Welles, The Book

What I Like to Find When I Go to the Archives

2011-07-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I was researching a Colonial Dames lineage case. At the start, I only had one source that listed the parents of a man named Oliver Everett Manning. That source was the Manning genealogy written about a hundred years ago. The genealogy had no source citations. That was a severe problem. Dames standards require a citation to a source that would be acceptable in itself, such as vital records, Bible records, church records, etc.

Spurred on by a manuscript catalog, I made two trips, one to see the Manning family association files and one to see the Manning genealogy manuscript.

The family association files are stored in the Center for Lowell History on French Street in Lowell, Massachusetts. There I found several archival boxes from the Manning family association. The boxes contained documents and artifacts. I found a photograph of Oliver's daughter and a letter from her own daughter about her lineage. I was dismayed to find that a box of artifacts was full of mold. Not a good feeling.

The Manning genealogy manuscript was at the New England Historic Genealogical Society on Newbury Street in Boston. There were two parts to this manuscript. One was a set of files for the households discussed in the genealogy. Each family had a file folder which contained the handwritten manuscript for that family. On the back of each sheet of paper were notations consisting of numbers in two colors. Some were red and some were blue. The boxes for the family files were beautiful. With the information from the published book, the archivist at NEHGS was able to locate the file for me immediately.

This perfect organization was not true for two of the Manning boxes. Those boxes contained correspondence. The letters were still folded into their envelopes and stacks of envelopes were tied together with red string. Some envelopes had numbers written on them. By extrapolation, I came to believe that the blue numbers were for letters outgoing from the author while the red numbers were for letters he received. As I opened letters and unfolded them, the archivist stood beside me and placed them flat into acid buffered folders. After an afternoon of unfolding, I was unable to find the exact letters whose numbers noted the ancestry of Oliver from the manuscript pages.

My dismaying experience with Manning correspondence differs from my experience with the Jacobus correspondence at the Connecticut Historical Society on Elizabeth Street in Hartford, Connecticut. There the letters are filed by correspondent's name in chronological order. The files include not only the letters addressed to Jacobus but also the carbon copies of the letters he sent.

No archives will have the time to put my files together after the fact. No archivist will understand how I organize unless I organize it before they accession it. What I learned from this research exercise was that I have to submit organized files in the first place. The Manning family files were easy to use. The Jacobus correspondence is easy to navigate. I can duplicate those approaches.

I'm the Fourth Genealogist on the Project

2010-01-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

The four genealogists working for the Welles Family Association were:

1) Lela Sampson, 1890-1964
2) Chester Wells, 1907-1970
3) Donna Siemiatkoski, 1946-2001
4) Barbara Mathews, 1949-[some time in the future -- 2049 has a great ring to it!]

The family association papers actually include in one way or another the work of all four of us. In addition, several cousins have published very useful works on their own wedges down from the Governor. I am in the great position of having copies of their books to use, but we don't include their work in our association files.

When I talk about the book manuscript, I'm being a bit too fast and easy in my wording. The boxes in the blog photo cover only the first to sixth generations of the current book draft. The full set of family association manuscripts has more elements than that.

As you can imagine, there are copyright issues when the work of so many people is involved. For that reason and because we want to ensure that the compilation of data remains available to future family historians, when these boxes all go to the Connecticut Historical Society, I will have them organized under the aegis of the family association as a whole. They will include:

1) Applications to the family association from 1936 to 1988 and some since then. Photocopies actually.

2) Genealogy work of Chester Wells. [Chester is quite clear in his books that he started with the work of Lela Sampson and filled in stuff using Stiles. If I could find Lela's work before it went to Chester, I'd include her work as a separate category.] This consists of photocopies of the five volumes of his typescript. At this time, Chester's work exists in only two extant copies (although we were told there was a third copy in his possession, we have no idea where it is today). One copy is bound and in the open stacks at the Connecticut State Library. The other copy is in the possession of the family association Registrar. Her copy is updated and has pages inserted. I have a photocopy of that updated copy.

2) Genealogy work of Donna Holt Siemiatkoski. This consists of the research notes she kept, which are all made on family group sheets. She kept them in the same order that you would see if you printed out an indented descendants chart. That worked very well for her as she researched multiple generations at a time along the same line. We should keep Donna's material in the order she organized it, but we might need to index it so that records are more easily found.

Donna's files also include two manuscripts. The first is the last marked-up copy of the manuscript that was later published as a four-generation study in 1990. The other one is the printout of the six-generation book that she gave me about two weeks before her death. It is fantastic to have such good snapshots of her work preserved.

3) Genealogy work of Barbara Mathews. This consists of family folders for each household in the future six-generation study. Each family folder includes notes written by me, by Nancy Pexa, and often by others as well. If you were to look in a folder, you would see the family structure develop as a dialogue between Nancy and me.

4) Correspondence. These four boxes include letters to and from Welles genealogists about families in the upcoming book. Some of the files include important information about descendants in generations beyond those published. Others include photocopies of documents not easily found elsewhere, like family Bible records. In some cases, the cousins who published books may have included them in our correspondence, which will be a great bonus for future researchers.

Right now, that's how it all is organized. I'm open to suggestions.

Yours, Barbara

New Year's Resolution

2010-01-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

More than a few times, Henry Hunt, erstwhile webmaster of the Welles Family Association, has asked me if I would do a blog for the site. "Sure," I've always said, but the task always ends up at a lower priority than everything else. This year I vow to do it differently. This year, I am starting the blog. Henry will just have to link to it. [Insert evil grin here.]

My plan is to let the cousins in their farflung corners of the universe know a little about how the book is progressing. I share some of this in my twice-yearly Wellesprings newsletter column. This blog will give me a greater opportunity to let you know about progress.

I'll explain a lot of things about the book, as well. Things like how it began as a project, who has been involved, and how it is organized. Along the way I also will talk about the Manuscript of the book, that is, about the research materials and handwritten and typed documents that will ultimately be accessioned to The Connecticut Historical Society as the Welles Family Association Manuscripts. That's a lot of information and I'm glad there is a way to share it with you all.

More blogging in the near future!

Yours, Barbara