>> Candice Buchanan: Hello
and thank you for being here.
My name is Candace Buchanan
and I am a reference librarian
in the local history
and genealogy section
of the Library of Congress.
This presentation is
called A Hoax in the Family,
the Buchanan Estate Scam.
As you can probably tell, I
have a personal connection
to this outrageous example
of genealogy gone bad,
but there is a much bigger and
broader message in this story.
Even though the Buchanan
situation is an extreme example,
it is just an example.
If you are new to genealogy,
this will be a lesson
in critical thinking, and
an insight into the types
of obstacles that family
historians must overcome.
If you are an experienced
genealogist,
this talk will likely
have you brainstorming
about the errors you have
seen and worked to correct
in what many of your
relatives consider
to be the accepted family tree.
Errors may not be international
scandals like the Buchanan scam,
but they will impact
your research.
Somebody might have read a
name or date wrong in a record.
They may have published
a mistaken conclusion
in their research that has
since been proven wrong.
An online tree might
have merged families
that don't actually go together.
Most of these are
innocent mistakes,
but the results are
far-reaching.
Because once the damage
is done, it's done.
Mistakes are replicated over and
over and passed along as truth.
We end up with a quantity
versus quality problem
because people say well,
there are all these trees
that say this, or there are
all these books that say this,
so it must be true, and so we
get into a difficult situation
of trying to correct
the mistake in genealogy
that everyone believes is true.
One of the reasons that
genealogy mistakes are so hard
to correct is because
genealogy is so personal.
It's not just history.
It's our history.
We bond to it, especially
if it's a story that's been
shared in our families.
If we've been told that we
have a celebrity ancestor,
or we came from a
certain part of the world,
those things get ingrained in
our identity, and it's very hard
to help people change
their minds,
because it's not just their
minds, it's their hearts.
It can be very hard
to correct mistakes
in genealogy for that reason.
On the other hand, that personal
attachment is what makes
genealogy such a fascinating and
meaningful branch of history.
I love this quote, that history
remembers only the celebrated.
Genealogy remembers them all.
That is the beauty of genealogy.
We want to remember every person
and we want to do it right.
We have an obligation to those
family members past and present,
to tell an accurate
and honest history.
As we work on our family
trees, making that effort
to remember them all, we study
not only our direct lines, mom,
dad, grandma, grandpa, but
also all of the siblings,
half-siblings, step-siblings,
adoptees, spouses, aunts,
uncles, cousins, everybody.
We also look at the fan network,
the friends, associates,
neighbors, who were a
part of their stories.
We try to put each ancestor
into the historical context
in which they lived and
understand what was happening
in the world around them.
That is all part of
the complete story.
We do our best to nail down
those details, with real records
and evidence from both the
public and private parts
of their lives as we try
to reconstruct those lives
and reunite those families.
So what happens when there
is a hoax in the family?
You're about to see the damage
done to the Buchanan genealogy
by the airship scheme
of the 1930s.
The effects linger today
on genealogists trying
to reconstruct these
generations.
Even if you are fortunate
enough to not have this type
of outrageous dilemma in
your tree, you likely can
or will soon relate to
some similar mistake
that has been perpetuated
in your family,
such as a research
error or a family myth
that has been passed down.
The negatives to come out of
a hoax are pretty obvious.
There are actually fake
family trees that get created.
Often the problem is that the
goal of the tree was to connect
to a particular ancestor, a
celebrity, founding father,
war hero, instead of a
correct, accurate ancestor.
If you have a famous
ancestor, that's great.
You're going to have lots
of material to study,
but a famous ancestor is
not more important than any
of your other ancestors.
Without every one of them,
you wouldn't be here.
In genealogy, you must
begin with yourself
and work backwards, accurately
linking every generation
with verifiable records.
Trees that begin by trying to
connect to some specific person,
instead of to the correct
person, will become skewed.
Once those faulty
trees are created,
their damage is permanent
because once they're
out there, they're out there.
There are now records that
will be found and referred to.
Even after you correct it and
make good information available,
there's still the chance that
somebody is going to go and dig
up that old inaccurate
document, so the mistakes have
to be corrected over and over
again, which is why we have
to educate every generation
of researchers and help them
to understand that
this problem exists.
It is a bummer for
genealogists obviously.
It is hard to break bonds
to beliefs that we've had.
It's hard to realize that maybe
we've spent the wrong time
researching the wrong person, so
this is something that we have
to work on together
as researchers
and support each
other to get through.
On the positive side, there are
useful leads that can be gleaned
from documents created
during the scam.
What we have in a scam like
this is people being called
to create family trees.
If they want to inherit,
they want to participate,
they have to create
a family tree.
These are perhaps people
who would not have normally
been interested in their tree,
so here they are, having
a reason to write it down,
and if you put yourself in
their shoes, just writing
down what you know about
your family, right now,
think about what you could say,
your birthday, your parents,
your siblings, your
grandparents,
maybe even your great
grandparents,
and so during the scam,
which for the Buchanan's is
in the 1930s, these people
are writing down data
that is probably useful about
the people that they know,
that maybe they otherwise
would have never written down.
We have to check it and verify
it, but these are good leads.
As you keep going back the tree,
beyond their personal knowledge,
you have to keep increasing your
scrutiny, but we'll see more
about that and how that
fits into the scam.
Another positive
from these kinds
of scams is the media attention.
Ordinary people who might have
normally not made the newspaper
are being interviewed,
profiled, photographed,
these might be your
relatives talking to the media
about your family history,
heirlooms they own,
what they'll do with
the money from the scam.
These are fascinating
insights that we don't find
for most of our relatives.
In the case of the Buchanan's,
this is the Great Depression,
so the idea that
these people are going
to inherit all this money, and
that this money is going to come
into these local communities,
that's exciting news,
and later when it turns around
and it's not so good anymore,
it still produces a
different kind of attention
that generates just
as many headlines.
The final useful takeaway
is historical context.
You have this story
for these relatives
who lived through this event.
What happened to them,
what they went through,
how they responded,
that's part of their story.
When you have a scam
like this in the family,
you have to address
it in your research.
You want to show that you knew
about it and confronted it,
because to not address it is to
leave a potential problem open
that makes your research
less reliable.
And so here we are, the
Buchanan estate scam.
Let's begin with some historical
context like good genealogists,
the world in April 1931.
We had the Great Depression
well underway at this point,
millions of people without jobs.
Herbert Hoover was the
President of the United States.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the
governor of New York and soon
to be Democratic candidate for
President, and as a fun fact
that will relate to our
story, on April 11th, 1931,
the Empire State building was
completed in New York City.
On April 6th, 1931, newspapers
across the United
States carried headlines
that caught the attention
of anyone
with a Buchanan in
the family tree.
A huge estate was going to be
distributed among eligible heirs
of the Buchanan family.
The public announcement was
made by Lorenzo D. Buchanan,
a grocer in Houston,
Texas, who said that he had
in his possession, the
will of a William Buchanan,
a relative of President
James Buchanan.
Here is our celebrity ancestor
connection in this case.
The alleged William was
incidental because he was
so vague, but President
Buchanan was easy
for people to latch on to.
The estate was valued
at $850 million,
equal to over $14 billion today.
Approximately 1,200
unspecified heirs were supposed
to benefit from the estate.
Lorenzo did not name specific
heirs or relationships,
leaving it wide open
for everybody
to hope they were on that list.
The estate property had
supposedly been tied
up in 99-year leases
that were now expiring.
The real estate was supposed to
be in several different states,
focusing on metropolitan areas.
As the rumors and the scheme
developed, the focus was
on prime Manhattan real estate.
Lorenzo D. Buchanan
was the point person
and figurehead of the estate.
We cannot know his
motivations or his intentions.
He refused to name the
attorneys or detectives
who were supposedly helping
him, and while we know
that others took on active
roles throughout the estate scam
duration, he remained
the central focus.
It was his public announcement
of the estate in April 1931
that started the pandemonium and
it only came to a close in 1936
when frustrated would-be
Buchanan heirs took him
to court over the estate.
When he announced the estate
in April 1931, Lorenzo said
that he had been
working with attorneys
for the last eight
years to determine
and contact eligible heirs.
We see in his very first
newspaper interview,
as he's making this
public announcement,
that his little grocery store is
visited by four Buchanan heirs,
who had come all the way from
Canada to Texas to talk to him.
The article also
mentions bodyguards,
who were protecting him from
heirs whom he had denied claims,
so he was already at some
level of celebrity status
and power among Buchanans
even before his announcement
caught headlines.
Even though Lorenzo
stated from the beginning
that he already knew
who the heirs were,
and he was already reaching
out, Buchanans everywhere wanted
to make sure that
he knew about them,
and that they were on his list.
Remembering our historical
context,
right in the Great
Depression, this announcement
of a huge fortune to be
divided among Buchanon heirs was
like shouting fire
in a crowded theater.
Buchanans went into a frenzy.
There was a real urgency to
find out who your family was,
get your tree together and reach
out to Lorenzo to make sure
that you're included
among the heirs
to receive the distribution
of this estate.
As local Buchanans made
their claims known,
local newspapers preserved
wonderful headlines.
This is how family members
who may not have normally made
the news are being profiled
with great information.
In this particular story,
we find out where the
family bible was in 1931,
which gives you a
great jumpstart
on finding the descendants of
these folks to hopefully locate
that heirloom today,
and while we have
to scrutinize the
ancestry provided in any
of these articles, because you
will see the scam narrative
trying to connect families
to President Buchanan whom
often don't actually connect
to his line, we still can
get lots of good information
on the more recent generations.
Here we have a Buchanan
cousin who's photographed
with Buchanan family heirlooms,
which are described in detail.
He's talking about
the provenance,
how they've been passed
down through the family,
what he plans to do with them
after he hopefully uses them
to make a claim on the estate.
There's biographical
information, where he lives,
his job, his family, and
again, we have to be cautious
about the ancestral information,
but there's lots of good data
on his family here to study.
In this article, we have a math
teacher and his baby daughter,
who are expecting to be
heirs of the Buchanan estate.
One of the big things here is
their expectation to receive
between $500,000 and $800,000
in the next 10 to 15 days,
and though he expresses doubt
about this all happening,
he's also saying
that he's following
up for the latest news.
This is just an example of
what a rollercoaster of hope
and disappointment
these relatives went
through during the scam.
As Buchanans across the
country were making their claims
on the estate, there were other
people who didn't have Buchanans
in the family tree, that
also wanted to be a part
of the settlement, and so we
see quit claim deeds filed
in local courthouses, in
which prospective heirs
who were hoping to
receive something
from the estate actually
sold shares of their share,
so they sold to other people,
portions of what they expected
to receive from the
Buchanan estate,
even though there was nothing
confirmed, they had no idea
that they were to truly an heir,
or that they would
actually receive anything,
or what they would receive.
These deeds are records that you
may run into at a courthouse,
and this is one of
those circumstances
when a courthouse record is
usually something we would
trust, so here you
have a situation
where you see an ancestor
selling a portion of an estate,
and that would make you think
that they truly are an heir
of that estate, but in the case
of this scam, that is not true.
This is something
to be aware of,
and it also demonstrates how
absurd the situation became.
So we know that Lorenzo's
announcement about the estate
in April 1931 caused a
commotion, as Buchanans tried
to create family trees.
William Buchanan, the alleged
benefactor, took on many names
as Buchanan family trees
morphed to fit the estate scam.
Since Lorenzo gave
very vague details,
people could not identify or
search for William in order
to connect to him, so the
fact that William was supposed
to be a cousin or relative
of President James Buchanan,
caused everyone to focus on
President Buchanan instead.
They can nail him down.
They have dates, facts, places.
They can find information
about his family.
Of course, he was a bachelor
with no known children,
so instead, they attach
themselves to his siblings
or to his father's siblings.
They try to make their trees
fit to President Buchanan
because they don't know enough
about William to determine
if they connect to him.
There were people who obviously
took advantage of this situation
and intentionally created
fake family trees just
so they could be connected
and eligible to inherit,
but on the other hand, there
were plenty of ordinary people
who legitimately believed they
might have a claim and wanted
to establish their
family history accurately,
to find out if they were heirs.
Imagine living during hardship
of the Great Depression,
and learning that your surname
is attached to a fortune
that you might be
eligible to receive.
If you don't know
your family history,
you don't know if
that might be you.
You want to find out.
You're in a hurry.
You're told the number
of heirs is limited,
the time to file a
claim is limited.
These people urgently trying
to create family trees the
right way, asked for help,
and it's these honest requests
for real records and information
that led to the undoing
of the scam.
Initially, many people wrote
to Lorenzo D. Buchanan.
We know that he was
swamped with inquiries
after his announcement, but
he maintained his narrative
that he already knew who
had claims and who didn't.
Well-meaning people also
contacted self-appointed claim
agents and attorneys
who said that for a fee,
they would file a claim for you.
This is a scam within the scam
because many people
lost money paying agents
who were supposedly
filing claims for them.
The estate scam begins
to unravel,
as other Buchanans
totally bypass Lorenzo
and the claim agents
and reach out directly
to the New York surrogate
judges.
These are the officials
who handle will
and probate in New York.
Specifically, Buchanans
contacted New York City courts,
because they believed that the
Buchanan estate was supposed
to be rooted in the
property leases
that were expiring
in New York City.
Buchanans reached out to these
court officials wanting real
information about the estate.
They wanted to see the
will and the progress
of the estate administration.
Another place Buchanans wrote
to for help was the
Library of Congress.
Buchanans asked the
library for help to research
and confirm their genealogy
so that they could
establish family trees
to prove their eligibility
to the estate.
Once entities like the court
system, the Library of Congress,
and the United States
Postal Service were involved
and impacted by the
estate inquiries,
the truth started to come out.
As early as July 1931, we
see questions being asked
and a huge explosion of
newspaper headlines calling
out the estate and quoting
officials who have things to say
that definitely don't
indicate a good future
for any estate settlements.
Lorenzo D. Buchanan himself
ducked out in July 1931.
He signed an agreement with the
United States Postal Service
to say that all of his mail
would be refused, unopened
and returned to sender.
He also said that he was
ceasing all operations
in connection with the estate.
Meanwhile, the surrogate
judges in New York,
the Library of Congress,
and others,
were receiving an overwhelming
amount of mail as well
as in-person visitors.
People traveled from all over
the country trying to find
out about their genealogy,
and what was going
on with the estate,
so it was to the point
that these entities had
to make formal responses.
The Library of Congress
responded
with a memorandum prepared in
1931, and sent out in reply
to anyone who wrote
to the library
about the Buchanan estate.
The librarians gave a summary
of the different versions
of the estate rumors
that they were receiving.
They accounted for what they
had in their collections related
to the Buchanan and family.
The librarians provided what
they considered the most
reliable of those resources and
explained why they thought so.
They explained the genealogy
of President Buchanan
as they had it in their records.
Basically, they eliminated
every potential member
of his close family
as being eligible
to be the alleged benefactor,
whether he was called William
Buchanan, or James or John
or George, or in some
cases, Alexander or Thomas,
all of the different names
that were used over the years
of the Buchanan estate scam.
The librarian showed
how the relatives
of President Buchanan did
not fit into the timeline
of the supposed estate.
This became their response,
and as newspaper articles
were published showing
that the estate was
in fact a fraud,
they attached those articles to
the memo as they sent it out.
The memo is still
in the library's
Buchanan vertical file,
and we see how it
was used years later.
There's a letter from the
1960s when someone dug back
out those Buchanan estate
papers that were passed
down through their family, and
they inquired with the library.
The library responded
with this memo
to let them know what was
really happening in 1931.
This newspaper article talks
about ways people
can receive money
from bonds they forgot they had
or from estates they did not
know they were an heir to.
The ending turns the
tables by explaining
that because these
situations do really exist,
that there can be
cases when you're going
to inherit unexpected money,
that this actually opens
the door for scammers
because people know the
scenario is possible.
The author mentions the Buchanan
estate and others like it
that come into the
Library of Congress
and keep the staff busy.
Even though doubts had been
raised about the Buchanan estate
as early as 1931, it did not
stop the Buchanan descendants
who wanted to inherit
from the estate.
They weren't convinced because
they wanted it to be real,
and they didn't want to be
left out if it was real.
The agents and attorneys who
were out there asking people
to pay them to file claims
kept creating new stories
about ways they were going
to inherit the money,
so claims kept coming.
This one in 1935 is to
a congressman from Ohio,
who had been contacted
by a constituent
who believed he had a claim
on the Buchanan estate.
He's expecting his Congressman
to act on his behalf,
and help him to get the
money that he should inherit.
This is another way in which the
Library of Congress is involved,
because the library
serves Congress as well
as the American people,
so librarians received inquiries
not only from the public,
but also from Congressmen
who are being called
on to handle claims
for their constituents.
Throughout the second
half of 1931,
there were many newspapers
articles quoting Governor
Roosevelt of New York, and
the surrogate judges involved,
who stated definitively that the
Buchanan estate did not exist.
They tried to dissuade
people, but it wasn't helping.
The claims were still coming.
The people were still
showing up.
They were still demanding
answers
from the New York surrogates
about this supposed estate.
In January 1932, Roosevelt
asked the newspapers
to publish a letter
that was written to him
by one of these judges.
These are some of the
highlights from the article.
He's very clear that the court
has done a thorough search,
and that there is no estate
on file that looks anything
like what's been claimed
in the Buchanan inquiries.
He mentions the nature of the
inquiries that are coming in,
and how they specifically
relate to land in Manhattan.
He names a number of
different buildings,
including the new Empire
State Building, as being one
of the areas where the Buchanan
estate land is supposed to be,
and so that's where historical
context comes into play,
because this would have been
a big deal to people in 1931,
when the Empire State Building
was a brand new, grand addition
to the New York skyline.
Imagine thinking that you
owned it, that this is part
of the property value
that is going
to be distributed
among Buchanan heirs.
He notes how the Buchanan estate
is very similar to a number
of other estate hoaxes
that they had seen.
This emphasizes that the
Buchanan state is an outrageous
example, but not
the only example.
He provides a list of
comparable situations and notes
that an attorney had been
disbarred for his involvement.
This is a bigger problem
than just this one case.
He points out that one of
the really terrible parts
of the situation is that
people are being duped.
They are paying agents to
file claims on their behalf
for a cost of $15
to $250 per claim.
This is the Great Depression
and people don't have
that kind of money.
He says that they are paying for
the purchase of a family tree
or genealogical chart
to trace their kinship.
They are buying family
trees from these scammers.
Finally, he says
something really important.
He talks about these potential
heirs and all that they've done
to be a part of this estate,
and he says similarity
of name alone, without
any blood relationship,
seems a sufficient inducement.
That is the crux of the problem.
People were creating
family trees that aim
to reach a particular ancestor
instead of an accurate ancestor.
They were going after
name recognition.
They were going after
celebrity connection.
They did it with the
hope of inheriting
but that's how the family
trees became corrupted
because they were not
showing accurate genealogy.
In the November of 1935
issue of Reader's Digest,
two economists published an
article called The Heir Chasers
in which they discuss these
kinds of heirship schemes
and the trouble that they cause.
The Buchanan estate is one of
the features in their article,
they talk about the
proportions that it went to.
They say a Detroit lady was
expecting a $500,000 check
by Christmas.
Some of her husband's relatives
had mortgaged their homes
and bought new cars
on the strength of it.
Their article demonstrates
how firmly people believed
that this estate was
going to benefit them
and how determined they
were to be eligible,
which impacts the family trees.
The damage done by the Buchanan
estate scam still haunts us
today, but we do see an end
to the real activity in 1936
when the case goes to court.
Frustrated Buchanan heirs
brought a civil suit
against Lorenzo D.
Buchanan demanding
that he provide an accounting
of the estate and explain
on whose authority he had acted.
At the time they
filed their suit,
they said there were
approximately 2,396 heirs
who had filed claims
and believed themselves
to be a part of the estate.
This petition is very vague.
They didn't have the
ability to be very specific
about the estate because those
details were never released.
Mostly they point out the
things that Lorenzo said,
the things that are supposed
to be in his possession,
that he is supposed to
know, that he had said
in the letters he had sent
to the heirs he claimed were
in the initial list
and were supposed
to receive benefits
from the estate.
They mentioned how long
it's been drawn out,
four to five years by this
point, all the promises
that were made of a distribution
that had not happened.
No new details had
been released.
They also supplied a list
of detailed questions
that they wanted answered
related to the estate,
the assets, and the
circumstances.
Lorenzo never answered
any of those questions.
His health was said to be bad.
Doctors submitted statements
saying that he was potentially
at the end of his life,
that he was in no condition
to answer questions of any kind,
and that it was probably the
excitement of this lawsuit
that caused his condition, and
so he never appeared in court,
and his attorney claimed
that he was never even able
to discuss the case with him.
He wanted the case thrown out
and he denied every allegation.
Ironically, it was
Lorenzo's attorney
who really called
the whole thing out.
He told the Buchanan heirs
who brought the lawsuit
that if they know as little
concerning the visionary,
imaginary estate, as
counsel for Defendant knows,
that in such event, said estate
is merely the fabrication
of a mind laboring
under hallucinations,
creating a mirage of visionary
wealth, which is calculated
to appeal only to the gullible.
Counsel for Defendant further
says that from information
and belief, he is of the
opinion, and here now alleges
that the whole matter pertaining
to the Buchanan state
is a fabrication,
and if there is any
substance of fact whatsoever,
that it is intangible and
incapable of being ascertained.
And so we leave Lorenzo
D. Buchanan,
and the whole estate debacle
behind us, and now we look
at the real tree consequences
that we are left with today.
This is what happens when
the estate papers resurface.
This is my story.
When I was 14 years old,
I had a birthday party
and my guests wanted
a bit of adventure.
I had grown up in a
small town neighborhood.
A few blocks from home
was a huge cemetery,
but I had never been there, so
one of the boys at my party knew
where a haunted mausoleum
was in that cemetery,
and we went adventuring.
As we got deep into the
cemetery, there is a large hill,
and all my friends were enjoying
the view, but I'm afraid
of heights, so I
wandered by myself,
and just like how your name
jumps out at you from a piece
of paper, my name jumped at me
from these incredibly
old tombstones,
and I was fascinated.
I had no idea about my
own family's history.
Even though I loved history,
I had never been introduced
to family history, to genealogy,
to what we could learn,
and so through the
whole rest of the party,
everything that went on,
I couldn't stop thinking
about these old Buchanan
tombstones blocks away
from my house.
The next day, I went
to my local library
to see my beloved
children's librarian
and she made some calls
and got me admission
to the genealogy room.
That very first day,
they taught me the basics
of how you research
backward from yourself,
and go through the generations
to establish your tree.
We quickly learned that the
ancestors I had walked right
into where Andrew Buchanan
and his wife Rhoda Stevenson,
my fourth great-grandparents.
Andrew was the first
of our family to come
to Greene County, Pennsylvania.
He came out of Chester County.
He was there as early
as 1802 when I can find
at the courthouse that he
was admitted as an attorney
to the Greene County Bar.
The family Bible tells us
that he married Rhoda
Stevenson in 1804.
Together, they raised
10 children,
nine of whom reached adulthood.
Those children have since spread
their families throughout the
United States.
He was a Congressman
from 1835 to 1839.
By the 1930s, at the time
of the Buchanan estate scam,
it seems very clear
from our family papers
that his descendants, which
at that time were some
of his grandchildren,
and more of his great-
and great-great-grandchildren,
they did not know
who his parents were.
Nothing in the Greene
County records
that I have ever seen identifies
his parents, so they were left
with this mystery
when they wanted
to establish a claim
on the estate.
One of the Buchanan
descendants in Greene County,
whom we know filed a claim
or at least tried to,
was Walter McClelland Garrettson
a great-great-grandson
of Andrew Buchanan through
his daughter, Elizabeth.
This is a copy of
Walter's claim.
This particular copy is on file
at the Cornerstone Genealogical
Society in Greene County,
in their Buchanan vertical file.
It is preserved along
with the newspaper article
about local Buchanans who
were supposed to inherit.
I have since added
information, but at the time,
there was no warning
label, no notation.
It was just in the file
waiting to be seen, and so me,
14 years old, brand new to
genealogy, this is what I found.
This was the first
document that ever showed me
who Andrew Buchanan's
parents were supposed to be.
I was introduced
to Thomas Buchanan
and Alma Townsend,
and their family.
Andrew is listed as a child.
The following descending lines
of Andrew show Walter's
particular lineage,
which in essentials, is correct.
It certainly is able
to be expanded,
and with original sources
and additional documentation
and details, but essentially,
it's a correct line,
and so when you're
looking at this document,
and you're looking
backwards from Walter,
each generation fitting into
place, the natural thing is
to think okay, here's
somebody who knew
who Andrew's parents were,
and it's a great discovery.
You think you have found
a great record to go
into your family
tree, but of course,
that turned out not to be true.
Fortunately, the volunteers
at the Genealogical Society
were very good researchers
who taught very good
research principles.
They taught me from
the beginning not
to accept what I was handed,
to always work backwards,
study the records, make
sure things made sense.
Very quickly, this did not make
sense, so I was in a conundrum.
I was still new enough
and thinking well,
how is this family
paper written like this,
prepared for a notary,
and not the real thing?
It was the 1990s.
The internet was a
new, wonderful thing
at my fingertips, so I went
online, and I found a woman
who seemed to know a good
bit about the Buchanans,
and I sent her an email.
She very kindly wrote
back to me.
She ended up being the actual
genealogist for Clan Buchanan,
so nothing like a novice
teenager going straight
to the top, but she introduced
me to the Buchanan estate scam,
and told me that what I had
in my possession was a
fabricated family tree.
With her help, I came
to understand how Andrew had
been assigned to a family
that can be found in one
of the most popular Buchanan
genealogies of that day.
It's called The Buchanan Book.
It was published in 1911,
and it's actually the book
that the Library of
Congress referred
to when they wrote their memo.
When you go through the small
section in the back related
to the Buchanan's in the United
States, this chapter appears
about Thomas Buchanan
of New York.
It goes into his family, does
not name Andrew, of course,
but that's often how the
family trees were fabricated
and created.
Andrew was simply
attached to this family.
Why they chose this family?
Presumably because of
the New York connection,
with the New York estate being
at the heart of the whole scam.
There is absolutely no evidence
to tie Andrew to this family
from actual documented research.
In fact, it's unlikely that he
ever even knew these people.
It was necessary
to scrap everything
in Walter's claim related Thomas
and Alma and start from scratch,
to figure out how to find
Andrew's parents based
on the proper genealogical
procedures.
We had to find the record
and those records existed.
They were on file in
Chester County, Pennsylvania,
where we knew Andrew
had come from.
In the 1930s, just as even
in my time in the 1990s,
there were not online
records like we have today.
It definitely required a
much more involved process
of correspondence, visiting,
doing that exhaustive
research the long way around,
but the records are there.
This is a will.
This is the will
of Andrew's father,
who was also named Andrew.
It shows that Andrew's
father died in 1785
when our Andrew was
just a little boy.
There are orphans' court
records, guardian appointments.
There are deeds distributing
the family land.
We can take the family
tree actually back not only
to Andrew's parents but
to Andrew's grandparents
in colonial Pennsylvania.
The problem that really
comes out of the fake tree
that Walter filed, the claim
that so many families run into,
is that the first
instinct is to be excited
to have this document,
and this issue happens
when that document is accepted,
instead of being researched.
The problem that I've seen
a lot of times is that if,
for example, Thomas and
Alma had just been accepted
as Andrew's parents, and
we jumped into spending all
of our time and energy
into finding
out who Thomas's parents were,
we would have wasted our time,
because Thomas was not
actually Andrew's father,
and that's where
genealogists really struggle,
because when they
realize the mistake,
they realize the investment
that they've personally made,
and emotionally made into the
wrong ancestor, and so this is
where education is so important
about doing research generation
by generation, doing
your own research,
and really checking the
records for yourself.
At the end of the
day, the takeaway is
to be your own researcher.
Enjoy it. Embrace it.
A family tree is never done.
You bring a fresh
perspective to the records.
You have access to things a
previous researcher may not have
had access to, especially
as records are constantly
being digitized and indexed.
Enjoy and study the
work others have done
and absolutely give
credit and make the most
of that contribution
to your family,
but also make your
own assessment.
You never know if
somebody read a name wrong,
read a date wrong
misinterpreted a document.
Revisit the sources they cite,
and make your own climb
of the family tree.
One of the places where you
can go to do that research
and find those resources
is the Library of Congress.
We invite you to
visit us in person
and to explore our website.
The local history and genealogy
section is an excellent place
to begin, with our
expansive collection
of published genealogies
and local histories,
but it is just one of many
reading rooms and divisions
at the library that have great
materials helpful to genealogy
and local history research.
On our website, you'll
find such resources
as Chronicling America, which
has historic newspapers,
many of which you saw
in this presentation.
We also have digital
collections, where things
like our maps, photographs,
manuscripts, and more,
have been digitized
and are available
for free research from home.
Also on our website, you'll want
to look at our research guides.
These have been prepared by
Library of Congress librarians,
and cover a variety of topics
where they give you background
information, and lists and links
to resources online as
well as print materials.
There is actually a
research guide to go
with this presentation that
provides quick links to many
of the things you saw today,
as well as additional
information to learn more.
The final concluding
point is just
that every ancestor matters.
They are all worthy of knowing.
They don't have to
be a celebrity
or a world leader or a hero.
They just need to
be who they are,
and we need to appreciate their
stories for better or worse
and acknowledge the
history for what it is.
Without them we wouldn't
be here.
Our job is to do the best that
we can to put them in their time
and place and share
their stories.
There is no reason to
shape or bend the branches
of your family tree to reach any
celebrated glorious ancestors,
and so with all of that,
I hope that this was a fun
and interesting presentation
and puts things into your mind
as you do your research to
watch out for and to learn from.
We hope you'll visit us at
the library and thank you
so much for being here today.