Research Methods 101:Case Study--William M’Neir, Printer, Annapolis

 

In my most recent post I referred to a research activity concerning an Annapolis printer named William McNeir.  During the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland weekly meeting on November 28, my supervisors Emily and Chris explained that they were looking for a way to accommodate a request from State Archivist Dr. Ed Papenfuse; because it would improper to use Department of Education grant funded personnel to pursue a newspaper research project, and most of LOSIM research archivists are paid by that grant or otherwise engaged, fulfilling the request would be politically sensitive or interruptive. I am paid by the The HistoryMakers: Mentoring, Training and Placement fellowship and was not yet deep into the Schweninger Collection (an interesting topic for later) so I volunteered.

Since most of these events took place over seven days, my telling is condensed and may not be perfectly chronological.

Initial Findings

 Emily and Chris’ assignment began with a simple question: Is the newspaper “The Carrolltonian, or, Spirit of Seventy-Six” newspaper published by Annapolis by William M’Neir directly related to “The Carrolltonian.” Several papers bore a title with that moniker, presumably based on the name of the far western country estate that Charles Carroll utilized like a title to distinguish him from his identically named father. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the longest surviving, and only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. He mainly lived in Annapolis and Doughoregan Manor. In the ongoing saga of Maryland’s transition from colony to consolidated state, nearly a dozen counties were carved from original ones or successive iterations. Carroll was formed in 1837 from Frederick and Baltimore counties. Although named after Charles Carroll of Carrollton, his usual country estate Doughoregan was in northern Anne Arundel. He died in 1832, seven years before northern Anne Arundel broke off to form Howard County.

Given the fact that the two Carrolltonian papers shared different names, publishers, and occupied different places in both space and time in years and miles respectively, I safely concluded the newspapers were unrelated. Moments after this conclusion I read an e-mail string forwarded by my supervisor that brought me up to speed: Ed wanted a write up on M’Neir because he was the official printer of the 1850 Maryland constitution. With some suggestions from him and Jane McWilliams, a published authority on Annapolis history, I looked in Google Books, Internet Archive, and Archives of Maryland Online for a list of imprints. I found references in the state House of Delegates and Senate proceedings for payment resolutions, and bibliographic records for imprints starting in the mid 1820s but none after 1854. I learned from Jane, and an PDF attachment from an uncited genealogy book for which no one claimed responsibility, that his wife died in 1856 and shortly thereafter he left for Philadelphia.

Building the Narrative

I approached my M’Neir research in the same manner I did my first case study—using Ancestry.com and checking microfilmed and scanned indices for probate and land records. While still effective, this approach eventually slowed me down and cost me at least a day of productivity. Checking Ancestry.com, I found 1840, 1850, and 1860 census records for census references to him and his family. I also found a death abstract reference to his death in Philadelphia in 1864.

Next I used the MSA website Guide to Government Records and looked for wills and other municipal or state records that William, his father Thomas, or his grandfather Thomas created over the normal business of their day. I was disappointed to find so very little and despondently ventured to MDLandRec to view land record indices; this turned into my greatest mistake.

Indices

Although it is better to have any index than none at all, the clerk who composed it did so in the least helpful and indecipherable manner. The preferred indices have every name written in alphabetical order. This meticulous clerk needed to compose an interim index of names as he encountered them in the land records before carefully re-entering them in a second, final index. Less desirable indices begin the same way: Write down names in groups based by the first letter of each party’s surname and the instrument (like a mortgage) taken as he found them but, unlike the preferred method, cease indexing without making a union alphabetical index; therefore a researcher must scan every entry (in my case, “M”s) to satisfactorily conclude research. 

Whichever clerk created this land record index chose the latter method and wrote in the most indecipherable script. Although my ability to read 19^th century clerical cursive increased since my placement at Maryland, this handwriting was so poor that I literally scrutinized every “M” name between about 1790 and 1839 in Anne Arundel County. Halfway through I realized it was easier to look for the name “William” or “Wm” and write their liber (book) enumeration and folio (page) number if the surname was short enough to be “M’Neir.”

After explaining this method to Jane McWilliams she was sympathetic to my plight with the land record index.

“But, you aren't reading that dreadful pre-1839 AA Co. land record index, are you? It is awful! Better in the original than on film, which is just about illegible…”

She recommended checking the Chancery Court indices and the “NEH Lot Histories.” Following a few conversations with my fellow LOSIM researchers and Emily Squires, I was introduced to previously unknown print references and was reintroduced to the checklist of indices webpage on the Guide to Government Records site. Since Annapolis is a treasured city with intense historical and genealogical interest, and LOSIM is concentrating on the Eastern Shore, I was ignorant of the resources available for Annapolis only research. One of these, the National Endowment for the Humanities Lot Histories, co-created by one Jane McWilliams, are loosely bound books arranged by lot and parcel number for all of Annapolis up to the early 1800s. I quickly learned this was how she provided land references to Thomas M’Neir despite the illegible script.

I returned to the checklist of indices page and, rather embarrassingly, learned of a dozen card indices unavailable online or otherwise confined to books written in that tight script. Although the blame for not using these resources earlier falls squarely on my shoulders, I expect the non-descriptive names for each index served as barrier to intellectual access.

The first card index I checked was Index 106, or “(Maryland Gazette, Annapolis Items, Index), 1745-1820.” I found four references to a Thomas or George McNeir but sadly none for William. Although I did not know which Thomas McNeir was referenced in the Gazette, I learned he was a tailor, he died around 1801, and he either had a wry sense of humor or was a bit of a jerk; a 1794 runaway ad asks readers to apprehend George M’Neir, an apprentice tailor to Thomas M’Neir, for the princely sum of $1. Since this ad was placed five years before printer William’s birth, and the 20 year old George M’Neir was probably not apprenticed to his 28 year old brother Thomas, I could safely conclude that tailor Thomas was William’s grandfather. An interesting note: The language of the runaway ad resembles dozens of slave runaway ads I have seen on the LOSIM website.

"so that I get him..."

 

"so that I get him." Many runaway ads are phrased identically

 

 

I also spotted the reference to Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s marriage announcement.

For those who are curious—an advertisement in “The Carrolltonian” proves that as of 1827 George M’Neir was one of two tailors/merchants in Annapolis.

In order to verify family information from the genealogical text that sourced printer William’s great-granddaughter for most of its content, I checked several more indices that did not yield much pertinent to William. These included:
 

• Index 27, or “(Church Records, Marriage Index), 1686-1958,” which replicated much of the information I derived from print resources,
• Index 47, or “(Oaths of Fidelity, Index), 1778,” which included a reference to one Thomas “McNear,”
• Index 48, or “(Pension Records, Revolutionary War, Index), 1778-1861,”
• Index 70, or “(Land Records, Annapolis, Index), 1699-1817,” a delightful index created by, or contributing  to, the NEH Lot Histories tomes,
• Index 1, or “(Probate Records, Colonial, Index), 1634-1777,” and

• Index 3, or “(Probate Records, Index), 1777-1854, incomplete,” which painted a complete picture about tailor Thomas’ estate.

By far the most useful index was 59 “(Chancery Records, Index), 1668-1807, 1817-1851”; with the references gleaned from this card index I determined at which paper he worked before starting his own printing company, the span of time he served as Justice of the Peace, some land he purchased from a deceased person’s estate, and a few minor but still interesting activities with the state.

In my time with the card indices I encountered various ways that index creators placed names beginning with “Mc” or “Mac.” Although printer William spelt his name “M’Neir” in print, overwhelmingly it was spelled “McNeir” by everyone else. The already unnerving, seemingly random ways that “McNeir” was spelled by clerks and the McNeirs themselves (McNier, McNear, McNair, etc) was compounded by its placement in the index drawers.  Some indices place “Mc” in a literally alphabetical order between names that begin with “Ma” and “Me,” consequently separating “Mac” from “Mc.” Others, like Index 1, arrange the cards as if the “a” in “Mac” is absent and interfile both spellings. Index 70 seems to split the difference and has an interfiled section for “Mc” or “Mac” between “M” and “N.”

My final resource of the week was the chattel records. Since the book index was unscanned and I did not wish to ceaselessly scroll through microfilm, and ventured into the stacks and wrote down any references to printer William. It was in this index, and subsequent research into the books and pages they cited, that reminded me about a philosophical tenet of chattel slavery and this scene from, of all things, Soylent Green.

Next time: An explanation.

Alex Champion--Maryland State Archives