Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
A "brick-wall" DIY genealogy podcast that features your questions and Kathleen Brandt's answers. She wants your stories, questions, and “brick walls”. But be ready to add to your "to-do" list. As Kathleen always says, this is a Do it yourself (DIY) genealogy podcast. “I'll show you where the shovel is, but I'm not digging up your family.”
Maybe, you have no idea where to start searching for an ancestor. Or, perhaps you want to know more about your family folklore. Host Kathleen has 20 years in the industry and is the founder of a3genealogy. She's able to dispense genealogy research advice and encouragement in understandable terms that won't get you lost in genealogy jargon. Along with her husband and co-host, John, she helps you accomplish "do-it-yourself" research goals, learn some history, and have a bit of fun along the way. Light-hearted and full of detailed info, Hittin' the Bricks is your solution for your brick-wall research problems.
Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
Ancestors' Financial Footprints: Meet Expert Heather
Are you underutilizing Tax Records. Tax records offer genealogists a treasure trove of information beyond just confirming where ancestors lived, revealing financial circumstances, family relationships, and even marriage dates.They are a key resource to leaping over that Brickwall.
Heather Jenkins, president of the Johnson County Genealogical Society and Heartland Chapter of APG, specializes in tax record research.
She shares with the Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen Team, about obscure laws that shaped your ancestor's decisions.
• Tax records connect to all aspects of life including birth, death, marriage, and property ownership
• Examining tax records can reveal an ancestor's true financial status, often showing apparent wealth hiding significant debt
Find Heather Jenkins at: https://balancedgenealogy.com
Email your genealogical questions to HittintheBricks@gmail.com
Be sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: Off the Wall with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials.
Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.
Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of flyover country in the heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the Mighty Mo, welcome to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen, the do-it-yourself genealogy podcast, with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be talking to Heather Jenkins from Balanced Genealogy, about death and taxes. So let's start hitting the bricks. Hey, baby. Oh Lord, I love starting that way because she hates it so very much. Like please, can you not do that.
John:So we're here with Heather Jenkins and, of course, Kathleen.
Kathleen:Hi there.
John:On hitting the bricks with Kathleen, because otherwise it would be just Hitting the Bricks with. So we're Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen and we have Heather Jenkins with us and we're excited because it's been a while since we've had a guest and Heather's bringing a really interesting take on genealogy. She is the owner-founder of Balance Genealogy and her story, I think, is really very interesting and I think the listeners are going to love this. Heather, how did you get roped into this?
Heather Jenkins:Oh, Kathleen sent me an email.
John:Oh, you don't have to go to the spam like I do.
Kathleen:That hurt just a little. Just a little yes yes, kathleen heather and I know each other through the association of professional genealogists, and so I'm going to her to tell us a little bit about who she is and what she's doing in that space.
John:First, okie dokie. So so, heather, you're on.
Heather Jenkins:Well, currently I am the president of the Johnson County Genealogical Society on the Kansas side, and I'm also the president of the Heartland chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists. And I have finished the. It's the International Institute of Genealogical Studies. I finished the American Records certificate there and so I have I get to put PLCGS after my name, which just means I took a lot of genealogy classes.
Kathleen:So, heather, what does the PLC stand for?
Heather Jenkins:The Professional Learning Certificate of Genealogical Studies. And then I get to say for American record.
Kathleen:Oh, got it. Okay, yeah, got it. So it is the one that. So I've taken their DNA class. Let me just put it like that.
Heather Jenkins:What I really liked about it was the self-paced. While I had a deadline, like you had to finish the class within so many weeks, but I could take it at my own pace. So if for one week I couldn't get to it, it's okay. As long as it wasn't the last day of the class, I could still catch up. And the other thing that I really liked about it, and which was what I was really looking for when I was looking for genealogy classes, was just information about genealogy records and where to go and how to find them and why do these records exist, and many of those classes were able to answer some of those questions for me.
Kathleen:So now John, the reason I invited Heather to join us is because she has an interesting niche. A lot of genealogists work with tax records, but that is one of Heather's loves, so I wanted her on board because we had several questions in the last three months on tax records, and so there's no specific questions. I just want you to explain to our listeners how do tax records and genealogy interrelate.
Heather Jenkins:Tax records are a huge part of that. There's birth records, death records. Those all have a financial aspect. When you think about it, it may not say it on the record- but.
John:But there's something, for example, something that might be implied on that.
Heather Jenkins:Well, death records is more like well, there may have been a hospital bill if they died at the hospital. There could have been. If they have the burial, then you've got all the things that come with a funeral and burials, and so all those things cost money. Now, whether or not you can find those records is a whole different story, but cemetery records and burial records you should be able to remember once, someone not only is living, they're creating financial records.
Kathleen:But when they die they are because we also have wills and probates and different kinds of trusts.
John:There's just no end to it. I'm hearing that even after I'm dead, I'm still going to have to be doing finances.
Kathleen:You do not have to, John you won't be Heather your tax record interest. Talk about that a little bit and, like I know you used to do a presentation on tax records, because there's lots of different kinds of tax records, do you have a favorite?
John:tax record.
Heather Jenkins:Do I have a favorite tax record? No, I don't think I have a favorite tax record, because they're all useful in their own way. They're just different, but there are a lot of them. 12 years ago is when I started really looking at tax records, and I wasn't even looking at them in the full potential that they could have been. I was just pulling the record, going, oh look, he was here at this date, great, and that's what I would do, and I would move on and and after a while I started digging a little deeper into the tax records and realized I was not using them to their full potential, not even close. I would start with your, your land taxes, your personal property taxes and poll taxes those three they're. They're the easiest to find, the easiest to learn how to use them, and they'll lead you to more records.
Kathleen:And so, john, recently I wrote a blog and I think we might have mentioned it about women and poll taxes. I love poll taxes because it gives you a little extra, but I also love tithing. So the further back we go, the tithing like in colonial times, and I didn't know about it until I did Tim McGraw's episode back in 2010.
John:So that was kind of your intro into the world of taxation genealogy via taxation genealogy via taxation.
Kathleen:So one of the things that Heather wrote in her bio and her bio is on balanced genealogy. That is balanced genealogycom and we'll put it in the show notes. But one of the things she wrote is my favorite thing to do is study how our ancestors spent their money. Let's just talk about that part.
Heather Jenkins:When you think about during the different periods in time where the United States was more prosperous and then there were times when it was not as prosperous, and so you can see that they would buy things like billiard tables, little bit more expensive furniture, and guess what? They were taxed on those things.
Kathleen:And Heather, where would you find some records on something that would include billiards or those kinds of things?
Heather Jenkins:Tax records is the one of the only places I know, unless you have a uh access to a store ledger that sold those items.
Kathleen:Who's doing the taxing? Is it state, is it county, is it city, is it federal?
Heather Jenkins:They were taxed at all levels of government at different periods of time. The federal government did some direct taxes, like the direct tax of 1798. You may have heard of it as the window tax. There's the first US income tax. It's also known as the IRS tax assessments and some people refer to it as the Civil War taxes.
Kathleen:Let me ask this one Can you explain exactly what is the window tax?
Heather Jenkins:So the direct tax of 1798 is the federal government. If we, if we talk about 1798, that was to pay for a war, an anticipated war with France, and what they did was they taxed the land, the buildings and the slaves. What became controversial about it is when they were taxing the building, they would actually count the number of window panes and the number of lights that were in the house, the number of steps even, and so sometimes you'll even see that in building records, you'll see that the steps got smaller or sometimes bigger, just to get the least amount of tax.
John:Why have a staircase with 13 steps when you can do it in four with big strides?
Kathleen:to save a little bit on the taxes, and they did it on windows, john.
John:They literally start removing windows you just brick up your window yep, they did, they would.
Heather Jenkins:They would board them up so to make it look like they didn't have any windows, or they would build their house with, like two windows, and that's it Now. What's interesting is when you read about the protests. Apparently there are reports where women would take boiling hot water and pour it down on the assessors.
John:It's going medieval on them.
Heather Jenkins:They didn't want to be taxed and they were already being taxed A lot. If we think about today and we think our taxes are expensive not in comparison to then.
Kathleen:Percentage-wise.
Heather Jenkins:Yeah, percentage-wise yeah.
John:Well I know the property tax assessors around here, especially in Jackson County.
Kathleen:They almost get water on them.
John:Low profile. If they got close enough, there'd be a lot of people pouring some hot water.
Heather Jenkins:Yeah, let's not give them any ideas.
Kathleen:So that is one of my favorite taxes, because they were literally evading taxation.
Heather Jenkins:I was thinking about all these individuals that own lots of acres of land and everyone's like, oh, he's really wealthy. But then when you keep looking, you find out that he has 10 mortgages and he has a lot of debts to a lot of people all over town. And then you learn that even when he died, if you look at their probate, they sold all of the estate and all the land and they still couldn't cover all of the debt that he had gained, so he wasn't as wealthy as he appeared, because there's a lot of times you see, where the women who had signed they had to get rid of it and then they have to go live with a child because they can't even live on their own home place because they owed everybody.
John:Depending on the time, See, my head always goes to you know where we, where we didn't have a social, a social net like Social Security or Medicaid or Medicare, those those types of programs where when you fell you just hit the ground. If you died, then chances are, especially at the time, if there wasn't the income, then your entire family suffered from it.
Kathleen:If you had not built that level of wealth that the whole family saw a reversal of fortune just because of the loss of the single income and there weren't any social safety nets, and normally what they were doing, john, when we're looking at those records and we're analyzing them and you're following it, so for a 10-year period, one family you're seeing them to rob Peter to pay Paul, so you can almost follow their demise is what I have seen. And again, I don't just go set out for financial records, I use them seriously, heather, to find out the rest of their family, like who else is involved with this, who are the sons, who's the wives and their people. And so I never think of it as me working with taxed records. And I know we're saying tax records just T-A-X, but is it tax records or should it be the records of taxed things, or should it be the records of taxed things?
John:What Are you giving personhood to our taxed items?
Kathleen:I don't know, because they. I mean, is it really the tax records, or are we looking?
John:are we following the taxable items, or are we looking, are we following the taxable items? I would differentiate between taxing humans on the slave taxes and taxing property, even though at the time those were the same thing they were taxed as property too. Yeah, but in my head, you know, I'm doing the adjustment of two different taxations, one of them is right. One of them is bad, the other one's abhorrent.
Kathleen:One of them's bad, the other one's abhorrent. Well, thank you for that, John.
Kathleen:So this is the part, if you haven't listened. This is the part I want to mention is the IRS tax records and the filing of them. Anyway, I went to the Library of Congress for a client and I was going through all of these records because her person that I was researching was a famous opera singer. In all of her belongings that the Library of Congress actually inherited were her 1040 forms. I don't know if it was 1040 on there, but it was in her 1040 forms and this was back in 1890. It told me a lot about her, but that's the only time I've actually seen a copy of people's IRS tax forms. Have you run across a lot of those kind of tax forms?
Heather Jenkins:No, the reason is they passed a law. I think it was either 1892 or 1894. They passed an income tax law because it was really starting to get revved up around the 1880s, because they were running low on money to finance the government. But the Supreme Court then deemed that law unconstitutional and so it was immediately. It ended at that point.
Kathleen:Okay, so I need to correct myself. This was during Eleanor Roosevelt's time, so it was much later than 1890. When I found those tax records, because she was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, so it was during that time frame.
Heather Jenkins:What is that? Yeah, that's Okay, okay, so.
John:That's mid-1900s.
Heather Jenkins:Okay, so not many of those tax records still exist. They were actually considered public record up until about 1977. But you still had to, like go through the Department of Treasury and the president to be able to open them and look at them. But they were also considered temporary records, so they were destroyed pretty quick. The fact that you're able to find one is is, you know, pretty amazing.
Kathleen:And not only did I find it because it was in her personal belongings, it was her copy of her taxes and it is in her tax records of her partner, who was a violinist, was a violinist, she was a musician versus the opera singer it was. All of this was outlined in her box with her tax records. The client was quite excited about it.
Heather Jenkins:Yeah, I mean yeah that's why I always tell people to keep their tax records. You don't have to keep every single year, but keep, you know, some of the, the major years you know, like when you change jobs or your dependents, you know, go off on their own or you gain a dependent. Keep those records because that's the only way today we're going to be able to see them.
John:Well, that's an interesting idea.
Kathleen:Interesting, interesting, preserving your own record. We have buckets.
John:Not that anybody. I can't imagine who's going to be interested.
Kathleen:No one own record. We have buckets, not that anybody.
Heather Jenkins:I can't imagine who's gonna be interested no one in our families, no one who's gonna be interested. I'm not even interested in them, john. I'm not even interested in them. I. I have an aunt. I have an aunt that has kept all of her records.
John:Wow.
Heather Jenkins:Yeah, and I asked her what are you going to do with them? She goes I don't know.
Kathleen:What is your best find that you have had Heather.
Heather Jenkins:My best find was actually when I figured out when one of my ancestors was married, and it's the simplest. It was the simplest case too, but I couldn't find the marriage record for this couple at all. I couldn't find anything. And it was in Pennsylvania. And I was looking through the Pennsylvania records and I was like, okay, there's land records, there's personal property, and that's all I saw at first. Well then I realized I needed to keep scrolling through the record Because they had at the end of the tax roll an unmarried tax list.
John:Oh, wow.
Heather Jenkins:Yes, sometimes it's known as the bachelor's tax or the single man's tax and in that tax list I find the male ancestor that I was looking for and I was like, well, what happens when I go forward a few years? All of a sudden he drops off the list. And so around the time he dropped off the list I went back to the land records and there he was. Like OK, that's got to be around the time he got married. They're living in Pennsylvania. It's in the Quaker records that that's when they got married.
Kathleen:Wow, excellent and it's just.
Heather Jenkins:It's one line that says so-and-so and so-and-so got married. That's it.
Kathleen:But that's the reward of not quitting when you just see a name. It's the reward of continuing your research, and that is brick wall research, because most people would have stopped.
Heather Jenkins:Yes, it's really important to go from front to back when you're looking at tax records, because you could miss family members that are also listed in those tax records. Your ancestor may be in there, his estate may be listed there, but it may not be under his surname. It may be listed under the executor's name, and then his name will be listed like as a little side note, and so you really got to read through the whole tax roll.
John:It's an interesting phenomenon, because what is a common theme in genealogy and brick walls is that the brick wall is not in the data. The brick wall is in the researcher.
Heather Jenkins:A lot of times.
John:Yeah, it's the methodology, and if you just clean up the edges, then you're not going to have that brick wall that you think you have. It's that last page of a document that you just didn't bother with, because how could there be anything useful on it?
Kathleen:And Heather, isn't it cute how my husband listens to me?
John:Yes, he's actually learned over the years. Isn't that adorable? It's so adorable. Yeah, actually, I just read up on her blog before we did these things.
Kathleen:That's a little disappointing, but okay. So, heather, one of the things that I think I'm really. I remember you first telling me that you really love tax records and you had this presentation on tax records. Do you have any presentations coming up?
Heather Jenkins:Yes, I do. I'm actually doing a tax record presentation for the Midwest Genealogy Center on June 9th. It's going to be a hybrid. That one is coming up and then I have another tax presentation coming up in September with the Northland Genealogy Society. That one is in-person only and that one we're focusing on the land, personal property, and I'm going to throw in poll taxes because they're usually on the same record. And then in October and I'm going to throw in poll taxes because they're usually on the same record and then in October I'm going to do a tax workshop with them. We're going to do some hands-on research.
Kathleen:Fun. This is excellent news. So, john, one of the things I want to really press on our listeners, I want them to understand, is Heather is a perfect example of someone who found her niche based on her own background. One of the questions we had was how do I determine my niche? And my thing is what do you love to do? Heather loves numbers. She has degrees in accounting. You have an undergraduate and a master's. Is that correct, correct?
Heather Jenkins:Yep.
Kathleen:Is it in accounting? Yes, okay, she has degrees in accounting her undergraduate and her master's and that is her niche to me, because I don't know a lot of people who are doing tax records for the purpose of tax records. We often hear, oh, let's look at the land tax, so let's look at this particular tax. But hers carries a common theme and it's not just follow the money, but what can you find from following the money? How does it move you out of your brick wall scenario, or how does it help create a community that can help you? So I just think this is really a fascinating topic.
Heather Jenkins:It's interesting how I got here, because I had the bachelor's and the master's degree in accounting and then I went to work for the government as, basically, a compliance auditor. Now here's the fun part. Now the interesting part is that being a compliance auditor and a genealogist isn't that big of a jump.
Kathleen:Why do you say that?
Heather Jenkins:Well, you're still making a plan. So you have your audit plan, you have your research plan. If you're still, why do you say that? Well, you're still making a plan, so you have your audit plan, you have your research plan. If you're a genealogist, interesting, then you're going in, you're doing the analyzation, you're collecting the records. You're doing that on both ends, and then you also write it up and then usually you um uh, present your findings to somebody, and so it wasn't that big of a jump and so I just started. I wasn't even sure what my niche was going to be when I started looking at it, but when I discovered tax records and I was talking with someone else and they're like you really mentioned tax records a lot I do, they'll ask me a question.
Heather Jenkins:They'll ask me a question. I'll be like did you check tax records? They're like, well, they're not going to tell me anything and I'm like, oh, go check the tax record.
Kathleen:And John. That brings us full circle, because that was the first way, the first conversation I had with Heather- Did she tell you to check? Your tax records? No, I asked. Did she tell you to check your tax records? No, I asked.
John:She came to an.
Kathleen:APG Heartland meeting and I said so, what's your interest, what are you doing? And she let me know right then that her first love was really tax records. Now I don't know where her husband and children come into that, but her first love was really tax records. Any other questions, John?
John:Well, no, but I am going to point out for our listeners just once again. There was a research plan mentioned.
Heather Jenkins:No, research plans are very helpful. They keep you on track. I even have a research plan just to research tax records. Yeah, sure, sure, all the places that I need to go to check for information on those records a full checklist sure, yep, and that's actually what one of my presentations covers. It covers some of that perfect people are. People are like, do you really check all those places? And I'm like, well, once I find the information I'm looking for, I stop you don't have to look after you don't have to keep going to find duplicate, but that's.
John:That's why it's always in the last place. You look, it's uh always so heather.
Kathleen:Last question are there any other presentations that you're giving beside tax records?
Heather Jenkins:I am going to present at genealogy kc, so they haven't announced it yet. I am going to present on how to prepare to research at a repository. Oh perfect very cool so something, something that was yeah, something that was easy, that we just don't do as much as we used to because you know we're spoiled.
Kathleen:And no, they're lazy. I'm sorry, Heather. Oh okay, just say it I was trying to be nice. I'm a brick walls researcher no, this is not the place. No, not on that, not on that, she's going to call them lazy.
John:Yeah, get out of your house.
Heather Jenkins:I've got, yeah, I've got. I'm working on a project that requires me to go to New York and do some of that stuff, and so I learned a lot about doing long distance research and then going in person and the differences and how it is, and I was. I was very successful. I'm glad I took. I did all the planning absolutely absolutely I would.
Heather Jenkins:I I got so much done and I still need to do more, but, um, I was able to get a lot of things done that I didn't think I would. I would even get close, but I was because I had planned it all out. I was able to just do it.
John:Perfect so so.
Heather Jenkins:John, what do?
Kathleen:you think?
John:I think that's going to be, actually, with the exception of my comments. This is going to be an easy edit. It'll be an easy edit because it'll just be me that's getting cut. Heather, you were wonderful. Thank you so much. So thanks for indulging me Well. Congratulations, you made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Heather Jenkins from Balanced Genealogy for chatting with us. Sambats Ganu to new listeners in Mongolia. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hittin' the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fisknuckle, and the Morgans Watch for their next appearance by the post office in Blackwater. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at HittintheBricks at gmailcom and let us know.
