I think a lot about context as I’m doing research. Usually, I find myself pondering how additional information might inflect my findings. Occasionally, the lack of information proves equally telling.
In my grandfather’s photo album, which he began in 1924 and maintained until about 1932, the absence of my grandmother is physically present. After some fifteen pages of lush, carefully-composed photo spreads memorializing camping hijinks, whirlwind romances, and construction work on the Owyhee Dam, you find yourself unexpectedly in the ruins of a marriage—a desert of photo corners surrounding empty spaces. The memories of my grandparents’ courtship have been superceded by the bitterness of their divorce. The only image of my grandmother that remains is a shadow of marcel waves and distinctively broad shoulders at the bottom of a picture.
This is a dramatic absence, but subtler ones can be important as well. For years I wondered why my genealogically inclined fifth cousins and I had such trouble finding information about my fifth great-grandfather, the Revolutionary War private John Howard of Salem, New Hampshire. The bulk of what we know about him comes from his widow Lydia’s application for a pension in 1837 and a few records of his military service; there are a few tax payments, and the births of two of his three children, recorded in the town records, but no census records, no death records, no will, no gravestone.
It wasn’t until I started searching land records that the reason behind this absence of documentation hit me: John was poor. Aside from a short period between a disastrous pair of land transactions, he doesn’t appear to have owned land. A second, closer read of the Salem town records revealed entries in which town funds were disbursed to cover Lydia’s medical expenses and the costs of fostering at least one of their children.
Understanding John’s poverty shifts the story I tell myself about his life. He and Lydia and their children were probably enumerated on the 1790 census for Salem, but as nameless entries in another person’s household. (The same was likely true in 1800, although the Salem returns for that census have been lost.) At the time of his death in 1808, he likely had no property to probate, and Lydia may not have had funds for a gravestone. It also shifts the story of his service as a private throughout the Revolutionary War, which stretched from before the Battle of Bunker Hill through at least 1783, and presumably involved heavy manual labor. Zeal may have been a part of his decision to enlist and re-enlist, but bounty monies and paychecks also may have played a role.
A wholly different kind of absence occurs in the records of my fourth great-grandfather, Henry Brumback, a farmer in Page County, Virginia, in the first half of the nineteenth century. A family Bible survives, in which Henry meticulously recorded his marriage and the birth of each of his children in his native German; the entry for my third great-grandfather translates to “Anno 1802 the 22 July there was born to us a young son, his name is Samuel, his constellation is the bull, the ruling planet for the year was Mercury.” The specificity and seeming tenderness of this entry do not, however, appear in a passage from Henry’s will, years later, concerning another child under his care: “I also give and bequeath to my wife…my negro girl, named Ann, and her increase, and after the death of my wife said negro girl and her increase are to be disposed of after the manner of my other Slaves, as is hereinafter mentioned.” The absence of human concern in this passage is shockingly stark, evoking the entire dehumanizing system of oppression his will perpetuates—which I find intensified rather than moderated by his statement a few lines later that “I wish my Slaves to remain among my Children and not sold out of the family.”
Unfortunately, though absence can reveal presence, it remains an absence. Almost no photographs remain of my grandparents together. Any idea of affection or attraction remains speculative. John’s poverty obscures as much as it reveals, casting a shadow over his life in peacetime that makes even the smallest details difficult to see. And Henry’s refusal to acknowledge the people he enslaved as anything but chattel has nearly eclipsed their history, leaving only the sparsest of clues to the lives they lived.
All the information I have been able to locate about Ann is available here.
Sources for this post include:
Howard, Charles W. Looking Back. Photograph album, compiled c. 1924-1932 in Seattle, Wash. Collection of Christine L. Howard.
Lydia Howard, widow’s pension application file W. 16030, for service of John Howard, Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service; Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, 1800–1960; Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; digital images, Ancestry.com, “U.S., Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900,” citing NARA microfilm publication M804.
Salem, New Hampshire, Town Records, Vol. 1, 1754-1784 [transcription of various older town records]; digital images, Familysearch.org, “New Hampshire, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1636-1947,” citing FHL microfilm 15306.
Brumbaugh, Gaius Marcus. Genealogy of the Brumbach Families: Including Those Using the Following Variations of the Original Name, Brumbaugh, Brumbach, Brumback, Brombaugh, Brownback, and Many Other Connected Families. New York: F. H. Hitchcock, 1913.
Page County, Virginia, Wills, Inventories and Accounts, Vol. C, pp. 88-90, Last Will and Testament, Henry Brumback, 21 February 1846; digital image, Ancestry.com, “Virginia, Wills and Probate Records, 1652-1983.”