Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen

American Archives Month: Paper Trails and Hidden Tales

• Kathleen Brandt • Episode 2553

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We celebrate American Archives Month with ways to get more treats than tricks when using using national, state, and local archives on your brick wall. 

This episode is a celebration of the archivists, collections and forgotten files that keep our family histories alive.

Do you have genealogical questions for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know


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.

John:

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of Flyover Country and the Heartlands of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty Moe. Welcome to Hitting 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 celebrating American Archives Month. There's a lot to cover, so let's start getting the bricks. Um, so we're going to talk about today. It's finally chilly, and it's October, and we're going to talk about some cooking because we're talking about archives.

Kathleen:

NoChon Archives, not Archives.

John:

Oh, I thought we were going to be talking about okay. Well, this is a very different show than the one I was expecting. Archives. Not archives.

Kathleen:

We're not going to talk about cooking right now. We're going to talk about the state.

John:

Yeah, archives, which is great because now this makes so much more sense. Because it's October, is uh American Archive Month.

Kathleen:

Is that what it is? Archive Month?

John:

It is American Archives Month. Well, that's what I have written here.

Kathleen:

American Archives Month. Yes. Okay. So that's why you want to talk about archives.

John:

Yes, absolutely. Now I've been to the National Archives in Kansas City, and it's it's a it's a little bit different than I think a lot of people picture it because it's part museum, and then the the interior sections are um it's not a bunch of dusty books. And typically I'm photographing stuff, so it's a very clean environment, and it's not really all the dusty books that I think a lot of people imagine.

Kathleen:

One of the things that Kansas City Archives holds is all of the alien records, meaning that they were not naturalized. We hold them for the nation. There is a small percentage that's still in California, less than 20% of the nation, but they too will sooner or later probably come to Kansas City. So we also hold the nation's bankruptcy records. And a lot of people forget that bankruptcy records are a great genealogy uh tool because it tells us a little bit more about our ancestors, who they did business with, their family members, and what their character was. Meaning that if they were accused of being a crook or ran down a business only to profit, those kind of things ran bankruptcy records. And so sometimes I'm just looking at bankruptcy records. Wow. Those are just two of the examples that Kansas City does for the whole nation, but there are a lot more, and people need to check our catalog. And you could just go to nationalarchives.gov or N Ara.gov in Kansas City and see all the holdings we have, but you can do this also for all of the National Archives.

John:

Well, is there some overlap between, let's say, libraries and archives?

Kathleen:

Yes, I use a library as the index, an archive as the meat. Libraries tell you what's available. Sometimes they get to the actual documents and the libraries meaning in books. We have a lot of extracts or indices. So the archives can be state, county, they can be national, as we already talked about. But in these books, it might say the county of Comanche County, Kansas has these marriage records. Well, then you need to go to the archives in Comanche County or the court records. But it could be in the archives in order to pull the actual documents. So there is a difference, but they do work together as synergistically because libraries are published books readily available, which is wonderful. And even if your library doesn't have it, you can use WorldCat to get the book you're looking for for your county where your ancestor was. But the archives has data that we normally can't always get online. It's not necessarily digitized, it's not necessarily readily available. We might have to use an archivist to pull the records for us, or we might have to visit that archive.

John:

So speaking of, which the first thing you do when you go into the archive, are you find an archivist? Or do you have to like buy an archivist or um we don't buy archivists, John?

Kathleen:

That's not one of our things. However, what I do is I I kind of have an idea already what's in an archive. A lot of them have what's called finding aids. Those might be published online. And if not, I call the archive, whether a state or county or national, even national, even um within the National Archives. I call all of them, or it the one that I need to call, just to make sure that they can help me when I get there, that they have what I need. And I want to be extremely prepared when I get to an archive. I don't want to waste my time fishing. I want to do all my homework at home. So by the time I call them, I'm setting up an appointment. I'm asking them to pull records like you have to do in National Archives here in Kansas City in advance, and most of the branch archives, you have to do that. You don't have to do that necessarily in College Park or in uh Washington, D.C. if it's open. You can normally just go in and then request it. But again, you're delaying your time. So you should be very prepared of what records you're looking for, the record set, and your names and dates.

John:

I'm assuming you found some interesting things over the years in your research and uh archive some of those real documents.

Kathleen:

I find a lot of great stuff. What are when I'm walking in there, you don't know what you're gonna get. And when you ask for an archival box of data, one of the things I found was a fabric. A piece of fabric from a husband's uniform was actually in the archives. That was a wonderful find, and our client was extremely pleased.

John:

A fabric from his uniform in what war?

Kathleen:

Civil War. In the Civil War.

John:

Okay, and and that's that's really amazing. These are things that everybody can have access to.

Kathleen:

You you might have to visit an archive. Now, if you are calling in, they could take a picture for you of that cloth or the uniform, but of course, you don't get to see it yourself. So those are the advantages of going to an archive.

John:

And so now everybody listening could look up their state archive. Could they look up a website for their state archive and start doing their digging there? Is that is that really where everything should start?

Kathleen:

Yes, but sometimes it's called his the Kansas State Historical Society, it might be the archive or the Missouri State Historical Society. It might be a historical society, but it is a form of an archive. Yeah.

John:

Okay. Oh, that's that's actually really good information because if you're looking for something that says archives, you might be missing or you look for historical societies. And I would imagine that if you really had a question and we're starting from square zero, your librarian, your local librarian or library would be able to answer any question about what the what the actual name of the society or archive is.

Kathleen:

So think of an archive as the people who are holding records. So the name of that archive could be anything. It could be a small estate, it could be any kind of collection of archival material.

John:

Okay, so let's say that um I can't find what I'm looking for. What do you do when the record doesn't exist?

Kathleen:

What do I do personally? I cry a little.

John:

Cry. Weep openly.

Kathleen:

So, John, there's a lot of reasons that archival material might not exist. It might have been archived, it might have been destroyed in a fire or a flood. Uh, it might have just been lost or stolen because there are a lot of stolen documents out of the archives until people became more aware of it. That once I went to Rutherford, North Carolina, looking for documents, and the entire folder was lost. The entire archival box rather was lost.

John:

Well, and you're saying stolen, does that just happen when they're not watching the front door and somebody says, Well, this is kind of my family stuff, or I want this stuff, and they just walk out with it?

Kathleen:

They're more vigilant now than they used to be.

John:

No, and yeah.

Kathleen:

Yes, someone has walked out with all of the information and they left an empty archival box with all of the data is is gone.

John:

Oh, that's true.

Kathleen:

So that has happened. And so now we have to be really creative. We have to reconstruct the family story and uh using other things. So there's a phrase that I love to say, and I do it in my presentations. The information that is lost always had a cousin. Meaning that you can always find it just like DNA through a cousin.

John:

You can run, but you can't hide.

Kathleen:

Exactly. So you might have to be just more creative. It's not a direct path, but there are other paths to the same information. You just have to make sure you're writing a very clear genealogical question of what is it you're looking for and why. And then what cousin might have the same answer or who might be a portal to this information?

John:

That's really tricky. That's amazing.

Kathleen:

It's tricky, but that's to me where the fun comes in, because that's true brick wall research, right? It's not a direct line, but you have to come up with a conclusion based on facts.

John:

Right. But you also like Seduco and tomatoes, so there's reasons why I don't fully trust you or your or your assessment of what's fun.

Kathleen:

Okay. That's too bad. So let's see where are we let's say it is a record that might provide to us once someone died. They might not even have death certificates yet. But I can determine this information through tax records, through land deeds, I can use newspapers, I can use court minutes or sacraments. These are all ways that we work around that issue. You know, there's just so much more that we can work with.

John:

So also I know that it's also uh Family History Month.

Kathleen:

Yes, it is. It's October. I call it the month of ghost and ghouls.

John:

The yeah. When when talking to dead when everybody's talking to dead people.

Kathleen:

Everybody's talking to dead people. Yes.

John:

There's some seasonal tips that I think uh might be helpful because we're getting ready to, at least in our part of the country, getting ready to go into cold season. I know it might be different if you're on a coaster, um, but with the way the weather is these days, considering we just got out of the mid-80s.

Kathleen:

Because today it's only 50 and raining.

John:

What sort of things should I be looking to do? What sort of genealogical work should I get out of the way?

Kathleen:

I'm gonna say like cemeteries. Those are things that you have to walk around in the snow, and you can't see them unless you really are into digging for them. Also, this is a perfect time before winter actually settles in to visit some of the co-climate ancestral homegrowns. So those are the kind of things I would say up front. I would also say this is also entering in what I consider the holiday season. We're getting ready to go into November, December. People like my mother collected all kinds of holiday memorabilia or small things. This is the time to do that craft work that shows what your ancestors were into, to display their crafts or their holiday traditions. So all of that works in it.

John:

So take advantage of the the maybe the cooler weather instead of tramping around cemeteries, then take advantage of that time to maybe dig through those books or those things that uh you have in your own family archives, which is otherwise known as the basement or the attic, and dig through those places and brush out the spiders and take a look at some of the things that are there, and it's a good time to start putting those things together and even displaying them.

Kathleen:

I think this is a perfect time to do that. Gather data so that you have January, February, and those cold months to actually analyze.

John:

And you know, that's another good, another good point. We've touched on this before. Then visiting uh or having people come visit also opens you up to go to the library and get your storytelling kit. And while, you know, Grammy's back over, use this year to go ahead and record those things that you've wanted to in those stories.

Kathleen:

Yes, and John, I'm hoping that we remind our listeners, especially those in Kansas City, that we have the tell me the story, tell me a story kits at the Midwest Genealogy Center. And they have quite a few, like over 40 copies of them. Secure yours for your holiday dinner so that you can interview people and have them recorded. That's very important because it is a family holiday season, it is a family time, right?

John:

Absolutely.

Kathleen:

I also think it would be fun for Halloween to gather the children's stories. What do you know about your ancestors? Or have your questions to ask children. Children's interviews are absolutely fresh and they're authentic. And so I think those are wonderful ways to capture the next generation.

John:

Well, that yeah, and that'd be uh that'd be a great key keepsake as well. Um, for again, for those archival boxes or that an archival hard drive that somebody will dig through in another 15 years.

Kathleen:

So, John, one of the things I want to mention is not long ago, I think earlier this month or late in September, I went to a hotel. And as you know, I love crashing conferences, and they had one that was for librarians. And what these librarians were doing was more digital type archives. We forget there are such things as digital archives, and they are set up like a regular archive, meaning that they there's a finding aid, there's information on it. WorldCat is one that we do for books and libraries, but we also have things like Hathy Trust or JSTOR, and these are more records that might hold information on your ancestors. So I want to mention that because this group of people, all they did, they would take in documents, catalog them. They were catalogers, and they were archivists in that they had a particular area that that is what their expertise was in. When we go to an archive, most times the archivists are divided in specialties. Not always, but the larger the archival repository is, the more experts they have. And that way you can already have spoken with your expert archivists before you get there. They'll pull records for you in advance. And then when you're there, all you're doing is going through your records. And that's what you were mentioning with the Kansas City National Archives. Normally, when you're going to take pictures for a client, you've already pulled the archival box. And so then you're just making your copies, you're not wasting time. And if there's a follow-up needed, you have more time to do that.

John:

It's actually really good advice. I mean, especially if you're doing client work and you want to give your client the biggest bang for their buck. When you land, you're getting into their records, you're not realizing, oops, I needed more or I needed a different set. So those conversations should always be done before you go.

Kathleen:

Yes, and that's the same if you're traveling for yourself, right? You've already paid for this plane ticket or car ride. You and you only have a limited amount of time that you can do this research. So organization is an important part. I love doing the pre-work and I love doing the analysis after the work because that gives you more questions. It allows you to find out where your other holes are, and you've gone a couple steps further along in your research.

John:

And speaking of time, I think ours is drawn to a close.

Kathleen:

I could see that on your face, John. So anyway, thank you.

John:

Well, congratulations, you've made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. 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 Fistknuckle and the Diamond Dogs. Watch for the next appearance in the labyrinth next to the man who sold the world. Do you have genealogical questions for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know.

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Kathleen Brandt

Host
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John Brandt

Co-host