Christmas at the Archive

Winter is a quieter time at the Archive Center. The phone is ringing less often, emails flow a little more slowly, and the summer genealogy tourists have hung up their keys for a few months while they meditate on what they've found so far. Staff and volunteers are making inroads on ongoing projects, and year-end administrative duties are wrapping up. All in all, it's a good time for planning and for answering questions.

And questions, we get. Family gatherings where conversation flows freely, inevitably someone pipes up with a factual question no one quite remembers the exact answer to. Where was the church where our great-grandparents got married, what year did Mom and Dad build their house, was Dad born at Saint Francis Hospital in Cape Girardeau or elsewhere -- we can probably help.

Also, if you're like many people, your thoughts might be turning toward genealogy this time of year. Online sites are great resources, but are not complete and often contain inaccuracies. In Cape Girardeau County, for example, a small portion of the county's government records are online, but only a small portion, and some of the images are a bit fuzzy.

A patron called here recently to ask us to decipher a word from an early-1800s probate book. The binding on that particular book is tight, and the imaging technique was just slightly off on that image, but I was able to take the original book and carefully tilt it until I could read that exact word.

Another patron found a mention of a will from 1811 in "Book 66 of the probate court office in Jackson, Missouri," in a genealogy book written by a distant, now deceased, relative of his. We realized it was not Book 66, but Box 66, and that's where the entire file, including an affidavit of heirs and administrative bond naming each heir, resided. Those files are indexed by name, and we found it under an alternate spelling.

We often hear from people from all over the country who are looking for a document to show relationships between parent and child, as this is important in applying to join the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution (SAR or DAR). Many people are working with their local DAR or SAR chapter and need to find acceptable documents. Often, a record from the probate court is the way to go, or even a land record that mentions the parent and offspring by name as "father of" or "mother of." In other counties, these records might reside with the Circuit Court's probate division or Recorder of Deeds, respectively (land records are with the Recorder in Cape County, but we have abstracts of early records).

And what's a Christmas story without a ghost? I'm told the Archive Center has our own ghost, Joe the Ghost, named for an owner of the Gockel & Buerkle livery stable that once stood where the Archive is today. It probably isn't actually him, but it makes a good story, and keeping our region's story alive is what we do.