Posts Tagged ‘HULET’

The new Family Search website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is quite likely the most valuable free tool for genealogists anywhere in the world.

Recently while exploring some of the “1865″ New York State Census that are available as screenshots of the microfilmed pages, though not indexed yet, may be viewed on your web browser of choice and you may go page by page in a location that your family lived in.

I have been filling in many pieces of data in various family groups that I had previously recorded all of the federal census for and some of the other NY state census. So when I get time it is always a pleasure to go on to their website and start looking at various communities in the 1865 census.

One set of ancestors that had resided early in South Hannibal, Oswego County, NY and then at Lysander, Onondaga County were Hopkins and Phebe (GARDNER) HULET. I have gathered a lot of info on this family but realized I did not have 1865 data for them.

So going to familysearch.org and scrolling down near the bottom of the white section of their homepage, just above the green area, click on the text for “United States”. This will bring up a listing by states and a simple search box. So when you put in “1865 New York” it will immediately show you things that they have available online as scans of rolls of film. In this case you will see the following choices:
New York, Civil War Service Records of Union Soldiers, 1861-1865
New York, Eastern District Naturalization Petitions, 1865-1957
New York, State Census, 1865

Well the first two categories are a wondrous marvel in themselves, but at this time I chose the last one for the 1865 state census.

Now click on the link for “Browse through 57,158 images”, and you will see the list of counties of which films are available for.
Select “Oswego” County.

Now over the past few weeks I have been looking in Hannibal, Enumeration Districts 01 and 02, with no success in finding my ancestors Hopkins and Phebe. Then realizing that Hopkins died in 1869 and his wife Phebe died at her son, Herman’s home in Fulton, NY in 1875, I decided to take a look at the Town of Volney which is where part of the village of Fulton was located at that time. I knew that Herman had lived on the east side of the river, and he had at one time been the Sheriff of Oswego County.

So as I was scrolling through each double page of the census films it suddenly dawned on me that this layout did not look like the 1865 census pages that I had recently been viewing, so in looking at the header title of the screen shots, it showed that this film was actually the wrong film. It is the “1855″ census pages, not the 1865.

This is not exactly a bad thing, as none of the 1855 pages have been published yet on Family Search, but they no doubt would want to know about the error. So I sent Family Search an email about the wrong film showing and I am sure that at some time in the future they will put up the proper 1865 version.

So if you have any interest in people in the Village of Fulton for 1855, you better hurry and get what you can get as it is now. Chances are 1855 is not due to be published until some time in the future.

We are all so lucky to have these resources at our keyboards and fingertips and I can only encourage LDS to keep up the fabulous program of publishing such useful information as the actual scans of the census pages such as these. Thank you LDS.

You may search this UNYG blog site for other articles about the New York State Census.

A huge treasure trove of historical and biographical information is now online for those of you that have family that lived in Wisconsin.

Why would we care on an Upstate New York Genealogy Blog?  Simple, millions of people that lived in, and migrated out of New York state went on out to the upper mid-west.  Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, and Wisconsin and others as well.

You might have been searching for many years in New York for details, and you should, but actually your clues might be found in information that was published in later generations that had moved on out of NY.

So this information just came in on one of the rootsweb newsgroups (GENWISCONSIN) sent by Patricia Ricci about an hour ago and I jumped right in to see what it was about.  Wow!  The Wisconsin Historical Society has sponsored this project, major kudos to them, and it is a very easy website to navigate and the digitized scans are remarkably clear.

More than 80 standard county and local histories are all word searchable, or you may browse them page by page.  You will find obscure directories, almanacs, local histories and county histories.  Are these primary source documents?  Absolutely not.  Do they have immense value to genealogist, of course they do!  Where else would you find such clues to spark a major in-depth search for primary records unless you know where people were at any given time?

I have always been interested in the earlier settlers of Racine and Kenosha Wisconsin as that area was first populated by old time families from around Hannibal, Oswego County, NY.

Here is a section of data that I have in my computer database regarding a family of HULET/HULETT relatives:  “Many families from the town of Hannibal, New York and the immediate surrounding towns, were stockholders in “The Western Emigration Company” that originated in Hannibal and settled in Racine County, Wisconsin and the Kenosaha area.  I presume that Gardner HULETT either was a stockholder or went to Kenosha to join neighbors, friends, and possibly other relatives.  More can be found out about the Western Emigration Company on the Hannibal and Kenosha GenWeb sites on the Internet.”

So I went right to the search engine on the new WCH website, checked for Racine and found three publications:

Prairie Farmer’s Reliable Directory of Farmers and Breeders, Kenosha and Racine Counties, Wisconsin – 1919

Smith’s Business and Farmers’ Directory of Racine and Kenosha Counties for 1897-1898. Containing a List     Smith’s Business and Farmers’ Directory of Racine and Kenosha Counties for 1897-1898.

Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Racine and Kenosha Counties Wisconsin. – 1906

In this last one I discovered the parents and siblings of one of the HULETT wives that is sure to lead me to more clues as they were from New York state originally also.

Thank you Pat, and a big thank you to the Wisconsin Historical Society!

Here is the link to the Wisconsin County Histories

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/wch/

Dick Hillenbrand
Upstate New York Genealogy Blog
www.UNYG.com/blog