Newsgroups: soc.roots
Date:         Wed, 29 Jul 1992 07:21:56 PDT
Reply-To:     Tom Lincoln <lincoln@IRIS.RAND.ORG>
From:         Tom Lincoln <lincoln@IRIS.RAND.ORG>
Subject:      In Genealogy the fat lady never sings....
Comments: To: Roots-L@vm1.nodak.edu

This is both a thank you note and a explanation of why
I post melvyl searches or E-mail them out to various participants
----------

To pick one example, a few statistics and a great deal
of thanks go to the many individuals on the net who
have helped me understand my g.g. grandfather George
Mitchell and his family, an Indian Agent in Northeast
Oklahoma after the Civil War. In the beginning of March
I could summarize my knowledge in two small paragraphs
of family lore and verbal history...

Words: 211
Sentences: 10
Paragraphs: 2

Near the end of April, using the UCLA library and the
resources of the LDS Library in LA, and as much advice
as I could find locally, I was still very nearly stuck,
although the information I obtained had about doubled.
Nevertheless, I did learn that he was the Agent at the
small but little known Quapaw agency.

Three months later, after appealing to the net and
getting many kinds of responses -- including
surprising detail I would not have known how to
look for, this portion of the family history has grown
25 fold to:

Words: 10713
Sentences: 545
Paragraphs: 84

About half is genealogy or descriptions of family
related events and about half involves the broader
historical context in which they lived -- the Indians,
their return to Oklahoma from Kansas as refugees from
the War, the Agency politics of the time, the towns and
geography etc.

It has been an extraordinary electronic Oddesy:

Justin Sanders found letters from George Mitchell to
his son, his obituary, where he was in the Kansas state
census of 1875 and 85, his property transactions, and
he showed me how to look at the Microcopy Rolls of the
Serial Set with its government correspondence. Rich
Ensminger filled me in on the Quapaws, their history
and customs, the surrounding geography, and we found
that members of our families participated in the same
historical events. Melodie Sanders pointed me to
detailed references in the Oklahoma Chronicles that gave
the history of the Agency, including a description of
his Agency house, also pointing me to an historian of
Indian culture with a little known book on the Quapaws
who turns out to live right down the road! Susan Gore
found the reference that led to the identification of
George Mitchell's father and a clarification of earlier
links. Rawles gave me the address of Henry Rawles who
has an unpublished list of 15,000 entries on Rawles and
Ralls families... George Mitchell's mother and her
family were there.

These are only some of the highlights. The data and the
number of netters grows and grows... But, like the bear
that went over the mountain.. only to find another
mountain, there are always fascinating open issues that
teach and enrich ones understanding.

I have worked with BBs and E-Mail for a long time as
part of my regular professional activities, but the way
Roots-L reaches out to link "brain banks" of such
diversity is quite unusual. The volunteerism is
unusual. The momentum is unusual. It has survived
flames and firestorms... It deserves a paper of its own
-- the sociological sequel to Pence's "Computer
Genealogy"

..... enough rumination for an early morning in late July

Melvyl searches are just one way of saying "Thanks!"

Tom
Newsgroups: soc.roots