printouts into the appropriate family folders and then leave the main stack unsorted and tuck it out of the way and return tomorrow to make a bit more progress. That’s essentially the approach I took and partly why there’s still some work to be done.

What about data on the computer though? On the computer make a folder in your documents area called Genealogy or Family History. You may already have done so, the next thing I’ve done is create a folder for each family name. If you have two different unrelated occurances of a family name, you might combine them in the same folder or specify by the first name of the most recent ancestor. (Maybe a folder called Parker, John and another called Parker, Nancy) I think I would tend to just use one folder and then perhaps divide that up into two different folders.

As with the real folders sort data a bit at a time until the digital beast is tamed. To help keep things from getting out of control in the future, new data can be put directly into either the physical folders or the computer folders.

You might also make use of PDF printing to avoid having too many papers to file. When you run across a forum thread with a good lead you might print to a PDF file instead of paper and file that away in your neat directory structure. (There is free pdf printer software available for most any operating system now.)

To tie into a previous theme. This is the time to think about backing up your data. Having things sorted into file folders on the PC makes it that much easier to just burn a copy of your Genealogy folder onto a Data CD or Data DVD. Once things are sorted (or at least everything is corralled into your genealogy folder for sorting) go ahead and burn a backup disk for “our old buddy Justin….Justin Case”