Faith Broadwater Selters holds an old fire-damaged insurance policy. All sorts of papers can be helpful for family history research.
You never know what treasures you might find tucked away in attics, closets, or other places. Faith Broadwater Seltzer discovered this firsthand when she stumbled upon a relative’s unclaimed insurance policy during a family history research course I teach at Cecil College.
Faith and her classmates were in the computer lab exploring the rapidly growing array of online newspapers. While doing this, I asked class members to give me a few names so that we could practice search strategies.
Faith offered one, and soon, we located a long list of names in a paid legal advertisement in a 1960s Philadelphia newspaper. It was a listing of unclaimed assets from the Commonwealth Treasurer’s office. With this discovery, she tracked down the asset associated with the policy.
This story highlights the importance of delving into old family papers. You never know what valuable information might be hiding in long unexamined documents.
The retired nurse also volunteers at the Historical Society of Cecil County. One of her colleagues was processing these old insurance policies from the Cecil Mutual Fire Insurance Company and the Farmers and Mechanics Fire Insurance Company there. While curating the collection, they discovered fire-damaged policies. While she had no connection with this instrument, someone may have collected on one of the policies, providing another clue for those interested in tracing their family history.
So don’t forget to explore your attic or closets while checking out online newspapers. You might uncover something valuable to help you better assemble your family story or assist your wallet.
A page from the Wise family Bible notes the death of Private Wise (Source: Tim Gavin)
During a genealogy class I led at the South Coastal Library in Bethany Beach, we delved into advanced methods for tackling complex family history inquiries. After asking the class to provide examples of challenging problems, Tim Gavin offered this fascinating account about his ancestor, Joseph V. Wise, who served in the 7th U.S. Calvary during the Indian Wars.
Tim and his cousin used military records to uncover many details about Private Wise’s life. They learned that he enlisted in the 7th U.S. Calvary on July 30, 1866, and was guarding cattle and horses near Fort Dodge, Kansas, when a Kiowa Indian raid occurred on June 12, 1867. Private Wise sustained wounds in three places and died the next day at the fort hospital.
While Tim and his cousin had some clues from various databases, the Family Bible, and stories passed down by the generations, they found the most valuable information in the military records of the National Archives. The 37-page pension file contained lots of information. For example, Wise’s mother, Elizabeth, began receiving a monthly pension of $8.00 from the U.S. Government starting April 1, 1868.
Through their hard work, Tim and his cousin also discovered that the Army Medical Museum had preserved the arrows that killed Private Wise. They were able to obtain photos of the arrows from the museum curator.
Tim’s research highlights how exploring historical records can unearth remarkable details about ancestors. If you face challenges in your genealogical research, check out digital collections at the National Archives, particularly military records. The institution has made significant progress in digitizing its collections, which can be a valuable resource for historians and genealogists.
I want to thank Tim for sharing his intriguing story and allowing me to view some family artifacts, such as the Wise Family Bible he brought to one of the classes.
Here are a few links from the FamilySearch Wiki that provide more guidance on military and pension records.
Some of my current research is focused on investigating the impact of the 1918 pandemic in communities along an extended corridor stretching from Baltimore to Philadelphia. This work has or will take me to cities and counties along I-95, as well as jurisdictions near this region.
In the summer of 2019, before the novel coronavirus upended normal life, part of my fieldwork took me to rural Salem County. As I worked in South Jersey, the Salem County Historical Society asked if I would write an article for the quarterly newsletter. When the piece appeared in the print, no one could have guessed that in six months, another pandemic of historic proportions, the novel coronavirus of 202o, would rip across the world, shutting Salem County down for months as public health officials struggled to control the pathogen’s spread.
Thus this summer, as the nation battles the COVID-19 outbreak, the editor asked if I would take a further look at the fight against the disease there, 102-years-ago. This installment focused on the frontline workers when the so-called Spanish influenza ripped across the county in 1918.
My research continues as I have been working with the Delaware Public Archives death records, police blotters, public health reports, death certificates, governor’s correspondence, workhouse journals, Wilmington city records, and much more. As conditions permit, I plan to do additional fieldwork in Harrisburg, Trenton, and Philadelphia.
Here is the front page from the Quarterly Newsletter.
Salem Countians on the Frontline of the Global Pandemic of 1918, an article in the Quarterly Newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society (Fall 2020)
A house was damaged in the explosion. Source: Greenwood A Delaware Town from the Collection of the Greenwood Library
Recently I have been researching a deadly Delaware tragedy that spurred a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad to push for national safety transportation regulations. Following several accidents involving powerful explosives, including a catastrophic one in Greenwood, DE, the Bureau of Explosives was created under the American Railway Association.
The Sussex County disaster occurred over a hundred years ago, on December 2, 1903. During a blinding snowstorm, two trains collided in the center of the town of 367 people. One pulling a lethal cargo of dynamite and naphtha exploded, the blast and fire severely damaging the Sussex County community of 367 people.
Because of the growing number of catastrophes, James McCrea, who would become the eighth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1907, urged carriers to adopt regulations to promote the safe transportation of explosives. The Bureau of Explosives (BOE) was created under the American Railway Association in 1907. With a chemical laboratory and 16 inspectors, the BOE immediately took the lead in inspecting shipments, encouraging improvements in shipping techniques, and developing rules that formed the basis of modern regulations of hazardous shipments.
Throughout the remainder of McCrea’s life, he had vivid recollections of the deadly detonations at Greenwood and elsewhere, which “had caused the death of many people, injury to many others, and had cost the Pennsylvania railroad many thousands of dollars.” Twenty-seven years later at the annual congress of the National Safety Council in Chicago in 1930, the tragedy was still being discussed in the official proceedings.
Having incidentally heard of the Greenwood Delaware Railroad Disaster in a few widely scattered secondary sources over the years, I wanted to better establish the broad framework and narrative of what appeared to be a major catastrophe in rural Delaware at the top of the 20th century. But there was little material conveniently available, and a Google search turned up only one hit. a genealogy website that had abstracted some information from newspapers.
So with my interest sparked and my research question framed, it was time to launch an investigation. Naturally, being a curious type, this is the kind of work I enjoy doing as I start a new study and begin my search for evidentiary fragments from the largely forgotten past.
My first step is always a review of the historical literature. This enables me to see what has already been done, and that often yields powerful results. But in the case of Greenwood, there wasn’t much secondary or primary material easily available.
My second step is to visit the community for a field observation as I look at the intersection of the present with the past. Surviving traces of earlier times exist, and exploring the built and natural environment facilitates understanding.
As I delve deeper into the past from that point, I move into archival research and interviews. Depending on the purpose of the study, this may include a wide range of materials — written, printed, or digital. The search for physical records includes letters, newspapers, diaries, photographs, maps, and much more One seldom knows where the information will be discovered as you start on the trail to find clues to the past.
While much of the material will be found in libraries, archives, special collections repositories, and local government offices, it usually is far from obvious where your data will come from. There are private papers in homes ranging from notes and letters to entries scribbled in diaries. Sometimes there are typed manuscripts containing memories of the community’s elders, but tracking these down means poking around to make contacts in the place you are visiting, as that material is often in basements, vaults, closets, and attics.
It also means leveraging unconventional techniques as I make my interest widely known in the community. That process usually begins with the reference librarian or the local community historian. Still, it also means visiting the barber shop, town hall, police station, tavern, and church. And it often calls for a visit to the nursing or retirement home.
Along the way, you collect your evidence, and the time will eventually arrive to try to fit the puzzle together by placing material into a pattern, which allows for the creation of a coherent narrative.
For the Greenwood disaster, this is still a work in progress, but as I continue, I will share thoughts on additional resources I come up with along the way.
