by Jimmy Fox
Today he headed for the New Orleans Public Library.
Summer is the most popular time of the year for beginners in genealogy. Students have lots of free time, and families pile into their vans for vacations. Amateurs who have knocked their heads against bureaucratic walls of correspondence all year flock to libraries around the country for a few days of frenzied searching.
Nick could tell them that some rural county courthouses would probably be a better place to spend their summer days; and they could perhaps learn more from that aged distant cousin in the retirement home in Florida. The desire to do something, anything, drives these eager amateurs from one how-to book to the next, from one library genealogical section to another, without much to show for their labor when they get home except a much thinner wallet.
The librarians who staff the genealogical sections, usually calm and polite during the rest of the year, become testy and unhelpful during the summer. Rarely do they point out to these pesky beginners the riches of their facilities, such as wonderful old maps and manuscripts that don’t appear in the general card catalogs, material which might hold in dusty, crumbling pages the crucial bit of information–say, for instance, that a state carved County X from Counties Y and Z at the end of the eighteenth century, and that Old Great-great Uncle Pete, who seems to be nowhere around during the period in question, lived in that often overlooked county, or parish in Louisiana.
Nick tried to avoid searching microfilm at public libraries during this hectic time of the year. Microfilm viewers could be tied up all day during June, July, and August, or so overworked that most were out of commission, awaiting repair.
Now, here on the third floor of the library, the crush was as bad as he’d ever seen it. Full sign-up sheets hung from every viewing machine, and the fiftieth person that hour had just asked the harried librarian at the counter for copier change. A friend of Nick’s, she looked at him across the crowded room and made a gun of her hand and put it to her temple. Stressed to the screaming point, poor woman.
The dozen or so round cream-colored Formica-covered tables were packed with researchers. The uncomfortable wooden chairs around the tables played hell with a hundred sacroiliacs. Nick wandered for a few minutes, half-heartedly looking for a place to light, wishing just a few of these rookies would throw in the towel and give him a crack at their family history impasse. The big room reeked with the public funk of too many people who’d sweated and cooled too many times in the New Orleans oven outside. Conversations rose to distracting levels from the stacks, as retirees droned on about who begot whom in their families.
“Excuse me, ma’am, is this seat taken?” Nick asked an overweight, bug-eyed, wheezing woman with thin hair dyed henna.
She said nothing and merely raked a large mound of books and papers toward her. But she did favor him with a withering glare, as if he’d just asked her to do something extremely objectionable to her moral sense.
He worked for a few minutes in the stacks, frustrated to find that most of the books he needed were out–probably in the possession of the ogreish woman at the table.
Nick was treating Corban’s familial oral tradition with a large grain of salt–a wise course for a genealogist. Much of the time, the sort of legend the old man related only confuses and misdirects the uncritical family historian. Take for example the common one that tells of three brothers who emigrated from the Old Country. One stayed in the New World base, where they landed, one went west, and the other south. The brothers, of course, did no such thing, if the individuals even existed at all. Most families have such an innocently misleading story tucked away in their collective memory. The truth usually proved to be more complex, sometimes even unpleasant. Human lives do not follow nice and easy symmetrical patterns or unfold according to formulas.
But Nick fought another doubt about Max Corban, as well. Was he leading him somewhere for a purpose other than normal familial curiosity? He sensed something lurking within Corban’s story, something dangerous in the subtle details of their meeting. Nothing definite he could put his finger on, but still, certain things about Corban bothered him…the old man’s vehement refusal to consider probably useful overseas research; his peculiar preoccupation with blood; his failure to recall even the name of the ancestor at the end of the interview. Nick had learned to rely on his intuition to lead him through the fog of life; a faint warning was sounding somewhere in his mind.
Ah, forget it, he told himself; get back to work. Maybe he was being too hard on the old guy; maybe it was time to start trusting people again.
He’d decided to check the phone books. It was a long shot that a genealogical search like this one, so devoid of details, would have such initial success–finding the right family of the right name, such an odd one at that, in the most accessible of places: a book everybody has in a kitchen drawer. But Nick was a gambler, especially when the losses came from someone else’s pocket. Genealogists have to be gamblers–the most certain clues can turn out to be nearly useless; the chance discoveries from wholly unrelated sources often point the way. You never know when you’ll draw the joker or the ace.
And if you got lucky, a simple phone call could crack a difficult genealogical case, make the family tree sprout with previously unknown generations. A handful of times he’d located a living survivor of a lost lineage this way, who guarded a wealth of family lore, and who’d waited years simply for someone to ask the right questions. Nick had found few things in life as exciting as those unexpected revelations.
Genealogy is like drilling for oil: lots of dry holes, but the stuff is down there, somewhere, in amazing plenty. The cardinal rule is to start with the simple, then work up to the complex, start with the living and work back to the dead. Corban wasn’t helping him do that, so Nick was improvising.
Was there a breathing bearer of the name Balazar somewhere in the state?
In dozens of Louisiana phone books he could find nothing exactly matching the name. There were plenty of Balthazars and variants, and even a couple of Belshazzars. An unfortunate surname, that one, he thought, scanning the blue plastic cards of microfiche, the transparent writing so small that to the naked eye it looked like specks of sand.
“‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,’” he mumbled several times, enjoying the incantatory sound of the words and remembering the great story of the judgment of a king written supernaturally on a wall. Your days are numbered, you are weighed and found wanting, your kingdom will perish, Daniel told the terrified Belshazzar. Genealogists rediscover the truth of that prophecy each working day.
The woman at the next microfiche machine shot him a worried look and clutched her bulging purse.
He still wasn’t discouraged. Finding no Balazars might simply mean that this family had no phone, or that the number was unlisted.
He tried several current and old city directories–fascinating volumes of data that aided businesses with marketing information about local citizens and other businesses. These directories can sometimes fill in the years between the decennial censuses. Nothing there, either. Not an unusual state of affairs. Many people slipped through the fingers of those who would tabulate them, especially in the days of fierce pioneering individualism, when distrust of the ever-curious government was stronger even than it is today. And there were whole classes of people who, according to the prevailing notions, simply did not count.
Next he searched the genealogical indexes for articles or existing family histories dealing with or referring to the surname Balazar. Nothing again. Even the scholars and family historians of the past were letting him down.
Nick was a resourceful researcher and had more tricks up his sleeve.
He phoned a friend, a volunteer congregant, at the local Latter-Day Saints Family History Library. She made a quick search of the computer catalog of the main Salt Lake City library for anything relevant. Eight times out of ten the Mormons, who have a world-renowned commitment to genealogy as an article of their faith, came through for Nick. This, tho
ugh, was one of the two times that nothing turned up.
It was time to search the federal censuses page by page, household by household, for the individuals who might have been skipped in the various indexes.
But not here, he decided.
He had a more secluded venue in mind, a secret he kept closely, knowing that popularity and crowds would irreparably damage it.
The Plutarch Foundation was only a few blocks from Freret University, filling with its thousands of books, original documents, microfilms, and exquisite antiques a superbly kept, stately Uptown “American cottage”–a cameo in a frame of ancient oaks, veteran camellias, and brick walkways worn smooth and friendly with nearly two centuries’ use. Scholars dreamed of places like the Plutarch.
Seldom were there more than a handful of people in the large two-and-a-half-story building, two or three being volunteer staffers. If they liked the researcher, these staffers might personally guide him to the required source, and later offer coffee and sweets in a sitting room overlooking a lush English garden at the back of the house. Though it specialized in the Battle of New Orleans, the Plutarch was an excellent all-round genealogical facility–a fact few knew.
“Man alive, am I glad to see you,” Angus Murot said to Nick, who stood in the foyer, dripping from a sudden downpour that had caught him on the walkway.
“I got this letter here from France,” Angus began, without further preamble, excited as usual over his long-running genealogical project. “I can’t make head nor tails of it. That French gal at my urologist’s office–you know, the one that helped me write my letter–she run off with one of the doctors.”
Angus had ushered him into a small book-lined room with a central worktable that was genuine Duncan Phyfe, Nick knew. Around the room, among other pieces of museum-quality furniture, there were shelves, stands, and cases displaying rare editions or splendid objects of historical interest.
“I dragged you in here,” Angus whispered, full of awe, “because Coldbread’s out there. You know how he gets when there’s noise.” He limped over to close the door a few more inches.
Angus had a false leg from the knee down. He had lost it fighting the Japanese on New Georgia, as he would readily tell anyone with the slightest interest and a few hours to kill. For a decade now he had been tracing an ancestor, a member of Lafitte’s entourage, who was personally commended by General Andrew Jackson for bravery. Angus had a certified photocopy of this letter, along with expert opinion that the now-missing original was not a forgery. Maybe, maybe not, Nick believed but had never said. A disconcerting portion of genealogy is based on half-truths and honest errors.
The taciturn Mr. Coldbread was a cranky fixture at the Plutarch; no one knew exactly what he had been researching here for six years, but it had something to do with hidden treasure and the Duke of Wellington’s brother-in-law Sir Edward Pakenham, who died with many of his men in the disastrous 1815 attack on General Jackson’s defending forces at New Orleans.
“Says here,” Nick said, struggling to translate, “that they find no trace of the guy in that département, or province. Who was he, anyway?”
“The second cousin of the soldier that got commended.”
“There’s more: you owe them a little over seven dollars.”
“After all the money I already sent them, after all we did for those Frenchies in the war?! Why, they didn’t even have the courtesy to write me back in my own language, like I did for them. Can you believe it?!” Angus’s face was beet red. “Just look at it: like some chicken walked all over the keyboard, with them, them accent marks going every which way.”
“Some memories are short when gratitude’s involved, Angus. Better get used to this kind of thing. Genealogical research can be like that. Tell you what you do. Read this article first.” Nick wrote down the title of a brief treatment of the vicissitudes of foreign research at a distance. “I know you have a copy here. Then we’ll send them a few international postal coupons, along with some other questions you and I’ll come up with. I’ll help you with my miserable French. And don’t worry: they’re proud but efficient, and probably really want to help. After all, you’re their countryman. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Nick made sure to send an annual donation to the Plutarch, but it was payment of this kind that really kept his welcome warm here.
Little Mrs. Fadge, profoundly deaf but always cheerful, helped Nick find the census microfilms he needed, though he didn’t really need her help. After promising her to have coffee and cookies when he finished his work, he entered the converted butler’s pantry that now housed five microfilm viewers, of sixties vintage and bulk, but in perfect, dustless order.
The subject of his research today was to be the 1880 census. This date would certainly be the latter end of this mysterious Balazar man’s possible life span. If he’d indeed come over in the period 1840-50, as Corban had asserted, he was then probably a young man of about eighteen. Add forty years, and in those days that was getting up there in age.
The government had by 1880 figured out the vast significance of the mandated prying every ten years. It had become clear that descendants of Mayflower passengers and of Virginia gentry would thenceforth constitute a diminishing percentage of the country’s populace. Someone in Washington decided it was time to find out who were these millions of new Americans Walt Whitman was singing about. Nick always found lots of good information in the 1880 census, though not as much as in the 1900. To researchers’ everlasting sorrow, most of the 1890 was destroyed by a fire in 1921.
But first, Nick needed to check the Soundex, a phonetic index that groups names by first letter and consonants.
The Works Progress Administration during the Depression was given the task of indexing certain censuses. Social Security was starting up, and it was essential to know who might be eligible, who would be turning 65 in 1935 and in the next few years. The census was the perfect place to look for a person’s year of birth. It’s the actual testimony of the person in question, or at least someone who knew him. Sometimes the only testimony.
For a country with a Babel of names from skyrocketing immigration, for vital records where clerks spelled for convenience, out of frustration, or by whim, the Soundex is a good place to start. But one caveat is that the 1880 Soundex includes only those households with children ten years old and under. These children, born between 1870 and 1880, were the ones who most probably would be alive to participate in the new Social Security program.
Nick had seen many amateurs tripped up by this last arcane detail: an ancestor may in fact be in the census proper, even if he doesn’t appear on the Soundex.
Keeping such knowledge to himself was job security, a way of ensuring that there would always be a need for professional genealogists, Nick reflected as he coded the surname Balazar.
In the darkened microfilm room, Nick used the Soundex code for Balazar–B426–to find the Balzar family, living in the old town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Natchitoches Parish, 9 June 1880. He had already checked the twenty-eight then-existing parishes preceding Natchitoches alphabetically and had been reluctantly about to call it a day.
As always happened when he made an important find, a triumphant smile of discovery spread across his face, and an unmistakable shiver hit him between the shoulders. He sat under the hood of the reader, leaning into the tunnel of light which vouchsafed him a glimpse of a century earlier, savoring the moment, but also questioning his find–as a good genealogist must do, no matter how rock-solid the evidence seems.
The spelling similarity was too close to ignore, he thought, struggling to be the rational researcher. Simply a question of a missing vowel. Worse errors on birth certificates were common, he knew. In such cases, the midwife was confused, the doctor was guessing or too busy or too drunk to care, or no certificate was ever issued because the child was born in a sharecropper’s cabin with just the family around. And, of course, the enumerator wasn’t a detective; he wrote down what he thought he heard
.
The rush of discovery flooded through his body again as he studied the projected image of the Soundex card before him. His eyes lingered on the line indicating “Color”: the head of household, Ivanhoe Balzar, was listed as a mulatto; on another card, so was his wife.
Either Nick’s hunch was incorrect, and these were not the people he was searching for, or Corban’s family tree had just become more complicated, even more interesting, and somewhat puzzling. Certainly, it was common for former slaves to take a garbled version of the slave-owning white family’s name, and slavery in the South was alive only fifteen years before this date; but could Ivanhoe Balzar have had a more direct relationship with the family called Balazar?
As he loaded up the appropriate reel of the actual census, which he had slipped out to get without Mrs. Fadge’s helpful interference, he heard several voices near the entrance of the microfilm room. It was Angus, giving somebody a tour. Somebody important, judging from his eagerness to explain everything in the building and beyond. Angus loved to talk, but he was really cutting loose this time.
Nick was more like the cantankerous Coldbread than he would have cared to admit: he hated to be interrupted during his research. He prepared a hard face for the intruders. But turning, he was astonished.
Whoever she was, she was beautiful. A grin of adolescent delight settled on his face.
She stood in the doorway of the darkened room, the faint light of his microfilm machine on her face, the stronger light from the building’s interior giving her long dark hair and her enchanting curves a sort of glowing outline. He’d seen lots of pretty female students pass through his classes, but if this woman had been in one of them, he would have been in more serious trouble a lot sooner.
She was taking notes on one of those digital pads Nick refused to learn anything about. Two young fellows behind her watched her every move; each was glued to a cell phone.
She looked Nick right in the eyes; he felt absolutely transparent. It seemed to him that not only did she know him, but also that she had just read his own listing in some psychic census of character.
