I'll start by saying that the Perry County branch of the OGS is awesome. The staff has been unbelievably helpful in all phases of my research, and I'm very grateful. I am not criticizing the organization but rather describing my own experience as a heads up to others who may want their families to be designated Pioneer Families.
My family were early settlers in Perry County; my 3rd grandfather, Michel Bourgeois, bought land and settled in Reading Township, Perry County, Ohio in Sept 1827. This meets the cutoff date of Dec. 31, 1830. So why am I not signing up?
Simply put, it's the challenge of meeting the standards for application. Part of the problem lies with the last name. The passenger list that documents the family's arrival in 1827 uses a pretty odd spelling (Boursioe), and the names and ages of the children listed do not quite match the facts. For instance, my own ancestor, Morand, born 26 Sept. 1810, is listed as Noma, age 14 (not 17). There are many elements of the passenger list that have convinced me this is our family, but that conclusion was reached in conjunction with many other documents (French birth, marriage, and emigration records, and Michael's will). Standing alone, it's reasonable to have some small doubts.
To demonstrate the family is eligible for the Pioneer designation, we must show more than a land purchase. But during the early years that the family was in Perry, the name Bourgeois was spelled almost 40 different ways, none of them Bourgeois. We do have the family in the 1830 census, but the spelling of the name doesn't match that on the land records (or the passenger list). So while I know that Michael Burshee on the 1830 census is the same as Michael Burchuer who buys land 29 Sep 1827 as well as Michael Burscheur and Michael Burshue, who buy land in 1828, I can't easily prove it.
Because Michel and his wife arrived with all six of their children, we have no birth records that date prior to 1830. One of his sons, Meinrad, buys land in Nov. 1830, but he's not my direct ancestor. And again, buying land is not evidence that the pioneer lived on that land. So I have less than sterling evidence that the family was actually living in Perry in 1830.
Even if Perry County would accept my data as sufficient evidence that the family was living in Perry County in 1830, that doesn't solve other problems. One is that my mother's birth certificate is gone; a fire in Cairo, Illinois took that. The catholic church where she was baptized won't release baptism records. So I must use her marriage record and other documents to prove who her parents were. Of course, the marriage record is not a contemporaneous record, although there is good reason to consider it accurate. And I do not have her father's birth certificate though it is probably available, for a fee. I realize that it is remotely possible there is a hidden bomb waiting to be exploded (mother could be the daughter of the local priest rather than the man married to her mother), but I don't think her baptism certificate is going to reveal that. I'm convinced she is the daughter of Herbert Bushu, but I'm not sure I have unquestionable evidence of that.
The clincher, however, is the requirement that I get independent confirmation of the translations of the German, Latin, and French birth and marriage documents substantiating the lineage of the immigrant family. I took French from grade school through two years of college; I took Latin for grade school and two years of high school. I spent an intense year learning German so I could translate the 100s of documents in my possession, and my translations have been informally substantiated by a German cousin who is now dead. I'm not fluent but I'm absolutely capable of translating simple documents. I'm not paying a translator beaucoup bucks to affirm the legitimacy of my translations. End of discussion.
I am not questioning the right of the society to make these demands; I assume they are consistent with the standards for the DAR and other pioneer societies. But these standards exceed those I have met to demonstrate incontrovertibly my ancestry. And so I've decided that I'd rather spend the money I would lay out to meet the society's demands on a genie trip, a book or magazine, or a conference. So the Bourgeois/Boursoie/Bursheur/Bushore/Bushu/Bushur/Bushue/Bursher families are pioneers, yes, but not Pioneers. Schade! Mais c'est la vie.
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