I was using tax records from Dawson County, Nebraska. They were digitized and available on FamilySearch. The temptation was to jump right in and start looking for my people.
That was a mistake.
What I needed to do first was to familiarize myself with the records so that I searched them correctly and did not overlook any references. Individual volumes appeared to have included the personal property assessment first and then the real property assessment. One could have been tempted to find the personal property name and assume one was done. That would have been a mistake.
The second was that the records were organized by precincts. After approximately 1884, the precincts boundaries appear to have followed civil township lines and those names were used. Before that it appears there were just several precincts and they were numbered–not named. And when using these materials on FamilySearch they were (as of this writing) sorted first by the precint names and then the numbered precints appeared at the end of the catalog listing. A reminder to sort through all the references to a specific record type to make certain nothing is overlooked.
Join Michael at the Mid-Continent Public Library’s Midwest Genealogy Center this October.
Check out our upcoming AI and Probate Classes–details on our announcement page.
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