The Family Tree Problem Solver: Tried-And-True Tactics for Tracing Elusive Ancestors (26 page)

“On 22 May 1875, the circuit court of Greene County rendered a decision in the case of
Abner C. McGinty vs. the unknown heirs of Thomas F. Elliott, deceased
.” The suit was over the parcel of land I was researching, “which Thomas F. Elliott allegedly sold on 26 July 1844 to Edmund Turner, but failed to make him a deed.” The suit then told me that Edmund Turner had sold the land to Bedford Henslee, who in turn sold it to William A. Norfleet, who deeded it to the plaintiff. The court agreed to clear the title and removed any right, title, and interest the unknown heirs of Thomas F. Elliott might have. I was back to square one as far as Thomas's heirs and his wife, Caroline, were concerned, but I had disposed of the elusive piece of property and knew Thomas was dead by 1875. In addition, I had made an important friend at the land title company. My next step would have been to check the actual case file for the suit, but unfortunately, it was destroyed when the courthouse basement flooded.

Figure 7-2 Map of Greene County, Missouri, from the
Illustrated Historical Atlas of Greene County, Missouri
.

Remember that you need to track down every piece of property owned by your ancestors and determine its disposition.
As you can see from the example of Caroline Elliott's family, there is the problem of the unrecorded deed. Unfortunately, there was no law stating that a deed must be recorded for it to be valid and, in fact, a fee was required to record a deed. Eventually, people found that they should record deeds for their own protection, but in the early history of the country, it was common to simply hand over your land without making any record of the transaction. As long as someone had the original deed and it was made over to the grantee, he could sell the property. This is the reason we find holes when attempting to chain a title of land back to its original owner. I have given you a method for chaining titles in federal land states using the tract, or abstract, books. In a state land state, which was surveyed on metes and bounds, you must try other methods, such as platting the land. For an excellent lesson on platting land see chapter eleven of Hatcher's
Locating Your Roots: Discover Your Ancestors Using Land Records
.

Figure 7-3
In and Out Land Table for property owned by James and Elizabeth Brown.

You may discover the parents of a man's wife in land records.

On 29 July 1728, William Upham, who married Thankful “which is said daughter and co-heir of Joseph Dana, late of Concord,” quitclaimed his right to eight acres in Concord (Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Land Records 28:243). All printed genealogical works have Thankful incorrectly listed as the daughter of Daniel Dana. This deed proves she was the daughter of Joseph.

By the time a man moved into his fifties, his children would have been starting their own families. Many fathers bought their sons or sons-in-law parcels of land, or divided some of the acreage they already possessed. We all know to look for deeds of gift from a man to his son or son-in-law that say “for love and affection.” But you also should know the usual price of land during the period you are searching. Some young men did not want an outright gift, so if the land was sold for much less than the going rate, you may have a clue to a relationship.

Bird and Nancy Estes sold 180 acres to Garret McDowell for just $50, when the going rate was $125 per acre. Further research showed why. On 19 February 1830 in St. Clair County, Illinois, Garret McDowell married Nancy Estes.

By the time a man entered his sixties, he would likely begin making some final plans, and may have made deeds of gift to his younger sons, perhaps with a provision that they would allow him to remain in the home and take care of him in his later years. He may also have chosen to distribute his land to his children, one deed at a time. In that case, he wouldn't have to make a will and could avoid probate.

To find all of these treasures, you must be able to account for every piece of property purchased by your ancestor. I make a table such as the one in Figure 7-3 above to help me keep track.

Land records are an underutilized resource. To gain the most from them, they must be examined in their primary form, which is not easily available. Even if you order microfilm from the Family History Library, researching deeds may require you to check ten to fifteen reels, or even more, to find all the land transactions made by your ancestors. Many researchers may not understand the jargon used in deeds and may decide that searching land records is more complex than it truly is. Yes, working in them can be tedious, time-consuming, and downright boring. After reading all the legal verbiage four hundred times, you may wonder why they couldn't have found an easier way to transfer land from one person to another. Soon, however, you will learn how to ignore the nonessential parts and find the nuggets of valuable information. There are hidden treasures in those deed books, and you will be well rewarded if you don't give up the hunt.

Land records are among the most valuable of all sources genealogists use. Land provides a tangible connection between the past and present. Documents arising from land transfers record transactions involving our ancestors and one of their most precious possessions. Those records provide us with a multitude of clues and evidence for the genealogical connections we seek.

James Brown lived in Newberry District, South Carolina, when his father's estate was settled in 1830, but his later residence was unknown. The Newberry County local history said, “James Brown married Melvina Haynes and moved to Georgia.” James had a brother, Robert, for whom I was also searching. His wife, Ann, was mentioned in her father's 1852 will, which said she also resided in Georgia.

I read every entry in the 1850 Georgia census, looking for a James Brown with wife, Melvina, who was born in South Carolina. There were at least fifty entries for men named James Brown, but I found nothing. I checked all the 1850 census entries for a man named Robert Brown, born in South Carolina, married to Ann. Still nothing. I had been so sure the two brothers would be living close to one another. Now what?

I found the answer in a deed executed back in South Carolina more than fifteen years after James and Robert had left. “On 17 February 1852, Nancy Brown, Abram Moore and Elizabeth, his wife, of the state of South Carolina, with James Brown and Robert Brown of Coweta County Georgia, in consideration of $1500 to be paid by George Brown of Newberry District, did convey 170 acres on Timothy Creek” (Newberry County, South Carolina, Deed Book EE:106-107).

But where was James in the 1850 census? Right in Coweta County, age forty-four, born in South Carolina — but my other clue, wife Melvina, had not helped at all. The James listed in Coweta County was married to Lavinia, so I hadn't picked up on him. When I visited the cemetery in Coweta County, I found James buried next to his wife: Lavinia Melvina Brown. Where was Robert on the 1850 census? He must have been on vacation; he was missed by the census taker even though he appeared as a slave owner on the slave schedule. Thus, he was living near his brother, just as I had originally suspected. I found him buried in the same cemetery with wife, Margaret Ann. One deed had solved the problem.

Too often New England researchers build imaginary stone walls around towns and assume that everyone with the same name who appeared in the vital records of a specific town was somehow related. This was the case with David Robinson. David Robinson married Mercy Segur in 1726 in Newton, Massachusetts. It had been assumed that there was only one Robinson family living in Newton, so David was assigned to that family in several publications. When researching that family I discovered that David was not named in the probate of either his alleged father, William, or an alleged brother, Jeremiah, who died without children. If David were a son of William Robinson, he would have been the only child whose birth was not recorded in the town records. Neither was the name David found among any of the family's descendants. To which Robinson family did David truly belong?

It was easy to learn that a man named David Robinson had been born to George and Sarah Robinson in Watertown, Massachusetts, but there was no further printed information on that line, and there was nothing to connect George Robinson to the town of Newton. While it is true that Water-town and Newton were not far apart — just across the Charles River from one another — why would David marry a girl from Newton if his family was in Watertown? No children of Mercy and David were mentioned in the town records of either Newton or Watertown, and there were no other stray families named Robinson in Newton.

On 1 June 1728, David Robinson produced his only deed in Middlesex County: David Robinson of Needham sold to John Taylor of Newton, a tract of land lying in Weston, consisting of forty-one acres bounded by land of Joseph Whitney, westerly by John Kimball and southerly by his own land. Sarah Robinson, “the mother of the said David Robinson,” and “Mercy Robinson, the wife of said David yielded up all their right of dower” (Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Land Records 27:422).

We find a David Robinson who lived in Needham (Suffolk County) and sold land in Weston (Middlesex County), which bordered his own land, but we have no idea how he acquired either parcel. This is the only land record for David Robinson in Middlesex County. Since this man had a wife named Mercy, it seemed possible he was the man who married in Newton. Since he had a mother named Sarah, it is possible that he was the son of George of Watertown. A George Robinson died in Weston, Middlesex County, in 1726, but he left no probate records.

Eventually, the case was established through land records, but it was not easy. To help you see how the connections were made, we will move backward (instead of in circles as I did for a considerable length of time). This is an approximation of George Robinson's land transaction as it was finally constructed. There was only one deed recorded for George Robinson Sr. in Middlesex County.

On 10 January 1721/22 George Robinson of Weston, yeoman, and his wife, Sarah, sold a mansion house and fifteen acres to Samuel Jennison of Watertown. That acreage was bounded on the southwest by the Weston line (bordering the town of Sudbury), on the southeast by land of George Robinson, on the northeast by land of John Kimball, which formerly had been owned by Caleb Green, and on the northwest by land of Samuel Jennison.

Returning to the crucial deed executed by David Robinson in 1728, we are reminded that the land he conveyed was abutted on the west by John Kimball and on the south by land he retained. A description of that parcel would place the land of John Kimball to the northwest, the exact same relationship to the land held by George Robinson Sr. seven years previously. Therefore, David Robinson and his wife, Mercy, were in possession of the land held by George Robinson before his death and probably where the widow, Sarah, still resided.

Figure 7-4
New England town map.

The locations of these men in the various towns — Watertown, Newton, Weston, and Needham — gave the impression that George and David Robinson were constantly moving. It fact, it was the boundaries that were changing. The map in Figure 7-4 above, drawn in 1831, is available from the Massachusetts State Archives. It shows both contemporary town boundaries in 1831 and the original town lines.