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calsfoundation@cals.org
calsfoundation@cals.org
Answering Questions Is What I Do
The official title I wear is “Genealogy and Local History Specialist.” When people ask me what I do at work, I generally tell them my job is to answer questions.
Some people who call us at the CALS Roberts Library or visit the Research Room have an exact question they want answers to, while others have general information and are looking to narrow the options in order to form a question.
In genealogy, the question could be, what was my grandmother’s maiden name? or, where was an ancestor actually born? or, what year were they born? For any of those questions, the answer will generate more questions.
A patron in the Research Room recently “discovered” a record with information showing that her great-grandparents with the surname “Joseph,” who were living in Jefferson County, Arkansas, were born in South Carolina. The record showed the couple were married in 1858. They were Black. If the information is true, this detail suggests that her ancestors were free people of color. (Prior to the Civil War, most Black people in the South were enslaved and not individuals with rights of citizenship like marriage.) They were in Arkansas by 1900, owned property, and were self-employed. These are details she didn’t know to ask for or expect to discover. Most of her research had been on her paternal grandfather and not the maternal grandmother, but looking for the birth surname of a grandmother led her to this other information.
Sometimes an inquiry opens up a larger area of investigative work to enhance the information you already have about the family you belong to. And sometimes our focus is on a particular branch when we should look at the entirety of the tree.
Written questions also arrive through the U.S. Postal Service. A letter dated July 8, 2024, arrived at my desk recently. Its address was simply to the “Librarian” at the Little Rock Library. It initially was sent to the CALS reference department, then to Information Services, then to the CALS Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art. The person who first received the letter at the Roberts Library determined that I would be the person to answer the question.
The letter begins with “I am 75 years old and am writing a book on long baseball games, lasting twenty or more innings. You had such a game: 22 innings.” The letter writer provided a date and the final score.
Local newspapers have been digitized in recent years, allowing a search less time-consuming than microfilm, which used to be our primary tool for looking at old newspaper articles. (See research tools and databases here.) Five articles related to this July 1971 Arkansas Travelers game were found. We printed out hard copies and mailed them to the man in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We’d answered the question and also provided additional details that he didn’t know to ask for. Quotes from the General Manager, Carl Sawatski, were included in an article in the Arkansas Gazette. Another article highlighted the “gloves” of Kenny Reitz, Milt Ramirez, and Tom Heintzelman, and the catching/fielding of Skip Jutze and Jorge Rogue.
And yet another article had a bit of women’s and civil rights history thrown in, referencing Mary K. Donald, “KAAY’s pert black newsgirl, who has been scoring the games from the pressbox lately, the first working female there in the park’s 40 years.”
The names mentioned in any of these articles may be links in someone’s family history or details about a family member that the researcher did not know to ask about.
What questions do you have? Find us, call us, or write to us at the CALS Roberts Library.
By Rhonda Stewart, genealogy and local history specialist for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, housed in the CALS Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art
