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For those who find the daily updates too much, a weekly blog update is available.
An electronic copy is available here–along with subscription instructions. The weekly update is only $5 a year.
The church’s funeral register indicated the first funeral at the church was in 1880. For a brief moment, I assumed that would be the first burial in the church’s cemetery as well. Not so. A physical search of the cemetery’s tombstones indicated a burial there in the mid-1870s. It could be that the cemetery was not originally associated with the church, that the church’s earlier records are missing, that the burials were conducted by a pastor from another church before the church in question was formed, or something else.
But my assumption that I had the first records of the church and that there could be nothing before that was wrong.
Check your assumptions before your own research gets buried by them.
Learn more about research methods and analysis in Michael’s newsletter Casefile Clues.
When using published sources and materials, copy (or take a picture of) the index in the back of the book. It is a great way to make certain you didn’t overlook any names. A paper copy is a good place to keep track of which pages you copied. That reduces the chance a page gets overlooked. Sometimes I will take a few notes on that “index page” and make a digital image of that page to put with any digital images I actually made from the book.
That way I have digital images of the pages I want and a digital image of my notes–all in the same place.
Genealogy Tip of the Day by it’s intent is short and to the point. The brief nature of our tips means that we don’t cover everything in great depth. The intent of the tip is to make you aware of something or to remind you of something you forgot. For some tips following up elsewhere is necessary.
My how-to newsletter Casefile Clues is different–it’s more detailed, more in-depth, and covers topics or records more fully.
Casefile Clues brings you one or more of the following:
View a list of previous topics from volumes 1-3 or volume 4 to see what we cover.
Subscribe today ($20 for 52 issues) and we’ll start your subscription with issue 4-14. It’s one of the best genealogical bargains around.
Always look at all sides of a tombstone–there may be additional details on the “back,” the “side,” or the “top” of the stone. Most stones won’t contain a reminder the way this one does.
There usually isn’t anything on the bottom of a stone and digging them up to look is frowned on and occasionally dangerous.
And the back of the stone does give more information about Franzen:
The Franzens are buried in what’s known locally as the “South Cemetery.” It’s actually the Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery southeast of Golden, Adams County, Illinois.
Learn more about research methods and analysis in Michael’s newsletter Casefile Clues.
Under a US Congressional act of 1796 (the Act For The Relief and Protection of American Seamen (1 Stat. 477) signed into law on May 28, 1796), American seamen were periodically issued certificates to hopefully prevent them from being illegally impressed by ships from other nations. . These documents can appear in one of three formats:
The Mystic Seaport Museum has a database of entries from the Custom Houses of Fall River, Gloucester, New Haven, New London, Newport, Marblehead, and Salem.
FamilySearch includes these databases:
Selected Ancestry.com databases:
National Archives research guide on the “Seamen’s Protection Certificates.” (PDF file)
What genealogy clues are waiting for you in the advertisements?
This one from Maryland in 1907 gives a college graduation date.
In locations that have birth certificates and birth registers, it is necessary to look at both. Determine what the “chain of creation” was. Usually the certificates were the “original document” and information in the register contains a transcription of what was on the original certificate. There’s always the possibility that the register contains a transcription error. But there’s also the possibility that the register’s entry is easier to read than the certificate or contains an additional comment made by the clerk and is not on the certificate.
It’s important to read both and to know how they were created.
Witnesses to a will cannot be beneficiaries named in that will and are generally not heirs. Witnesses should be disinterested individuals. And, as a reminder, beneficiaries and heirs are not necessarily the same group of people. Heirs have legal rights of inheritance under statute. Beneficiaries are named as the recipient of real or personal estate, usually upon the death of the owner of that property.
Your relative died in 1850, but records indicate that his estate was not settled up and the farm sold or transferred to someone else until 1869.
Don’t conclude that there had to be “drama” or some court action that you cannot find.
It could be as simple as the family waiting until the widow had died or the youngest child reached the age of majority. Mother may have put her foot down and issued an edict that she was living on the farm until she died. The children could have decided to let mother have control and the money from the farm until she died. The heirs could have decided it was easier (and cheaper) to wait to “settle up” until all the heirs were of age and a guardian would not need to be appointed.