Old News - New Stories: Creepy Columns

I love using Newspapers for genealogical research.  Not only do you find out things about your ancestors but you also get to read the same publications that they very well might have read.

Since it's Halloween, I used Newspapers.com to search some of the newspapers from areas where my ancestors are from or would have access to those publications to see if I could find any spooky ghost stories written up in the local papers.

So, here is one of my favorite spooky columns I found searching through the papers this week:

A Real Ghost

On November 4, 1873, an article ran in the Bristol News reporting on four train engineers which had all had odd sightings by the train tracks. 

A fortnight ago Thomas Campbell, who was temporarily acting as engineer of [the] train that left Troy at forty-five minutes past four P.M., when passing Stoney lane, near the Aqueduct, saw a man standing between the tracks waving his hat and gesticulating vehemently. Campbell whistled "down breaks", and keeping his eye on the man, and being fearful of running over him, whistled again.  While the speed of the train was being slackened the man seemed to disappear from sight. Campbell and his fireman both express a willingness to swear to this statement. They affirm that the man did not walk away: he vanished into the air. After the train arrived in Scheneetady they related the circumstance to the other men employed on the train. There are several hypotheses by which this circumstance if it stood alone could be explained. But we can offer no explanation for what follows. On Monday of this week William Mower, the engineer on the train, saw on the same spot two human arms. When the train reached the place the arms disappeared. Tuesday evening the roof of the cab was struck by a stone which the engineer says would have come from only one direction - the sky. Wednesday evening John Lawrence, engineer of the gravel train, at precisely the same spot saw arms. The hands attached thereto were not clenched as before, but were open and held two balls of glowing fire. Last evening, at exactly the same time and place, Lawrence discovered the body of a man lying across the track. In vain he essayed to stop the train. His efforts were futile. The locomotive and all the cars passed over the prostrate form. As speedily as possible the train was stopped, and all proceeded to the place where the form had been seen, expecting to see a bloody and mutilated corpse. They found nothing, not even a spot of blood. Then the conclusion forced itself upon the mind of the engineer that he ran over a ghost. He is an ardent spiritualist, and he is positive in the belief that something about the occurrence was supernatural. -- Troy Times

"A Real Ghost" Bristol News (Bristol, TN), 04 Nov 1873, p. 4, col. 2; Digital image (https://www.newspapers.com/image/76176961/); Accessed 25 Oct 2017.

Trip to Richmond, VA

Enjoying the VA Museum of Fine Arts
Painting: Two Donors in Adoration before the Madonna
and Child and St. Michael, 1557-60
Giovanni Battista Moroni, Italian

Over the Labor Day weekend I took a short trip up to the Richmond, VA area partly to do some genealogical research and partly because I’ve driven through Richmond about a hundred times and had never actually stopped to see anything there.

I’m probably going to get a few posts out of this trip because I have a bit to share, plus since I got back into records I hadn't been in a while, I noticed info I hadn’t documented properly which led me to find more ancestors – Yay!

But, I’ll start at the beginning with a word of advice:  

If you are planning on going to a library or archive, double-check the calendar or give a call to make sure that they are open their normal hours.  

I had planned to go to the Library of Virginia, which is normally open on Saturdays; however, as I discovered late the night before I was going to go, they were closed all Labor Day weekend.  I figured they were going to be closed on Monday but they were also closed Saturday.  Sadness! 

At least I did figure it out before showing up, but it was a bit of a bummer since I was geared up to do some research.  I do think my husband breathed a large sigh of relief that he wasn’t going to be tethered to a library for several hours however.  

Dapper Dan - I'm fairly certain I had one of these

So, instead of the library, we went to the Virginia Historical Society which had some lovely exhibits about VA history and helped to answer some of the questions I had about some of my ancestors who migrated from VA to OH (via what is now WV) in the late 1700s.  They had some interesting interactive displays including one for Civil War battles that showed how many losses were had on what sides and then showed a graphic on where in the US those troops were from which was really fascinating to visualize.

Trolls - some of my Mom's favorites!

They also have a temporary exhibit currently on Toys from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s which was a lot of fun – my husband turned into a 7-year-old in that exhibit, it was adorable.

We also visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.  My favorite exhibits were the Art Nouveau jewelry and furniture as well as the Fabergé eggs.

Imperial Red Cross Easter Egg, 1915
Fabergé Firm

The Sorcerers Necklace, 1900

Buckle, ca. 1900

Buckle, ca. 1899

Fabergé Firm, Lilies of the Valley
19th-20th century
 

We stopped by the Edgar Allan Poe museum which was interesting and I learned a bit more about the author than I had known and I now need to go read some of his other works that weren’t part of my normal high school readings.

After that, we hopped over to the American Civil War Museum (Museum of the Confederacy) in Richmond.  We didn’t tour the Confederate White House because that involved a lot of stairs and my feet/ankles were already complaining loudly about all the walking we had been doing.  This museum focused a lot on the Confederate side of the war and how it was viewed from Richmond's point of view. 

View of the James River from
Hollywood Cemetery

We also did a self-driving tour through Hollywood Cemetery which is probably one of the prettiest cemeteries I have visited as it is right on the James River.  As far as I know, I don’t have any ancestors buried there but there are some Presidential gravesites: Tyler & Monroe.  It is definitely worth a drive around.

And on the last day of the trip since it was on the way back home again, we stopped at the Richmond Battlefield visitors center.  I discovered later (should have done a bit more research before coming) that the ancestor I was focusing on this trip was involved in a lot of the battles in the Richmond area.  I’ll need to come back another time to really spend time at these because there are several battle locations around the Richmond area – the National Park Service suggests 4 hours for the driving tour around the various battlefields.  But, I got an overview of these battles at the visitor’s center.

Hollywood Cemetery
Richmond, VA

Then we moved on to the Petersburg National Battlefield.  I knew that my ancestor, Freeman Hunt had been at Petersburg and that he had mustered out at that point.  The rangers at the National Park visitor center were super helpful in giving me information about where my ancestor might have fought/stationed at the battlefield.  Since I knew what group he was with they were able to show me maps of battle movements, etc.  If you make any stops to any of the national battlefield parks, make sure you take that info with you because the rangers there are very knowledgeable and might be able to give you even more information about what your ancestor was actually involved in at the battle.

I’m going to stop there for today.  I’ll have another post about much more detail about what I discovered about my ancestor, Freeman Hunt’s civil war stories and more in-depth genealogy wise.

But, if you have a chance to visit Richmond, VA, I certainly recommend it.  There is a lot of history there, the Library of Virginia houses a lot of the state archives, and some great places to visit.

The Baby Book: History & Use for Genealogists

One of my favorite things that we have in my personal family history collection, is my grandmother’s baby book.  It is a mixture of adorable facts about my grandmother as a baby.  From lovingly detailed descriptions of my grandmother’s first words & first holidays to advertisements for life insurance, this glimpse at my family’s history is delightful, but the history of the baby book is fascinating as well.

You begin finding baby books starting in the late 1800s, but by the early 1900s they had become mass-produced with fill-in-the-blank areas for parents to document their child’s progress.  They were “memory books in which parents could record a child's activities and developmental milestones and which provided a place to gather photographs, locks of hair, and other mementos.”¹  

Nicholas Day, the author of Baby Meets World, said that these baby books were really the first baby blogs.  “Baby books were where mothers—and they were almost always mothers—recorded the mundane, wondrous details of infancy….it became common for a whole population to write down their random thoughts about their babies. The baby books, like baby blogs today, were a new genre that encouraged parents to pay more attention to every tiny detail of infancy.”²  He also surmises that baby books started to become popular in the early 1900s because of the drop in infant mortality; parents were able to expect babies to survive and therefore parents started to document their lives and plan for their futures.  This seems like a sound theory for the baby book boom.  In 1911 the infant mortality rate (IMR) in the United States was 135 deaths per 1000 live births³ but the “first third of the 20th century marked an era of significant growth in child health and welfare efforts….the US Children's Bureau (USCB) was founded in 1912, and both local and state public health departments began focusing many of their resources on mothers and children….Along with improved nutrition and public health, advances in medical therapy have reduced the IMR from more than 100 to fewer than 10 deaths per 1000 live births”.⁴

Another fascinating aspect of many of these mass-produced baby books is the social history of advertising they provide.  Baby books often have advertisements geared to sell products. “Businesses discovered that babies are a wonderful excuse for consumption, and they helpfully padded the pages of baby books with advertisements for all manner of things that that no baby [or parents] should be without.”⁵

Baby books can be an excellent tool for genealogists as they offer a fascinating glimpse into the daily lives of that family.  The books often contain dates, and names of family members.  You might find the married names of female relatives.  You might find records of siblings.  As well as touching moments in that family’s lives.  It’s a great way to piece together the story of your relative’s infancy and the lives of the new parents.  Look in your attics or trunks to see if you have any baby books.  Generally speaking, you find them for the first child and other children in the family either don’t have one or very little was filled in - but even if the baby book you find isn’t your direct ancestor examine it for family details!

The UCLA’s Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library has a collection of baby books, the oldest book in their collection is “The Mother’s Record of the Physical, Mental, and Moral Growth of Her Child for the First Fifteen Years” published in 1882.⁶  The UCLA does take donations of baby books (it might be a good home for your baby books if you don’t want to keep them, or your family doesn’t want to inherit them).  Some researchers are using them to study baby development, health, and other social aspects from the home-documented sources such as baby books.  If you are interested in donating your baby book to the library, go to the library’s donations page: http://www.library.ucla.edu/about/giving-library/gifts-materials.

My next post will examine more in depth my grandmother Betty's baby book and the story I was able to piece together using that family history document.

---

1 “Baby Books Collection.” UCLA Library, 20 Apr. 2017, http://www.library.ucla.edu/special-collections/medicine-sciences-biomedical-library/baby-books-collection.^↩
2 Day, Nicholas. “The First Baby Blogs, Over 100 Years Ago.” Los Angeles Times, 17 Apr. 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/how_babies_work/2013/04/17/history_of_baby_books_parents_recorded_children_s_lives_because_they_weren.html. ^↩
3 Brosco, Jeffrey P. “The Early History of the Infant Mortality Rate in America: ‘A Reflection Upon the Past and a Prophecy of the Future.’” Pediatrics, vol. 103, 2, Feb. 1999, AAP News & Journals Gateway, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/103/2/478.short.^↩
4 Brosco, Jeffrey P. “The Early History of the Infant Mortality Rate in America: ‘A Reflection Upon the Past and a Prophecy of the Future.’” Pediatrics, vol. 103, 2, Feb. 1999, AAP News & Journals Gateway, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/103/2/478.short.^↩
5 Day, Nicholas. “The First Baby Blogs, Over 100 Years Ago.” Los Angeles Times, 17 Apr. 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/how_babies_work/2013/04/17/history_of_baby_books_parents_recorded_children_s_lives_because_they_weren.html. ^↩
6 Lin, Judy. “Baby Books a Mother Lode for Research.” UCLA Newsroom, 3 June 2010, http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/baby-books-a-mother-lode-159628.^↩


Additional Sources:

• Braun, Bob. “Rutgers University Professor Writes Book on How Infants Shape Culture, Economics.” NJ.com, 1 Apr. 2010, http://blog.nj.com/njv_bob_braun/2010/04/rutgers_university_professor_w.html.
• Denny, Melcena Burns. The Book of Baby Mine. Grand Rapids: The Simplicity Company, 1915. Print.
• Kellogg, Carolyn. “The Hidden History of Baby Books.” Los Angeles Times, 11 June 2010, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/06/the-hidden-history-of-baby-books.html.