The Mad Genealogist

Beginning Monday, Aug. 24, the fee for a single copy of a birth, death, marriage or divorce certificate or a report of fetal death from North Carolina Vital Records will increase from $15 to $24. The fee for additional copies will remain at $15 each. The change is due to a new law, the Current Operations and Capital Improvements Appropriations Act of 2009 (G.S. 10.22 130A-93.1), passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor on Aug. 7.

The cost for conducting a search of files for the record even if no copy is made will also rise to $24.

New forms for requesting vital records, with the updated fee information, will be available on the N.C. Vital Records website (vitalrecords.dhhs.state.nc.us/vr) beginning Aug. 24. Mailed applications postmarked on or after Aug. 24 must include the new fee, or the request cannot be filled and the application will be returned to the sender.
Vital records are also available from the Register of Deeds in the county where the event took place. For questions about the fee change, contact N.C. Vital Records at 919-733-3000.

World Vital Records is extending their promotion of for their offering of FREE PUBLIC ACCESS to its entire online collection to August 18, 2009. Originally it was suppose to end on the 13th.

Workers repairing an underground steam pipe at the University of South Carolina in Columbia found human bone fragments — believed to be the eery relics of a Civil War hospital that once treated injured soldiers fighting for both the North and the South.

“We don’t know what it is,” Richland County Coroner Gary Watts told South Carolina newspaper The State, adding that the fragments found range from a skull cap to half-inch pieces.

“It probably is Civil War remains, but we’re still going to do this as if it were a crime scene,” Watts told the paper.

The coroner’s office and the State Law Enforcement Division are excavating the steam pipe trench and examining the soil.

The coroner says he expects to know Tuesday if the remains are from the Civil War era. He has an anthropologist working on the case. Watts says the bones could be amputated body parts.

The fragments were found behind DeSaussure College, the second oldest building on campus. It was completed in 1809.

The building now serves as the offices of the college of social work on campus. It is named for the attorney from Sumter County who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Later, Henry William DeSaussure helped establish South Carolina College – now USC – during his 18 years in the Legislature, a university spokeswoman told The State.

During the Civil War, the school rented many buildings to the Confederacy as a hospital to treat the wounded from both sides of the battle.

Click here for more from The State.

World Vital Records is announcing the addition of the largest number of records to be released in a single day since the site launched in 2006. To commemorate this , for the first time World Vital Records is offering FREE PUBLIC ACCESS to its entire online collection beginning August 11 through August 13, 2009. According to them no credit card is required to get free access.

I just received an email like many of you probobly have, about upgrading to Family Tree Maker 2010.

This is what they claim is new:

• Easy family tree download from Ancestry.com – Import your Ancestry.com family tree, along with attached photos.
• Improved organization – Enjoy new ways to organize photos and other media.
• Slideshows – Create slideshows from photos in your tree.
• Family books – Publish beautiful keepsakes and books to share with friends and family.
• Standard source templates – Cite the right information every time.
• A new person view – View relationships within the context of your entire family tree.
• Scanner support – Add photos directly from your scanner.
• Family migration paths – View timelines and interactive maps highlighting events and places in your ancestors’ lives.
• Better Performance – Experience faster load times and navigation.

The upgrade cost is $19.95 if ordered before Aug 18th. I will upgrade mine and see if it is worth it. If you want to see for yourself then visit their FTM2010 Webpage.

Footnote is offering the 1930 US Census for Free for the month of August and “see the lives of people not just names”. You might wonder why they offer the 1930 US Census while other sites already have it. I believe they offer a richer experience at exploring the census. Some things I like that makes Footnote different are:

• Instantly see names you searched in the Footnote Viewer
• Add stories and pictures to a name
• Choose “I’m related” to show your relationship
• Keep and eye on things with Watch
• Memorialize a person instantly with a webpage and you can even share it on facebook
• Connect any of millions of documents
• Add your comments, memories to a name
• Connect with others that have similar interests
• Easier to find alternate names and spelling

They do not require a Credit Card to view the census but you will have to register for a free account. They also have the 1860 Census although it is part of the paid subscription.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson lambasted the four alleged “graveyard robbers” charged with digging up graves and dismembering bodies buried at a suburban Chicago cemetery in a moneymaking scheme.

The four cemetery workers are accused of taking cash payments from unsuspecting clients for plots of land, falsifying deeds, excavating existing graves and dumping the bones and remains in the back of the cemetery, authorities said at a news conference.

They would then allegedly bury the new corpses in the already-used graves at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill. Police called conditions at the historic cemetery “startling and revolting.”

“The human degradation is immeasurable,” Jackson told reporters. “There should be no bail for these graveyard thieves. They deserve a special place in hell.”

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said workers at Burr Oak allegedly tampered with about 300 graves, digging them up, dumping the bodies and reselling the plots to unsuspecting members of the public.

The three men and one woman were charged Thursday with one count each of dismembering a human body. Dart said the woman was the cemetery’s office manager and was at the center of the operation.

“This was not done in a delicate way,” he told reporters. “They would excavate the grave and the entire site and then dump the remains wherever they found a place to do it in the back of the cemetery.”

He says in other cases the graves were “pounded down” and another person was buried on top. Burr Oak is the final resting place of many famous African-Americans, including lynching victim Emmett Till, blues singers Willie Dixon, Dinah Washington and Otis Spann, as well as Harlem Globetrotter Inman Jackson.

Hundreds of confused and angry family members are looking for answers after the arrests. Authorities in the southern Chicago suburb of Alsip were directing crowds at Burr Oak Cemetery Thursday and taking reports from families. Among the family members is 54-year-old Ralph Gunn, whose father and nephew were buried at Burr Oak but whose bodies are missing. Gunn says their headstones are gone. And he says he can’t fathom why anyone would want to dig up bodies.  Authorities say most of the problems are from a secluded area of the cemetery that contains older plots.

Click here for more on this story from MyFOXChicago.com

In addition to the population schedules, federal, state and local governments have requested special information for administrative decisions. These special schedules can be quite useful for family historians.

An act of 3 March 1879 provided that any state could take an interdecennial census with partial reimbursement by the federal government. Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, and the territories of Dakota and New Mexico returned schedules to the secretary of the interior. The schedules are numbered 1, 2, 3, and 5.

• Schedule No. 1: Inhabitants Lists the number of dwellings and families. It also identifies each inhabitant by name, color, sex, age, relationship to head of family, marital status, occupation, place of birth, place of birth of parents, literacy, and kind of sickness or disability, if any.
• Schedule No. 2: Agriculture Gives the name of the farm owner and his tenure, acreage, farm value, expenses, estimated value of farm products, number and kind of livestock, and amount and kind of produce.
• Schedule No. 3: Products of industry Lists the name of the owning corporation or individual, name of business or products, amount of capital invested, number of employees,wages and hours, number of months in operation during the year, value of materials used, value of products, and amount and type of power used.
• Schedule No. 5: Mortality Lists the name, age, sex, color, marital status, place of birth, place of birth of parents, and occupation, and gives the cause of death for every person who died within the year ending 31 May 1885.

The schedules are interfiled and arranged alphabetically by state and then by county. Schedules for a number of counties are missing. The National Archives has microfilmed the Colorado (M158, eight rolls) and Nebraska (M352, fifty-six rolls) schedules.The originals are in the National Archives.

The 1885 census is useful for locating data about individuals who were living on rapidly growing frontiers: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Florida, and North and South Dakota; for locating and documenting newly arrived immigrants from Europe; and for documenting small businessmen and farmers—many of them immigrants—who were just getting started in their businesses. The manufacturers schedule for 1885 is the latest one available for research.

In some religions, a dispensation was necessary, under certain circumstances, for a couple to be married in a religious ceremony. Dispensations were requested for various reasons, such as not wanting banns read or posted, a marriage between cousins, or, most commonly, a marriage between a couple of different religious backgrounds. In the Cathcolic Church, for example, a dispensation is  necessary for a Catholic to marry someone of another denomination.

In those cases, dispensation records reveal a good deal of biographical information: names of prospective bride and groom, their birthplaces (sometimes including exact towns, which can be especially  helpful in learning a foreign origin), residence at the time of filing for the dispensation, and the names of both parents, often including the mother’s maiden name.

In order to locate this kind of record, the religious backgrounds of the couple of interest must be determined as well as where and when the marriage took place. If the records have been saved for the time period in question, an inquiry to the religious headquarters, diocese, or archive may be the best starting point. If nothing else, this may narrow the search to a particular congregation or parish.

An example of a published collection of Catholic dispensations is Bishop Loughlin’s Dispensations-Diocese of Brooklyn 1859-1866, Volume 1 by Joseph M. Silinonte.

The value of this particular book of 5,200 dispensations lies not oninly its content, in itbs ucto verage-the  Diocese of Brooklyn included all of Long Island (then Kings, Queens, and  Suffolk counties) and present-day Nassau County, a total of thirty-five churches. Furthermore, this region was the initial stopping off place for many immigrants, who would later move elsewhere.

I know many times I have found myself trying to figure out one of my ancestors birth date, especially before 1850 when census records only listed age ranges for everyone. Well I have a list here to help find out at least when someone was born before.

For example, I am looking for a birth date for John Doe. The earliest record I show for him is in 1780 as a witness on a court document. Well I use my little chart here and see that males needed to be 14 to legally witness a document. So I can at least determine that John Doe was born before 1766 (1780 – 14 = 1766).

This chart has helped me many times in the past and I hope you can use it as well.