By David A. Fryxell
Did your ancestors make their stand in Dixie? The South will rise again in your family tree, if you follow these tips for getting started researching your Southern roots.
Finding your fickle family
As you trace your Southern ancestors backwards across what once was the frontier of "the Old Southwest," don't look for them to have simply uprooted from, say, Virginia and then settled for good in Alabama. Migrating families typically tried several new homesteads, possibly in several states. Historian Owsley compares this fickle migration pattern to "a great drove of blackbirds lighting in a grain field"—one gust of wind and they're aloft again, only to settle in the next field over.
You can look for patterns, however. Migrating families often went due west, and they looked for valleys to settle in that reminded them of the place they'd just left. They moved in clusters, with one family member or even a neighbor being the first to try a new area, and others in the cluster following later. Children of migrating families were more likely to eventually migrate again themselves. If you can't trace your ancestors, try their siblings and other kin; look for unrelated people who lived near your ancestors and who may have lived near them in their previous home, too.
Census records can be valuable tools here, since federal censuses go back to 1810 for Louisiana, Kentucky and parts of Tennessee, 1820 for Mississippi and 1830 for Alabama and Arkansas. Some areas had territorial censuses even earlier. Texas, not a state until 1845, had its own census ranging from 1829 to 1836. You can access these through Family History Centers, the National Archives and larger libraries. Census records are also coming online at such subscription sites as www.genealogylibrary.com and www.ancestry.com
, as well as through volunteer efforts at www.usgenweb.org.
Don't just check for your Southern ancestors in one county or even one state, however. If you can't find them in Alabama, for example, maybe they weren't there long enough to be counted before heading for greener pastures in Mississippi or Texas.
The 1850 census was the first to list the names of all free inhabitants in a household as well as the first to record their birthplaces, so it gives a valuable snapshot of Southerners' migrating ways—and may help you find patterns in your family's past. That enumeration found almost 400,000 people born in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas who had landed in Alabama, Georgia (non-Georgia natives), Mississippi and Louisiana.
You can also explore records of what likely drew your ancestors to this part of the South in the first place—public land. More than 2 million title records for public land sales (called "patents") are searchable online at the Bureau of Land Management's site www.glorecords.blm.gov. These cover all the Southern states except the original colonies, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas, from 1820 to 1908. It's a great way to find not only your ancestors but their neighbors, whose names might help you take the next step backward. (Get tips on using this site from the October 2000 issue of Family Tree Magazine.)