The Family Tree Problem Solver: Tried-And-True Tactics for Tracing Elusive Ancestors (31 page)

Second, a land office was opened. The earliest such office opened in 1800 in eastern Ohio, and the land was offered at public auction. Although the federal government initially offered credit, it was a paperwork nightmare. By 1820, land was offered for cash only, and payment was required the day the purchase was made. If land remained unsold after public auction, it was then opened to private entry in unlimited amounts at $1.25 per acre. If two applicants sought the same tract of land that had been opened to private entry, it was sold to the highest bidder.

Land transactions generated at least two types of records that are available to modern researchers. The receiver made one entry into a tract book, recording the date; the parcel description by section, township, and range; the certificate number; and the date the patent was issued. Those
tract books
have been microfilmed and are available for all states except Missouri and Alaska through the Family History Library, or through private purchase. One may also examine the originals at the National Archives. The other type of record,
cash entry files
, contain receipts. Originals also are stored at the National Archives.

This receipt includes name, residence, date, location of purchase, price, and amount of land purchased. There may be other papers in the cash entry files, particularly if there were later disputes over the land, but most packets are pretty slim. To find the cash entry number, go to
www.glorecords.blm.gov
and search the land patents. Enter as much information as you can about your ancestor. When the record appears, go to the tab labeled “Patent Description” for the land description, land office, and cash file number. Land transfers made after the initial purchase are recorded in the county recorder's office. This all seems fairly straightforward, doesn't it? The reality, however, may prove to be quite different.

Researchers will probably encounter two major problems. First, because the federal government of the nineteenth century didn't move a lot faster than it does now, most land patents were not issued until several years after the purchases were made. Many individuals wanted to move on before they received their patents. Sometimes they went ahead and sold their land and recorded the transaction in the county deed book, only occasionally stating that the patent had not yet arrived. Often, you must return to the federal cash entry file to follow the chain. In that file you may find the assignment of the land entry to another individual and a request that the patent be issued to him. Sometimes this assignment was made within months of the original purchase. The first buyer may have remained in the area, or he may have left immediately — often for parts unknown. With the passing of time, federal paper work fell further behind. Sometimes people simply abandoned their land; sometimes entries were not completed, or certificates did not find their way to legitimate owners. Sometimes titles were not cleared for decades. One parcel I studied had a title entered in 1836 that was not cleared until 1934!

The second problem you may encounter is preemption.
As I mentioned, a lot of people already lived on the land by the time the Indian titles were settled and the federal government got around to selling it. Many farmers had improved and cultivated their land, and they were not eager to see someone else snatch it. They wanted preferential rights to purchase the land, and they wanted a reasonable price. Settlers had long been in the habit of preceding a surveyor and a legitimate sale. They moved into an area, selected the land they wanted (contrary to the intrusion laws), and then demanded the right of preemption. Preemption began as early as 1814 for territorial settlers, but general preemption legislation was not approved by Congress until 1830. Under the Act of 1830, which was extended with minor revisions until 1862, every settler or occupant on public land who had been in possession of that claim for a designated time could purchase 40 to 160 acres for $1.25 per acre. Affidavits were required to support those claims, and these often may be found in the individual cash entry files. Such affidavits provide original signatures and establish those critical neighbors that are so helpful to genealogists.

The cash entry files, which are shaped like the loose probate packets, vary greatly in size and content. They often contain just the application and the receipt. If a controversy developed, however, they can be quite extensive. Only rarely do you find critically important documents within cash entry files, but in one instance, I was able to find mention of a man's prior county of residence in Virginia; in another, I found a crucial clue to the identity of a man who lived in a county where records had been destroyed by fire.

Although a genealogist may begin by following general search principles, in order to find your particular needle in that vast haystack of frontier settlers, you will need to employ some more specific techniques.

There is no single, surefire method for locating ancestors from the early 1800s. What may work beautifully in one case might fail miserably in another. In his will, Archibald C. Adams left land in Bedford County, Tennessee, to his daughter, Mary Ann Sims. Thomas James paid a stud fee on 9 April 1835 in Madison County, Tennessee, for breeding his mare to a local stallion. The receipt was in his probate packet. But I have examined hundreds of other probate records that don't give the slightest clues as to origins. Two probate records helped me locate the prior origins of frontier settlers.

Some deeds are wonderful. Richard Brown made a deed of gift to his children in White County, Tennessee, in 1828, and then recorded it in Missouri in 1843. David Stockton didn't sell his land in Meigs County, Tennessee, until after his arrival in Missouri in 1839. It's exciting to find one of these deeds. On the other hand, I have examined literally thousands of deeds in the past fourteen years and only a few have provided these keystones to prior origins. There are no shortcuts, no magic documents. You find clues; then like Hansel and Gretel, you follow the crumbs down the forest path. Following are five methods that have worked well for me.

1.
Pinpoint patriarchs

2.
Reconstruct relationships

3.
Focus on families, not on names

4.
Find friends

5.
Follow the trail

The most difficult people to locate before 1850 are those born between 1800 and 1820. If they moved west as young men, you are unlikely to find them listed as heads of households in an earlier census in their previous community.
When you are looking for the origins of a young adult who was new to the frontier, you must connect him to an older person living in the same frontier community.
It doesn't have to be a father; it can be a mother (beware: sometimes this may be a remarried mother with a new surname), father-in-law, mother-in-law, uncle, brother, brother-in-law, or minister. Older adults tend to create more records than younger ones. In addition to being listed as heads of households in censuses, older people were more likely to buy and sell land, more likely to be administrators and executors of estates, more likely to be involved in court actions as witnesses or bondsmen, and more likely to have participated in some event that makes them eligible for federal benefits.

One of the best methods of finding connections to older individuals is to study the probate records of the community in which your young ancestor was living. For whom was your ancestor the executor, administrator, or guardian? Read the probate minutes and loose probate files for the earliest time period in which your ancestor lived in a community. This will reveal those connections that can yield valuable clues.

Another method is to study deeds — not just for obvious clues like the ones I mentioned above, but for more subtle ones. If your ancestor purchased land from someone, did he buy at the going rate, or did he seem to get a particularly good deal? In other words, could the transaction have been more like a gift from a relative?

If your ancestor fell into debt, who stood as security on his note? Older people usually had more money than younger people, and usually were considered more reliable and responsible. Who would trust your ancestor enough to lend him money or agree to make good on his debts?

After you make a connection to an older person, try tracking that man. Three situations in my research can serve as examples. Joseph Akard and James M. Pike of Missouri were the administrators for their fathers, who were heads of households in 1830 in Tennessee. Henry Collier administered the estate of his father-in-law, Samuel Dixon. In Samuel's probate packet was an unpaid bill from a merchant in Perry County, Illinois. Anthony Ayres was located because he administered the estate of Mary Bewley. That probate file revealed that Catharine Bewley had relinquished her right to administer the estate of her daughter, Mary, “in favor of her son-in-law, Anthony Ayres.” Many researchers study only the probate records of their ancestors. Ignoring the probate records created by others in the community can be a fatal error.

Sometimes the clues to relationships with older individuals are more subtle. For example, Jacob Alderman bought forty acres in 1838 in Polk County, Missouri. In the 1840 census, he was listed as head of a household with one male under age five, two males age five to ten, two males age ten to fifteen, one male age forty to fifty, one female age five to ten, and one female age twenty to thirty. He was the only man of that surname living in the county. In 1845 Jacob and his wife, Lucy, sold this forty acres to Richard Brown. Jacob Alderman paid taxes in Polk County in 1841, 1844, and 1848. Charles and Hiram Alderman were taxed in 1844. Hiram was underage at that time. By 1848, Jacob was over fifty-five years of age. From all this information, we can deduce that he must have been born about 1792. No probate or marriages under the name of Alderman were located in Polk County. By the 1850 census, Jacob Alderman must have left the community, although I cannot find him in the 1850 census indexes for Missouri, Oregon, California, Arkansas, or Texas (all likely migration spots), nor does he appear on any Internet databases.

However, there was a significant deed recorded on the page following the record of Jacob's sale to Richard Brown. It was made on the same day for an adjoining parcel, forty acres sold by Charles Bolt Sr. He was listed next to Jacob Alderman in the 1840 census. Was he still in Polk County for the 1850 census? No, but Charles Bolt
Jr.
was. He was listed as age fifty-five, born in Virginia. It is difficult to tell when Charles Bolt Jr. left Virginia because the oldest child in his home, age fourteen, was born in Illinois. Although there were no marriages in Polk County for anyone named Alderman, a Mary Bolt had married Thomas E. Wright there in 1839. In 1850, she was recorded as living in adjoining Dallas County, age twenty-eight, born in Virginia.

My next step was to check the 1830 Virginia census, combining the names
Bolt
and
Alderman
. I found both in the record for Montgomery County, which listed the following as heads of households on p. 51: Charles Bolt Sr., Charles Bolt Jr. and Jacob Alderman. Marriage records clinched it: Jacob Alderman married 25 April 1822 Lucy Bott [sic], daughter of Charles Bott.

How do you find your ancestor's relatives?
You reconstruct relationships by looking for the people your ancestor cared about during his lifetime, those on whom he depended and who depended upon him.
Start by looking for connections in the community where the individual lived. Study all the records that he produced and write down the names of the people with whom he associated. At first, it may appear that these names represent many unrelated individuals, but a pattern will eventually emerge. Then find the records that those people created, and search them carefully for the tiny bread crumbs that will lead you through the forest.

According to the 1850 census in Greene County, Missouri, James Murry was born in 1809 in Tennessee. He married Jane [— ? —], born about 1811 in Tennessee. A lot of people named Murry lived in Tennessee; in fact, there were eighty-three Murrys listed as heads of households there in 1830. James was not likely to be a head of household in 1830, since he would have been just twenty-one, and his eldest child was born in 1831.

I looked a long time for James Murry's origins outside of Missouri, examining a lot of the records he created as well as records for all the other Murry families in Greene County, Missouri. The key to James's origin was a very small one. On the 1843 Greene County tax list, James Murry was administrator of the estate of Jonathan Douglas, holding $1,100 at interest for which he had to pay a tax. Who was Jonathan Douglas? He did not appear in the census or any other earlier records I located. I had never seen the name in connection with any other family I studied in Greene County.

I examined Douglas's probate file — a very small packet. It revealed that Jonathan Douglas was planning to move to Missouri but became ill while on a scouting trip. James Murry cared for Jonathan from the time of his illness until his burial. Upon submitting his bill for this responsibility to the court in 1842, James Murry applied for administration of Jonathan Douglas's estate. Those papers stated that administration also was granted for Jonathan's estate in Monroe County, Tennessee. I immediately went to the Monroe County census for 1830. There was Jonathan Douglas — and several households away, James Murry. All kinds of new records subsequently opened up, including a trail leading toward James's parents. So, James Murry was head of household in 1830. Yes, I know now that I could have examined just the census records of the five men named James Murry in the 1830 Tennessee index, and I might have found the one I wanted. But without his connection to Jonathan Douglas, how could I have been certain that I had found my James Murry?

Usually the clues to reconstructing relationships are not as subtle as in this case. Other questions you might ask include: Who were the sponsors at family baptisms? Who helped establish the local church at the same time as your ancestor? Who were the guardians for his children? Who did his daughters marry? Who supported his pension or bounty land application?