Join me for one of these research trips in 2025: Library of Virginia FamilySearch Library Allen County Public Library
It’s minor’s naturalization not miner’s naturalization. We’re not talking about immigrant coal miners in this post. During the 1824-1906 time period, individuals who had arrived in the United States as minors and were over the age of majority could complete a one-step naturalization process (there was no separate declaration of intention required) as long as they had resided in the United States for five years (including three years before they reached the age of majority). Typically they had to reside for one year in the state in which they were being naturalized. Pay close attention on these documents as to what the witnesses were witnessing as it may suggest how long they had known the individual being naturalized.
When your relative appears on a legal document in any capacity, determine who was eligible to act in that capacity and who was ineligible to act in that capacity. There could be significant genealogical details in those requirements. Typically someone who witnesses a will must be a disinterested party–this usually means they are not an heir-at-law of the testator or a beneficiary of the will the testator is signing. Witnesses to homestead claims under the US Homestead Act of 1862 typically were not to be relatives of the claimant. Guardians of a child’s estate typically had to be of the age of majority and meet other requirements set by state statute. Children over the age of 14 typically could choose their guardian–with approval of the court. Individuals serving […]
I recently read someone post that they had digitized all the census photocopies they had made early in their research. Preservation is good and we all digitize what we have, but if you’ve got a great quantity of material, there are some things to preserve digital images or records of first: Federal census records are readily available digitally in a variety of places. An old family history published in the 1880s may already be online on multiple websites. Those letters from great-grandma? Those pictures from that 1920 family reunion? They may only exist in your collection. Preservation and digitization should initially concentrate on what you have that’s unique. I have a copy of a family history of one of my families published in the early 1980s. I could […]
Keep a document that has a listing of the various ways your various ancestral names can actually be pronounced. A list of spellings is not a bad idea either but knowing various ways a name could have been said can be helpful as well.
How many of your ancestral homes are still standing? How many do you have pictures of? For those whose ancestors were very mobile or were renters, this may be difficult to answer unless those specific residential addresses are known. For those whose ancestors tended to stay put and were landowners or homeowners, the question may be easier to answer. A follow-up question is how many of those homes were you in? For me, the home I grew up in is still standing. The home my father grew up in is not. I’m not exactly certain where the rental farm was my mother grew up in, but I’m guessing it’s no longer standing. My maternal grandmother’s childhood home is still standing and owned by a family member. Both homes […]
In many record sets an ancestor’s name should appear only once, but there are exceptions. People get “double counted” in census records regularly–sometimes because they moved and other times because they had two residences. Sometimes it’s because a couple is really living apart and one spouse does not want to admit it to the census taker. In some cases amended birth or death certificates may be filed. This is sometimes done with birth certificates in the case of an adoption and with death certificates if the cause of death needs to be changed. People can easily be listed on property tax rolls in more than one location if they own property in more than one location. And individuals (or even couples) can appear as a bride or groom […]
Land records generally record the acquisition and disposition of land. While document recorded in the “land records” of county or jurisdiction are typically deeds transferring title to property, occasionally they are other documents that are related to the title of a piece of property. It’s not just land records that may may provide information about your ancestor and their land ownership. Property tax records (often maintained at the same jurisdictional level as land records) may indicate that the owner is deceased or that the widow or someone else is paying the taxes on the property. There may not be a deed transferring the ownership from the estate of the deceased to the heirs until years after their death. If you need to estimate a date of death for […]
When digitizing photographs, it can be temping to just focus on the humans. That can be a mistake. There can be clues to the time and place of the photograph in those non-human details. A church (or other building) in the background may help to identify the location or when the photograph was taken. Don’t remove the surrounding structures from the individuals in a photograph. Clouds and sky are usually fine to crop away.
My Aunt Adolphina, who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Illinois, occasionally went by the name of Phena (or Feeny, Pheenie, Feenie, etc.). There’s one reference to her as Josephine. In over other record, she’s listed as Adolphina (or Adolphena) or one of the variants of Phena. And it got me to wondering about the Josephine. Did she tell the clerk her name was Phena (since that’s apparently when she was referred to by most relatives and friends) and the clerk assumed that her name was actually Josephine? I’m not certain, but the one reference to Josephine when all other references are to Adolphena or Feenie have me wondering. Sometimes variant spellings or names are because someone in the records office made an assumption.
Many of my ancestors settled in areas where they knew people–either family or neighbors from back home. Those connections, often combined with economic, political, or cultural changes, resulted in many of our ancestors moving. But the move might not have been in response to a neighbor or relative moving. If your ancestor apparently picked up and moved to where he knew no one, is it possible he was responding to an advertisement? Speculators, land agents, promoted their projects and developments in a variety of ways–including newspapers. It might have been an advertisement that caused your ancestor to pick up and move to where he knew no one.
If you find a relative in a court record, do you know how to search for transcripts of testimony, petitions of plaintiff, responses of defendant, and other original court documents? Entries in journals and ledgers may only be part of the record and are a great place to start, but there may be more. The difficulty is that in some cases these records were never kept in the first place or they are no longer extant. But it is worth your while to find out. The local courthouse that houses the court record you’ve found is the first place to look. Local historical/genealogical societies may be able to give some guidance in addition to locals familiar with the records. Older records may have been transferred to the appropriate […]
While working on a Virginia family at the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, I located some court records that partially explained a family and their relationships. It also confused me more than I already was about a few other things. I thought if I just kept looking at the information and beat my head against the wall (so to speak), I would eventually “figure it out” and the likely scenario would dawn on me. It didn’t. Time spent drawing out the possible scenarios was better spent looking for more records, crossing sources off my search list, etc. It’s usually best to wait until the research is complete to start trying to put it all together. Of course, one is going to conjecture and speculate as new materials […]
Remember that 1 January was not always the first day of the new year. A few links with more information:
That one record you’ve found, a deed, a death certificate, a will, an estate settlement, probably was created because something else happened. For some documents it may be obvious what caused the document to have been created. But a deed? Why was the property being sold? Was the couple planning to move? Had they fallen on hard times? If a guardianship was filed and the parents were still alive, what was the reason? Was there an inheritance that someone didn’t want a parent frittering away? Always ask if what you are seeing or have located is just the shadow of a larger event. Records weren’t created in isolation. And even if you know what caused a document to have been created ask yourself what other documents might also […]
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