The word looks like “popepion,” but it is not. It’s “possession.” There was a time when a double “s” was not written like one “s” after the other. Sometimes the script looks like a fancy lower-case “f” and other times it looks like a “p” in this illustration from an 1820s era court case in Harford County, Maryland. My transcription of the word is “possession” and not “popepion” because the practice was common. This is not a misspelled word.
It is always advised to compare a record of your ancestor to others in the same series of records. How does the amount of detail compare? If the document is a death certificate, is it filed in the same time frame after the death as the others? If it is a handwritten baptismal entry is there something about it that is different from others? Whenever you are confused about a document, look at similar ones to get a reference point. You can’t know what’s unusual if you don’t know what other ones look like. Like this phone from my childhood. It sat on top of a box of toys in my Grandparents’ home for years. I thought they came with a red O. They don’t. Grandma painted it […]
We are still accepting registrations for our US land records class starting on 2 March. See our announcement for more details.
A reminder from a while back. The “problem” with using certain websites, search engines, etc. is that one can locate images or content and not be certain what they are seeing. A good way to solve that problem… ask someone for help. Not really knowing what you are looking at is a good way to not understand it. The illustration used in this post is an index card to naturalizations created by the US government to help people find their naturalization record when they had lost it and weren’t really certain where they were naturalized (among other reasons). It’s not the naturalization record and is not the same thing as the naturalization record. Ask fellow genealogists if you stumble on something and do not know what it is. […]
Is it possible that your relative had an obituary in a church newspaper or periodical? These materials can be difficult to find and likely were not published near your ancestor lived or housed near where they lived. Searches for such items should begin with national or regional archives devoted to the denomination of which your ancestor was a member and continue with the state organization (state library, historical society, state archives, etc.) responsible for gathering newspapers published within the state in which the ancestor lived.
When you have finished analyzing the materials in a court case file, make note of the dates of any court action. Then search local newspapers for possible mention of the case. The court record may only give part of the story. What is in the newspaper may be unsubstantiated, but it may give you a different perspective than what was in the court record. It’s always worth remembering that manual searches of digitized newspapers are sometimes necessary and that not every newspaper that could contain genealogical information relevant to your research problem has been digitized. Most US newspapers have been microfilmed (but not all), but not all microfilm has been digitized. Don’t limit your newspaper searches to just those items that are online.
Grantor and grantee indexes to land records typically only include the name of the first grantor (seller) and the first grantee (buyer) listed on a land transfer. Deeds involving inheritances, estate disputes, and partnerships may list multiple grantors or grantees. Searching for all members of your ancestor’s extended family (relatives by blood, relatives by marriage, etc.) may locate references not found if you only look for that “one person of interest.” And since not all deeds get recorded promptly and since they are indexed when they are recorded, consider searching for after the death of the grantor and grantee as well. And if your ancestors were farmers and you’ve never looked for a deed…you could be missing out.
We are offering a four-week class on United States land records starting on March 2. There will be lectures, discussions, and optional assignments designed to help reinforce concepts. Additional details are on our announcement page.
I don’t have pictures of too many ancestors. Signatures can be a good replacement. Trying to find them can be an “outside the box” problem-solving approach. Remember that record copies of deeds, wills, and some other records do not contain the actual signature. If the handwriting of the document matches the signature, it’s likely a record copy of the document and not the original. Hence that’s not a signature but instead the clerk’s handwritten copy of it. Places to get signatures are: case packets of original papers from probate or court cases, some marriage records (if the couple had to sign), pension records, bounty land applications, some federal land records, and draft registrations, There are other records that may provide signatures as well.
Due to a schedule conflict, we’ve changed the date for our ChatGPT webinar to 2 March. Details on our announcement page.
When your research crosses a border into a state where you have never done research, put the ancestor away. Learn something about research and records in the state. Visit the website for the state archives, state historical society, state historical library, etc. Learning something about the materials that may be available to you may help you more than immediately digging away using approaches that worked elsewhere.
My webinars on searching land records at FamilySearch, searching probate records at FamilySearch, and full-text searching at FamilySearch have been released. Details on our announcement page.
In reviewing research on my Irish immigrants, I realized that somewhere along the line, I made an incorrect conclusion. I “got it in my head” that the bondsman on the 1865 marriage of my ancestors appeared as the bondsman on numerous bonds and probably was not a relative for that reason. When I went back and reviewed the records, the bondsman was a bondsman on only one bond: the one for my ancestors. All of which means that I need to research the bondsman more fully to determine if he had any relationship to my ancestors. Lessons:
Are you using an 1820 census enumeration where the names appear to be listed in rough alphabetical order? Census takers and some tax collectors, in an attempt to be helpful, roughly sorted names by the first letter of the last name. The problem for genealogists is that this strips the record of all sense of neighborhood. Keep this in mind when you think all the “B”s in an area lived together. No group of people are that organized.
We’ve put together a new ChatGPT webinar. Check out the details on our announcement page. Attend live or pre-order a recording.
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