The rest of the story
So many times, the answer to a genealogical question can be found with a simple action.
Turn the page.
And … sigh … The Legal Genealogist occasionally needs a reminder to find the book that has the pages to turn them.
Case in point.
Some years ago, an older cousin who had the history books for Tillman County, Oklahoma, shared some images of pages from the books. And down at the bottom right of one page in the second volume was this tidbit:
You’ll understand why I was interested when I tell you that Jasper Carlton “Jap” Robertson was my great grandfather.1
Except for one minor detail. The official records of appointments of postmasters in Tillman County, Oklahoma, doesn’t list him. At all. Not in Hollister. Not in any other town in Tillman County. Not anywhere in Oklahoma, nor in Indian or Oklahoma Territory.2
Bummer. It was kind of fun thinking that Jasper had been postmaster. I put the matter aside and went on to other things like chasing crazy Germans who all have the same names.3
Then Bob Gordon of Books & Things was kind enough to loan me both volumes of the Tillman County History. And, for the first time, I was able to — yep, you guessed it — turn the page.4 And there at the top of that next page:
Sigh… Hollister appears to have had an unofficial post office when the trains began to arrive in 1907 before the first official government post office was established in 1909.
Reminder to self: turn the page.
Even if it means going back and finding the page to turn.
Now to try to verify that unofficial post office story…
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Turn the page,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted date).
SOURCES
- Tillman County Historical Society, History of Tillman County, vol. II (p.p. : Frederick, Okla., 1978), 269. And yes, I know his name is given as “Robinson” here. And — sigh — in about half the census and other records where he appears. But his name really was Robertson. Trust me… ↩
- National Archives and Records Administration, Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-September 30, 1971, Records of the Post Office Department, Record Group Number 28 (NARA : Washington, D.C. 1977), rolls 101-104. Today available as digital images, “Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971,” Ancestry.com, if you wanna look at ’em online. ↩
- See e.g. Judy G. Russell, “Navigating the Johanns,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 31 Aug 2019 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 3 Sep 2019). ↩
- History of Tillman County, vol. II : 270. ↩
“Unofficial” should certainly count if you have some proof of it and it seems that you do. I suspect that there have been a number of “unofficial” postmasters/mistresses who handled the mail before any “official” person was appointed to the job. My Grt-Grandfather William C. Bayless was a postmaster in the tiny town of Datura, TX (now only a ghost town). He was “official”, his name appearing in the Post Office records and also announced in the newspaper. It’s a small thing but I did have some fun discovering it. Another family member, Samuel Bayless, was an official Postmaster of Bayless, TN, which also is a “ghost town” today. I found the records online in the National Archives.
But, you now know which political party he was affiliated with…..
“Turn the page” really resonates!
I recently reviewed the scanned image of a Connecticut Church record hoping to find information not in the extract that would help identify a suspected relative. It’s a restricted film so I could only view it at a FHC, and with limited hours and unlimited “todos” I usually take a quick look at a page image to confirm it’s the right page and save it to my USB key to look at later.
Later… I saw that my suspect’s baptism was listed in a group at the bottom of the page with a bold penstroke along the right side, a mark that looked like an open bracket. I had to go back for the page following… where I found the rest of the group of 20+ enclosed by the continuation of that bracket, and for the payoff, an annotation beside it, on that next page: “baptized on profession of faith”.
Indicating that this record was for someone at least 16 years of age… an additional fact that was omitted from the extract. And that helps make the case about who he was. And that missed, initially, because I neglected to turn the page.