A few general comments about going to the courthouse: You are not a local. It sometimes makes a difference. Be polite. Look reasonably professional. Ask before taking digital images. Consider copying indexes if time is short. There’s more you can do to prepare for a visit, but these are a few short reminders for this short tip.
If you have family who lived in the same small, somewhat isolated area for a few hundred years and there are records extant, always consider the possibility that you are related in more than one way to someone than you think you are–especially if your research on the family is not complete. This can impact your autosomal DNA results going back to your 5th great-grandparents at least. One more relationship than you think you have can confuse your matches more than they already are–especially if you’ve already got two or more relationships between a DNA match.
Those with an interest in the American Revolution may find our post about using the free index and images to these records at FamilySearch helpful. The index (not created by FamilySearch) and the images of the records at FamilySearch are not linked to each other.
When using any handwritten index to local land, court, or probate records for the first time, take some time to familiarize yourself with how it is set up and organized. Indexes can vary from one office to another and the indexing scheme that was used in one location can vary from what’s used in another. Assuming they are all the same can cause you to overlook records. This index from Clinton County, New York, indexed records by the name of the grantor and grantee, but the last names were not just broken up by the initial letter of the first name, they were broken up in to subsections based upon the first and second letters of the last name. A hurried researcher, not familiar with the index might […]
A little Google searching for those items in your ancestor’s estate may enlighten you about their life and some of the items in it. The 1880-era estate inventory of Andrew Trask in Mercer County, Illinois, mentioned a “Weir Sulky Plow.” After some searching, I knew what it was, where it was manufactured and even had a patent image of it. Newspaper searches for those items may reveal pictures and other information–if Google isn’t helpful.
For much of American history, name changes did not require court action. A person could simply start using a new name–as long as they weren’t going to engage in any fraudulent activity. Your ancestor in 1880 could simply have chosen to use a new name when he or she moved into a new town. Sometimes immigrants would take a new name when they naturalized. That name may have been based on the name they had in their native language, but there was no law that they had to literally translate. Comprehensively searching your ancestor may help reveal name changes as land records, estate records, other court records, military pension materials and other records may document the name change. Good ol’ Riley was originally named Latte when he came […]
A seasoned professional genealogist does not guarantee to find anything. All any researcher can do, professional or not, is methodically search the records that are extant and report what they find. Without having searched the records, no one can guarantee what will be found. If someone tells you that they are 100% certain they can answer your question, consider another researcher.
The Preemption Act of 1841 permitted “squatters” who were living on federal government-owned land to purchase up to 160 acres for $1.25 per acre, before the land was to be offered for sale to the general public. To qualify under the law, the squatter had to be: a head of a family; a single man over 21 or a widow; a citizen of the United States (or an immigrant who has filed a declaration of intention); and a resident of the claimed land for a minimum of 14 months. The text of the Act is online. The Bureau of Land Management website indexes federal land patents that were issued under this act. View the actual patent to determine if the patent was issued under the Preemption Act as […]
When starting with an analysis of DNA matches, it can be tempting to work on solving that “brick wall” problem right away. That might be a mistake. Two good approaches are to sort out the low-hanging genealogical fruit–those matches that are easy to figure out. This should be done even if the family some of these matches are related on are not the “brick wall” family. The other approach is to sort out matches on those families where you already “know everything.” This can be a good way to improve your DNA analysis skills in order to help you work on your true brick wall.
Often when looking through search results researchers quickly eye each returned entry and determine if it’s “close enough” match to warrant looking at or not. That analysis sometimes is done quickly and is based on what we “have in our head” about the person for whom we are searching. Other times it is easy to get the details of the person I am searching for mixed up with details of other people. To help keep me on track, I quickly jot down what the search results should look like if I were to find the person. If I’m looking for a person in the 1850 US census, I have written down their name, what their approximate age should be in 1850, where they were roughly born, and whatever […]
I made up a silly little story about the dog, the cricket, and the rubber band and posted it to my personal Facebook page. The story was pure fiction and the rubber band had nothing to do with anything–it was just there. Are you trying make all the details fit into one genealogy story that is consistent? Maybe the problem is that one detail really doesn’t fit–because it is incorrect. Does someone appear on a document simply because they were in “the right place at the right time?” Witnesses aren’t always relatives–sometimes they are “warm bodies” who are legally able to witness a document or an event. Is there another way to interpret the document that you have? It can be easy to get stuck in our “first […]
There is a limit to how far back Autosomal DNA testing can be used to determine genealogical relationships simply because a person gets half their DNA from each parent and the further back you go the smaller the potential share you get from each ancestor. That’s why it’s advised that people have parents and grandparents or other relatives of that generation tested. But are there some cousins who are not quite as distant from your ancestors as you are? My great-grandmother Ufkes has several descendants. Two of them are in their late twenties. One of those twenty-somethings is also her great-granddaughter. The other twenty-something is her great-great-granddaughter. Which would be preferable for testing if you could only afford one test? The great-granddaughter would be preferred as she’s “closer” […]
Census records suggest that there are “gaps” in the dates of birth for the children of an ancestral couple. Don’t just conclude that they didn’t have any more or that they died young at birth. While those situations are indeed possible, it is also possible that some children were apprenticed out or lived with other family members who needed extra help in one way or another. It’s also possible your ancestor had more than one spouse and that those “gaps” are when the ancestor was not married.
Military pension files may contain dates of death for veterans and can be good places to find this information if death records are not extant in the time and place where the veteran died.
My Henry and Barbara Trautvetter are living together as husband and wife in Hancock County, Illinois, in 1860, with their children. Their immigration date is unknown, but it likely was in the 1845-1855 time frame. There apparently is another Henry and Barbara Trautvetter living in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1850. Based upon the ages of Henry and Barbara and the children in the enumerations, they appear to be separate couples. All of them are German immigrants. Never assume that there couldn’t be more than one couple with what you think is an unusual name combination. Do some research. The sites that do “automatic matching” make it easier than it already is to merge people like this together.
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