Receipts in probate files may give locations suggesting where the deceased lived. These references can be helpful in estate files where there is no real property to describe or locate.
Spelling variations or misreadings where consonants are changed can frustrate searches, particularly where interchanged letters don’t sound alike. In this example, a “v” was replaced with an “r.” That’s different enough that sound-based searches don’t often work.
A house fire or natural disaster could easily explain why your branch of the family has few pictures or other family ephemera. In one case, I am lucky that there are many things as there are given a house fire in 1924. Situations such as this make it all the more important to contact members of your extended family to see if they have copies of pictures or other items—and to preserve information you have as well.
Ancestry.com is not a video game, don’t treat your subscription like one where you can always find whatever you want when you want. Save your images to your own media so you have them if you ever let your membership lapse (downloaded online Ancestry.com files don’t include images). And analyze what you find as you find it—avoid merely clicking your way to a collection of images that may or may not be related to the exact same person.
My aunt had a baby several years before she was married in the early 1870s. Family members had always assumed that the baby was the child of the aunt’s eventual husband. Court records indicated that the “early” child was not the child of the eventual husband, but was instead the child of another man who left shortly after he learned my aunt was pregnant.
There are two obituaries for one of my ancestors. One says he died at the home of son George. The other says he died at the home of son Fred. The reminders from this are: cite your source–so you know what said what get as many different sources as you can–they may not agree any source can be in error all obituaries are not created equally When I only look in one place and fail to cite where I got it, I’m eventually going to be confused.
When you discover a “new” event in your ancestor’s life, do you consider that it might have generated newspaper coverage? Deaths and marriages are pretty obvious items for possible newspaper menti on, but there are other events that may have generated newspaper coverage as well. An ancestral acquaintance was convicted of manslaughter in 1858 and pardoned a few years later. I thought to look for a newspaper account of the trail, but should have looked for mention of the pardon as well.
It’s easy to locate an obituary in one newspaper and move on to another research task. In some locations, there may have been several newspapers in the area that might have published a death notice or an obituary on your ancestor. One may have easily included bits of information that were not mentioned in others. Ask yourself: “are there other newspapers that might have published an obituary?” You never know what you will find until you look.
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Before the repairman comes to do any work in the house, I always make certain everything is “cleaned up and out of his way.” There’s no need to pay a plumber to clean out under the kitchen sink to reach the garbage disposal when I can do that myself. It’s the same with hiring a professional genealogist. Before someone else can work on your problem, they will need to organize and “clean up” what you have already obtained. That organization of information is something you can do yourself and is preferred to simply sending the researcher a random collection of documents. If the researcher you hire has to organize our information before he can even begin, you will be charged for the time spent organizing your unorganized information. After all, […]
Never avoid reading the “boring legal pages” of a court record. There may be a spelling clue buried in all that legal talk.
Sometimes one has to realize when it’s time to refocus and move in a different research direction. I’m about there on the second husband of an ancestor whose first husband (my ancestor) died in late 1855 in Warsaw, Illinois. She and the second husband were married by May of 1856 and they were parted by the end of that month when he left for parts unknown. All I know is George’s name and that he was old enough to serve as a guardian/administrator of an estate in May of 1856. That’s it. And the one signature I have of him looks to be in German script. And his name is written as Fendler once in the record instead of Fennan. It still may be time to really think […]
The reverse side of many legal documents typically contains the title of the document and details about its being filed and recorded. There may be other clues as well. This document indicates the letters of administration were revoked. If all the papers in this file had not been extant, this reference may have been the only clue the administrator of this estate was removed from his position.
Publication notices are pretty pro forma in United States settlements in the mid-19th century and later. This one served to remind me that I had not looked for an obituary of Samuel Neill in this paper where his estate notice was published. The papers were not available to me years ago when I initially researched Samuel and I never thought about them later. A local paper may have a better obituary for him than the ones I have. Always be on the lookout for clues and reminders–even in legal notices.
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