Teaching Jobs & Women

I think my mother, Virginia (Brown) Murray (b. 1917, d. 1982), would have loved to know and talk with her grandchildren. I am thinking of one of her grandchildren in particular who today is leaving one high school, in which she taught business courses and coached girls' soccer, for a position in another high school. She never knew my mother, who was also a teacher.

In contrast to my successful niece, my mother was not successful in getting a permanent teaching position as a mathematics teacher when she graduated from college in 1937. The country was still amidst the Great Depression, jobs were scarce, and math teachers tended to coach boys' athletics.

From family reports, it seems she would have preferred to work and earn money but there was no guarantee of a job. She had little choice but to go to college as she had received a university scholarship from "The University of the State of New York, the State Education Department". She graduated in 1937 at age 19 with a bachelors' degree in mathematics. The college yearbook quote attached to her photograph reads: "They gazed and gazed and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all she knew."

However, brilliance in college did not readily translate for her into a teaching job in mathematics. As the following letter illustrates, both the times and her gender worked against her.



Other than one temporary teaching position in the year immediately following her graduation, my mother never held a teaching position. She did manage to rear several teachers amongst her offspring and would have been extremely pleased with the success of her grandchildren, who currently carry on this family tradition.

Kate Harding (1843-1917)

I heard in a discussion recently that Michigan had put up some death certificates on their Seeking Michigan site. It was here that I discovered the death certificate for Kate Harding, my 2nd great grand aunt, who died in Detroit in 1917.

My interest in Kate is that she was a sister of Mary Ann (Revels) Delaney, my 2nd great grandmother, who died in Prescott, Ontario in 1906. I estimate that their parents, Michael Revels and Catherine Carthy, immigrated from Wexford, Ireland about 1830. Kate Harding was born Catherine Revels and is listed on both the 1851 and 1861 Canadian census living with her parents in Prescott, Ontario.

I came to identify Catherine Revels as Kate Harding of Detroit, Michigan from both her sister's, Mary Ann (Revels) Delaney's, 1906 obituary and her brother's, Charles Revels', record of his stay at the US National Home for Disabled Volunteers in Marion, Indiana. (Charles died in 1909.)

Catherine Revels married John Harding, a jeweler from England, some time between 1861and 1871. The 1871 Canadian census lists John (age 32, born in England) and Catherine (age 26, born in Ontario) living in Prescott, Ontario with their daughter, Alice C., born in December 1870.

The 1881 Canadian census for Prescott, Ontario, also lists John Harding (age 42, Church of England) and Catherine (age 32, Roman Catholic), along with 8 children. Five appear to be children of their marriage: Catherine (10, b. in Ontario, RC), James (6, b. Ontario, RC), Ellen (5, b. Ontario, RC), Thresia (4, b. Ontario, RC), Frances (2, b. Ontario, RC). Three, appear to be John's sons from a previous marriage: Charles (17, b. England, CE), John (15, b. England, CE), and William (13, b. England, CE).

There are two additional Michigan death certificates that appear to be sons of Kate and John Harding:

• James W. Harding, born 1874, died 28 June 1912 in Detroit, Michigan


• Albert Harding, born 1884, died 20 Februray 1912 in Detroit, Michigan

Daniel Murray (b. 1854)

County histories can be a wonderful source of information. And in the case of Daniel Murray, born in County Down, Ireland, the following Greene County, Missouri, biography from the 1883
History of Greene County, Missouri by R. I. Holcombe, Editing Historian, is rich in details.

Most of what I know about this Daniel Murray is from the brief biographical sketch that follows. I did find 15 year-old Daniel Murray living in the Potosi, MO household of my great-grandfather, Hugh Murray, a wagonmaker, to whom Daniel was likely apprenticed. (Note: It may be that Daniel was born in 1854 rather than 1864.)

Daniel is obviously related to Hugh, and as it happens, Hugh had a twin who remained in Ireland. I believe the twin was named Daniel Murray as well.

I don't know yet how the Daniel Murray, described below, who worked as a wagonmaker in Ash Grove, MO, in 1883 is related to my great-grandfather, Hugh Murray. Daniel is one more link in the chain that will hopefully, one day, lead to my Murray ancestors in Northern Ireland.

DANIEL MURRAY.
Mr. Murray was born in county Down, Ireland, October 12th, 1864, and was educated in the common schools of that country. He emigrated to America, landing at Castle Garden in January, 1870. He soon after came to St. Louis, but remained only a short time, and then went to Potosi, Washington county, Missouri, where he served an apprenticeship at wagon-making. In the fall of 1874, he went to Dade county and set up a shop at the Pemberton mines, which he ran a year and then came to Ash Grove and opened a shop, and does a good business. He is the patentee of the now adjustable vehicle wheel, for wagons and buggies, by which a wheel can be set to any grade or dish desired. It is a most useful invention and likely to come into general use everywhere. Mr. Murray's parents are yet in Ireland. He has one brother in Manchester, England, and one in Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. Murray is a member of the Knights of Labor.
-- Chapter 20, Boone Township - Biographies

Standards and Ethics in Genealogy

"Genealogical Standards: Obsolete Model T or Space-Age Air Car?" by the remarkable Helen F. M. Leary was an entertaining and thought-provoking NGS discussion about the ethics and standards by which genealogical research should be conducted and documented. Ms. Leary provided frequent and entertaining examples from her own experiences to highlight the various aspects of performing research.

This was more than just a "document your sources" discussion though. The need for, and the value of, judgment and interpretation in the analysis of records was discussed at length, as was the importance of taking personal responsibility for the conclusions reached as a genealogist. Copying information (and references) from somebody elses family tree without verifying the information yourself is not ethical, and it opens you to the risk of being associated with shoddy work.

She emphasized the need to judge the value of information obtained from records based on several important factors. These include who recorded it, how soon after the event it was recorded (sooner is generally better than later) and the source of the recorders information. For example, a death certificate is a highly reliable source for information related to the death (where, when). However, in spite of the fact that a death record is frequently an official document we are at the mercy of the informants memory for information regarding the decedents birth.

The need to be creative and dogged in establishing the truth was humorously but effectively demonstrated by example. She discussed claims of slave descendants of Thomas Jefferson by discussing DNA testing and the use of a time-line showing that Thomas Jefferson was in the same physical location of the woman in question at the time of inception for all of her children.

Another theme presented that has been resonating with me in several of the sessions is the importance of understanding the background, surroundings and chronology of the documented event. Who were the neighbors or relatives? Where did the event occur? What was happening in the area at the time: a drought? a war? an epidemic? What societal or religious rules were in vogue at the time? All of these can (and do) color or filter our interpretation of records, either distorting them (because we are not aware of them) or enhancing our understanding because we do.

Looking Beyond the Facts

"German Church Registers: Where Only a Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing" presented by Dorothy A. Boyd-Bragg, PhD, was another worthwhile presentation at the NGS, although it was not what I expected. The focus was records for German churches in the United States (not Germany, which is what I was hoping to hear), but it provided a lot of very good information about German church records.

She also brought home the importance of understanding history and context for genealogists. For example, most German churches established in the US in the 1700's and 1800's brought with them attitudes and memories about the country and societies they left behind. The Lutheran and German reform church members apparently had not been persecuted and thus continued to record events much as they has back in Germany (in German... the switch to English would not occur until the early 1800's) while those of Amish or Mennonite backgrounds did not.

I also began to develop a deeper appreciation of the importance of looking beyond (maybe around is a better word) the event being documented to pick up subtle but important information. For example, sponsors may be an important link to other relatives since they were usually blood relatives (aunts, uncles and or grandparents). I also learned that Germans were clannish in that groups that migrated together tended to remain close, so that communion lists may yield clues about family relationships because church members sat, and hence were listed in many church records, together.

Potosi, MO: A Texas Connection

We just returned from our first meeting as new members of the Dallas Genealogical Society. I had a wonderful time! Lloyd Bockstruck presented an enjoyable, fact-filled lecture entitled The Call of the West: MO, AR, and TX.

It was nice to hear mention of Potosi, MO, the town to which my great-grandfather, Hugh Murray, emigrated in 1857. Potosi was built on land donated by Moses Austin in 1813.

By the time Hugh settled in Potosi, Moses Austin was dead and his descendents had moved to Texas. Moses Austin's son, Stephen F. Austin, is called the "Father of Texas". The plaque marking the Austin homestead site, Durham Hall, in Potosi refers to it as the "Cradle of Texas".

Unless he was out of town, I'm certain Hugh Murray would have experienced the great fire in 1871 that destroyed Durham Hall and much of downtown Potosi. The plaque below marks the site where Durham Hall stood in Potosi, MO.



Plaque Transcription

The silent stones in the front foundation wall are all that remain of Durham Hall, magnificent frontier mansion build here by Moses Austin in 1798-99.

Named for Durham, Connecticut, where Austin was born in 1761, the home was the political, social and economic center of Austin’s American colony and of much of Missouri, as well as the “Cradle of Texas.”

In 1797 Austin received a Spanish Land Grant here, adjoining the earlier French mining camp of Mine Au Breton, founded in 1763.

Austin and his family – his wife Maria Brown Austin and their children – Stephen F. Austin (Born 1793) and Emily Margaret (1795) – moved into Durham Hall in July, 1799. A third child, James Elijah Brown Austin, was born here in 1803.

Durham Hall and the first Washington County Courthouse (1814) were designed by Austin in Greek Revival style, dating from Austin’s association with Thomas Jefferson in the first Virginia Capitol. Both were the first of their architectural style in middle America.

From here Austin developed mining and smelting of lead into Missouri’s first major industry. From the lawn of this home, on May 12, 1802, Austin repulsed an attack by a band of Osage Indians. From here, in 1813, Austin gave the land to establish the town of Potosi as the county seat for the new County of Washington. And from here, in 1818, historian Henry Rose Schoolcraft began a famous exploration tour to the Southwest.

Here at Durham Hall, Emily Austin was married to James Bryan in 1813. Their first child, Stephen Austin Bryan, was born here in 1814.

In 1816, Moses Austin moved northward to Herculaneum, which he founded, and expanded his financial interests in St. Louis. Durham Hall was left in the care of Stephen F. Austin, who spent 1816-17 alone here while representing Washington County in the Territorial legislature of Missouri.

Here, as early as 1813, Moses Austin had dreamed of expansion to the Southwest. In 1820, Austin lost Durham Hall and his other properties in financial reverses. Seeking to regain his fortune, he traveled to San Antonio, where, in 1821, he received the first American grant for a colony in Texas.

Upon Moses Austin’s untimely death, on June 10, 1821, the Texas venture was willed to his son, Stephen F. Austin, who became “The Father of Texas.”

In 1831, the last of the Austin family left Potosi. Emily Austin, her second husband, James F. Perry, and their family moved to their Peach Point Plantation in Texas, after first reburying the bodies of their parents, Moses and Maria Austin, in the Potosi City Cemetery.

Durham Hall burned in 1871, in a fire which destroyed much of downtown Potosi.

Taking on the State of Texas

Moses Austin is still buried in Potosi, MO. His tomb bears the cracks made by an undertaker from Texas who was sent by a group of Texans in 1938 to move Moses' body to Texas. One story goes that the undertaker was caught in the act. The citizens drove the undertaker out of town and Potosians brag they are the only town that ever won a tangle with the state of Texas.

Where DO all those records on Ancestry.com come from?

I have never really stopped to think about how a document such as the US Census finds its way onto the Ancestry.com web site, but a presentation at the 2009 NGS conference titled “The Journey of an Ancestry Record: How an Image gets from the Archives to the World “ by Laryn Brown really made me appreciate all that goes into such a journey.

Just obtaining the rights to documents sometimes takes several years to negotiate: the length of time from start to finish for some paper documents can take up to 5 years!

Ancestry has several microfilm scanning operations running around the clock in several locations around the world. To index their documents they employ specially trained Chinese typists to do character-recognition typing of documents. They also employ a group of English speaking typists in Uganda to translate more complicated documents that require an understanding of context.

Ancestry makes a great effort to insure that their transcriptions are as accurate as possible. However, 20 to 30% of the images that they deal with now are literally "indeterminate". Even expert, full-time professionals see different things in repeated blind testing because the images are so faint or have been damaged. Ancestry depends on subscriber feedback to correct these problems, only possible when somebody knowledgeable about the context of the information views the image (i.e., you find your grandparents on a census and can identify an otherwise illegible entry as their son or daughters name).

It was interesting to note that Ancestry anticipates exhausting most of the available microfilm based information within the next 10 years or so.