A courtesy is, generally speaking, a showing of politeness from one person to another. Curtesy is different. Curtesy is the potential life interest or life estate that a husband may have in the real estate of his wife after her decease. If you see a husband on a deed relinquishing his right of curtesy, it suggests that the wife was the one in the marital couple who obtained the property. And determining how she did that (purchase, inheritance from family member, via a previous husband) could provide genealogically relevant information.
This session (attend live on 25 Sept at 8 pm central time or pre-order download) will provide an overview of the records to expect at the typical United States county courthouse–focusing on local vital, court, probate, and property records. It will include: a general overview of the general types of records to expect, use of indexes and finding aids; how to organize your searches and set a search strategy, preparing for an onsite visit. Geared towards advanced beginner and beginning intermediate researchers. Michael has been researching his own genealogy in American courthouses since the 1980s and is an experienced courthouse researcher. This session will be held on 25 September 2019 at 8:00 pm central daylight time. You can register for live attendance (handout included) or pre-order a download […]
Admittedly it can be difficult to find newspaper references to people when only their last name is mentioned. Chances are when that happens there are other identifying clues to help you find the person. Most commonly those are occupation or a geographic location. While the newspaper reference may appear vague, there were probably enough clues for contemporary readers to determine the identity of the individual. The problem is that one hundred and thirty years later those clues may not be known to the researcher.
I’ve stopped sending immediate requests for “tree access” from those whose trees are private. There are reasons a person might want to make their tree private. I’m not certain this approach will garner any more success than I have currently had, but it’s worth a shot. What ideas have you tried? Hello. You and I are a DNA match and Ancestry.com suggests that we are connected through James and Elizabeth (Chaney) Rampley who were married in Ohio in 1830 and came to Illinois where they died in the 1880s. My connection is through their son Riley who died in 1893 and served in the Civil War. I’m trying to sort out my matches and wondered if the connection was correct and which child of James and Elizabeth you […]
A few general comments about going to the courthouse: You are not a local. It sometimes makes a difference. Be polite. Look reasonably professional. Ask before taking digital images. Consider copying indexes if time is short. There’s more you can do to prepare for a visit, but these are a few short reminders for this short tip.
If you have family who lived in the same small, somewhat isolated area for a few hundred years and there are records extant, always consider the possibility that you are related in more than one way to someone than you think you are–especially if your research on the family is not complete. This can impact your autosomal DNA results going back to your 5th great-grandparents at least. One more relationship than you think you have can confuse your matches more than they already are–especially if you’ve already got two or more relationships between a DNA match.
Those with an interest in the American Revolution may find our post about using the free index and images to these records at FamilySearch helpful. The index (not created by FamilySearch) and the images of the records at FamilySearch are not linked to each other.
When using any handwritten index to local land, court, or probate records for the first time, take some time to familiarize yourself with how it is set up and organized. Indexes can vary from one office to another and the indexing scheme that was used in one location can vary from what’s used in another. Assuming they are all the same can cause you to overlook records. This index from Clinton County, New York, indexed records by the name of the grantor and grantee, but the last names were not just broken up by the initial letter of the first name, they were broken up in to subsections based upon the first and second letters of the last name. A hurried researcher, not familiar with the index might […]
A little Google searching for those items in your ancestor’s estate may enlighten you about their life and some of the items in it. The 1880-era estate inventory of Andrew Trask in Mercer County, Illinois, mentioned a “Weir Sulky Plow.” After some searching, I knew what it was, where it was manufactured and even had a patent image of it. Newspaper searches for those items may reveal pictures and other information–if Google isn’t helpful.
For much of American history, name changes did not require court action. A person could simply start using a new name–as long as they weren’t going to engage in any fraudulent activity. Your ancestor in 1880 could simply have chosen to use a new name when he or she moved into a new town. Sometimes immigrants would take a new name when they naturalized. That name may have been based on the name they had in their native language, but there was no law that they had to literally translate. Comprehensively searching your ancestor may help reveal name changes as land records, estate records, other court records, military pension materials and other records may document the name change. Good ol’ Riley was originally named Latte when he came […]
A seasoned professional genealogist does not guarantee to find anything. All any researcher can do, professional or not, is methodically search the records that are extant and report what they find. Without having searched the records, no one can guarantee what will be found. If someone tells you that they are 100% certain they can answer your question, consider another researcher.
The Preemption Act of 1841 permitted “squatters” who were living on federal government-owned land to purchase up to 160 acres for $1.25 per acre, before the land was to be offered for sale to the general public. To qualify under the law, the squatter had to be: a head of a family; a single man over 21 or a widow; a citizen of the United States (or an immigrant who has filed a declaration of intention); and a resident of the claimed land for a minimum of 14 months. The text of the Act is online. The Bureau of Land Management website indexes federal land patents that were issued under this act. View the actual patent to determine if the patent was issued under the Preemption Act as […]
When starting with an analysis of DNA matches, it can be tempting to work on solving that “brick wall” problem right away. That might be a mistake. Two good approaches are to sort out the low-hanging genealogical fruit–those matches that are easy to figure out. This should be done even if the family some of these matches are related on are not the “brick wall” family. The other approach is to sort out matches on those families where you already “know everything.” This can be a good way to improve your DNA analysis skills in order to help you work on your true brick wall.
Often when looking through search results researchers quickly eye each returned entry and determine if it’s “close enough” match to warrant looking at or not. That analysis sometimes is done quickly and is based on what we “have in our head” about the person for whom we are searching. Other times it is easy to get the details of the person I am searching for mixed up with details of other people. To help keep me on track, I quickly jot down what the search results should look like if I were to find the person. If I’m looking for a person in the 1850 US census, I have written down their name, what their approximate age should be in 1850, where they were roughly born, and whatever […]
I made up a silly little story about the dog, the cricket, and the rubber band and posted it to my personal Facebook page. The story was pure fiction and the rubber band had nothing to do with anything–it was just there. Are you trying make all the details fit into one genealogy story that is consistent? Maybe the problem is that one detail really doesn’t fit–because it is incorrect. Does someone appear on a document simply because they were in “the right place at the right time?” Witnesses aren’t always relatives–sometimes they are “warm bodies” who are legally able to witness a document or an event. Is there another way to interpret the document that you have? It can be easy to get stuck in our “first […]
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