#2 Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources: The American Genealogical-Biographical Index (AGBI)
Gary Boyd Roberts
Published Date : March 14, 1986
Last week I spoke about using heraldic visitations. I have written several
times on the three giant databases that now enable us to solve at least some of
our most difficult New England "problems". The first two databases are the
International Genealogical Index, and the Consolidated Index to The NewEngland Historical and Genealogical Register, vols. 1-148, itself in six
volumes (this index was also included in our sesquicentennial publication of the
Register on CD-ROM; both the printed indexes and the CD-ROM
Register can be purchased from our sales department).
I wish
today to talk a bit about the third database, The American
Genealogical-Biographical Index to American Genealogical, Biographical and Local
History Materials, which our staff calls "AGBI." The most recent volume on
our shelves is 194, covering Wheelers from Elizabeth to Sarah. Four or five
volumes of this series are published annually, and it is much hoped that the
final volume will appear before the century’s end. This work is published by The
Godfrey Memorial Library, 134 Newfield Street, Middletown, CT 06457 and is an
index to nearly every volume in its possession. Especially valuable are its
index of the entire 1790 census—so we can learn quickly in which states rare
names can be found; of all published Revolutionary soldier rosters; and of the
invaluable genealogical column of the Boston EveningTranscript.
This last deserves a few more words. The
Boston Evening Transcript, like the New York Times today, was
a newspaper of record. Its genealogical column, which usually ran twice or more
a week for several decades in the early twentieth century, was often an
exchange among the most devoted and scholarly genealogists of the day. Many
materials not published elsewhere are published therein, and even finding your
ancestor only in a query (which often asks basically the same question you have)
tells you that very probably nothing more was then known. The coverage of the
column is almost altogether New England, and AGBI generally has a New
England emphasis. Probably the heyday of the Transcript column was the
1920s.
A recent experience in helping a member in the Society’s library
may have wider ramifications. The researcher was combing Cole sources for a very
rare first name, and could perhaps find some primary data, but nothing in print.
I suggested trying the Cowles genealogy. The hunch paid off and there was the
man, his agnate ancestors, and even his children and grandchildren. Moral of the
story--over time names or name spellings may be simplified to the point where
they become the same as another well-known surname. Often, too, names are
spelled in official records as they are pronounced or American immigrants or
their children spell the name phonetically because they think it’s easier. The
mother of NEHGS Executive Director Ralph Crandall was a Watrous which is
pronounced that way in Yorkshire, England, but was there spelled Waterhouse.
In 1996 I edited Massachusetts and Maine Families in the Ancestry of
Walter Goodwin Davis. I hope that the success of this effort will inspire
more edited reprint sets of multi-ancestor works. In particular I thought of
Dawes-Gates (all the ancestry of the vice-president) and the four books
commissioned by Mrs. Charles Stinson Pillsbury of the Minneapolis flour family
from Mary and Winifred Lovering Holman (the two-volume Pillsbury genealogy and
the two Stevens-Miller compendia). Other possibilities include the
volumes of J. H. Cory, Edith B. Sumner, and the works Jacobus compiled for the
Watermans (Waterman, Granberry, and Hale-House) or N.G. Parke II.
These
works should all be examined by serious genealogists. There is sometimes a
geographical emphasis but almost every researcher with much New England
ancestry will find several ancestors in each of these series. The most detailed
and perhaps the most minutely documented is the Dawes-Gates compendium. If you
share an ancestor with Vice-President Charles Gates Dawes you need seldom
to look further. Of the dozen or so works I used to document the New England
ancestry of the late Princess of Wales, two-thirds were such
multi-ancestor works.
In the last week or so I have been editing various
chapters of Notable Kin, Volume Two. Pocahontas lost her English
descendants (thanks to an article by William Thorndale in The Virginia
Genealogist (vol. 34: 1990, 209-13). Thanks to Richard Brenneman, Marilyn
Monroe has more maternal ancestors; and additions to New Englanders in Texas
include Senator John Tower and current governor and presidential son George
Walker Bush.