Between May 1905 and April 1907, the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the Secretary of the Interior to identify the descendants of Eastern Cherokees entitled to participate in the distribution of more than $1 million authorized by Congress. The purpose of the authorization was to settle outstanding claims made under treaties between the U.S. government and the Cherokees in 1835–1836 and 1845.

On May 28, 1909, Mr. Guion Miller, representing the Interior Department, submitted his findings with respect to 45,847 separate applications for compensation (encompassing about 90,000 individual claimants). Miller qualified about 30,000 persons inhabiting 19 states to share in the fund. Ninety percent of these individuals were living west of the Mississippi River, but all of them were considered to be Eastern Cherokee by blood, that is, descendants of the Cherokee Nation that had been evicted from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee in 1835. (The Interior agent submitted a supplemental report in January 1910 that resulted in another 610 eligibles.)

The volume at hand is the third in a series by Mr. Jeff Bowen based on the Guion Miller applications. Volume III, like its predecessors, begins with a helpful Introduction describing the origins of the Guion Miller rolls and the methodology used in abstracting them. The text itself consists of 3,677 additional applications of the 45,847 examined by Miller. Mr. Bowen has culled every shred of genealogical value from the applications (part of Record Groups 75 and 123 of the Bureau of Indian Affairs), which in every case provides the application number, the applicant’s name and city of residence, the number of other persons in the applicant’s family, references to family members found in other applications, and the disposition of the application. In many instances, moreover, Mr. Bowen has supplemented the core elements found in the abstracts with references to other family members by name, relationship(s), and dates of birth and/or death. The researcher will find references to about 5,000 Cherokee descendants in this volume, bringing the total number in volumes I through III to 16,000. The name index at the back of each volume makes it easy to find every such reference.

Between May 1905 and April 1907, the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the Secretary of the Interior to identify the descendants of Eastern Cherokees entitled to participate in the distribution of more than $1 million authorized by Congress. The purpose of the authorization was to settle outstanding claims made under treaties between the U.S. government and the Cherokees in 1835–1836 and 1845.

On May 28, 1909, Mr. Guion Miller, representing the Interior Department, submitted his findings with respect to 45,847 separate applications for compensation (encompassing about 90,000 individual claimants). Miller qualified about 30,000 persons inhabiting 19 states to share in the fund. Ninety percent of these individuals were living west of the Mississippi River, but all of them were considered to be Eastern Cherokee by blood, that is, descendants of the Cherokee Nation that had been evicted from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee in 1835. (The Interior agent submitted a supplemental report in January 1910 that resulted in another 610 eligibles.)

The volume at hand is the fourth in a series by Mr. Jeff Bowen based on the Guion Miller applications. Volume IV consists of 3,824 additional abstracts from the Guion Miller applications, bringing the grand total examined by Jeff Bowen to over 14,000. Mr. Bowen culled every shred of genealogical value from the applications, which in every case provides the application number, applicant's name and city of residence, number of other persons in the applicant's family, references to family members found in other applications, and the disposition of the application. In many instances, moreover, Mr. Bowen has supplemented the core elements found in the abstracts with references to other family members by name, relationship(s), and dates of birth and/or death. The researcher will find references to about 4,000 Cherokee descendants in this volume.

Between May 1905 and April 1907, the U.S. Supreme Court authorized the Secretary of the Interior to identify the descendants of Eastern Cherokees entitled to participate in the distribution of more than $1 million authorized by Congress. The purpose of the authorization was to settle outstanding claims made under treaties between the U.S. government and the Cherokees in 1835–1836 and 1845.

On May 28, 1909, Mr. Guion Miller, representing the Interior Department, submitted his findings with respect to 45,847 separate applications for compensation (encompassing about 90,000 individual claimants). Miller qualified about 30,000 persons inhabiting 19 states to share in the fund. Ninety percent of these individuals were living west of the Mississippi River, but all of them were considered to be Eastern Cherokee by blood, that is, descendants of the Cherokee Nation that had been evicted from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee in 1835. (Mr. Miller submitted a supplemental report in January 1910 that resulted in another 610 eligibles.)

Volume V in this series represents an additional 3,783 applications examined by compiler Jeff Bowen, bringing the total to more than 18,000. Mr. Bowen culled every shred of genealogical value from the applications, which in every case provides the application number, applicant’s name and city of residence, number of other persons in the applicant’s family, references to family members found in other applications, and the disposition of the application. In some instances, moreover, Mr. Bowen has supplemented the core elements found in the abstracts with references to other family members by name, relationship(s), and dates of birth and/or death. The researcher will find references to nearly 5,000 Cherokee descendants in this fully indexed volume, bringing the total number of descendants in Volumes One through Five to 34,000.

This is the second volume in a series of transcriptions of census material for the Eastern Band of Cherokees between 1923 and 1929 (see also Volume I). Researchers familiar with the work of compiler Jeff Bowen will know that he completed the transcription of a four-volume series of census records gathered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Agent James E. Henderson for the years 1915 to 1922. Like its predecessor this new three-volume series is based on Agent Henderson’s enumerations. This series marks the first time the 1923 to 1929 Eastern Cherokee data has been made available as a publication.

Eastern Cherokee Census, Cherokee, North Carolina, 1923–1929 concerns the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians from Cherokee, North Carolina, living on the reservation known as the Qualla Boundary. Individuals enumerated in the Henderson census are descendants of the Cherokees who were not removed to Indian Territory during the period 1838 to 1839 in the migration known as the "Trail of Tears." While there is sometimes additional data, information provided in the census almost invariably gives each person’s name, family relationship, date of birth, and sex—information that is critical in any genealogical research. In all, researchers will find references to about 3,500 Cherokees who inhabited the Qualla Boundary between 1925 and 1926, bringing the total identified in this series to date to about 7,000.

Whatever may be their origins in antiquity, the Cherokees are generally thought to be a Southeastern tribe, with roots in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, among other states, though many Cherokees are identified today with Oklahoma, to which they had been forcibly removed by treaty in the 1830s, or with the lands of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in western North Carolina. The largest of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, which also included Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, the Cherokees were the first tribe to have a written language, and by 1820 they had even adopted a form of government resembling that of the United States.

It is a lesser known fact that there was considerably more intermarriage between Cherokees and Whites than any other tribe, so they have a genealogical significance far out of proportion to their historical numbers. There is also a great deal of genealogical data on the Cherokees, mostly in the form of census records and enrollment records. All of which is to point out the abundance of sources available to Emmet Starr when he came to pen his classic History of the Cherokee Indians and Their Legends and Folklore.

Not to diminish Mr. Starr's contribution in writing about the early Cherokees, their constitution, treaties with the federal government, land transactions, school system, migration and resettlement, committees, councils, and officials, religion, language, and culture, and a host of other topics upon which he writes eloquently, but his stated purpose in writing the History was "to make it as near a personal history and biography of as many Cherokees as possible." And in fact more than half the book is devoted to genealogies and biographies, of which there are several hundred. The biographies in particular, each averaging a paragraph or more, are noteworthy for their focus on the genealogical events of birth, marriage, and death over a period of several generations, naming thousands of related individuals in a classic roll-call of family members.

Although written in 1921, Starr's pioneering work has never been superseded, and we are delighted to make it available to a new generation of researchers    Hardback, 672 pgs