I know we have some folks with Cherokee lineage on the list... EVERTON'S FAMILY HISTORY NEWSLINE Tuesday, 18 May 1999 The Clifton-Kern Roll of Cherokee Freedmen As Frank Beacon pointed out in his column "Publican Papers", in many cases the "census substitutes" we use in our genealogical research were originally compiled by government workers as part of their jobs to collect money. But the work of the Clifton-Kern commission was quite the opposite. They were to compile lists of people who would receive government money. The "Clifton-Kern" commission was actually composed of three men: William Clifton, William Thompson, and Robert Kern. Their work, completed in 1897, was in the form of a census conducted among the Cherokee Freedmen -- the descendants of unions between Cherokee and African Americans. Like the Wallace Roll, the rolls of the Kern-Clifton team list the names of those who were confirmed Cherokee Freedmen roughly in alphabetic order by family, giving the full name (English, not Native American) of each, his or her relationship to the head of the household, gender, age, and residence (by district). Each name was also assigned a (serial) number, allowing that person to be quickly identified -- and cross-referenced -- in subsequent matters regarding tribal membership. The list and its supplement were compiled into typewritten sheets, numbering about 200 pages. Although the photographic contrast of these century-old pages is not perfect, it is certainly high enough to result in very readable JPEG images of each page. While it should be easy to save a copy of a relevant page to your hard drive and clean it up a bit with a graphics program, you may want to contact the National Archives and purchase a photocopy of a page you value. Fortunately, instructions for this are included online. Resources: Search the NAIL Collections http://www.nara.gov/nara/searchnail.html Old Military and Civil Records National Archives Building 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20408 Online Resources for Native American Genealogy http://www.everton.com/resources/special.html#native Copyright 1999, Everton Publishers All rights reserved - ------------------------------------------------------------------ FAMILY HISTORY NEWSLINE is a free daily genealogy news service provided by Everton Publishers subscribe: <[email protected]> message: subscribe history unsubscribe: <[email protected]> message: unsubscribe history Recent articles are available online at http://www.everton.com/FHN/