From the desk

The glossary The words old records use, in plain English.

The words old records use, and the words we use about them, in plain English. Learn a handful, and an old deed or gravestone starts to talk.

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Abstract: A summary of a document, such as a deed or will, giving its main points. Useful for finding the original, but not the record itself: abstracts drop words and sometimes get names and dates wrong.
Administrator: The person a court appoints to settle the estate of someone who died without a will. Compare executor.
Ahnentafel: German for “ancestor table.” A numbering system for a pedigree: the subject is 1, a person’s father is double their number and their mother double plus one. So 2 is the father, 3 the mother, 4 the father’s father.
Census: A count of the population. The United States has taken one every ten years since 1790; from 1850 it names every free person in the household (enslaved people were counted on separate schedules, usually without names, until 1870). Most of the 1890 census was destroyed after a fire in 1921. Each census is opened to the public 72 years after it was taken.
Clamper: A member of E Clampus Vitus, the joke fraternal order that turns up in newspapers from 1846, followed the gold rush to California, and was revived in 1931 as a historical society best known for its plaques. Ours is the story of its earliest lodge yet found with members named, at Cassopolis in 1846: see our E Clampus Vitus series. E Clampus Vitus® and Clampers® are registered trademarks of E Clampus Vitus, Inc.
Consort: A husband or wife. Often seen on old gravestones: “Mary, consort of John Smith.”
County history: The big county histories printed from the 1870s to the 1910s. Many biographies in them were paid for by the people they describe, so they tend to be reliable on what the family knew well, and generous on everything else; dates and places still need a document.
Credo quia absurdum: Latin for “I believe because it is absurd”: the motto of E Clampus Vitus.
Deed: The written record of land changing hands, copied into the county’s deed books. Deeds often name wives, heirs and neighbors, and sometimes say where a seller had moved to.
Ditto (do.): “The same as above.” Census takers and clerks used it, or a pair of marks, for repeated surnames, birthplaces and occupations.
Double dating: Dates such as “10 February 1731/2.” Before 1752, England and its colonies began the new year on 25 March, so January to March dates were often written with both years.
Et ux.: Latin, “and wife,” in deeds and court records: “John Smith et ux.” means John and his wife.
Executor: The person named in a will to carry it out. Compare administrator.
Field notes: A surveyor’s notebook from the original land survey, recording every line walked: the trees, streams, soil and sometimes the people met along the way.
General Land Office: The federal office that surveyed and sold public land, from 1812 until it became part of the Bureau of Land Management in 1946. Its plats, field notes and patents are free online.
Hewgag: “The great tin horn” of E Clampus Vitus, blown to call the brethren to meet.
Informant: The person who answered the questions on a certificate. On a death certificate the dead person was never the informant, so everything on it is someone else’s memory.
Instant and ultimo: Old newspaper shorthand: “the 4th inst.” means the 4th of this month; “the 20th ult.” the 20th of last month.
Intestate: Having died without a will. The court then appoints an administrator and divides the estate by law.
Land patent: The first transfer of a piece of land from the government to a private owner.
Local legend: The famous ancestor, the buried treasure, the river under the ground. Some are true. The desk reads each one against the record and says which.
Long s (ſ): An s that looks like an f without the full crossbar, used at the start or in the middle of a word until about 1800. “Congreſs” is Congress.
Lore: What a place says about itself: the stories passed around a lake, a township or a lodge, told without a page to point to. Lore is where a hunt often starts; the record is where it ends.
Maiden name: A woman’s surname before marriage. Most records name married women only by their husbands’ surnames, which is why a woman’s own family is the commonest gap in any tree.
mtDNA and Y-DNA: Two DNA tests that follow one line each: mitochondrial DNA passes from mother to child down the all-female line; Y-DNA passes from father to son down the all-male line.
Naturalization: The process of becoming a citizen. Older files often have two parts: a declaration of intention (“first papers”) and, years later, a petition. Later ones can name the town of birth and the ship.
Noble Grand Humbug: The presiding officer of a lodge, and today of a chapter, of E Clampus Vitus, in a role held for one year. See our E Clampus Vitus series.
Pedigree collapse: When the same ancestor appears more than once in a family tree because cousins married. It means fewer separate ancestors than the arithmetic of doubling would suggest.
Plat: A surveyor’s drawing of land divided into lots or parcels, such as a town plan or a subdivision.
Poor Blind Candidate: In E Clampus Vitus, a man on the night of his initiation. What happens to him, the Clampers keep to themselves. See our E Clampus Vitus series.
Probate: The court process that settles a dead person’s estate. A probate file can hold the will, an inventory of belongings, and the names of every heir.
Register system: The standard way of numbering a family register, used by American genealogists since the 1800s. Each descendant gets a number, and the children of each couple are listed with small roman numerals.
Relict: A widow, or less often a widower: someone who outlived their husband or wife.
Section, township and range: The survey grid of the public-land states. A survey township is six miles square and divided into 36 sections of one square mile (640 acres). A land description such as “NE¼ of section 12, T5S R14W” pins down a farm exactly.
Senior: In the 1800s, not always “father.” Sometimes it only meant the older of two men with the same name in town, related or not. Junior was the younger.
Soundex: A code that groups surnames that sound alike: a letter and three digits, so Robert and Rupert both come out as R163. Old census indexes were built on it. Try it in our toolkit.
Tract book: The land office’s ledger of sales, arranged by section, showing who first bought each piece of land and when.
Transcription: A written copy of a record, word for word. Better than an abstract, but every copy is a chance for a new mistake.
Vital records: Records of births, marriages and deaths. Most states only required them from the late 1800s or early 1900s.

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