Genealogy Blog Update 9 September 2026 - Genealogy Tip of the Day

Genealogy Blog Update
9 Sept 2026

** Age is 20/30

** Full-Text Searching at FamilySearch–5 Week Class

** Metes and Bounds and AI–new release date

** Have You Got Your Deed?

** Upcoming Trips–Join Us!

** Do You Need a Simple Lookup?

** Updated Webinar List

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Age is 20/30

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I’ve often seen ages listed in fractions of a year 1/12, 2/12, etc. but it is not often that I see an age listed as a fraction of the number of days in the month. Maggie Johnson is listed as 20/30 for her age in this 1880 census enumeration from Prairie Township, Hancock County, Illinois. The census states that she was born in May. The date this census was taken was 12 June 1880 and the actual date of the census was 1 June 1880. My guess is that this means she was 20 days old–but May does have 31 days, not 30.

Source:
1880 U S Census, Prairie Township, Hancock County, Illinois , page 20D, line 40.

Next step is to see if there is a birth certificate for her. That search should start in the records of Hancock County and expand from there if needed.

Don’t forget:

5-week class on Using FamilySearch’s Full-Text Search

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Updated Webinar List

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Increase your research skills!

Ready-to-Go Webinars from Michael–download immediate:

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Using AI for Metes and Bounds Deed Analysis–to be released 18 September

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A completely new presentation!

and there’s still time to get it at the introductory price

Using AI for Metes and Bounds Deed Analysis

Do deeds with metes and bounds descriptions give you headaches? You are not alone. We will see how to use AI to help with drawing properties, analyzing deed transactions, noticing patterns, and more. Our presentation is easy-to-follow, down-to-earth, and practical. This presentation is not about how to find land records. We will assume you already know how to do that.

Topics covered will include:

Using AI to work with metes and bounds descriptions.
Manual versus AI transcriptions
Fitting parcels together
Viewing acquisitions and sales over time
Creating ownership chronologies

Participants are encouraged to send Michael a limited number of questions after they have viewed the presentation.

Revised release date is 18 September 2026. Pre-order price $21. Post-release price $27.00. Handout included which will include commentary and prompts that were used. The presentation is approximately an hour long and can be viewed more than once.. Order yours today. Don’t wait as we tend to forget.

About Michael:

Michael John Neill has actively researched his genealogy since the early 1980s. He has given genealogy lectures at a variety of national and small conferences since the 1990s. Michael has a master’s degree in mathematics and taught mathematics at a community college for thirty years. He has led research trips to the FamilySearch Library for over twenty years.

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Got Your Deed?

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This image comes from the Rockford [Illinois] Forum of 9 January 1850. Apparently the former recorder had approximately 1,000 deeds that had never been picked up. Interestingly enough my ancestor Clark Sargent purchased federal property in Winnebago County during this time period. Clark died in 1847 and, who knows, maybe his deed was in this collection.
Makes a person wonder how many deeds were never picked up by the property owners. I doubt if all 1,000 deeds were picked up by the rightful parties–wonder what happened to them.

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Upcoming Trips

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Do You Need a Simple Lookup?

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Sometimes all the genealogist really needs is a lookup. Sometimes they need more extended research. Which really depends upon the situation.

One lookup example stems from the newspaper article I located from 1892 in Quincy, Illinois. It references a court case regarding estate of my ancestor, Ulfert Behrens.

Years ago, when I was much younger, I located his estate file which included a copy of his will. I did not do land or court record work at that time. While I am always interested in land records, I don’t need them right now and the family relationships have been fairly well documented with other records. However, this court case intrigued me. But do I need to hire someone for extensive work to research this? Probably not. All I really need in this case is information from the file.

However, I do need someone with research experience–even though they are doing a “lookup.” Why?

So they know how to search for this record. The newspaper doesn’t have any citation information.
So they know how to extract. There might only be a few papers in this file or there could easily be hundreds. In some cases, many of the pages may be repetitive or contain entirely legal jargon. I might not want to go to the expense of getting a copy of the “entire file.”
They need to have experience searching this type of record and know what various items in the file mean and interpret them correctly.

In this case, I probably don’t need a formal research report since one document is being researched. However, I do need to know what records were searched, how they were searched, and what the citation is for the records that were located.

A lookup might not be as simple as a lookup.

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Want to Keep Getting These Updates?
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With distribution costs of the updates, we’ve finally had to stop sending this out for free after this issue. We hope you’ve enjoyed receiving the updates, but we simply have to pay the bills to keep things afloat.

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Michael John Neill

Genealogy Tip of the Day

PO Box 17

Henderson, IL 61439