No One Book Will Cover It All

Today completes the series on our ancestors’ migration and settlement patterns in America. Hopefully, it will help you fit your ancestor more correctly into his time and place.

It’s unfortunate that a single source cannot be recommended for further research, but there’s not just one book that covers all the internal migration routes that developed as immigrants settled America. However, historical atlases and books on specific subjects - canals, early post roads, spread of civilization - will help. American history textbooks will furnish background, and specific area histories will supply fuller information.

To help determine into which port your ancestor’s ship arrived, consult the “Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives,” in the Genealogy Section of the downtown Spokane Library.

As you puzzle your ancestral family’s migrations, keep logic and common sense in mind. They might not have traveled from Point A to Point B over the seemingly shortest way if that route led over the mountains. It was easier to travel a longer way around if it were by boat.

Today, the eastern mountains do not appear to be a barrier, but they surely were. Picture a dense, brushy forest and imagine how you would get a wagon through - going uphill, to boot.

Many routes followed Indian trails, which in turn followed earlier game trails. Many paralleled water courses: migrating animals and people need water.

Knowing how your ancestor traveled from place to place adds so much to your family history. You might know the family came through the port of New York, but how did they get to Wisconsin? My German family ended up in the Midwest, which port would they have come through?

Historical fiction can help: James Michener devotes an entire chapter in “Texas” to tell the story of a German family coming to early day Texas. In “The Immigrant,” John Jakes tells why a young boy left Germany, how he traveled, and how he walked from New York to Chicago! Wilhelm Moberg’s classic stories of Swedish immigrants to the Midwest help us see and understand.

Now for a few reader queries. If you have information for these folks, please write directly to them.

Verneice Smith Adams, P.O. Box 430, Dallesport, WA 98617-0430, seeks information on Zylpha Augusta MANDIGO who married Myron Wright ELLITHORPE in 1864 in Illinois. She died 5 Oct 1939 in Rose Lake, Kootenai County, Idaho.

Barbee Hodgkins, 605 Sherman, The Dalles OR, 97058: looking for descendants of Jonah and Jane MOSIER. She died 25 Aug 1865 in Wasco County, Oregon, leaving seven children.

Diane Smith Royer, 45305 - 203rd, Arlington S.D. 57212-6130: researching the SMITH, RILEY and THURMAN families of Whitman County, Washington; and Linn and Lane counties, Oregon.

Marilyn Seagert, 2300 B Road, Redwood Valley CA, 95470: researching William Henry TEEL and his wife, Sarah Hannah SMITH, probably in their 40s when they lived in Spokane in 1886; she died in Hollywood, Calif.

Darlyene Howard, 24183 N. Suttenfield Road, Acampo CA, 95220-9730: Charles ROBINSON, b. 1867, is listed in the 1889 census for Whitman County in the same household as George SMOOT. He had a younger sister, Jane; a Jane SMOOT is also listed in the household. Did Jane Robinson marry George Smoot about 1888, or …?

, DataTimes MEMO: Donna Potter Phillips welcomes letters from readers. Write to her at The Spokesman-Review, Features Department, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210. For a response, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Donna Potter Phillips The Spokesman-Review