The Family Tree Problem Solver: Tried-And-True Tactics for Tracing Elusive Ancestors (25 page)

Although not as common as a deed made after someone has moved to an area, sometimes a deed stating where the grantor planned to go was made before he left the county.

From deeds, you find an individual's heirs.

When you find a group of individuals who sold land together, and that land belonged to an individual who had died, you can assume that these people are probably his heirs, even if it is not stated.

If a man died still owning property, there must be some disposition made by the heirs.
One of the ways land was sold was an administrator's sale. The administrator of the estate petitioned the court to sell the land to raise money to pay the debts of the estate. Unfortunately, these petitions did not provide the names of the heirs. In another unhelpful situation, the administrator sold the land and the court ordered him to divide the money obtained among the living heirs, but did not name them. If land was left in the estate after all the debts were paid, it must be divided among the heirs. If there was a great deal of property, there may have been enough to allocate a share or “lot” to each of the heirs. Commissioners (usually three) were appointed by the court to evaluate the land and determine the best way to divide it so that each piece would be of equal value. That recommendation was returned to the court, which determined who received which lot. The deed book may include a helpful map showing how that land was divided (see
Figure 7-1
).

After Thomas Toler Jr. died in Wayne County, North Carolina, the land was divided in August 1821:

If one or several of the heirs petitioned the court to partition the land, but the court determined that the land could not be divided without causing a loss of value to everyone concerned, the land was put up for auction. Sometimes one of the heirs would be the highest bidder, and then he would pay the others in cash, keeping the real property for himself. On other occasions, an outside party bought the land and the cash was divided among the heirs, depending on what portion of the estate they were entitled.

Another possibility is that the heirs may have decided to sell the land to one of the siblings for a small amount of money. Perhaps the others had received money from their parents over the years, while the younger one stayed at home and cared for the aging parents. Or some of the heirs may have moved away and were no longer interested in the land that remained. In that case, each heir had to sell his or her share to the sibling who wanted to gain all shares in order to have clear title. You may find all of the heirs listed in one deed of sale to their sibling, two or three selling together, or each selling individually. The deeds may be scattered throughout the deed books over several years of records. Some deeds may actually tell you the number of undivided shares in the land, which indicates the number of heirs and the portion each inherited.

Figure 7-1
Estate division of Jeremiah Turpin, Garrard County, Kentucky. Probate Book A:384.

Following are some examples of these types of deeds, what we can learn from them, and the steps we must take to gain more information.

In the deed abstracted below from Boone County, Missouri, the heirs are carefully outlined.

Another set of deeds illustrates another type of recorded distribution.

From this deed, we can assume that a younger George Zumwalt bought the shares of the deceased George Zumwalt. Was Nancy a daughter of the elder George, and therefore a Zumwalt? We can't make that assumption yet, but it's likely. Our next step is to see if we can find other heirs of George Zumwalt Sr. selling land to the living George Zumwalt. Check the grantee index.

We now have identified another heir, Elizabeth, perhaps George Sr.'s daughter or sister, and we know that there are seven parts to the estate of George Zumwalt Sr. If we looked only for people named Zumwalt who were selling land to George Zumwalt, we would not find the married women who were also heirs. Continue to check the grantee index to find additional heirs.

Watch out for the red herrings! Some deeds are not as explicit as this one. They may report the sale of a one-seventh share without explaining that the land was acquired by purchase, not by inheritance. The heir here is John Zumwalt, not Elizabeth Coshow. Continued research in the grantee deed books eventually showed all seven children of George Zumwalt Sr.

Remember that indexes do not always lead to the list of heirs you are looking for.
Some of the land partitions to which I have referred are indexed under the name of the executor or administrator of the estate. You can find this individual's name in the books containing letters of administrations or testamentary, the probate minute books or the bond books. Some counties may have all these records; some may have retained only one of them. It's also possible to find some of these records indexed under Sheriff's Deeds or under the name of the sheriff himself. That makes it more difficult for you, but it's still worth it if the deed contains the names of all the heirs. So keep looking.

You can find an individual's spouse.

Prenuptial agreements are often recorded in deed books. This type of agreement is usually found when a man and woman have been married previously and are both bringing property to the marriage.

Such an arrangement may have been made in a first marriage if the woman was bringing property that she had inherited and wanted to keep as her own. This was more common with personal property than with real estate.

Standard dower was a one-third interest in the husband's real estate for the wife's lifetime only. Upon the death of the widow, her dower lands were divided among her husband's heirs. Note that it was only his heirs; any children she might have had in a previous or subsequent marriage were not included in the division of the dower.
Please be sure that you do not write a woman off as dead before her time.
Clerks were not always as careful as they should have been in obtaining a wife's dower. Rarely did a wife have to sign a dower release on a mortgage, even though that land was subsequently lost because the mortgage was not paid. Or perhaps the wife was not able to be present at the time the deed was made. Sometimes the wife would not release her dower until much later. In some instances, the male grantor would post a bond to ensure his wife's release of dower. In the following example, the fact that the release was not made until later was extremely helpful because it revealed where the family was living.

Let's say that you know your ancestor died in 1852, and that he owned a farm at his death, but you can't find any deed executed by the heirs. Your problem may be that the deed was not recorded until much later. Perhaps after their father died, the children let their mother or stepmother live on that land for the rest of her life. Then they sold it after she died, which may have been twenty years later. Or maybe they gave it to one of their younger brothers who had been taking care of their mother, and after he died, his youngest son needed a place to farm. In that case, the actual heirs might not sell the land for another thirty-five years. Or, in another scenario, the children gave the land to their saintly sister, Susan, who had taken such good care of their mother in her later years. After her parents' deaths, Susan married Timothy Timberbottom. So now, the land either passed to the Timberbottom children or was sold to benefit all the heirs, but was indexed under the name Timberbottom. For every piece of land purchased, there must be some disposition of that land or the title is not clear. You simply have to keep looking.

If the title is not cleared at the time the individual who owned the property died, there may be a suit in circuit court later. Charles Rountree of Polk County, Missouri, died in 1851 and left no issue. The land title was not cleared and a suit was instigated in 1874. Seventy-five people were named in the suit as having title to the parcel of land. Their relationship to the deceased was not listed. I did, however, finally identify those heirs and published the results in the Fall 2002 issue of
Ozar'kin
.

If you know the land description, your search to chain the title may be easier if you use the tract books. These books list land sales by land description, section, township, and range, rather than by grantor or grantee. They then guide you to the deed book that describes the sale. In some states these tract books are in private land abstract offices; in others, such as Ohio, Illinois, and Kansas, they are located in the deed office. Even though tract books may be in private rather than public hands, I have never been charged to look at older records, but no doubt some holders may charge a fee.

I was researching the family of Caroline Elliott, who supposedly had lived in Greene County, Missouri, in the mid-nineteenth century. I wasn't having a great deal of success in the standard sources. I did find that a man named Thomas F. Elliott, supposedly Caroline's husband, had purchased a small parcel of land. On 26 July 1844, Jacob H. Smith and his wife, Mary Catharine Smith, of Greene County, sold to Thomas F. Elliott of the same location, for $290, the fractional NW¼ of section 5, Township 29N, Range 20W containing 80 acres more or less (Greene County, Missouri, Deed Book C:303). Thomas F. Elliott did not appear on any of the extant tax rolls, including the one for 1843. He did not appear in the census of 1840 or 1850. There was no record that he had sold the land. What had happened to it? It was obviously still sitting there and someone owned it. How had it been transferred?

From the map pictured in Figure 7-2 on page 135, I discovered that by 1876, the parcel in question was owned by Abner McGinty. I tried tracking the deed back by finding who McGinty purchased the land from, and where that man had purchased the land and so on, but I hit a dead end at a man named Edmund Turner. I could not determine how Edmund had obtained the land. So, I went to the tract books at the Hogan Land Title Company. At the place in the transactions where the deed book and page should have been listed, there was a notation: “cc 1875-165.” The man at the abstract office had no idea what the notation meant, and said that he had asked at the courthouse, and they had no suggestions, either. I decided I would try the circuit court records for the year 1875 and look on page 165.