They Might Have Arrived on an Alien Space Ship, But They Owned Land in 1656 -- However, What Was the Date?

When I discovered that FamilySearch.org had the Massachusetts Land Office Records found in  County Courthouses throughout Massachusetts, 1620-1986 available online, I wanted to look for my Thomas Dakin/Dakeynes/Dacon who was one of the persons who got "first division lands" in Concord [now part of Sudbury], after he was dropped off by an alien space ship [for some reason he hasn't been found on any of the ship manifests before the 1650s when he was in Concord getting first and second division lands.]

Deed Grantee Index for Middlesex County, 1639-1799, A-G

The actual records aren't searchable, however, the above entry in the Grantee Index clearly shows where to look for the actual record for Thomas Dakeynes: volume 2, page 105.  The Grantor Index gives the same information, ironically Thomas Dakeynes is both the grantor and grantee in these indexes.   FamilySearch.org very nicely not only uploaded the index but they uploaded the books too.  So going to volume 2, page 105 produced the deed referenced here.

Middlesex County, Massachusetts Deeds, volume 2, pages 104, 105

The Dakin deed is the one on the lower right corner of the above pages, shown below:

Thomas Dakeynes/Dakin/Dacon, husbandman, and his wife Sarah sold land, that they previously bought from widow Elizabeth Barrow, to John Hayward who signed an indenture (agreement) dated 9th day 11th month 1656.  The index gives a date almost three years later in 1659.  Looking closely at the deed, it clearly shows both in the text of the deed that it was the "9th day, 11th month 1656" and in the notation in the margin: "9.11.1656"
I have not transcribed the deed [very hard to read, will work on that later] but it looks like there is another sale of this land to Samuel and Josiah Dillard on 14th of 2nd month 1658.

So where did the date of 12 August 1659 come from?  It appears that was the date that they recorded the deed in the county of Middlesex.  If you look at both this deed and the one above it, the person who  recorded the deed was Thos Danforth.  The deed on top was agreed to 22 April 1657, but entered and recorded in 1659, by Thomas Danforth.

Since they lived in Concord which is part of Middlesex County, the county seat of Middlesex (now and then) is Cambridge -- probably about 16 miles away.  Historically, looking at Newberry Library's historic county maps, Concord was in Middlesex County which was established in 1643 as one of the original Massachusetts counties.  People did not live near the county office, in this case it is about 16 miles away on modern roads (then, not by modern highways with easily driven cars) -- long walk or horseback ride.  Maybe they didn't see a need to record it until it there was yet another sale of the land.  Maybe everyone involved went to Cambridge and recorded it 12 August 1659.

Another question would be: when was the index created?
This index goes from 1639 to 1799.  Was it created in 1800 or in some year long after that?  My reason for asking this question has to do with the change from the Julian to Gregorian Calendar in many Protestant countries (including England and its colonies) in 1752.  In the Julian Calendar New Year's Day was not the first of January.  Instead New Years Day was the 25th of March:  Annunciation Day (nine months prior to Christmas in the Christian churches, the day that Angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary about her new upcoming role as the mother of Jesus).  With the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar, the 1st of January became New Years Day.

Thinking about the question of when was this index created, I wondered: how was the index creator reading "9th day, 11th month"?  In 1800, the 11th month was November, but in 1656, the 11th month was January.

Looking closely at the recording date by Thos Danforth:

I transcribed this last sentence:
"Entered and Recorded  12th (8 mo  59    By Thos Danforth Record."

In the Julian Calendar, 8th month would be October, and if I read this correctly, then the date should be 12 October 1659.

If the person creating the grantor and grantee index which goes through 1799, was thinking of the difference between the calendars of 1659 and their current year, would the date have been recorded as 12 October instead of 12 August 1659?

I can't get into the mind of the person with the wonderful handwriting who created the index.  But it would be nice to be able to ask that question!  [Personally I wish that Danforth who entered and recorded the deed had equally as good handwriting!]

  πππππππππππππππππππππππ

If you want more information on the change between the Julian and Gregorian calendars --- the why, how and when--- check out The 1752 Calendar Change on the Connecticut State Library website.   Since the Protestant countries switched many years after the Catholic Countries, there was an adjustment needed which involved eliminating 11 days in 1752.  The Connecticut Library site points out as examples of what happened with the change:

The changeover involved a series of steps:
• December 31, 1750 was followed by January 1, 1750 (under the "Old Style" calendar, December was the 10th month and January the 11th)
• March 24, 1750 was followed by March 25, 1751 (March 25 was the first day of the "Old Style" year)
• December 31, 1751 was followed by January 1, 1752 (the switch from March 25 to January 1 as the first day of the year)
• September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, 1752 (drop of 11 days to conform to the Gregorian calendar)

The link to this post is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/05/they-might-have-arrived-on-alien-space.html

©Erica Dakin Voolich 2013

"St. Anthony, St. Anthony, Please Come Around, Something's Lost and Can't Be Found!"

The name "Okljucna" means "around the key" here is the key 

viewed from the road leading into Okljucna, Croatia.

Usually I write about my adventures researching my own family.  Today I'm making an exception and instead writing about seeking out my husband's family  who came from two islands in the Adriatic:  Vis and Brac, Croatia.  I want to apologize for not putting a "v" over a bunch of z's and "c's, and getting the  ´ to end up on top of the letter "c" instead of next to it -- I don't yet know how to do it!

His relatives welcomed us with "opened arms" and were wonderful.  I will not name them because I do not publish the names of living people without their permission.

We stayed and visited in Split with my mother-in-law's cousins.  On the 3rd day we took a ferry to Vis where my husband's maternal grandparents were all born.  The husband of one of his second cousins accompanied us to Vis and was an amazing guide to Okljucna, the semi-abandonded village where the Bozanic family lived and his grandparents migrated from.  No one lives there now, but our "tour guide" could tell us who had lived in each house.  I say semi-abandoned because there are members of the younger generation trying to restore some homes enough for weekend living --- including the Bozanic three-family.

 It is easy to see why folks have moved away from this scenic village -- no running water or wells -- just cisterns.  Electricity has just recently come to the area and the "improved" roads are very rough.  Now you can drive around, but the car scrapped bottom as we slowly went in, around and out 13 km.  When my mother-in-law visited in 1991 she went in by donkey.  The only street sign at the one crossroads, gives two towns, each "2h" [two hours] away by foot.  The modern sign has replaced the old hand-lettered one my husband saw in his past trip.  Any time they had to sell fish, for example, it was carried to Komiza or Vis on their backs or heads.  They raised olives and grapes. Not an easy life.

We visited the tiny church.  There are people in the village of Vis who care for it.

The inside is so small that there is only one small bench with a kneeler is on each side of the room along the walls.  We noticed pictures of and a statue of St. Anthony, and immediately my husband and our guide started reciting the poem: 

"St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around.  Something's lost and can't be found" -- each in his own language.  

I added: it's appropriately named since they have lost all of their congregation and some people definitely need to be found!

Road leading up to the church

The surrounding buildings at the church are in a state of disrepair but till have some interesting things to see.

a beehive oven and rack to pull
out the bread

hoops for wine barrels

a cistern --
bucket nearby and water within

a sundial

shoes left behind next to oven

We spent time with relatives on Vis (the island) who now live in Komiza and Vis (the town) -- such hard working generous people -- even had a chance to share stories and my math books with one who teaches the same age students as I did (but then at the end of the school day joins his wife and father in their vineyard or olive grove).

We next took the ferry to Brac, this time our "tour guide" was another second cousin's husband.  On our way to Splitska, were my husband's father was born, we stopped to visit relatives in Dracevica, a small town of 80 (down from 500).  Again we were welcomed with open arms, a great meal and stories.  The town around them is partially abandoned [St. Anthony are you listening?] but they have updated and expanded their house.  They too are working multiple jobs, including a vineyard and running a general store.  I was able to share my math books with a first year high school teacher of engineering.

They took me on a tour of the downtown which included these plaques.

This explains why my mother-in-law didn't know how to contact relatives on the island on my husband's first trip in the mid-1990s -- she hadn't gotten the news that telephones had come to the island of Brac.    They also showed me the old horse-driven olive presses.

The "second" squeeze in cool press olive oil processing.
Now the people take it elsewhere and it is done by machine
without the horsepower in living color.

The first squeeze of the olives.  You can see how the horse
could walk around driving the olive press.

outhouse

We walked around, chatted with neighbors, saw the closed neighborhood school, their abandoned stone outhouse and their still operating stone oven.  My husband's family story is that on Vis, when they used the outhouse they only had flat stones to wipe themselves afterwards (I didn't ask whether that was true on Brac). 

We could see the evidence of the where the wildfires burned the distant mountain and then came right up next to their home [firemen were pumping water on it to save it], three years ago.

oven

We visited the Brac Museum in Skrip -- it is in a building that dates to Roman times and is next to our "tour guide's" ancestral family castle, also from Roman times.  We saw the family store and the little church with a pine tree growing out of the roof in Nerezisca.

We were welcomed to Splitska by even more relatives -- who had stories to tell, a place to stay, and another tour guide who took us to Vidova Gora -- highest point on Brac at 778 m -- with a beautiful panorama view, including Vis on a clear day.  

She took us to see the Vulic and Drpic houses where my father-in-law was born and lived until he immigrated to the US as a young boy.  

The smaller house with an air conditioner (now) is the Vulic

house, the ones next to it and below are the Drpic houses.

Helen Drpic married Mate Vulic -- nothing like marrying 

the girl or guy next door!

I marveled at the irregular tessellation her husband designed, cut and laid on their porch.

Both islands, Vis and Brac, are incredibly rocky.  It is hard to imagine that anything can grow with stones everywhere:  on the ground, stone walls, houses, roofs of houses, large piles.  In fact, vineyards and olive groves usually are surrounded by stone walls and often have piles of stones between the trees.  

In Split and all the towns we visited on Vis and Brac, everywhere we were greeted joyfully with lots of hugs and kisses, stories were shared, we were well-fed, and then sent on our way with olive oil or wine.

Splitska from the road leading into town.

I came home with a sense of what life was like for my husband's family in Croatia and a better understanding of why many people immigrated after the phylloxera pestilence wiped out the grape crops that my husband's family depended upon for their survival.  I can only imagine what life was like for my own ancestors who came from other parts of Europe at an earlier time.

I will leave it to my husband to write up the genealogical findings, scan their photos, share their stories, and share the hundreds of pictures that I took.

This blog hasn't begun to do justice to what I saw [900+ pictures] and the people I met.  But it is a start that I hope you'll enjoy.

The link to this blog post is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/05/st-anthony-st-anthony-please-come.html

©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich

A Family Legend and the Rest of the Story

In the 4-generation picture above, the baby is my mother, and the eldest gentleman is William Richardson.

In my mother's autobiography, written when she was in 8th grade, she said:

"... Long ago the Richardsons were great landholders in the north of Ireland.  After awhile they came to Canada and settled in Quebec.  One son went to Belleville, Ontario where he met a Miss Bogart, whose family had come from New York because they had been loyal to the king.  After the revolution the king gave them a grant of land near Belleville.  Richardson married Miss Bogart.  They had a large family, the youngest of it was my grandfather.  He grew up in a boy’s boarding school and came to Oak Park.  They had two boys, Robert and Harold.  Harold never married.  Robert married Adelaide Harvey and they had two children, Alice and Madelon. ..."


I found her autobiography in her papers after she died in 2001.  When I asked her about the Richardsons before I knew about the autobiography, she said they came from Belfast Northern Ireland to Canada.  Then the family came to Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire (1871) to help with the rebuilding of Chicago.  She said her great grandfather William Richardson worked for the Bank of Nova Scotia.  So that was the family legend I was starting with:  Belfast, Ireland to Québec, Canada to Belleville, Ontario to Chicago, Illinois in 1871 in two generations.  As an adult, telling me about the family, my mother named six children, her grandfather was actually child number two, not six.

∞∞∞∞

I found the wedding of Robert Richardson and Sarah Allen, the parents of William Richardson in the Anglican Cathedral Holy Trinity Church in Québec on 25 May 1832.  William was born on 5 November 1835 in Québec City.  Robert was a cordwainer.  Sarah had four children before she died 28 January 1843, in Québec City.  Robert remarried, this time to Harriet Isabella Birch on 20 September 1843.  They had nine children.  Not all of his 13 children made it to adulthood.  In the 1851 and 1871 censuses, Robert says he was born in 1810 in Ireland.

I have not verified the "great landholders" or the "Northern Ireland." Robert did work as a cordwainer in Québec, he sounds like someone who is working for a living rather than managing an estate of some kind in Québec.  I have not found any passenger records bringing Robert to Québec -- so I don't know if he came as a young adult or as a child.  I haven't found any potential Richardson parents for him in Québec.  I have noticed there are many Richardsons in Northern Ireland, many of them named William Richardson and some own land.  Robert's first son was named William.  So, maybe that part of the story is true.  That is left to be investigated further.

∞∞∞∞∞∞

Now on to part two of the family legend:   Robert had a son William who went to Belleville, Ontario, married a Loyalist, and then moved to Chicago after the Fire working for a bank helping in the rebuilding effort.

In the 1851 census, William Richardson is living with his father and step-mother in Québec City and is working as an accountant.  In the 1861 census, William (25) is married to Minnie (19), he was born in Lower Canada, she was born in Upper Canada and they are living in Cobourg, Northumberland, Canada West.  He is working as a bank accountant.

William married Mary A C Bogart, daughter and granddaughter of United Empire Loyalists who came to Canada from New York.  I found a newspaper birth announcement in Belleville Ontario for only one of their six children and this became a clue:  William Jr. was born 16 February 1862, baptized in Cobourg.  The newspaper identifies William Jr.'s father as employed by the Bank of Montreal -- not the Bank of Nova Scotia.

In 2005, I wrote to the Archives of the Bank of Montreal, hoping that they might have some records on their employees.  They did!

"William Richardson
Entered service at Québec in June 1854, was a Teller at Belleville (ON) in 1857.  Between 1859 and 1860 he held several positions at HO (Montréal) before becoming an Agent in Cobourg, St. Mary's, Waterloo, Goderich (all branches in the Province of Ontario).  In 1869, W. Richardson is Manager of our St. John (NB) branch, and in 1871 he is the Manager of our Chicago branch.  He resigned in 1876 when in office at Chicago."

Also in that letter were copies of two newspaper clippings about the Bank, the first was from an 1943 Belleville paper telling about the history of the 100 years of the Bank of Montreal in Belleville.  The other article was from a corporate newspaper, FIRSTBANK NEWS, September/October 1981, page 4, titled "Bank's Chicago office opened in 1861," by Freeman Clowery, Archivist. The article was an interesting history linking banking and the development and growth of Chicago's trade and transportation center.  One particularly interesting paragraph:

     "At the time of the Great Chicago Fire, Bank of Montreal responded quickly, substantially supporting the disaster fund set up to aid sufferers.  Almost before the embers had cooled the Bank opened temporary quarters on Randolph Street, to help get commerce rolling again."

The article included a poor quality photo of the bank office after the Chicago Fire.  Fast forward to 2013.  I contacted the very nice archivist at the Bank of Montreal who I had corresponded with in 2005.  I inquired  whether they could scan the newspaper article so I could actually see a higher quality photo since it is supposed to be William Richardson in the doorway.  After a few inquiring e-mails back and forth, I received a scan of the original photograph, not the newspaper!

     "Manager William Richardson stands in the doorway of the 

Bank of Montreal's temporary premises in Chicago, opened

immediately following the Great Fire of 1871.  After the blaze it

contributed to the establishment of a fund for the relief of those

suffering from the disaster.  The Bank has operated in Chicago

since 1861."

Photo used with permission Bank of Montreal Archives.

Not only does this confirm part of my mother's story about her great grandfather coming to Chicago to help with the rebuilding after the Fire, but it clearly shows the surrounding devastation and challenges in opening up a office for any business in October 1871.


©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich
The link to this post is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-family-legend-and-rest-of-story.html

Blind Man's Bluff .... Is that What this Scrapbook is Playing with Me?

An illustration in Ella Worthington's scrapbook
-- notice the game is called "Buff" instead of "Bluff" in the mid-1870s

Since initially posting about my family's scrapbook initially in A Scrapbook with a Surprise, little did I know how this would challenge me to find out more.  I had no idea that so much could be learned from what looked like a simple scrapbook full of period pictures.  I shared some of that adventure in Some Logic, Some Help, and "Ask a Librarian" or two ... Gives an Answer.   Well the adventure continues and, as the blindfolded person in the above picture, I feel as if the clues are all around me -- IF I could ONLY see them!

Here's my latest update on the adventure.

Ellen Gruber Garvey, the author of Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance, commented on my first blog post about how she had scrapbooks which were made with all sorts of books that folks might have found discarded or passed along.  In her own blog post about the release of her book, Garvey says:

For many, scrapbook making was a salvage art.  They turned the trash of the newspaper into treasured volumes.  Where did they get the volumes to work with? Not only did they remake newspaper clippings into books, but they remade old books into scrapbooks.  As one scrapbook maker whose family was busy pasting papers in 1873 explained, they were not "using up good printed books" as her visitor accuses her of doing.  Rather "there is nothing in them that we want, and so we propose putting in something, rather than have them stand idle.... Some of them are old school-books, not much worn, but out of date.  Almost every library has some useless books."

So folks were "reusing"  what they considered "useless" volumes!  I'm sure librarians cringe at the statement about the library having some useless books!

She mentioned to me that she had copies in her collection of Patent Books and Congressional Record books as scrapbooks. 

The government helped supply nineteenth-century scrapbook makers with useless books.  The hefty yearly volumes the Patent Office issued, included their agricultural reports, were especially popular with scrapbook makers.  They neatly fit two columns per page and looked well on the bookshelf, one scrapbook advice giver explained.  And since Congressmen (all men in those days) sent them out free to constituents, at least in part so their constituents would have that good-looking binding around as a reminder of the Congressman's favor, why not refill the dull contents one's own uses? Thousands did. 

Government reports and other thick volumes, such as outdated city directories -- the forerunners of phone books -- lent authority to clipping collections.  An African American janitor in Philadelphia used such directories to past up over a hundred massive volumes mainly concerning black life.  His collection drew admiring comments from newspaper reporters who were pleased to see their own newspaper writing presented in such a dignified form.

So, did the Worthington family consider their copy of the Congressional Record  a "useless book" or did they have a copy for  a reason?  When might they have acquired this Congressional Record?  Knowing when they acquired it might give a hint as to whether there was a reason for their having it beyond a gift from their Congressman who hoped that Robert would remember his largess come election day.

In order to answer the question of when did the Worthingtons acquire the book, I needed to find out when it became available to the public.  You might remember from my previous update, the copy of the Congressional Record that they owned and that Ella Worthington used for the scrapbook was volume 8, part 1, from the 45th Congress.  The date that was visible was 14 December, and it turns out that the year was 1878.  The visible page, 190, was early in the volume and so I wondered how many pages were actually in the volume and what date was the end.  The librarian at "Ask a Librarian" for the Library of Congress was helpful yet again.   It turns out that volume 8 had three parts:

Part 1, 2 December 1878 to 3 February 1879, pages 1 to 928

Part 2, 3 February 1879 to 24 February 1879, pages 928 to 1804

Part 3, 24 February 1879 to 3 March 1879, pages 1805 to 2410

The Library of Congress Librarian referred me to George D. Barnum, the Agency Historian for the Government Printing Office (GPO).  He was very patient with my questions.  He pointed out that

The Congressional Record is published daily when Congress is in session (it is printed the morning following the date on the face).  The bound volumes are issued sometime later, usually after the close of the session Congress.  Daily issues and the bound volumes have separate indexes, since the pagination changes when the bound volume is issued.

On first glance, then some time after 3 March 1879, the volume 8 of the Congressional Record for the 45th Congress would go to press.  How much after?  I can imagine it takes a while to prepare, but I figured I'd ask George Barnum.  

At the close of the session, the daily issues would have been re-set (all type was still set by hand at GPO until 1904) for the bound edition.  Unfortunately, I really don't have any information that would tell me in what sequence the volumes might have been printed, or how long it might have taken.  Bear in mind that "going to press" is one step among a great many (editing, indexing, setting type, proofreading presswork, binding) all (except editorial) done here.

Comparing the production of the Record in 1878 with today would be impossible, since virtually every variable from the production of the index to the composing of  type, method of printing, construction of the binding, or the press of completing the work has changed.  The period between the close of the session and the appearance of the the Bound Record volumes varies, depending on how quickly Congress finishes and approves the editing, how big the individual issues are, how long the indexing takes, and what other work is in the plant, etc.  I believe that the lag is about 18 months presently.

George Barnum suggested that I might check with one of the Depository Libraries here to see what their acquisition date is for their copy of this volume.  I did check with Connie Reik, a wonderful genealogist and librarian and Government Publications Coordinator at Tisch Library, Tufts University.  They received the volume in 1898, but they weren't a Depository Library in 1879.  I need to check at an earlier Depository Library to get a sense of when it was distributed to the public.

It is definitely getting later and later for the actual acquisition of this volume of the Congressional Record by the Worthington family.  So, what I thought at first about what Robert was doing as a job back in the early 1870s may not be relevant to the question of why/how they acquired this.  He might very well have acquired this book when he was working as the Secretary to the Real Estate Board of the Chicago Board of Trade.

I shared my two previous blog posts about this scrapbook with George Barnum and he added:

Very interesting post.  Let me add a little information for you.  In those days, it was not at all uncommon for members of Congress to give all manner of publications away to their constituents, and the large numbers authorized in those days reflect that.  Congress authorized 7500 copies of the bound Record for the 45th Congress 3rd session, which amounted to 30,000 actual pieces (they were, according to our annual report, 4 vols. for that session), and practically all of those went to the House and Senate folding rooms for distribution to members.  Members are more circumspect these days, but you wouldn't have had to work too hard to get a copy of the Constitution (printed at GPO) out of one of your Congressional delegation.   In earlier days the popular ones were the annual Agricultural report (later the Yearbook of Agriculture), a big tome called Special Report on Diseases of the Horse that went through a bunch of editions and, obviously, the Record.

So my part 1 of volume 8 was one of 7500 printed, many of which were for distribution to constituents.  Not too rare, but probably one of the few decorated with only gorgeous pictures from Demorest's Monthly Magazine from 1876 to 1882.

One of the side effects of this research is that I am reading Ellen Gruber Garvey's book, Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance.  People in the 19th century created scrapbooks to save the information that they had read and to be able to re-read and to share with others.  Whole families might scrapbook -- each member having his/her own.  I know Robert Worthington's two scrapbooks are very different from this book with all of it's gorgeous illustrations.  His started with news clippings of the assassination of Lincoln and then are various articles on things that interested him along with obituaries for family, colleagues at work and some friends. 

George Barnum, Agency Historian/Congressional Relations Specialist, Office of Congressional Relations, added one final thought:

This phenomenon of using books (and it seems to have been especially common for government documents) as the basis for scrapbooks has quite a history.  Thomas Jefferson did it.  http://americanhistory.si.edu/jeffersonbible/

I think because people got these government documents for nothing from members, they probably had a particular allure.

I remember hearing years ago that Thomas Jefferson "wrote" his own version of the Bible, by cutting and pasting passages from the Bible that he liked and enjoyed.  When I first heard that story, cutting up a Bible sounded almost sacreligious.  Giving it some thought now, Jefferson's Bible was in essence a scrapbook!

©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich

The link for this post is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/04/blind-mans-bluff-is-that-what-this.html

Some Logic, Some Help, and "Ask a Librarian" or two .... Gives an Answer

In A Scrapbook with a Surprise and a Question, I shared pictures from my Ella Worthington scrapbook, both the beautiful prints from Demorest's Monthly Magazine

and the discovery that the scrapbook was made from a copy of the Congressional Record - House based on the one side of one page that was partially unglued.

I had wondered in the last post about why Ella Cobb Worthington had ended up with a copy of the Congressional Record to make into a scrapbook.  Some folks e-mailed me suggestions and posted on FaceBook and on my Blog and in e-mails to me.  I'll come back to that later in another post.

Elnora Esther (Ella) Cobb Worthington
with her great granddaughter Alice Richardson

Another couple of questions arose:
•How prevalent were Congressional Records outside of official depositories and possibly in middle class homes?
•Which copy of the Congressional Record is this?

Which copy of the Congressional Record is this?   When writing the first blog post on this scrapbook, my initial thought was to assume that it was after 1873, since the footnote on the bottom of the page refers to an law passed on 24 May 1873 concerning marine insurance companies.  And to assume it was before 1876 since that is the earliest date from a picture glued into the book.  Before writing the original story, I tried searching online for a copy of the Congressional Record - House.  I checked and didn't find the Congressional Record for the House, only for the Senate for 1873-1874.   I had figured I would continue searching, year by year, if they were online.

One of my readers, Madaleine Laird, is the author of the KinfoLit blog was told about my blogpost and question by Gena Philibert-Ortega.
Madaleine contacted me and suggested that I could narrow the actual year of the Congressional Record by reading the information on the page and then checking out the congressmen mentioned using a website which identifies members of congress, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.  I had not known about that webpage and the searching on it was helpful in narrowing down the possible year.

Looking at the part of page 190 which was visible, I can see the names of congressmen:
Mr. WILLIS, Mr. FRYE, Mr. POTTER.   Going to the Biographical Directory site, there were multiple men named Willis, Frye and Potter in the US House over the years.  I narrowed it down to:
•WILLIS, Benjamin Albertson (D), NY 1875-78
•FRYE, William Pierce (R), ME, 1871-1880
•POTTER, Clarkson Nott (D), NY, 1869-1874, 1877-1878
The earliest year for all three is 1875, I figured that was my starting point, except I initially hadn't noticed that POTTER wasn't there during the 1875-1876.

However, my helpful reader Madaleine Laird, the KinfoLit blogger, noticed another name that I had missed because he wasn't a speaker but someone mentioned, mid-paragraph:  Mr. CONGER.
So, now adding
•CONGER, Omar Dwight (R), 1869-1880.

Putting this altogether gives us the 45th congress, 1877-1878 as the only place to look for my copy of the Congressional Record-House which is so delightfully decorated with pictures from the Demorest's Monthly Magazine.

Unfortunately, that issue of the Congressional Record is not online.  So I decided to Ask a Librarian online -- I sent my blog post, along with my question and my predicted session of congress.  I got an automated reply that they would get back to me with in 5 business days.  Less than 24 hours later a wonderful librarian sent me scan of pages 190 and 191, volume 8, Saturday, 14 December 1878 (45th Congress, 3rd Session).  Since I couldn't use those scans online [from a commercial site], my friend Connie Reik, a wonderful genealogist and librarian and Government Publications Coordinator at Tisch Library, Tufts University, located and scanned the copies for me shown here.

The above page matches the page partially visible from Ella's scrapbook.  The next page in the book, shown below gives the year: 1878.

So my assumption that the issue of the Congressional Record had to be earlier than the first pictures was incorrect.

I guess Ella Cobb Worthington had some pictures she had saved and then put them together when she started her scrapbook.

Elnora Esther (Ella) Cobb Worthington with her grandson
Robert Worthington (Bobbie) Richardson

©2013 Erica Dakin Voolich

The link to this page is http://genea-adventures.blogspot.com/2013/03/some-logic-some-help-and-ask-librarian.html