If you’ve encountered “old tenor” in a 18th century deed from Massachusetts, it is a reference to a form of paper money. There’s a longer post about it on our sister website. There’s a Wikipedia article on American Colonial currency that discusses colonial money in general. Help support Genealogy Tip of the Day by visiting any of the following sites: Try a GenealogyBank Genealogy Search to see what you find. Newspapers.com AncestryDNA offers. Books on Michael’s Genealogy Shelf My 1950 Census webinar
The problem-solving approach developed by George Polya has been used in math courses for years. With a little adaptation, genealogists can use it as well. The four steps can be summarized as: Understand-learn all about your relative, the time period, the location, and the records Plan–decide what to search and how to search it Execute–do it…and track what you do Evaluate–analyze what has been found, integrate it into what is already known. If you solved the problem, then there are new ones to solve. If you didn’t solve it, go back to the understand step. That one requires the most work, particularly when research in a new area or time period is being undertaken. Order my problem-solving webinar.
A distant relative contacted me out of the blue and in reviewing a chart he sent on the descendants of my aunt’s husband’s parents, I realized I had information on several of that man’s nephews and nieces because the names were familiar to me. I had heard the names before and I knew where. They were not all in my database. They were all in my head. Even though two names were in my database, I didn’t search for them based on their name. I searched on them based on their relationship to me : wife of my second great-grandfather’s brother, wife of my second great-grandfather’s brother’s first cousin, man who attempted to homestead with a different second great-grandfather. Fortunately I had written about the homesteader situation and […]
Happy 2022 to all our readers. Best of luck in your research in the new year! Today we’re offering a 20.22% discount on two of our webinars.
Your ancestor may have waited to record a document for a variety of reasons. Land records were often filed relatively soon after the document was executed, but some individuals in frontier areas would sometimes wait to file a document because of confusing boundary lines, difficulty of getting to recording office, failure to realize the importance of recording the document. The example in this image is a relinquishment of an interest in a piece of property which was not recorded until the property was subject to an out-of-state lawsuit decades after the relinquishment was signed. Powers-of-attorney to transfer property are sometimes not recorded until the actual document transferring that property is recorded. Sometimes deeds of purchase were not recorded until the property is being transferred by the owner or […]
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