Finding Ancestors in The Congressional Serial Set

Episode Overview

Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping researchers uncover records and historical context that bring family stories to life. In this episode, host Kathleen Brandt explores the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, one of the most overlooked resources in genealogy research.

Far more than a collection of congressional documents, the Serial Set contains petitions, testimony, claims, investigations, and reports that can place ordinary Americans into the historical record. Kathleen explains how these records can help researchers discover ancestors, understand community issues, and add context to family histories that extend far beyond names and dates.

In This Episode, You'll Learn

•  What the U.S. Congressional Serial Set is and why genealogists should care about it 
•  How digitized federal records make searching easier than ever 
•  The types of ancestors who may appear in Congressional records 
•  How to use the Serial Set alongside other record collections 
•  Research strategies for finding ancestors when direct name searches fail 

Topics Covered

•  The U.S. Congressional Serial Set and its genealogical value
•  Searching digitized federal documents through govinfo.gov 
•  Veterans, widows, petition signers, centenarians, and community advocates 
•  Congressional petitions, testimony, claims, and investigations 
•  Using the Serial Set as both a primary source and supporting evidence 
•  Freedmen's Bureau records and federal documentation 
•  Reconstruction-era records and connections to Juneteenth 
•  Southern Claims Commission files and witness testimony 
•  Researching formerly enslaved individuals and enslavers 
•  Search strategies using ships, locations, organizations, and community events 

Episode Discussion & Key Moments

Kathleen explains why many genealogists overlook the Congressional Serial Set, assuming it only contains information about elected officials and national politics. In reality, these volumes often document the lives of everyday Americans who interacted with the federal government through petitions, compensation claims, military matters, land disputes, and community concerns.

The episode explores how digitization efforts have made these records more accessible and how researchers can use them to uncover details unavailable in local records. Kathleen discusses the value of combining Serial Set findings with sources such as Freedmen's Bureau records, military files, land records, and local histories.

Special attention is given to Reconstruction-era documentation, including Southern Claims Commission files that contain affidavits, witness statements, and testimony from formerly enslaved individuals, enslavers, neighbors, and community members. These records can provide extraordinary context for understanding families during and after the Civil War.

Key questions examined include:

•  How can federal records help solve local genealogy problems? 
•  What kinds of ordinary people appear in Congressional documents? 
•  What should researchers do when a name search produces no results? 
•  How can historical events be used to uncover hidden family connections? 

Resources & Research Tools Mentioned

•  U.S. Congressional Serial Set 
•  GovInfo.gov digital federal collections 
•  Freedmen's Bureau records 
•  Southern Claims Commission files 
•  Reconstruction-era federal records 
•  Military and pension records 
•  Petitions, testimony, and claims documentation 

Why This Episode Matters

Many researchers focus exclusively on local records while overlooking federal collections that document entire communities and major historical events. The Congressional Serial Set provides access to stories, claims, testimony, and evidence that can place ancestors within the broader context of American history and reveal connections that other records miss.

About the Podcast

Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping listeners navigate historical records, uncover hidden sources, and understand the larger historical forces that shaped their ancestors' lives.

Transcript

Welcome And Summer Schedule

John 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of Flyover Country in the Heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty mow. Welcome to Hittin't the Bricks with Kathleen, the Do-It-Yourself Genealogy podcast with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be talking about a Congress you're less likely to hate, the U.S. Congressional Serial Set. Now that you're here, we have a quorum. So let's start hitting the bricks. Hey baby. You're so silly.

Kathleen 0:30

But John, it sounds like you have me on a tight schedule.

John 0:33

I do. We're on tight schedules these days. So it's a great segue to talk about schedules, and let's do talk about schedules here for a moment. Because normally we do two podcasts a month. That's been our schedule.

Kathleen 0:46

And I'm hearing podcasters across the nation laughing because they do like two a week. Oh, I know.

John 0:52

So that's okay. There's people who do far more. Um but my poor wife is working with me, so two is Herculean as far as what we've been doing. To get me to actually do the studio work in it. Um, but we're going on a summer schedule, so we're only gonna be doing one a month for the summer, basically. And explain to them why I am I am failing our listeners by dropping down to just one podcast a month. Why, why are we doing this?

Kathleen 1:24

Well, because we're also having our book published right now, and you are the lead in design person, if not the only one right now.

John 1:35

No, that is the only one.

Kathleen 1:36

That is the only one.

John 1:38

I would love to be able to subcontract, but I am not subcontracting. Chewie refused the job.

Kathleen 1:44

So the book Behind the Uniform is being written and in the publishing stage. We have a short time frame for that, and you have to do double duty. So thank you for that, though.

John 1:57

Ah, you're welcome. Um, it's so much fun. It's just the way I imagined my retirement. On to other pleasant topics.

What The Serial Set Is

John 2:06

You got very excited about this podcast upcoming, this one that we're doing right now, because you said it was about the congressional set. Congressional cereal set. Congressional cereal set. So this doesn't have anything to do with Congress eating breakfast, nothing. Not that kind of cereal, John. If I get to my notes, I wouldn't I would probably know that.

Kathleen 2:28

You should know that. Do you even know what the congressional serial set is and what its purpose is?

John 2:35

No, of course not. I know nothing about the congressional serial set.

Kathleen 2:39

Okay, so let's talk about that first. What it is is the government's record, and it is literally a congressional record from the early times, right after the War of 1812. They have kept these records for every group of Congress. Now, actually, we can go back further, but they're not as clean. These records are now digitized and online. So what they do is it tells you what's going on in America, USA. But it tells us more than that because people think it is about Congress, and it's not. It's about the citizens.

John 3:16

I think what I'm hearing is my ancestors, even if they're not politicians, might be part of congressional records.

Kathleen 3:23

Absolutely. I mean, they name our ancestors. I can't say all of our ancestors, but at any given time, your ancestor can be given their name in these records, whether it's for military or a petition or any kind of testimony. There are so many ways that I find them. The other day when I was looking for a particular military person, I found them in prison in Washington, D.C. He was named, he was given his race, and why he was in prison.

John 3:56

And now see, I'm kind of curious why was he in prison?

Kathleen 4:00

Well, one was two of them had high were highway robbers. One was accused of trying to sell enslaved people that were free.

John 4:12

And so he was serving in DC. So what what you're really describing is not what um what most people would think when they hear you know congressional record.

Kathleen 4:21

They do, and they avoid it. Most genealogists avoid it. However, there's two things they need to know. One is they've been digitized, not all of them, but many of them are already digitized on the govinfo.gov website, and they're searchable. So you can just search for your ancestor in your county, your area for the time frame you're looking for.

John 4:45

So, what kind of information would those records contain?

Kathleen 4:49

One of the records I was looking for with a client was for the Mexican American War. And a lot of Americans sued Mexico. They wanted Mexico to pay for their losses. But the documents are there with your ancestors' name, what they were claiming, and how much they were claiming. And I'm gonna do a blog on that part because people have asked me about that part. And so if these people were often in the military, their questions for compensation or the Southern Claims Commission, if you were a union person living in a Confederate state, they too were compensated. And so a lot of times we get more of the circumstances than on ancestry or family search. I just want to make sure our listeners understand that the congressional serial set is not just a lot of papers about Congress. It's really about the citizens. It's the citizens who wrote in and who are named, who are highlighted in these records for a cause, an issue, or some financial exchange that needed to be rectified.

John 6:06

So it might be grievance that they're writing in to their congressmen.

Kathleen 6:11

That's one thing. Another one could be your ancestor, like my great-grandmother, might have made it to a hundred years old, and the centenarians were honored by Congress. Their names may be in those records.

John 6:27

Oh, interesting. Is this where in the congressional serial set, is this where Juneteenth comes into the conversation?

Juneteenth And Reconstruction Paper Trail

Kathleen 6:34

It is very closely tied to Juneteenth. And people overlook that also. The one thing about these records is they're not divided racially, but by issues, because it's the citizens bringing it up. So we can follow from the Reconstruction era to recently when Juneteent was actually formalized as a federal holiday. We can follow what has happened through these years. What we normally do, John, in these circumstances when we're working with the congressional serial sets, we use it as collaborative information, but it actually is a primary foundation, right? So let's say I'm working with the Freedman Bureau records and I'm working with some formerly enslaved persons. What I can do is find more details with them or about them rather inside the congressional records. So we're tying it all together about an issue. So not only does it subset regions like the South or Northern State, it also would take issues, and we can also search these records by dates. So it allows me to get a fuller picture of what was going on with my ancestor. We don't always follow our ancestors' name directly, but we might follow their community. We might find a newspaper article that references an issue within, let's say, something leading up to the Juneteenth, like the Reconstruction Era. And from there, I can dig into the congressional serial set and get the background information that might even mention that community, the people who have approached their congressional representative and get their information for my specific ancestor.

John 8:35

So there are literally thousands of individuals that you might be researching that might be your ancestor that might appear in a congressional record set or a congressional serial set.

Kathleen 8:47

One of the things that I should mention is when I'm talking, let's say, about the African Americans in the Reconstruction era, they were active participants and their voices were heard in the congressional serial set. They were not just a subject of the Reconstruction, they were actually the movers who had an active voice in that movement.

Southern Claims And Coerced Testimony

John 9:11

I have heard you talk about the the wonders and joys of the Southern Claims Commission. We we've covered that before. I I guess every genealogist knows that record set.

Kathleen 9:22

However, where there was an enslaved person, there was an enslaver. And it should be known by all genealogists because it was part of the American history. And it is recorded the activities of people's ancestors separate from the congressional series, and then you can pull it together. A recent client that I was looking for was named DeLap, and he was a slave trafficker, slave trader, rather.

John 9:53

No, I think you can use that interchangeably. Human trafficker, slave trader. It's just like a niche inside behaviors, that's all.

Kathleen 10:03

But as I was following him, it was two brothers. One of the brothers died and asked for compensation for their company.

John 10:15

Because they lost a piece of property.

Kathleen 10:17

The Delap brothers, one of them passed away, and the other one wanted to make a claim on the property loss because they said that now they were really on the union side and they actually got cleared, even though they were slave traders, and they were cleared and were compensated for their company's loss. Southern Claims Commission, the people who were attached to the union could ask for compensation. Some of them just made it up, but they had to have witnesses. And who was a better witness than the person you enslaved? The enslaved people witnessed for their enslaver that they were actually union friendly.

John 11:04

Wow.

Kathleen 11:04

And that's where we see these people all tied together because somebody wants money. They present it to a congressional hearing or they send in a petition or a request to their Congress person and they get approved by it. It doesn't mean that the enslaver was really for the union, but it was decided they had a valid stance to be union friendly.

John 11:33

So the positive aspect in the from the research side of this, ignoring everything else that goes along with it, the positive side is that we're seeing that you could get the name of an ancestor that was enslaved.

Kathleen 11:48

Correct.

John 11:49

You could get their name and their information because they would have done court depositions.

Kathleen 11:54

Uh petitions. They did petitions and test or affidavits that were included in the records.

John 11:59

Wow. Wow. That would be that would be some and I I'm assuming you've read things like that.

Kathleen 12:05

I've read quite a few. And then when you do the research of actually what happened in history, which Congress didn't have digitized newspapers, but we do, you could see that they were literally slave traders. You actually could see their advertisement of who they were selling.

John 12:22

And they and then they would use their slaves in order to get compensation to defraud.

Kathleen 12:27

And a lot of times the previously enslaved person got something out of it. Maybe a piece of land, maybe a cow or something out of it.

John 12:37

Yeah, okay. Yeah. I'm sure they caught something out of it. I'm just I'm not even going down that road today. Not even.

Kathleen 12:47

Okay. But this is what I was telling you. The the conversation about congressional cereal sets is wonderful. It's a primary source.

John 12:56

No, that's really interesting.

Kathleen 12:58

People are actually telling what they saw, when they saw it, where they saw it, and who was around them. Well, it was the community or the neighbors who can also verify. It doesn't necessarily mean for the G for the genealogists that what they said was honest. Some of it was coerced.

John 13:18

Yeah. But it doesn't really matter. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter because you from a research standpoint, the actual testimony is is a lot of flavor. But if you're looking for an ancestor and can actually have their name, if that's what you're searching for, or who is their enslaver, or your ancestor who was an enslaver or a trafficker, that you're able to find that information out through the congressional serial set, right?

Military Sailors Ships And Local Context

Kathleen 13:48

Yes, because it also tells you about military service. It tells you if someone was a sailor or a soldier or they got on a ship that may or may not have been legal. A lot of this is documented in those records. So you might find your ancestor on a ship in one of the manifest records. I say go and look up that ship and that information as much as you can to see if it had anything inside the congressional serial set. Because you get more background on it. And you get more background of what happened. That was a fun one with that Mexican war one. It was all of the shipwreckers and how many got uh commodered. So I could see that a ship might have been taken by the Mexican country and they wanted their compensation for that ship.

John 14:40

So even if you're not finding your ancestor directly in any of these record sets, then you are at least seeing the world they lived in.

Kathleen 14:50

Oh, that's wonderful. The world they lived in for their time frame and often with their community, because remember, someone was representing your ancestor too. One of the records I found in Rutherford, North Carolina area, I think it was in Polk County, or it might have been Tyron area, but in North Carolina, I found a record right after the Civil War with one of my ancestors who was leading the Reconstruction era change, making sure African Americans were registered to vote and that they were citizens. This is in 1860 still. And I have the documents that tell what this group was doing and their names are on it. So I can look at the North Carolina information and take the congressional serial set and corroborate that information and see where my ancestor was involved with this movement in this area.

John 15:52

Wow. That's a really powerful piece, and it is a primary source.

Kathleen 15:56

It is a primary source because the recording is being done by the people who did it at the time it was done.

Famous Names Search Tips And Farewell

John 16:05

Okay, so I know you you said your family was mentioned, or your your ancestor, I should say, was mentioned in this. Who are some of the other better-known African Americans that appear?

Kathleen 16:17

So people like Hiram Revels, they know Robert Brown or Elliott and John Roy Lynch. These are people who were very well known to historians. But John, seriously, what excites me more than a few famous people, it's kind of like not that we don't want to honor the same four or five people that we know in history books. It is that ordinary people, our ancestors, their names appeared in these testimonies and petitions and claims, and they were not famous. They are not well known. They might have been a supporter of a movement, they might have signed a petition. Many of them did affidavits and submitted them. They're there.

John 17:04

Well, those are the people we actually are researching. There's a there's a small percentage of us who are looking for our famous ancestor or will find our famous ancestor, but the most of us are looking for the unnamed names uh that that so often occur.

Kathleen 17:19

That's the whole point. Most of us aren't descended from senators, we're descended from citizens.

John 17:25

So, what's what's our takeaway for listeners on this, Kathleen?

Kathleen 17:29

I would say our biggest takeaway is don't assume congressional records are only for politicians. Because the congressional serial set, it is really a record of Americans interacting with their government. And because of that, it's documented. And it's amazing what you will find. Veterans appear, widows appear, community advocates are in it, as well as the petition signers and even formerly enslaved individuals. They are in these records.

John 18:00

Well, yeah, and especially this time of year, it's worth remembering, Juneteenth, that African Americans were not only the subjects of Reconstruction, they were active participants in the Reconstruction. That's a that's a point you make often, is that progress has never been linear as it's often presented in history. Just after the Civil War, African Americans were far more prevalent and far more active, and were allowed to be far more active and prevalent in government roles, even, than they were in the 1960s.

Kathleen 18:35

That is correct, because they were doing a lot of suppression at that point. Whereas there was a time and we can see the change if we read on the issues, how the African voices were preserved in federal records. So those voices they belong to our own ancestors.

John 18:53

Yeah. Good reason, if nothing else, an excellent reason to go to the uh where do you find that again?

Kathleen 18:59

The website for the for the digitized version, and some of your libraries might have a full authentic copy, is the govinfo.gov.

John 19:07

Okay. So you got your the work cut out for you the rest of the uh month. Get to work then, people. John, I have a Machine game to play. Well, congratulations, you made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. Thanks to new listeners in South Korea, Vietnam, and Botswana. And of course, thanks to you for tuning in, downloading, and subscribing. The theme song for Hit in the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fistknuckle and the Heat Waves. Watch for their next appearance at an anticyclone near you. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know.