DearMYRTLE - 10 Jan 2006 DearMYRTLE's Family History Hour

DearREADERS,
This is the lineup for today's genealogy podcast, now available for you to listen to 24/7. Please also note the "Links We Mention" and "Listening to the Show" directions below. Myrt's guests include:

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Edith Wagner, editor of Reunions Magazine from www.reunionsmag.com with stories about planning fun school, military and family reunions. She explains the #1 problem all reunion planners face, and recalls the most recent family reunion where an entire barn was devoted to artifacts from the family. The magazine reports on the successes and the "wish we had done its" from reunion organizers.

Pierre Cloutier, from www.progenysoftware.com, the technical guru behind PAF Companion 2, which prints colorful charts for PAF Personal Ancestral File, both available from www.FamilySearch.org. Note that Progeny first developed PAF Companion in 1997 in partnership with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. PAF Companion is now bundled with PAF Personal Ancestral File on CD and sold by The Church's Distribution Services 1-800-537-5971 for $8.25US. An evaluation version of PAF Companion is also available as a free download from www.FamilySearch.org. This trial version limits the number of generations that can be viewed or printed. Users can then purchase full access to the downloaded trial version for $6.75US by calling The Church's Distribution Services to obtain an unlock key.

World Place Finder & SSDI for FREE! available from www.progenysoftware.com or by calling 800.565.0018
Offer expires February 28, 2006 so order yours today!	Save $45US when you order both World Place Finder and SSDI for free! You just pay the shipping. · Read more about World Place Finder · Learn more about Progeny's SSDI Order one or both of these CD products. The single shipping charge of $6US ($10US for international orders) covers up to two CDs so why not order both!
Other products from Progeny Software include:

	System Requirements (for each of these products) Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP Pentium processor 32 MB RAM 12 MB of free disk space VGA or better monitor Windows compatible printer Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® (required for preview and publish to PDF)

Richard E. Black, director of the Godfrey Memorial Library in Middletown, CT. Our topics include:

UNTAPPED SOURCES: Tennessee Apprenticeship & Maryland Prerogative Court Records
"Just as he did for 29 counties of East Tennessee (see below), Dr. Alan Miller has sifted through the apprenticeship records of 35 Middle Tennessee counties and brought them within the reach of the genealogy researcher. With the publication of his second book, MIDDLE TENNESSEE'S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN: Apprentices from 1784 to 1902, Mr. Miller is now two-thirds finished unearthing these rich but rarely consulted source records for the Volunteer State.

As Dr. Miller reminds us in the Introduction to his first book, EAST TENNESSEE'S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN: Apprentices from 1778 to 1911, the practice of apprenticeship "spread to the colonies along with other English customs but gradually became less of a method of training in the professions and crafts, developing instead into a system whereby children who were or were likely to become indigent could be supported without cost to the local government." In Tennessee, in fact, the term "orphan" was broadened to include not only parentless children but also "any child as bindable whose father had abandoned him or utterly failed and refused to support him . . . ."

Since apprentices were separated from their families at an early age, if your ancestor was apprenticed, his/her record could serve as the "missing link" to generations of elusive ancestors. It is sometimes possible to find a county's records of indenture in the original. However, as in Mr. Miller's case, even when those records have disappeared, you can reconstruct them by combing through the original court minutes of the pertinent counties themselves.

Apprenticeship records, by the way, ordinarily provide the date of the record, name of the apprentice, his/her age, and the master's name; however, on occasion, they also furnish a parent's name, the trade, date of birth, and other useful details.

A full century before the first Tennessee apprenticeship record had been filed, the Province of Maryland had amassed thousands of probate records. Before the various Maryland county courts assumed responsibility for the administration of probate, the provincial Prerogative Court in Annapolis performed that function. (In fact, even after the county takeover, some records related to probate continued to be filed with the Prerogative Court.)

Until very recently, the records of the Prerogative Court were inaccessible to researchers because they lacked an index and were bound in volumes (libers) the dates of whose contents sometimes overlapped. Fortunately genealogist Vernon Skinner has made it his mission to abstract the contents of these crucial 17th- and 18th-century records. To date, we have published three volumes of Mr. Skinner's transcriptions, and we expect to produce several additional volumes during 2006. Thanks to his diligence, this extremely valuable but obscure record group will soon be within the grasp of all Maryland researchers.

Scroll down for more detailed descriptions of the rescued records pertaining to probate in colonial Maryland and post-Revolutionary Tennessee apprenticeship:

MIDDLE TENNESSEE'S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN: Apprentices from 1784 to 1902
This second volume of Tennessee's "forgotten children" contains some 7,000 apprenticeship records scattered among the minutes of the county courts for Middle Tennessee. These records span the period from 1774 to 1902 and list in tabular form the apprenticeships created in the following 35 Tennessee counties: Bedford, Cannon, Cheatham, Clay, Coffee, Davidson, DeKalb, Dickson, Franklin, Giles, Grundy, Hickman, Houston, Humphreys, Jackson, Lawrence, Lewis, Lincoln, Marshall, Maury, Montgomery, Moore, Overton, Perry, Robertson, Rutherford, Smith, Stewart, Sumner, Van Buren, Warren, Wayne, White, Williamson, and Wilson. http://www.genealogical.com/item_detail.asp?afid=&ID=9838

EAST TENNESSEE'S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN: Apprentices from 1778 to 1911
These 11,000 records bear reference to apprenticeships created between 1778 and 1911 in 29 Tennessee counties. Mr. Miller has arranged the records by county and thereunder chronologically. For each record we are given the name of the apprentice, a date (either the date of the original bond or indenture, or a subsequent date), age at apprenticeship, name of the master, and miscellaneous information ranging from the name of the mother or a sibling, race, cause of apprenticeship (e.g., orphan), his/her trade, etc.
http://www.genealogical.com/item_detail.asp?ID=9259