Monday, March 18, 2013

Source citings from the Twilight Zone

The Rhodes family gets at least one more post. In searching for the details on Captain Zachariah Rhodes' fate, the source citations got just plain weird!

One of my early breakthrus was locating the book by Adelos Gorton, The Life and Times of Samuel Gorton (George S. Ferguson, Philadelphia, PA, 1907). The page on the Rhodes family stated that Zachariah died at sea in 1815. Progress!

While trying to locate additional information at the FHL in Salt Lake back when the family histories were located in the Joseph Smith Building, I came across the series of genealogies on Roger Williams. The Rhodes family was allied to Williams, so I checked out the following:

Dorothy Higson White, Descendants of Roger Williams: The Waterman and Winsor Lines Through His Daughter Mercy Williams, Volume: I - The Waterman Line (Gateway Press, Inc., Baltimore, MD, 1991).

White included the fact that Zachariah and Perry Rhodes were lost at sea in 1815 on a voyage from Baltimore to Puerto Rico. More details! White cited Gorton.

A trip to an FGS Conference to Boston gave me the opportunity to visit the NEHGS Library. There I found the multi-volume set by Frederick A. Holden, Family Record or journal of facts of the Holden Family in America, 1852-1910: from Randall Holden about 1636 to the present time (New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, 1989 [photocopy]).

Holden was the mother lode! Captain Rhodes sailed from Baltimore on the schooner "Hannah" on 14 Aug 1815 with brother Perry and was never again heard from. [Citing Gorton]

There I had it: Date of departure, port, destination, ship's name and type.

How is it that Holden and White were able to flesh out the story by sighting the source that had the least amount of information?

Sometimes you are lost in that dimension beyond which is known to man - THE GENEALOGY ZONE!

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