Just because your ancestor uses the phrase “my now wife” in his will, it does not mean he had to have been married twice. A man might use the phrase to make it clear to whom a bequest was being made. If his will said “to my now wife I leave my farm for her life and at her demise it to go to my children” that meant his wife at the time he wrote his will. He might have been concerned that if he remarried and his “then wife” married again that his real property might fall out of his family’s hands.
Full Text Searching at FamilySearch Labs live on 20 October 2024-11:00 am central This presentation will discuss the full text search at FamilySearch Labs of US land, US probate, and other records. The following will be included: · Search techniques and strategies. · Tracking your searches—this is crucial. · Organizing and tracking results and located items. · Determining exactly what it is you found. · Downloading images. · Essentials for citation. Registration or recording purchase options Presentation can be attended live on a first-come, first-served basis. Seats limited. · Full-Text FamilySearch Strategies Live attendance-$16—handout included. · Full-text FamilySearch Strategies Recorded presentation-$15—available within 24 hours of presentation—handout included. Price after 20 October is $18. Genealogy Trip Planning live on 20 October 2024-12:30 pm central This presentation will discuss planning a trip to a genealogy library or an area of former ancestral residence. […]
For many people, the holidays are a time of various family gatherings and a sharing of holiday greetings. Are you going to put a genealogy spin on your holidays? Now may be the time to start planning how you will do that. Do you have an unidentified family photograph (particularly one from the holidays)? Consider adding it to your holiday newsletter–if you send one–or putting a printout of it in your cards to those who might know who the people are? Put a print out of family photos in a small booklet to pass around during family gatherings and encourage people to share their memories. The booklet could also include photos of holiday events in the past, family Christmas ornaments, favorite foods (along with recipes), etc. Images are […]
Your person of interest may be mentioned in local court or land records decades after their death. When their estate’s been settled and closed and their grave is completely grown over with grass (depending upon the location), there may be cause to refer to them in a deed or court record. Sixty years after my ancestor died in Warsaw, Hancock County, Illinois, in 1855 there was an issue the current owner of his home had with the title to the property. A court case resulted to clarify the issue. There in the court record was a discussion of when my ancestor purchased the property in the 1850s, the fact he died in 1855, the fact his wife died in 1903, and who their heirs were in 1913. They […]
From our Facebook page… What do you struggle with in your research? I’m not certain it really impacts things and it may be a stretch to say it’s a “struggle,” but I tend to imagine the ancestors I didn’t know as older and having always been older. My parents are for some reason stuck in their mid-30s (that’s probably my first real solid memories of them) and my grandparents (the three that I knew) are remembered the same way (ranging from 50 to 70 depending on how old they were when I was born). Of course I knew them when they were older. But now that they are gone, they seem to have migrated to those ages in my mind. Memory is a funny thing. Maybe that’s because […]
Genealogists researching in 2024 have indexes available that genealogists in 1924 probably could not even dream of and that genealogists in 1984 might have dreamed of but never thought would happen. Despite those indexes and full-text search capabilities for some records, there are still times when records or references cannot be located. Indexes and full-text searches are not perfect. Sometimes manual searches of every page are necessary. Sometimes searches using the original indexes that were created by the creator of the actual record need to be referenced. Those indexes are not always ideal, but for years they were all we had. In some cases they are still all we have when the records have not been digitized and only exist in their original format. We are not yet […]
From a while back… In one document letters can be made differently, depending upon what letter is next. Handwriting is not always consistent–not even within one document. Don’t expect better writing from clerks than you do of yourself <grin>.
Ancestors who rented property can be difficult to locate. Real estate leases are typically not recorded and they are rarely passed down from one generation to the next. If the lease was paid and the family moved on, there’s often little reason for a person to keep the record. There are some ways to potentially determine where your ancestor lived. For urban individuals, city directories and census records may provide a residential address. In addition to these items, consider any record that may also list an address, particularly vital records, death notices, obituaries, etc. There are home sources that may list addresses as well, including letters, newspaper clippings, and the like. For rural ancestors most of the sources for city dwellers can be used, although directories are often […]
Issue 5-7 of Casefile Clues has been emailed to subscribers. We looked at and analyzed an estate claim for farm labor in Illinois in 1898. Learn more about Casefile Clues and subscribe today!
As FamilySearch makes it easier to find things in local court and probate records via their full-text searches, one of the things that can be discovered is to whom your ancestor lent money, from whom your ancestor borrowed money, and who signed on as security when your relative borrowed money. Many of these transactions are documented in court and probate records. It can be tempting to ignore these items. But think about those individuals who had financial dealings with your ancestor: Your ancestor may have ignored their debts–that’s sometimes how they end up being mentioned in court records. Don’t you ignore their debts as well. Join me on 20 October for on one three live webinars–Full-Text Searching at FamilySearch, Citations, and Genealogy Trip Planning!
When performing full-text searches of court and other local records US records, when do you stop searching for a relative? Five years after they died? Thirty years after they died? Never? It can be difficult to tell. The important thing is to not stop searching after the individual’s estate has been settled. A deceased person can easily be mentioned in court records decades after their death. Recently, I discovered a court case involving a property line dispute that mentioned in 1914 an ancestor who died in 1855. Information on the heirs of the long-dead ancestor were mentioned in the 1914 court records–sixty years after he died. It is not unusual for affidavits to be filed with land records that provide information about events that took place fifty years […]
When searching, it can be tempting to only look in locations where a person is known to have lived. After all, sometimes even searching through search results and records in those locations can be a time consuming and daunting task. That can be a mistake. Your relative may have never left a very narrow and specific geographic location, having lived there their entire life. Yet, they may be mentioned in the records of a county or a location in which they never lived. My great-grandmother lived her entire life in two townships in Hancock County, Illinois. She’s mentioned in several records in Adams County, Illinois, during the settlement of her grandparents’ estates. Other relatives purchased property in adjacent counties while never living there. Don’t limit your searches to […]
Check out our webinars for 20 October–attend live or purchase a recording. Topics are:
When you find a piece of genealogical information online, save it. Save the image or the text in a way you can view it later. Save it to your own computer, flash drive, jump drive, digital media, or other storage medium. Backing up to the cloud is fine, but make certain that your cloud storage is backed up to other physical media. That should be media over which you have actual control, media you know exactly where it is, and media you can actually put your hands on if necessary. You cannot put your hands on the cloud. If your files are stored one someone else’s server or site or they are simply linked to your account or tree and not stored as your actual images, there is […]
A 1914 petition in an Illinois court case appears to have been signed by the three complainants in the case and their solicitor. The four signatures look similar. It’s because they likely were written by the same person (probably the attorney). The “By” in front of the solicitor’s signature suggests that it was signed by him for them. The signature for Heipke Dirks on the 1914 petition does not appear to match her known signature from an April 1913 document in her husband’s probate file. I’ll need to see if I can find signatures of the other two and make comparisons as well. What you think is your ancestor’s signature may not be. Think about the record, its creation, and other contextual clues in determining whether you’ve got […]
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