Heritage

Using Study Bibles in Genealogy

One method to grasp the complexities of our ancestors is approach their lives from the sidelines. For example, you can’t fully know about their religious and spiritual life. However, clues to this closed door can be identified by understanding their understanding. If we can determine what they heard in church and how they may have interpreted that message, we can gain valuable insights. This is why I use Study Bibles. These can also be an excellent secondary tool when seeking background information when developing a narrative for your family history.

Types of Study Bibles

There are many different Bibles on the market today. Some are general and some are specific. For example, for a Scots-Irish Presbyterian family, the Calvinist based Reformation Study Bible provides excellent insight. If your ancestors were of the Irish Brethren tradition, then you certainly would be interested in The Scofield Study Bible. For a Roman Catholic perspective (even if a contemporary one), The Catholic Study Bible provides helpful information. I use the commercial site Christianbook to identify reference material such as these.

It’s the study notes at the bottom of the pages which you will find most informative. Many also have special discussions on specific topics. These notes typically guide the reader through belief, theology, history and culture. Even if an ancestor was illiterate or semi-literate, they would have understood principles taught at church.

Tradition Specific Study Bibles on the Market Today

Upon arrival in an immigrant country, both Irish Catholics and Protestants may have changed religious affiliations. This affects your family narrative and history; opening up a variety of Study Bibles as references.

Faith and understanding are progressive. What a modern Study Bible states may not necessarily be how your ancestors saw their faith. The demands of orthodoxy also do not necessarily correspond with what the person in the pew practices. Even with these considerations, you can draw some important understandings. Below is a selection specific to a particular tradition.

Baptist (Conservative)
The King James Study Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2012).

Calvinist (Reformed, Presbyterian, Congregational)
The Reformation Study Bible (Orlando, Florida: Ligonier Ministries, 2005)

Ecumenical
CEB Study Bible with Apocrypha (Nashville, Tennessee: Common English Bible, 2013).

The HarperCollins Study Bible Including the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, Revised Edition (San Francisco, California: HarperOne, 2006).

The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2003).

The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, Fourth Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Evangelical (Conservative/Fundamentalist)
The Scofield Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1909, 1917).

Evangelical (General)
ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2008).

HCSB Study Bible: Holman Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Holman Bible Publishers, 2010).

NIV Study Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2011).

NKJV MacArthur Study Bible, Revised and Updated Edition (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2012).

The Ryrie Study Bible, Expanded Edition (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 1999).

Jewish
The Jewish Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Latter-day Saints (Utah Mormons)
The Holy Bible (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1979).

Lutheran
The Lutheran Study Bible: English Standard Version (St. Louis, Missouri: Concordia Publishing House, 2009).

NIV Concordia Self-Study Bible (St. Louis, Missouri: Concordia Publishing House, 1973).

Orthodox
The Orthodox Study Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2008).

Pentecostal-Charismatic
Life in the Spirit Study Bible: Formerly Full Life Study Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1992, 2003).

New Spirit-Filled Life Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2013).

Roman Catholic
Anselm Academic Study Bible: New American Bible Revised Edition (Winona, Minnesota: Anselm Academic, 2013).

The Catholic Study Bible: The New American Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2010).

Little Rock Catholic Study Bible (Little Rock, Arkansas: Little Rock Scripture Study, 2011).

The Navarre Bible: New Testament (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008).

Seventh-day Adventists
Andrews Study Bible: Light, Depth, Truth (Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 2010).

The Remnant Study Bible with E. G. White Comments (Coldwater, Michigan: Remnant Publications, 2009).

Wesleyan (Methodist, Holiness)
Wesley Study Bible (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2009).

If you would like to explore more how to place your ancestors in a religious context Contact Us.

Identifying Irish Origins Through Intermarriage

9 Nov By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Irish intermarried with various ethnic groups. Sometimes to find Irish origins, you have to explore the other group.

For example, in the American Southeast, the Scots-Irish intermarried heavily with the Catawba, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and the Muscogee (Creek). If the geography and time period was right for intermarriage, then research tribal records. Remember, tribal membership is determined through a documented lineage. Within that lineage, often in a compiled family history, the Ulster branch may be documented.

The same principle applies to the Maori of New Zealand. They are very mixed-blood with both Catholic and Protestant Irish. Another plus for Maori research is large numbers have converted to Mormonism which almost guarantees additional genealogies.

Even stranger, the Scots-Irish were kidnapped during tribal raids in New England in the mid-1700s, and taken to Quebec. There are entire books written about the kidnapped, their conversion to Catholicism, adoption into the tribes, their native names, and those who eventually returned to New England. Upon returning, they spoke French and a First Nations language (some broken English), finding New England Protestant culture very alien to them.

Sometimes, intermarriage is as simple as an Irish Catholic marrying a German Catholic. In some parts of North America there was hostility between the two groups (example: Cincinnati, Ohio). In other areas, the intermarriage was common place. It may be within a German Catholic record birthplaces in Ireland are preserved.

You will find Scots-Irish Presbyterians marrying German Baptist Brethren (now Church of the Brethren). They settled among each other in the Mid-West and on the frontier in Virginia and Maryland in the mid-1700s. Once you realize your Anabaptist ancestors were really Scots-Irish, with a Germanized surname, this directs your research into Brethren record for an Irish birthplace.

As odd as any of these strategies sound, they do work. This is thinking outside the box.

My Ancestor was an American Spiritualist (Part 2)

1 Nov By Dwight Leave a Comment

Part 2 of this series explores the female medium as a profession. It’s easy to forget in nineteenth century America, women could not be public speakers, and were denied most basic rights accepted today.

In 1848 when news of the Fox sisters began to travel, the first women’s rights convention was also being held also in Upstate New York. The two currents converged. While not all feminist were Spiritualist, all Spiritualists were feminist. By combining the two, female trance mediums found a public arena from which they could deliver trance messages to a mixed audience of receptive men and women. There were several types of nineteenth century mediums:

Medical Medium: These mediums would see inside a patient’s body and prescribe non-evasive healing.

Mental Medium: These mediums use their own spirit eyes and spirit ears to see and hear things clairvoyantly.

Normal Medium: During the 1850s and 1860s, male mediums traveled the lecture circuit addressing their audiences in a “normal” state outside the trance state.

Physical Medium: These mediums demonstrated in phenomenon such as spirit rappings, table tipping, slate writings (on chalk boards) also called independent writing, direct voice sounds, flashes or balls of light, the materialization and dematerialization of objects, levitation, transfiguration, spirit photography, spirit painting, spirit cabinets, spirit music, and the materialization of a spirit being.

Trance Medium: The trance mediums enter an alternate state of consciousness wherein there is access to the knowledge of the spirits. They functioned as oracles of spiritual truth.

Test Medium: In physical mediumship, tests were often implemented to assure that the medium was not creating the phenomenon. These test mediums could be blindfolded, gagged, tied up or locked in cabinets while the spirit manifestation occurred around them.

In the 1870s physical mediums began to replace trance medium. As the profession became more entertainment than religious; it lost its empowerment for women. The American Society for Psychical Research: www.aspr.com investigated the claims of mediums and publicly exposed frauds. The newly formed Theosophical Society and Christian Science began catching the waves of dissatisfied Spiritualists who no longer saw mediumship as embodying their vision for a better world and social reform.

For more information on the role of mediums and Spiritualism in general, I would recommend some locally published or reprinted books authored by Spiritualists. One such bookshop is at the Morris Pratt Institute: www.morrispratt.org

B. F. Austin, The A. B. C. of Spiritualism (1920); Mark A. Barwise, A Preface to Spiritualism (1937); Peggy Barnes, Psychic Facts (2002); A. Campbell Holms, The Fundamental Facts of Spiritualism (1927); Rev. Lena Barnes Jeffs, The Laws of Spirit Mediumship (1999); Margaret L. King, Mediumship and Its Phases (2002); Hudson Tuttle, Mediumship and Its Laws: Its Conditions and Cultivation (1904, 1969).

Why Were Methodists so Radical?

11 Oct By Dwight Leave a Comment

As tame as the Methodist Church is by modern standards, in the 1700s, it was considered radical and dangerous by many. Yet, it would spread like wildfire, and would emerge as the fourth largest denomination in all of Ireland. The first Methodists congregations in North America were planted by Irish immigrants.

The chief founder and theologian was John Wesley (1703-91), who with his brother Charles Wesley (1707-88) would gather Bible study groups within the Church of England. The Methodist Church would not emerge until after John Wesley’s death.

Although the Wesleyans were Arminian (Christ died for all people not just the elect) in their approach to theology, others were more Calvinistic-Methodist. Arminian theology as developed by John Wesley has come to be known as Wesleyan-Arminianism. However, Wesley refined Arminianism with a strong evangelical emphasis on justification by faith. He did departed from Classical Arminianism in the following areas, and this is where the Methodists were considered radical:

Atonement: Wesley sought a relationship between God’s love for people and God’s hatred of sin. To him it was not a legal demand for justice so much as an act of mediated reconciliation.

Possibility of apostasy: Wesley taught Christians could apostatize and lose their salvation. In Wesleyan-Arminianism, it’s not the sin committed that is the grounds for loosing salvation, but it is more related to experiences that are profound and prolonged. Wesley saw two areas in which a person could lose their salvation; unconfessed sin and the actual expression of apostasy. Wesley saw these as not permanent states, but the sinner could return.

Christian perfection: Wesley taught that Christians could attain a state of practical perfection wherein they lack all voluntary sin through the Holy Spirit. This was a state of perfect love and could happen in this life. This has also been termed entire sanctification. Perfect Christians did not mean they no longer violate the will of God, for involuntary transgressions remain. Christians remain subject to temptation and still have a need to pray for forgiveness and holiness. It is not an absolute perfection but a perfection of love. Some see this was Wesley’s greatest theological contribution to evangelicalism. He would outline his theology in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1777): http://gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/perfect.html Versions of this doctrine would birth the Wesleyan-Holiness and Pentecostal-Charismatic movement.

The Methodists would prove to be a highly successful evangelical movement in the British Isles. It caught the imaginations of the common person as it called for the individual to experience Jesus personally.

I would suggest the following books to understand Wesleyan-Methodist thought: Richard Clutterbuck, Handing on Christ: Recovering the Gift of Christian Doctrine (2009); Kenneth J. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (2007) and John Wesley: A Theological Journey (2003); Kenneth J. Collins and John H. Tyson, Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition (2001); Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (1994).

The Travellers

8 Oct By Dwight Leave a Comment

“Travellers” or “Tinkers” are nomadic Irish who exist as a sub-culture within both Ireland and the UK. If you have spent time in Ireland or Northern Ireland, you have probably seen them. You may have even heard the locals speak in no-so-nice terms about Travellers in their community. I certainly have!

While they speak English, they also speak a Pidgin English known as Cant, Shelta or Gammon. It is known to insiders and meant to mislead outsiders. The Travellers are not Romani Gypsie (Roma) as on the Continent. They are Irish.

Large immigrant communities are concentrated in Murphy Village, South Carolina; White Settlement, Texas; and the London boroughs of Harrow and Brent. It is possible you will trace back into a Traveller family.

Their origins are debated. Some believe origins lie in families made homeless during the conquest of William of Orange in the 1600s and then later in the 1840s by the Potato Famine. As disposed tenants with nowhere to go, they became inter-locking families who travelled and intermarried. Recent genetic tests show at least some Travellers have a much longer history.

I have personally seen the word “Traveller” in the christening records of the Roman Catholic and the Church of Ireland. While traditionally Catholic – don’t limit your search. With indexes to church records now readily available, documenting them across the island is easier than ever!

The University of Limerick has a “Traveller and Roma Collection”:

www3.ul.ie/~library/travellers and for genealogical purposes the “Romany and Traveller Family History Society”: www.rtfhs.org.ukis a must! There is no shortage of websites on the Travellers. The “Navan Travellers Workshop” is but one example of quality presentations: http://www.travellerheritage.ie/default.asp

Presbyterian Identity

13 Sep By Dwight Leave a Comment

The beliefs explaining the core identity of the Scots-Irish Presbyterians, helps us to understand what drove this community of believers with such zeal. It also helps us to understand many of the records they left behind. In this worldview, the Reformation is always reforming itself, with true reform never really being finished. This blog is best read with my “What is T.U.L.I.P.?” posted on 26 August 2012. Historic Presbyterian identity markers are:

Scripture. The Bible provides a perspective from which every question in life could be viewed. Historically, Presbyterians would view the Bible as verbally inspired and inerrant. In contemporary Presbyterianism, tensions exist over whether the Bible is verbally inspired, being the very autography of God; or thought inspired, conveying the meaning and not the words of God.

Divine Sovereignty. God continues to be supreme and rules the creation in an active manner; termed Providence. It is tied to election and predestination. Both the Sovereignty of God and the Providence of God are key Calvinist principles.

The Covenant. The Bible is viewed as a whole, with Old and New Testaments revealing God’s unified plan. This is the Covenant of Grace, with a chosen people, and God has an active relationship with them. Key themes such as salvation by grace alone, the necessity of blood atonement, and the church as a gathering of redeemed people (including children) are all Old Testament concepts brought forward in the work of Christ. Most Calvinist distinctives hinge on Covenant Theology.

The Law of God. The Law of God is revealed in the 10 Commandments. Believers are active participants in the political and social arena as the application of the Law of God is beneficial to everybody, believers and non-believers, in building a just society. This has prompted Presbyterians to be active participants in the political and social arena in many countries.

The Church. The church is in both the Old and New Testament; a living body, with Christ as its head. There are two sacraments; baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is an initiation into the community of believers, and the whole family, including children, becomes part of a Covenant community. Communion or the Lord’s Supper is a means of spiritual renewal.

Rpcnabanner — Reformed Presbyterian Church. Taken from www.wikipedia.org

The Kingdom of God. God will come to earth to reverse sins’ effects so that justice and righteousness prevail. Christ established the Kingdom on earth in the form of the church. However, the fullness of the Kingdom is when Christ comes again. The Christian must not retreat from it, but to engage it with actions, helping to bring peace and reconciliation to the world.

In depth studies of these principles can be found in: Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism (2008); James Montgomery Boice, Foundations of the Christian Faith: A Comprehensive and Readable Theology (1986); Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (2011); Dr. Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith 2^nd ed. (1998).

The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland (1844)

25 Aug By Dwight Leave a Comment

If you are writing a pre-famine family history, or simply wanting to know what life was like in a particular area, then The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland (1844) may be what you are looking for. This is a ten volume set arranged alphabetically. This work is found several places online, so it is best to Google the title of the book and see which database you want to consult.

This work is similar in scope to the two volume Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837): www.libraryireland.com/topog/index.php by Samuel Lewis, which I have already blogged about. The two sources together provide you with an excellent pre-Famine view of Ireland.

The gazetteer is written from the government point of view, so a parish entry will mean civil parish. However, Roman Catholic history and statistics will be listed under the civil parish. There are entries for counties, parishes, islands, towns and considerable villages, baronies, principal mountains, bays, all fishing harbors, all rivers, principal lakes, chief mines and mineral districts, on all villages which contain at least twenty houses, and hundreds of others which contain fewer, and principal rural antiquities to name some of the topics covered. This remains a true encyclopedia of pre-Famine Ireland. What is not listed are histories on individual townlands.

The entries all sorts of statistics taken from the 1831 and 1841 censuses. This in itself can provide you with hard to find information from which to develop your narrative, if you are writing a family history or conducting historical research.

A breakdown of the volumes are as follows: Volume 1 (A-Arm), Volume 2 (Arm-Car), Volume 3 (Car-Cus), Volume 4 (Dal-Gal), Volume 5 (Gal-Kil), Volume 6 (Kil-Mag), Volume 7 (Mag-Rap), Volume 8 (Rap-Tib), Volume 9 (Tib-You), Volume 10 (You-Z and Index).

Irish, African, Slave, Muslim, Christian and Hoodoo Practitioner

29 Jun By Dwight Leave a Comment

The intermixing of Europeans with African slaves produced new religious ideas. This happened openly in the 1600s as Irish indentured servants intermixed with Africans. It also happened through the master-slaver relationship. What it gave birth to was little known piece of American religious history.

Many of the kidnapped Africans were Muslim, and a hybrid form of the faith continued on the plantations, combining Islam, Protestant Christianity, and Hoodoo. Hybrid Islam survived on the isolated Georgia islands into the 1870s. In regard to Hoodoo, it means to “conjure.” It is a folk practice, mixing the Germanic-Swiss hexmeister from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with indigenous African, Islam, Native American and European folk magic.

If you study the “Slave Narratives” recorded in 1936-38; the former slaves describe the mixed practices. These are on www.ancestry.com under the database: “U.S., Interviews with Former Slaves, 1936-1938,” and elsewhere on the Internet. Georgia Presbyterian minister Rev. Charles Colcock, wrote a guide for missionaries going on the plantation. His The Religious Instruction of Negros in the United States (1842): http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/jones/jones.html provides amazing details as to what he observed. He noted the slaves took the stories of the Quran and transferred them over to the Bible seeing both religions as the same religious idea (see page 125), and this was 1842! It’s an otherworldly and bizarre read by our standards!

Concerning Christianity, Catholic slaves often would mix their faith with Louisiana Voodoo. In the Protestant South, the Baptist and Methodist denominations would dominate African American life. There they mixed Hoodoo into their faith. Voodoo and Hoodoo are very different.

Just be careful not limit what it means to be Irish to white and Christian. Irish identity may have become submerged into the African American experience, but the Irish contributed to the mixture of ideas and faith (Catholic, Protestant and folk religion).

The Irish Workhouse (1838-1948)

26 May By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Boards of Guardians administered poor relief (1838-1948), and each Poor Law Union had a Workhouse. Union boundaries can be found in Brian Mitchell’s A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland (2002).

The Workhouse regiment was so grueling that only those who had no other choice went there. Workhouses provided a haven for unmarried pregnant girls, deserted women, orphan children, sick, handicapped, the elderly and poor. If a family entered together, they were separated by category.

Funds for emigration purposes were used heavily during the Potato Famine (1845-51). Due to the overcrowding of the Workhouses the Outdoor Relief programs began in 1847. Under this program, people could remain in their homes, and work for food.

The records are housed in several repositories such as the County Library system, The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the National Archives of Ireland. Many are on microfilm at the Family History Library. This is such a heart wrenching subject, and many research papers and even Workhouse records have been placed online.

The detail provided in these records is amazing. Notation such as marital status (single, married, deserted), the status of a child (orphaned, deserted, bastard), the condition arrived (physically dirty, has clothes, physical and emotional condition), religion, date

arrived and date died or discharged. The “Minute Books” document assistance given to emigrate. The majority of the information on the residents will be in the “Indoor Relief Registers.”

If the Workhouse is the last place you document your ancestors prior to their emigration, then the date they were discharged from the Workhouse will be the closest record to a departure. When it is compared with the U.S. passenger or Canadian arrival list, a clearer picture will emerge and you will be able to create a time line.

The Value of Joining a Genealogical Society

28 Apr By Dwight Leave a Comment

The future of the genealogy society has been discussed much in my profession as of late. Many feel as though their time has passed. Others now see societies as educational beacons.

A typical society will act as an educational resource, holding classes and hosting speakers at their meetings. In September, I’m one of the guest speakers at the genealogy conference at the Kelowna & District Genealogical Society: www.kdgs.ca in British Columbia.

Many societies try to match the needs of their members by forming special groups, such as an Irish Interest Group. Others focus around technology. Some societies focus on record preservation, through indexing and publishing programs. I use such indexes in my client research constantly. I am so grateful when I find what I’m looking for in a book or on an online database.

While societies can be on the state level, such as the Ohio Genealogical Society: www.ogs.org others are on the county level, such as the Franklin County Genealogical Society: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohfcghs/In this case, the Franklin County society would be a chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society.

Then there are Irish societies. For example, the Irish Genealogical Society International concentrates specifically on the world of Irish genealogy: www.irishgenealogical.org Their membership is international and their journal The Septs is the prime Irish genealogical journal in the United States. I have a regular column in this journal.

If you do not belong to a society I would suggest you look into it. See what educational programs they sponsor, and most important, what talents you can offer them.

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