Family History Research before FamilySearch, Ancestry and other popular websites

If you believe the ancestry ads on TV, you can subscribe, type in your name along with your parents' and VOILA! leaves appear and soon you have your family tree emerging.  Actually research is not exactly that easy today, but I want to look at researching in the not too distant past, before the internet.

For the DAKIN family, we have the 716 page "go to book" written over many years by Albert H Dakin, and published, after he died by his niece, Mrs. H B Yamagata in 1948.

Prior to the internet, I would write letters to town clerks, including the self-addressed stamped envelop (SASE) and a check to cover the cost of sending a birth, marriage or death certificate.  Then from that certificate, write more letters for the grand or great grand, etc. parents indicated there -- building the tree piece by piece as I'd learn parents' names of an ancestor.  Now with the internet and the availability of some new sources online, I get hints from more than just the birth, marriage and death records -- newspapers, census pages, etc. are full of research clues.  But I still send to the town clerks for the vital records for confirmation.

Just imaging Albert H Dakin working on this not just for years but for decades, starting with the original Dakin settler, Thomas, in Concord MA in the 1600s and working down to "his time" of the 1940's.  Checking every child, then every child, then every child .... continuing down the generations.  WHEW!!  716 pages of ancestors numbering in the thousands!  Actually Albert documented 6,843 descendants of Thomas Dakin and also included an every-name index in his book!  IMPRESSIVE work.

What else might Albert have done beyond writing town clerks in order to find these 6,843 descendants?
Well, he wrote letters!  Lots of letters.

These letters were before the days of email and computers.  So every letter was individually typed and contained some information that he already knew and asked for more information for his files.

This letter written to my grandmother in 1943, inquiring about her family.  It tells her who referred him to her, a reference to information sent by her husband a year before he died in 1917, and a chart to fill in and correct if anything is incorrect.  He is writing this in 1943, worrying about whether he will be able to finish his project -- he died in 1945.

                    ALBERT H. DAKIN        2064        12-35
                    977 Anderson Ave.
                    New York, N.Y.

                            January 21, 1943
Mrs. Marion E. Dakin,
c/o College,
Storrs, Conn.


Dear Mrs. Dakin:
    For many years I have been collecting the genealogical
records of the Dakin Family and am at present writing up my notes
in the final shape.  I have not known where to locate you until
yesterday when Mr. Charles R Harte gave me your address.  I am
very anxious to bring my notes up to date and am asking your
kind help to secure it.
    I am enclosing a blank which shows all the data I have
of your family and which is for the most part  data your
husband sent me in 1917.
    Will you please add to this enclosed blank any additional
data that may be missing, correct any errors of mine and return
the blank to me.
    I believe you had another child that I have no record of.
If either of  your children married will you please give me their
address so that I may write to them to bring my notes up to date.
    One other question: Is Mr. Dakin’s mother living and
if not can you tell me when and where she died.
    I will greatly appreciate receiving an answer from you
as I am anxious to complete my records while I have the ability.
                Sincerely yours,
                    Albert H Dakin

and of course, he enclosed a SASE!

The Chart arrived in the mail in January of 1943 -- a busy time for Marion.  Her son Theodore got married that month with the anticipation of being draft by the US Army & shipped out sometime in the next few months; and as the First Extension Nutritionist for the State of Connecticut, Marion was busy preparing Farm and State Bulletins on how to manage with the Rationing for World War 2.

So, did Marion Dakin fill out the chart?


Sure looks like she edited incorrect information, added her new daughter-in-law, added her son who had died, and added death information for her husband.





So, did she mail it back?
Clearly not this one, since I found it among her paperwork when she died decades later.

Did Albert ask again?
It doesn't look like he did.
After all, I found the envelop sent from Albert to Marion in 1943.

Here is the book entry for her husband's father including his marriage to Marion and the birth of their son Theodore.

It does not any of Theodore's siblings who died young, or the information on Theodore's marriage.  Theodore is entry #3596, but there is no separate entry for him later in the book.

The documentation of our family line in the "Dakin book" stops with Theodore's birth.

Marion's not sending the letter back, means that any further information is not included in the Dakin family book.

But the gift Marion gave us by not mailing it back is to show us what our ancestors who documented our families in past decades and generation did in order to put their family histories together.


The link to this page is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2017/01/family-history-research-before.html
©2017, Erica Dakin Voolich

Remember the Women, part 1

If you have been doing family history and have tried to trace your family name, you might been thrilled to have the "XX Family History" or "The Descendants of XX" book.  I know I was when I first started out and discovered the DAKIN history "was all in" the Descendants of THOMAS DAKIN of Concord, Mass. Compiled by Albert H. Dakin (Tuttle Publishing, 1948).  Albert spent many years sending out letters to folks all over the United States trying to trace all the descendants of Thomas who was in Concord, Massachusetts selling land in the 1650s.  He made an effort to include the names of the women who the Dakins married and when possible included their parents' names.  This is not always the case. The Dakin family descendants were lucky to have that information.  Sometimes, when tracing a family, the records only give the first name of the woman and don't identify their parents.  The DAKIN descendants were also lucky when  Elizabeth H. Dakin took the women in the first few generations and traced their families back in her The DAKIN FAMILY from THOMAS of Concord to THOMAS of Digby Including the Families of Their Wives (Plainville MA, 2008).

In my own research, I have moved beyond just looking for the names and dates of my ancestors, to also including some of their stories as you probably know just from reading this blog, if not from my genealogy books [shown on the right in this blog].  I have decided to focus on the stories and the genealogy of the women in my family.  This year I am starting with my grandmothers' generation.  Next year, will be the women in my great grandmothers' generation.  I will research not only the direct ancestors, but also interesting sisters who I have been able to include.

Adelaide Copeland Harvey Richardson with her daughter Alice.

Adelaide (Addie) Copeland Harvey married Robert (Bobbie) Worthington Richardson.  He always wanted a beautiful woman by his side; and as a young woman, Addie was beautiful.  A part of Bobbie's job with magazines involved entertaining the stars who came to town to be photographed and interviewed.  Tragically, Adelaide developed a skin infection that left open sores all over her body for decades.  Then she was blinded in one eye and partially in the other from cataract operations, as a young woman.

As their children grew,  Bobbie was "looking elsewhere," and when their two daughters were starting their own families, he started another family himself.  Then tragically for his new children, Bobbie and his new wife died.

Addie was a divorcee, legally blind, scarred by sores, and suffering from asthma.  How did she manage to survive in the world?

Marion Elizabeth Evans Dakin shortly before her marriage in 1913.

Marion Elizabeth Evans married Robert Edward Dakin.  He was an engineer who grew up watching the Bulls Bridge Power Plant being built, with the canal across his farm.  He came back and built the addition to Bulls Bridge Power Plant to bring power to the neighborhood.

When they married, she started a life moving around the state as he moved from one engineering project to another until he died tragically.  One week in December 1918, Marion's mother, husband and youngest son, died in the Flu Pandemic.  Marion needed to figure out how to support herself and her two-year-old son, Teddy.

Marion became the first Extension Nutritionist for the State of Connecticut.  If something was related to nutrition in Connecticut from 1921 until she retired in 1946, she was probably involved in it. For example, during the Depression and the WW2 Rationing, she was helping people cook with the available foods.  She was giving talks and writing farm bulletins and serving on committees.

Clarice Evans visiting the museum with modern art -- one of her favorite places.

Clarice Evans started out as an elementary teacher in Connecticut.  She took classes at the State Normal School in Danbury and eventually earned two degrees from Columbia Teachers College.

Clarice taught many places around the US and even in England before she joined the faculty at New Jersey's State Teachers College in Jersey City where she taught fine art and industrial arts until she retired in 1950.  She was an early advocate of Industrial arts in the schools and traveled to Dartington Hall in England (1928-1930) to introduce industrial arts to Dartington teachers and to surrounding schools. She also studied other progressive schools in England and on the continent and to reported back to Dartington Hall with suggestions for modeling their own programs.

Since it took me 400 pages to report on what I found on these three women in Remember the Women,  Heading up the Branches of our Women's Family Tree, part 1,  I can not begin to describe everything here.  Basically, we have three women born in the late 1800s, who came into adulthood in the early 1900s: one a divorcee, one a widow, one never married.  All managed to find their way through the challenges of the 20th century.  Enjoy.


©Erica Dakin Voolich 2017
The link to this post is:  http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2017/01/remember-women-part-1.html