Ships & Plantations - Kansas Ancestor McKinney

Question: Where is Malinda McKinney of Wabaunsee, Ks?
Anna Wilkins from Shawnee County, Kansas, drops by for some DIY genealogy advice from Kathleen about researching her Great, Great, Grandmother.  Will she find her in Tennessee or perhaps further down the Mississippi? 

Plus, knowing your ships: immigrant, cargo,  military, mail ships - and slave ships, can be traced. . Oh there are more, but the mail ship with live cargo (as in people and camels) helped unravel Anna's conundrum.  

Transcript

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00:00

John Brandt

Ladies and gentlemen, from the depths of flyover country adjacent to the Land of Oz, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty motel. Welcome to Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen, the genealogy show that features your questions and her answers. I enjoy your humble honey host. And on this episode, Kathleen will be talking to Anna Wilkins from the Wheat State, the Jayhawks state, home of the Kansas City, that little Willie Littlefield was not singing about the great state of Kansas. And now let's hit the bricks here with the brick hitter herself, Kathleen Brandt. And today we have Anna Wilkins from the great state of Kansas, and she is here with a question. And we're really happy to have you here. Anna, thank you for dropping in.

Anna Wilkins

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

John Brandt

Anna, in my note, you're a Dula.

Anna Wilkins

Yes.

John Brandt

So what does it Dula do?

Anna Wilkins

We assist expecting mothers with birthing plans, exercising comfort measures, breastfeeding techniques, etc. before and after birth of their baby. And usually, I work with personally either doctors at the hospital or I contract with a midwife. This is a retirement career, but it's still remarkable.

John Brandt

Okay, So. So, Kathleen, you had met Anna. Do you want to tell that story about how you two got connected?

Kathleen Brandt

I'm going to let Anna tell the story.

John Brandt

Oh, okay. Perfect.

Anna Wilkins

Oh, okay. Well, I met Kathleen at the seminar. Oh, God. I'm sorry. I can't remember what it was called at the library.

Kathleen Brandt

Identity Quest.

Anna Wilkins

Identity Quest is Identity Quest. Yes, yes, yes. I'm sorry. And I get a chance to listen to her breakout session afterwards. We just kind of there was few a people just kind of milling around and outside the door and we just kind of struck up a conversation. And I just kind of asked her a question, just off the cuff, and she answered it. And I was just like, okay, well, she has this information on her flier about doing the podcast. And so I decided to sign up to see, what would happen.

John Brandt

Welcome to Hittin’ the break.

Anna Wilkins

Thank you.

Kathleen Brandt

And also, John and I had a question that day in Topeka at the library, and I kind of gave her an answer and a light bulb went on that she maybe needed to do some other research. So I'm going to start first, Anna, with that question and then get to the other question you asked for Hittin’ the Bricks. And the first question was about Melinda McKinney of Wabaunsee, Kansas.

Kathleen Brandt

And my understanding is you lost her at about 1880 and couldn't find her in her older years after 1880 asset, correct?

Anna Wilkins

Yes.

Kathleen Brandt

When we were talking in the hallway, you thought, well, maybe she passed for white because I had given an example in the DNA class, people might have passed for white, especially for African-Americans. And that's one of the reasons we don't find them. But I want to back up on that a little bit. You mentioned that she was born, I believe, about 1875.

Anna Wilkins

Somewhere around there.

Kathleen Brandt

I think you had said so around 1875, in Tennessee. Okay, first of all, what is your relationship with Melinda?

Anna Wilkins

My grandmother's mother? Okay. No, my grandmother's mother's mother. So it'd be great. Great, right?

Kathleen Brandt

Yes, that's correct. Okay, perfect. So she is a direct line from you. You thought she might have been born from Tennessee. And where did you all get that information?

Anna Wilkins

Well, I just remember my grandmother saying that they had four sisters and one brother, and she always spoke of growing up in Tennessee. So I just took it for granted that everybody was born and raised in Tennessee. I didn't think any different.

Kathleen Brandt

Do you know her actual last name? Is it McKinney? Was her married name or her maiden name?

Anna Wilkins

That see, I don't know, because I one point I thought she was a Jackson. And then because some woman's name or Jackson or something or McKinney. So I didn't know which one to grab or which one. I tried to look at both them, but I found her under McKinney so that, where, I found her.

Kathleen Brandt

So I want to give you a couple of hints on where you can go and do more research before you pickup that maybe she passed for white. It's very possible she never left in one. See Kansas at that time, it was very not only rural, it was barely settled. And so we want to make sure that you're covering everything right there.

So I'm going to give you eight tips. Now, normally, if I'm teaching a presentation on this, I would say eight tips of enhanced to find your female ancestor. So these are the eight tips I would give to you so that you can look her up, find her real maiden name, probably her parents and where she's from..

05:00

Kathleen Brandt

For one, you have a black woman in Woburn City, Kansas, named Melinda. Melinda can be spelled two different ways. It can be spelled several different ways, but every time you see the vowel, put a question mark there so that you're covering both the MA and the MEL And just in case it’s spelled wrong. The MIL. So use that question mark on your vowel, and this is while you're doing, let's say, an Ancestry search.

And we also do that because there's lots of errors in, in the indexing. The other thing I want you to do is do a surname study for Waubonsee, put in only the last name and put it the race as black and see what other Mckinny’s you get. And that might help you narrow her family unit.

A third thing I want you to do is to check the local cemeteries. Now, sometimes the cemeteries are segregated, so you want to also make sure there's not a one just for the colored burials. If there is an age discrepancy, like is she in a household with people who are in their sixties or fifties in these call her a daughter it’s possible they're actually a granddaughter daughter.

So I want you to really analyze your census records. And she may have married young. Very common for Kansans. I have ancestors who married as young as 15 in western Kansas. That also means they may have married several times. You might want to check to see if that has something to do with that whole Jackson McKinney information that you have.

Anna Wilkins

Okay.

Kathleen Brandt

You can check death certificates and you're checking deaths certificates nationwide with anyone with her surname, say, and the mother is, do you have a mother with this Melinda McKinney from Kansas and you'll put a birth of Kansas in there. So we're playing with the databases. And don't forget that Kansas also has odd number census records that gives that a lot of information, not in every county, but in some of the counties and Waubonsee’s one of them. So I want you to not be loyal to your assumptions. Don't have a pre-decision on where she is or what happened to her until you have a reason to have that thought.. I don't know if that might help you.

Anna Wilkins

Yes.

Kathleen Brandt

I don’t know if that will help you at all, John.

John Brandt

I was going to say this, this is really familiar to me because I typically get an eight-step solution from Kathleen about how to change the sheets on the bed or load the dishwasher. Normally involves a short seminar, a quick test afterwards, that’s normally online, but then I'm able to get a load of laundry done.

Kathleen Brandt

Might I add that after 25 years, he still gets a D-minus on making the bed.

John Brandt

Very nice.

Kathleen Brandt

Oh, we're going to just let him keep trying until he gets it right.

John Brandt

When did you start doing your research on your family and what what was kind of the impetus of research?

Anna Wilkins

It was my sister. I have one sister and she's seven years older than myself. But it's just the idea of she has children, grandchild. I have children, grandchildren. And I just came to the conclusion that it's important for those children to know where they come from. You can talk to them day and night, but just to have something physically where they can see and hold and, you know, share, have a continuing one generation to generation, hopefully that that they can just we could just share amongst ourselves and pass it on.

John Brandt

And so that's what put you in it. It was your sister and kind of the idea that somebody's going to need to know these things.

Kathleen Brandt

Things now, that's not why you called in. However.

John Brandt

Now we get to the meat.

Kathleen Brandt

This is, now we get to the meat and Anna, you had also a question on ship records. But I wanted you to clarify exactly what is your question.

Anna Wilkins

I do have manifest of slaves from a family member on my mother's side of the family. And I my question was, is there a way to find out where the slave ships came from versus where they you know, we have an idea of where they ported, but do we have an idea of where they would have come from?

Kathleen Brandt

So is this on the same family line as Melinda or no?

Anna Wilkins

Yes.

Kathleen Brandt

So you submited to me. A ship wrecker. I believe this name is Moses. That's correct. And he was on a manifest of slaves from 1857, is that correct?. So this is one of the questions I had about Melinda. If it was the same family. You thought she was from Tennessee, but Moses was clearly, according to his manifest record, coming into New Orleans area for a man by the name of Peacher. 

10:00

Kathleen Brandt

So were you able to look up the Peacher person? William A. Peacher?

Anna Wilkins

I found that there was the plantation that's still in existence. The family is still very much have roots there. But other than that, nothing else..

Kathleen Brandt

Well, let me explain how we work with the ship Manifest Records first.

Anna Wilkins

Okay.

Kathleen Brandt

So one of the things I'm looking at is the picture you sent me on the manifest that tells me that there was a William A. Peacher from Brandon, Mississippi, not Tennessee. He was the one who was claiming Moses as a slave. So that is in Rankin County, Mississippi. I want to say that first of all, when we're looking at slave manifests, the two main keys is who was the captain of the ship?

Kathleen Brandt

And you want to trace that and you want to trace the person who was paying for the slave or paying for the transport of that slave, which is this fellow from Brandon, Mississippi. We also want to look at the dates. So, I know that this particular ship left Galveston on March the 9th and it went to New Orleans on the 11th. And this ship is the steamship Louisiana, the S.S. Louisiana. So, in this part, I did a very quick search because I was trying to pull together how you got Tennessee. And so, I'm going to give you a few things that will help you when we're tracing slave ships. Besides making sure we researched this shipper and research the captain of the ship, we want to research the ship.

Kathleen Brandt

The easiest way to do all three of those to start with is a newspaper search. And in a newspaper search based on this particular slave manifest, we see that the ship captain was W.H. Talbot. And I just put that in a place like newspaper.dot com, Newspaper Archives, any kind of newspaper research, or maybe Chronicling America, which is free to everyone through the Library of Congress.

Kathleen Brandt

I just put that name in that search bar, and it tells me that William H. Talbot was the captain of the S.S. Steamship for these years, and that particular steamship was not a slave ship. It is a mail ship. But it took freight. So if you had a freight, which would be a slave, he can get an on the mail ship and go that route.

Kathleen Brandt

You can also learn the route this way. So you ask, how do you know where it originated and goes to? Well, the SS Louisiana just does a circle because it's just delivering mail. It goes from Indianola, Texas, to Galveston, Texas, to New Orleans, and then it goes back around again and you could put your freight on and off this ship.

Kathleen Brandt

So we really like the fact that this particular ship was easy to analyze in the trace because that kind of told me also, he really probably was from Rankin, Mississippi. One of the keys to finding this route for this particular ship, was it lands in New Orleans. As you remember. I told you that it looks like our Peacher person is from Rankin County in Mississippi.

Kathleen Brandt

Both are off of the Mississippi River. And if you come down further, you get to the Pearl River. The Pearl River is a swampy area. It is really known for slave runaways because if the slave could get to that Pearl River swamp, but they couldn't be traced. Also, it is noted for the Confederacy. I think it’s St. Tammany Parish.

Kathleen Brandt

If you have Confederate ancestors, you too want to know the path of that Pearl River to the Mississippi River. And it makes sense that your, William, A. Peacher, actually lived on the other side of that Pearl River. A lot of the big city business from that part of Mississippi did their business in New Orleans. So for him to pick up or drop off a slave in New Orleans makes a lot of sense.

Anna Wilkins

I guess it's just I mean, this is wonderful news. Now I know which way to relook or whatever, But yeah, I just remember my grandmother always talked about Tennessee for some reason.

Kathleen Brandt

Probably because of later generations. People wanted to get out of Mississippi for obvious reasons. Tennessee was much friendlier. I mean, when you compare it to Mississippi. So yeah, well, it's very possible that was a stop. Not uncommon with Kansas. I too have family members from North Carolina. Their first stop was Tennessee for several years before they went to western Kansas, though not the the Wabaunsee area.

15:00

Kathleen Brandt

Matter of fact, another weird fact. Oh, no. Outside of, part of Topeka. Part of Topeka. Used to be called Tennessee Town. And it was where all the black people settled. And so it's not uncommon from Tennessee to Kansas, was a very nice stop, especially with Pap Singleton in our world.

Anna Wilkins

Right. Right.

John Brandt

And do you want do you want to mention something about Pap Singleton?

Kathleen Brandt

Pap Singleton, no. You know, people will We'll talk about Pap Singleton on another episode. 

John Brandt

Call you right out on that right now.

Kathleen Brandt

But I can talk about it.

John Brandt

I'm sure you can. But quick, let me check the time. Again, let's jump back to what's come up so often is what about DNA in this case?

Kathleen Brandt

Anna, you will want to take a DNA because we're talking about the picture family. And as I mentioned, these planters all trade it within each other, even those that were all related. So we don't know if you are a direct relation of the Peachers or not, but you may be direct relation to other people that were on other Peacher plantations or other plantations in the area and that would help to place whether or not you were that to see stop, that maybe your ancestors took. It may or may not have the name Peacher involved, but we can look at your cousin matches and decide, well, what kind of migratory path did other people have and it might help you also.

Anna Wilkins

Okay. And I will do that.

Kathleen Brandt

I think I covered, John, everything except one of the other questions you asked about how to trace ship records. Anna. Well, first of all, I want you to remember that you can get a lot of pictures of ship records on the Library of Congress website. But one of our biggest keys to slave manifest records is the National Archives.

Kathleen Brandt

The National Archives has a web page. This archives.gov. And if you go there and you put in slave manifest as your keyword, you see that there are about 30 rows of microfilm on just slave ships. So I would say start with the newspapers in the archivals. The DNA will help also for you to figure out which ship was going in, whatever region you were talking about, and that helps a lot. If you're looking for where they originated, though it often came through the Captain records.

Kathleen Brandt

So those Captain records, a lot of times are held in archives, not always, but that's why we want to research the captains. It tells us where that ship transported as well as, like I said, you're looking at the National Archives slave ship manifest.

Anna Wilkins

Thank you so much. This is what was puzzling me. Well, then you kind of explain it as well. As you know, when you're tracing women, the different how the names can shift so much and so often.

Kathleen Brandt

Yes.

Anna Wilkins

And that's makes it very difficult to make you wonder if you pull in the right person or not.

Kathleen Brandt

I have one thing to mention. You said women's names changed between 1865 to almost 1900. It was not supposed to last that long, slaves were able to choose their own names so everyone might have a different last name. The most famous one we have is Martin Luther King. He was born a king, but his family chose that last name. It was not the name they had when they came out of slavery. 

Anna Wilkins

And his name was Michael. 

Kathleen Brandt

Exactly. First and last names might change. It was slave names. So that's also why DNA might help us. Might I share a nice little tidbit, John?

John Brandt

No.

Kathleen Brandt

I'm going to anyway.

John Brandt

So we're going to put you on a tidbit quota.

Kathleen Brandt

A tidbit quota? Well, I have one very important one that Anna needs to know about.

John Brandt

Oh, okay. We'll lead with this one.

Kathleen Brandt

Okay. The shipper I mention, W.H. Talbot, who was in the SS Louisiana, and I said that route went from Indianola, Texas, to Galveston, Texas, and all the way around to New Orleans and kept going in that circle. Indianola, Texas is best known for the first stop off state in America for the camels that we imported. And the camels were used.

John Brandt

You're saying camels? Do you mean camels?

20:00

Kathleen Brandt

I mean camels.

John Brandt

You mean. Wait a minute. Let's just make sure you don't mean the things that they rode in the cavalry. You mean the things with the humps that you see at the zoo, right?

Kathleen Brandt

I mean, camels.

John Brandt

Okay, I'm just checking.

Kathleen Brandt

Mr. So Indianola, Texas had the 1856 Camel Corps. It landed in Indianola, then they crossed and went all out for the West. And that is what that particular fort was most known for. And we brought in like 45, I think, two shiploads of camels for a western trek across America.

Anna Wilkins

Oh, my goodness. I didn't even think that there were camels ever here.

John Brandt

Okay, That tidbit stays. Okay, that's a good one. Wow.

Kathleen Brandt

So, Anna, Do you have any other questions for me? 

Anna Wilkins

I do not, actually. I'm just looking forward to just diving right back in when I have more time and see what comes up and getting the DNA test done is really my next stop is my next really on the top of my list. Next.

Kathleen Brandt

We will post on our website where we post the episode. Pretty much the things I've told you. So you'll have a road map for your research plan because you know.

John Brandt

You're going to put your eight steps up.

Kathleen Brandt

Yes, I'll put the eight steps up for Melinda and I'll talk again about the ship record store. So which you need to make sure you trace.

John Brandt

And the camels.

Kathleen Brandt

All good genealogists Have a research plan. And so this will get you started on your research plan. As I put John on a camel out west.

John Brandt

Okay. Anna, thank you so much. Greatly appreciate you coming by. There's a lot of fun and really, really interesting. Thank you so much.

Anna Wilkins

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you so much. This is something that is nervous now, but good.

John Brandt

Good. We're friendly bunch.

Anna Wilkins

This is very cool. I really like this and I'm really excited about, you know, the tips that she offered. And I just really enjoyed it.

Kathleen Brandt

Thanks, Hannah, for joining us.

Anna Wilkins

Thank you. Bye bye. Bye. Nice.

John Brandt

Nice meeting you. 

Congratulations. You've made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. We want to thank our guest, Anna Wilkins, for her questions and spending some time with us. Thanks to Chewie Chewbacca Brandt our full-time pizza-bone disposer and part time gaffer for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hittin’ the Bricks is written and performed by Tony Fistknuckle, and the Aphids see their next show in the parking lot of the Wabaunsee Piggly Wiggly on the second Tuesday after the fifth Friday in January. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast, so stop by our Facebook page at Hittin’ the Bricks and let us know.

End of Transcript

Running Time: 22:46

Posted to Buzzsprout, January 14, 2023