New York Thursday with Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter's mystery in the July NYGBR

How could Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter (1798-1855) be included in her parents' family Bible record but never mentioned as an heir in her father's 1876 probate proceedings -- especially when New York law required all heirs to be named? In the July issue of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record I tell the story and try to cope with the conflicting evidence by confirming Elizabeth's ongoing role in the family, and looking into how probates were handled in Madison County, New York, in the 1870s.

NYGBS members can read this and other new and continued articles at the society's a preview and await the physical issue's arrival in their genealogy library. Non-members can become members here.
web site; non-members can access

Elizabeth was the husband of "Col." Harry Porter (a private in the War of 1812) and the oldest sister of my mother-in-law's great-grandfather Samuel Clark Bassett. One curiosity of this story is that Harry and Elizabeth in the late 1830s settled in the same small Illinois town where I grew up in the 1950s -- and are buried three blocks from our house!

Like most NYGBR articles, this one has a double purpose: to resolve a knotty problem (highlighting a prized New York record type) and to document a New York family. The documentation (genealogical summary) occupies more space than the problem-resolution part and is continued in later issues. Many thanks to editor Karen Mauer Green for her relentless help and encouragement in bringing this project into print.



Harold Henderson, “A Missing Heir: Reconnecting Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter to Her Parents, Lewis and Dorcas (Hoxie) Bassett” [Part 1], New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 145 (July 2014): 165-184.


Harold Henderson, "New York Thursday with Elizabeth (Bassett) Porter's Mystery in the July NYGBR," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 August 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Just another day at the office . . .

What you can learn by spending a day on actual printed materials at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center . . .

. . . there are worse things than surname-only indexes, but not many. (In another couple of generations "indexes" may be as little understood as cursive writing.)

. . . a genealogical periodical from Omaha is called "Remains To Be Found."

. . . the father-in-law of the son of a main character in a forthcoming article died of unnatural causes in 1835 in Canton, Fulton County, Illinois: a tornado drove a wagon-wheel spoke through his groin. This unexpected death information appeared in an abstract of an 1892 newspaper article.

. . . Walsh County, North Dakota, published four volumes of cemetery readings labeled as volumes 25, 26, 27, and 28.

. . . the charmingly titled book Forty Years of Funerals did not include the funeral I was looking for.

. . . the first case heard by the (traveling) Supreme Court in Greene County, Ohio, was the first-degree murder of an Indian (Billy George AKA Kenawa Tuckans) by two white men in 1804.

. . . when you're J. P. Morgan's son and you die in 1943, you get an obituary that names seven generations of ancestors. (OK, it was in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, but still . . . )




Harold Henderson, "Just another day at the office . . .," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 8 November 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

It's Always Halloween With Scary Property Records

Every county is a little different, but some are more different than others. Last week was my first time researching in Fulton County, Illinois, which is one of the more different.

Most land records are indexed according to the number of the book and the number of the page where each record was recorded, such as Book 22, page 33. For some reason, Fulton County was not content with this simple, elegant, expandable, and durable system. The county started by giving each record a number of its own regardless of where it had been recorded. For the first few decades this seems to have worked fine. The land records (usually deeds) were entered in numerical order so it is no great trick to find the required record. When indexes were created, sometimes the clerks named the book but they always gave the unique property number.

Those who have worked with property records have already seen the impending train wreck. Later on, especially in the grantor indexes, book numbers were dispensed with. As the 19th century rolled on, for a variety of reasons documents were no longer entered in numerical order. No doubt some were recorded late; some may have been segregated in special books (for instance, Tax Deeds and Quit-Claim Deeds); some were recorded in books with preprinted forms while other books were all handwritten.

The result is an index that gives only the most general idea of where to find any particular deed. I hauled ten different large books off the shelves looking for a particular five-digit-numbered document. Sometimes I found the document, sometimes not. Most of the time the documents in any given book were themselves in numerical order regardless of how many numbers were skipped, but in a few cases I saw books where the occasional deed was out of numerical order. None of the books I saw contained their own indexes.

If you have property-owning research targets in the Spoon River Country, be prepared for a good long physical workout and an incomplete in-out table of deeds at the end of the day. One final touch: the grantor index through 1853 burned.

Of course, today's record custodians bear no responsibility for this malpractice. Those who do are presumably in a very warm place at the present time.




Harold Henderson, "It's Always Halloween With Scary Property Records," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 17 October 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Illinois roads almost a century ago; Indianapolis almost 2 centuries ago

Fulton County, Illinois, and vicinity -- state road map 1925

The ever-faithful University of Wisconsin Internet Scout's Report for 12 April 2013 (volume 19, number 15 -- quite an old resource in internet time) alerted me to a digital collection of State of Illinois road maps beginning in 1917. (The interface will require a little patience if you're looking for a particular year.)

In 1925 paved roads (solid lines) were scarce. Dotted lines were projected roads. Black-and-white roads were "graded." White roads were "dirt." Passenger trains were not superfluous at this time! -- but construction was moving rapidly. The 1926 map shows impressive changes (the series itself provides a microhistorical overview of road construction). And by 1929 the state published a map in two colors, with red solid lines indicating "interstate" highways.

This 1925 map shows no county lines, but does give population figures (hard to see in this image) for incorporated towns. It includes many hamlets now all but forgotten. Also check out the "stairstep" roads (Vermont to Ray, for instance) where the road evidently followed right-angle section lines rather than a diagonal path.

For a significant further step back in time, check out the named roads (no claims as to pavement!) in 1917, complete with their colored or symbolic insignia and individual names (no route numbers). Yes, in those innocent days there was a Swastika Line, and the roads themselves are shown in railroad style, with the towns as little circles within the route line.

Three generations of my family grew up in the range of this map -- my mom's generation in San Jose (on the Mason-Logan county line) in the early 1930s, mine in Farmington in the 1950s-60s, and our kids' near Summum in the 1970s-1980s, both in Fulton County.

Moving east a bit . . .

If you want to delve into the deeper past, IndyGenealogist Ron Darrah has a much-used three-volume find for you in the Indiana State Library, Thelma M. Murphy's 1985 typescript, "Marion County, Indiana, Pioneers Prior to June, 1830." She wrote, "It was a labor of love and it helped to be told 'it can't be done.'" That's the spirit. Thanks, Ron.



"Illinois State Highway Maps," Illinois Digital Archives (http://www.idaillinois.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/isl9 : accessed 12 April 2013).

Ron Darrah, "248. Indy Source for Pre-1830 Ancestors," IndyGenealogy, posted 10 April 2013  (http://indygenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/04/248-indy-source-for-pre-1830-ancestors.html : accessed 12 April 2013).



Harold Henderson, "Illinois roads almost a century ago; Indianapolis almost 2 centuries ago," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 April 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Subterranean Direct Evidence: A Research Travelogue

In my experience, aspiring genealogists who read the top journals would love to read more than the polished, logical summary. They also want a taste of the research process that made the polished, logical summary possible. Here's one taste, involving my mother-in-law's great-grandfather's sister Elizabeth Bassett, who married Harry Porter. In this case finding Harry's origins was the problem.

I met up with some other folks on line who had also been researching Harry for a while. They had been using original records and had found much about his life in western New York and later western Illinois (Fulton County). Better still, they had some good clues indicating that he might well be the same Harry Porter who had grown up in Jefferson County, New York, with half a dozen brothers and sisters, none of whom had migrated to Illinois with him or had any known contact with him in later life.

Was Harry of Jefferson County the same man as the Harry who married Elizabeth and lived in Illinois? There might be enough indirect evidence to make a case, but there was plenty more research to do. Jefferson County Harry's father, John S. Porter, died in 1840, by which time Elizabeth's Harry had settled in Illinois. Any record that named Jefferson County Harry's residence would pretty well seal the deal one way or another.

Of particular interest, my new-found cohorts had unearthed an on-line newspaper item stating that two of Jefferson County Harry's sisters had received land from their father John S. Porter in a partition suit in the Jefferson County Court of Common Pleas. (Partition is a court case in which heirs ask that the decedent's real estate be divided among them.)

I consulted a researcher in Salt Lake City, who located the only deed Harry ever executed in Jefferson County. Shortly after father John's death, Jefferson County Harry sold all his rights to John's land to his sister Lydia Maine. Unfortunately the deed did not say where Harry was living at the time.

With this background knowledge I went to Jefferson County with two specific research targets:

(1) the loose papers in John S. Porter's probate, which should contain a list of heirs and a receipt from Harry, either of which might say where he was living; and

(2) the partition suit, which might also name Harry in some useful way.

Target #1 didn't work out. John's probate did list Harry as a recipient of a share of the estate, but it did not say where he was living at the time. And I found no receipt from Harry at all, although there should have been one. Probates can be like that sometimes.

That left Target #2. I had hoped to find a row of bound court books from the period, with in-book indexes. No such luck. The individual court sessions were each bound separately with no hard covers and no indexes, and with the three different kinds of courts (General Sessions, Common Pleas, and Oyer and Terminer) mixed together. Worse yet, according to the labels on the archival folders, there were no Common Pleas sessions for 1840 in the box at all!

Never trust a label when you can look. I looked at a file labeled General Sessions. Halfway through the writing was upside down. I flipped the booklet over and saw the "back" page was labeled "Common Pleas." The courts had saved paper by using the same set of pages for both courts' records, but only one was mentioned in the folder label. The needed Common Pleas sessions were there after all, stored archivally and in chronological order.

After that scare, I soon found records of two key court sessions: one where the court received the Porter heirs' petition for a partition of John S. Porter's land and named commissioners to divide it up, and another where the court approved the commissioners' proposal. Sister Lydia was to have two shares, and Harry's name was not mentioned. Having seen the deed, I knew why, but I still didn't know if this was our Harry or not.

While the court session records were being copied, I thought hard and realized I had one last option. I asked if they had any loose papers from Common Pleas, in the hopes (a) that the papers might include the actual petition the heirs had submitted, and (b) that if they did, the petition might contain more detail than the court's ruling had. I was soon rewarded with a box tight-packed with a year's worth of "trifold" papers from various cases, as they had been submitted to the court 172 years ago and then folded for storage. They were called "law papers," so there was no assurance that they would even include petitions.

Like the cases themselves, the trifolds had no index, but at least they were in chronological order. I worked my way through November and into December. (Time was running out in my world too.) But then, there it was: not one but two copies of the petition the heirs had filed with the court. And it named one of the heirs as "Harry Porter of Farmington Fulton County Illinois." O happy day!

One moral of this story: it would have done no good at all for me to go to Jefferson County "looking for Harry Porter." Genealogy at this stage requires knowing much more than the target's name -- the family, the type of record, the approximate date, the name of the court, the process involved in the original court proceeding -- enough that you can get to the unindexed records, keep going, and hopefully do some good with them.


Harold Henderson, "Subterranean Direct Evidence: A Research Travelogue," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Two Simple Things Deeds Can Do

They can connect a common-name person in one place to another:

In 1840, Harry Porter "of Farmington, Fulton County, Illinois," sold property in Clarkson, Monroe County, New York, where he had lived for almost twenty years before heading west. This contemporary record confirms other records left at much later dates by his descendants.

They can provide evidence of death in times and places where vital records are scarce:

In 1823, Oliver Lee sold part of lot 29 in the Town of Warsaw, Genesee County, New York, to Matthew Hoffman. It was described as "beginning at a stake in the north line of Land owned by Chauncey L. Sheldon..." Nine years later, when Hoffman sold the same land to Isaac C. Bronson, it was described as "beginning at a stake in the north line of land owned by the late Chauncey L. Sheldon deceased..."

In this case, the deeds' information can be confirmed. Dr. Chauncey L. Sheldon has a beautiful and well-preserved 1828 gravestone in the Warsaw Pioneer Cemetery. It's documented and imaged on Find A Grave -- along with other unsourced material that does not appear on the stone. Since 1841 the graveyard has been in Wyoming County, New York, but when Chauncey died it wasn't.

Confirmation doesn't mean the deeds are unnecessary. No important genealogical conclusion should rest on a single piece of information, any more than a chair should have only one leg.

Monroe County, New York, Deeds 52:174, Porter to True, 28 August 1840; County Clerk, Rochester

Genesee County, New York, Deeds 18:501, Lee to Hoffman 24 November 1823, and Hoffman to Bronson 31 October 1832; County Clerk, Batavia.

Harold Henderson, "Two Simple Things Deeds Can Do," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy done right -- NYGBR edition

How do you tell apart two people from more than 200 years ago named Joseph Chaplin who both had parents Joseph and Sarah and who both married women named Abigail?

If you're a 19th-century genealogist or a 21st-century beginner, you just mash together the first plausible-looking match that comes to hand.

If you're Susan Farrell Bankhead, however, you:

(a) learn the names of their children and stepchildren, and who they each married,

(b) find the estate record of one Joseph's widowed and childless sister, and

(c) match her heirs (nieces and nephews) with known children and stepchildren who belong to one Joseph and not the other.

In other words, you research the whole family, including people who on the face of it seem unlikely to have any record that would help in your single-minded quest.

This is an extremely condensed and simplified version of Bankhead's article, "Joseph and Daniel Chaplin of the Town of Virgil, Cortland County, New York," the first part of which was published in the new (January) New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. But the point is still good. Skipping over all those pesky siblings and stepsiblings would just be building your own Chaplin brick wall.

And of course I was happy to see that one of Joseph and Sarah's children ended up in Avon, Union Township, Fulton County, Illinois, my home county!

Illinois' fall quarterly

I'm looking forward to catching up with this issue, which arrived during my hiatus. A lot of material here, including some from my home county!

Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly 40(3), Fall 2008

"Personal Journals, Diaries, and Old Letters in Genealogical Research," by Bryan L. Mulcahy

"Confessions of a Puzzled Genealogist," by Oriene Morrow Springstroh

"Joseph Bigham, Jr. -- His Remembrances of the Bigham Family History," tr. Phyllis J. (Bigham) Bauer. (Montgomery County) "As soon as I could make letters I had to jot down on paper fathers accounts as he could neither Read or write."

"Richard F. Sutton's Story: A Revolutionary War Soldier -- Part 2," by Raleigh Sutton

"Faces from the Past -- Identifying Photos with Marge Rice"

"Sarah S. (Miner) Boyd," by Mark A. Miner (Fulton County)

"West Aurora [Kane County] School District finds lists of earlier graduates...," from the Aurora Beacon News

"Gravestone Recording: How to Conduct a Project -- how to Use the Data," by John E. Sterling

"Ask the Retoucher!" by Eric Curtis M. Basier

"1864 Award Winners at the Kendall County, Illinois Fair" [just in case you missed it the first time]

Fulton County, Illinois

Working under the Illinois Ancestors umbrella, Janine Crandell has gathered a lot of online-only material as well as original documents and transcriptions on Fulton County (my home county in central Illinois) and 13 other mostly central and western counties. If you need the feel of a small town in the 1940s, check out Jan Van Doren on Table Grove and Camp Ellis. She catches it perfectly.