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HIT A BRICK WALL?
Do you have an ancestor who seems to have disappeared from the records?
Maybe you can’t find their parents.
Perhaps you don’t know where they were born or they simply vanished between the census years.
SEND US YOUR GENEALOGY BRICK WALL!
Each quarter, we’ll select a member’s research mystery to feature in our quarterly newsletter. We’ll share what is known, what records have already been searched, and possible avenues for further research.
GENEALOGY TIP OF THE QUARTER
GENEALOGY TIP OF THE QUARTER
Don’t Search for Your Ancestor—Search for Their Neighbors!
Can’t find an ancestor in a census, land record, or other source?
Try searching for the people who lived around them. Names were often misspelled, handwriting was misread, and census indexes can be surprisingly inaccurate. If you know the names of your ancestor’s neighbors, relatives, or other associates, search for them instead.
Once you find a familiar person, look through the surrounding pages to see whether your ancestor is nearby. This is part of what genealogists call the FAN Club approach— researching an ancestor’s Friends, Associates, and Neighbors.
QUICK TIP: When you find your ancestor in a census, write down several nearby households. Those neighbors may become valuable clues later.
WPWGS LOOK BACK -
WPWGS LOOK BACK -
WESTERN OKLAHOMA HISTORY
WESTERN OKLAHOMA HISTORY
THE ESCAPE OF NORTHERN CHEYENNE
On September 9, 1878, Chief Dull Knife and Chief Little Wolf led over 300 Northern Cheyenne men, women, and children on a desperate flight for freedom from their reservation near Fort Reno, Oklahoma. Relocated to the Darlington Agency in Indian Territory, the tribe had suffered devastating losses from malaria, starvation, and extreme heat, prompting the leaders to resolve that they would rather die trying to reach their ancestral lands in Montana than perish on the southern plains. Slipping past military guards under the cover of night, the Cheyenne began an arduous 1,500-mile trek across the prairies of Western Oklahoma, evading thousands of pursuing U.S. Army troops in one of the most remarkable and tragic resistance stories of the American frontier.
Major Jean Pierre Chouteau
Major Jean Pierre Chouteau
A French-American fur trader and influential frontier businessman, played an important role in shaping early Oklahoma history. In the late 1790s and early 1800s, Chouteau established strong trading relationships with the Osage Nation & helped develop a trading settlement near present-day Salina, OK, traditionally dated to 1796.
Considered one of the earliest permanent European-American settlements in the region, the trading post became an important center of commerce and cultural exchange. Chouteau later served as a U.S. government agent to the Osage, helping negotiate treaties and influencing relations between Native nations and the expanding United States. His legacy remains part of Oklahoma's early history, long before statehood in 1907.
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