April speaking engagements

I'm looking forward to talking genealogy with folks in and around Plymouth, Indiana, and then Kalamazoo, Michigan!


April 15, 6 pm EDT -- Plymouth IN, Marshall County Historical Society: "Beyond Fort Wayne, Madison, and the Newberry: Welcome to the Other Midwestern Archives"

April 21, 7 pm EDT -- Kalamazoo MI, Kalamazoo Valley Genealogical Society: "Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without"




Harold Henderson, "April speaking engagements," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Pretty good news for Kane County Illinois land researchers

Quietly, the Kane County, Illinois, Recorder's office has placed all of its deeds (and several other kinds of documents) on line. Basically this is good news but there are a few qualifiers as described in the following quickie tutorial:

(1) Few genealogists will be using the tab that says "Search Land Records" --the straightforward grantee and grantor search only works for deeds since 1980. The interface for older deeds is somewhat klunky, but structurally it's the same that we go through in person: first find promising entries in the grantee and grantor indexes, then find the deeds themselves in the deed books.

(2) The grantee and grantor indexes are reached by going to the tab "View Miscellaneous Documents," then "All Miscellaneous Documents," and then choosing "Grantee Index" (actually a whole bunch of volumes of grantee indexes) or "Grantor Index" from the resulting menu. Under "Grantee Index" there's a list of books identified by volume number and year. Pick your book and then pay attention to the, um, unique patented method that a previous recorder chose to use for indexing. (It's called "Dennick's Universal Chart System of Indexing, patented in 1893, and explained below ** as it will take a while.)

(3) Once you've found a book and page number to consult in the deed books themselves, go back to the beginning and hit the tab "Books," under that "Document Books," under that "Folders" (actually original deed books), pick the desired volume number, and then within that volume the page.

(4) Once you're there, the images are variable in quality, with many portions of pages overexposed. (In some cases you may want to transcribe from the image rather than print it out.) Many pages are missing at least one line at the bottom. I have usually found FamilySearch's deed images from other states to be of better quality.

All this said, this degree of online access is better to have than not to have. Kane County is a suburban county west of Chicago, and I'm in a suburban county southeast of Chicago. Even living that close it's cheaper to work the deeds this way than in person. And the more people who can use this option, the better the old deeds are saved from extra handling.

** The grantee and grantor indexes are each arranged under one of many supposed 19th-century improvements on the alphabetical-by-first-letter-of-surname-and-then-chronological default system. First, surnames are organized in the following 47 initial-letter-equivalent groups, each beginning with a certain number, as follows:

A 1, Ba 14, Be 27, Br 40, B 53, Ca 66, Co 79, C 92, D 105, E 118, F 131, Gr 144, G 157, Ha 170, Ho 183, H 196, I 209, J 210, K 223, L 236, Ma 249, Mo 262, M 275, Mc 288, N 301, O 314, P 327, Q 340, Ro 341, R 354, Sc 367, Sh 380, Sm 393, St 406, S 419, T 432, U 445, Va 446, Ve 447, V 448, Wa 449, Wh 462, Wi 475, W 488, Young 501, Y 502, Z 503.


Within each surname initial-letter-equivalent, given names are organized according to 13 different initial letter equivalent groups: AB, C, DE, FG, HI, Ja, Jo, J, KL, MN, OPQR, STUV, and WXYZ.

Note that in this system surnames are not in alphabetical order: Grommet will appear ahead of Garofalo because their initial-letter-equivalent groups are in that order. And within each surname letter-equivalent-group, the names are organized by given names.

I looked for Levi Goodrich in the earliest grantee index, beginning in 1837.  Since his surname starts with G (page 157), given names beginning with "L" will be found at the ninth given-name initial letter equivalent group, so 165. (One big advantage of Kane County's system is that its image numbers correspond to the original page numbers, at least where I looked.) On 165 I found an L. D. Goodrich buying property, referring to a deed at volume 35, page 511. Before going to the deed, I carefully scrolled to the bottom of the page and found that this listing was continued on page 130, where I checked for any more.

OK, he turned out to be Lewis D. Goodrich, not Levi, but those are the breaks. Good luck and good hunting!

Note: As I have learned from Michael Hait's on-line state resources book, DeKalb County has what appears to be a similar setup (in beta test and requiring login) which I have not examined in detail.


Harold Henderson, "Pretty good news for Kane County, Illinois, land researchers," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Digging for Ancestors: new book on using land records

Michelle Roos Goodrum. Digging for Ancestors: An In-Depth Guide to Land Records. Utica, OH: The In-Depth Genealogist, 2013. 123 pages. $9.95 Nook, Kindle, or PDF; $29.95 paperback.

Most genealogists don't use land records enough. Most genealogy bloggers don't talk about them enough. And few practical books for beginners focus on them exclusively.

The folks at The In-Depth Genealogist have been doing something about all of these problems, first by publishing regular posts on these records, and now by helping contributor Michelle Roos Goodrum compile and augment the posts into book form for wider distribution. The hope is that this "will motivate the reader to take the necessary steps to utilize their ancestors land records." (page 1, image 8)

Land-record newbies can learn plenty from this book, not just from what it says about the records, but also from the author's visible enthusiasm and positive attitude toward indirect evidence, cluster research, and the Genealogical Proof Standard. Readers will also appreciate its direct and informal style (which carries over from blogging). Best of all are its step-by-step illustrated explanations of how to extract information from particular land records, which occupy about half of the book.

Unfortunately, the book may miss the mark with some readers because the material is poorly organized. It also lacks enticement, overview, information for state-land states, and any mention of what remains the best place to start learning about US land records: the late Sandra Hargreaves Luebking's 65-page chapter in The Source, third edition, available in print and on line at Ancestry.com's wiki.


Newcomers to land records often find them intimidating; I know I did. (They're so -- detailed!) Therefore a book about them needs to give the reader

(a) an incentive to dive in, such as a few quick examples of why land records are worth the trouble, and

(b) a brief clear overview, so that the reader gets some sense of control and won't be constantly surprised.

Instead, Digging for Ancestors begins with ten research tips -- good advice, but only three of the ten have to do with land records. The first chapter follows up by telling how important and complicated land records are, with a list of eleven rather bewildering ways in which land might be transferred. Technical terms (such as "grantor," "grantee," or "aliquot") are used before they are defined. No larger context is provided, either historical (the importance of property ownership from the beginnings of settlement) or logistical (the two main kinds of land descriptions).

The book covers only 30 states. It offers little to those researching in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Alaska, or Hawaii. These 20 states or their colonial powers provided original grants of land, and land parcels there are usually described using the metes-and-bounds system, as opposed to the other 30 "federal land" states that usually describe land using the rectangular survey system.

Readers will benefit from the author's decision to explain the practice of transcribing deeds, and to show the use of methods old and new -- transcription and GoogleEarth -- in analyzing them. The book's strongest parts are the step-by-step examinations of a land case, a homestead file, and a bounty-land file. Choice of other subtopics seems a little random -- why a chapter on cemetery deeds rather than, say, mortgages? -- but the subject is endless and one has to stop somewhere.

The list of resources would be improved by annotations. (Newcomers are likely to learn more from Val Greenwood than from E. Wade Hone.) It could also be supplemented by mention of

* Elizabeth Shown Mills's short and straightforward 1995 article, "Analyzing Deeds for Useful Clues," on the BCG web site;

* the blog In Deeds, which has been all-land-records-all-the-time for more than five years; and

* a few outstanding journal articles that show successful use of land records, such as Karen Green and Birdie Monk Holsclaw's contribution to the June 2012 NGS Quarterly.

Lesser issues: Some of the transcriptions shown don't distinguish between the preprinted and the handwritten portions of the forms being transcribed. Neither of the two separate discussions of searching for names on the BLM web site mentions that it allows use of wild-card search terms. For comparing monetary values between years Measuring Worth would be a better choice than The Inflation Calculator. Ideally PDF image numbers would coincide with page numbers, and apostrophes would be used properly. The original land records now appearing on FamilySearch might have been mentioned, as they offer unprecedented access and pose unique issues for researchers.



Harold Henderson, "Digging for Ancestors: New book on using land records," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 December 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Questions to ask land records

If you just don't know what to say or do when confronted with a land record, my friend and colleague Kimberly Powell has ten sure-fire research-conversation starters over at About.com.

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.]

Land research help and more Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center

Did your research target buy or homestead federal land between 1820 and 1908? Did (s)he try to? Then you need to check out friend and colleague Kimberly Powell's correlation of at least three different on-line resources over at About.com. Tract books may be your new BFF.



A friend has pointed out an important omission from my Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center research book, Finding Ancestors in Fort Wayne. When planning a research trip, you can produce a private list of materials to consult, and include ratings and comments or reviews. When you locate a title in the main catalog, click on "Save or Tag," set up your account (it's quick and does not require holding a card at the library), and proceed to listmaking. (NOTE: This feature applies materials listed in the main catalog. There are several others to be consulted as well, including microtext, which does not have this capacity.) I will include this feature when the booklet is revised, but in the meantime there's this big conference coming up in three weeks...





Kimberly Powell, "Searching BLM Tract Books on FamilySearch," About.com Genealogy, 30 July 2013 (http://genealogy.about.com/b/2013/07/30/searching-blm-tract-books-on-familysearch.htm : viewed 30 July 2013).


Harold Henderson, "Land research help and more Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 August 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Speaking in Cincinnati and Bloomington

FYI -- hope to see you there!

Next Friday (the 26th) I'll be speaking at the Ohio Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati on "First Steps in Indiana Research." (Tom Jones keynotes the day before.)

On Saturday the 27th I'll be speaking at the Indiana Genealogical Society conference in Bloomington on "Land and Property: The Records No Genealogist Can Do Without" and "Probate Will Not Be the Death of You." (Josh Taylor is the featured speaker.)





Harold Henderson, "Speaking in Cincinnati and Bloomington," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 April 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

SLIG 2014!

Those who attended the concluding banquet of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy last Friday received the flyer announcing the twelve courses that will be available 13-17 January 2014, a short walk from the Family History Library.

Five of the twelve were offered in 2013:

Paula Stuart Warren, "American Research and Records"

John Phillip Colletta, "Writing a Quality Family Narrative"

Thomas W. Jones, "Advanced Genealogical Methods"

Angela McGhie and Kimberly Powell, "Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum" [hardest course ever ;-]

Judith Hansen, "Problem Solving"

Seven are new additions for 2014:

J. Mark Lowe, "Research in the South"

Karen Mauer Green, "New York Research"

Carolyn Barkley, "Scottish Research"

Richard G. Sayre and Pamela Boyer Sayre, "Advanced Research Tools: Land Records"

Maureen Taylor, "Comprehensive Photo Detecting"

Kory Meyerink, "Researching in Eastern Europe"

Apryl Cox and Elissa Scalise Powell, "Credentialing: Accreditation,Certification, or Both?"


Early-bird registration ends 31 October 2013. I'm not saying which one(s) I want to take. But if you can't find a topic essential to your genealogy on this list, you might be reading the wrong blog!

#






Harold Henderson, "SLIG 2014!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

NGS Day Two (Thursday the 10th)

Games conferencegoers play: Many vendors and groups have little ribbons that can be stuck on in layers so that they trail down from your NGS nametags. Some folks compete to get the longest string of ribbons. My friend Michael Hait doesn't go for that, but he does have two ribbons that you don't see the same person wearing very often: one identifis him as a speaker (two talks Saturday), the other identifies him as attending his first national conference!

Other things that came my way today:

Jana Sloan Broglin explained Ohio's fantastically complex systems of distributing land in the state. I believe sixteen different systems were tried out. She gave accompanying glimpses of the relevant American history and idiosyncratic Ohio pronunciations (Newark = Nurk, Putnam = Putman). In some counties you need to know both the metes-and-bounds land system AND the rectangular survey system (or an experimental variant) in order to research land records. In her home county of Fulton (as well as Williams and Lucas), early deeds in the northern part of the county have to be sought in Michigan, a result of the Ohio-Michigan War ("a cow died"). If you love land records -- and genealogists pretty much have to -- you'll love Ohio!

Stefani Evans carefully described an ongoing project under the title "Red Herrings and a Stroke of the Dead Palsy," which included a monumental red herring in which a Revolutionary War regiment's record somehow migrated 500 miles! I took away this quote: "If we don't look at each detail in each document, we're going to reach wrong conclusions." Stefani's reflective style itself was a reminder that, as researchers, we need to remain calm in the midst of conflicting and ambiguous records.

The Association of Professional Genealogists' "Gathering of the Chapters" had representatives from all over the US. Many chapters cover a wide area, and the new availability of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar should make it easier to meet and greet without enduring long car trips. We even had a five-week-old "member" in attendance.

The "night at the library" -- the renowned Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County -- was in full swing when I left early, having located one of my coveted obscure articles. The genealogists outnumbered the staff, who were good-natured about the crowd, and in my case went the extra mile to find a periodical that the regular retrievers couldn't.

Tomorrow's my turn to do some talking instead of listening, with a talk in the 9:30 am slot (Indianapolis Orphan Asylum), so it's early to bed...


Harold Henderson, "NGS Day Two (Thursday the 8th)," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 11 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

December Indiana Genealogist

The December issue of the Indiana Genealogical Society's all-virtual quarterly, Indiana Genealogist, is just out and has the usual collection of short items from all around the state, as well as two longer ones:

* John J. Weidner of Lake County explains his research into his ancestral Kolling family, who were early settlers in the county, and

* I describe some time-machine-like land records for Gibson County (and other counties) that are available in the National Archives branch in Chicago (near Midway Airport).

If you have Indiana people, do consider writing them up for this publication.

Methodology Monday with the Fall Ohio Genealogy News

The new issue of Ohio Genealogy News is so packed with information I need two blog posts to cover it. In the methodology department, we have:

* Cross-check Your Sources: Dan Reigle, co-editor of the Ohio Civil War Genealogy Journal, amplifies on an earlier article about the Veterans Grave Registration cards, showing how the cards are valuable sources but they do contain errors, and need to be cross-checked against other military records, "as with any thorough genealogical study," using the example of Garnett B. Adrain. More likely his name was Adrian, and he served not one but two separate hitches in the Civil War.

* Know Your History: Neil H. Elvick describes land and property research in Gallia County, which has two different sets of original land records, from the Ohio Company in the east, and from the US government in the western half.

* When Indexes Fail: Marianne Szabo describes how browsing the Cuyahoga County Birth Returns at Footnote.com enabled her to find a Booms relative. Searching alone had failed, because the data was indexed under the name Boomer.

Montgomery County Illinois on line in a big way

The Historical Society of Montgomery County's digital archive holds tons of information that would be even better with a bit more context:

* searchable index of 27,044 death certificates 1877-1950, with a link to the form for requesting actual copies from the County Clerk/Recorder.

* searchable index of 6,946 first land purchases, mid-1800s; helpful information on how to read these descriptions is at the Illinois State Archives' web site, from which at least some of the information appears to come.

* vintage photos, biographies, and historical tidbits for 17 towns from Butler to Witt.

* searchable list of 10,214 veterans with DD 214 discharge forms registered with the county clerk/recorder, going back to World War I.

* searchable index of 22,737 obituaries 1980-2008 from two local newspapers, as scrapbooked by society members.

* names and detailed location information for 125 cemeteries.

And that's just on the research tab! If you don't lose track of the time perusing this site, your ancestors sadly must not have passed this way.

Hat tip to Cyndi's List What's New.

Social Science Research Network? What?

Sometimes as a genealogist, you can feel like a dog underneath a banquet table -- so many of the succulent scraps of information are out of reach, requiring access to those few libraries that have access to JSTOR or NBER papers. But the Social Science Research Network has thousands of papers anyone can download for free (PDF). And some of them are even relevant to our work. Here are four titles I picked up in a few minutes of searching:

"'Social Equality Does Not Exist among Themsleves, nor among Us': Baylies vs. Curry and Civil Rights in Chicago, 1888," by Dale

"History in the Law Library: Using Legal Materials to Explore the Past and Find Lawyers, Felons, and Other Scoundrels in Your Family Tree," by Metzmeier (2008, Kentucky)

"Anglo-American Land Law: Diverging Developments from a Shared History. Part II: How Anglo-American Land Law Diverged after American Colonization and Independence," by Thomas (1999, BYU)

"'The Most Esteemed Act of My Life': Family, Property, Will, and Trust in the Antebellum South," by Davis and Brophy (2009) -- on antebellum probate practices in Greene County, Alabama -- a county that was both wealthy and unburnt.

I'm sure there's more. Arf!

Hat tip to this post from the Samford University Library's Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research on Facebook.

Methodology Monday with deeds instead of probate

You can find some interesting stuff in genealogy newsletters these days, premier among them being UpFront with NGS from the national Genealogical Society. The June issue has more than one interesting article, but I was riveted by Jane Atkinson Andrews' account of how she used deeds to figure out an inheritance situation in the 1840s and 1850s in Wayne County, Ohio (or at least that's where it started) and get her in-laws sorted out. She writes,

"One particular group of transactions piqued my interest: ten deeds from ten different grantors to the same grantee, recorded in consecutive order. (Wayne County, Ohio, Deed Book 44:540-46; Various grantors to John Q. Andrews, Quitclaim deeds recorded 10-12 Dec 1854; Wayne County Recorder, Wooster; FHL microfilm 420,936.)

"This was an estate property settlement, but for whom? How were the grantors related to each other and to the deceased? What was their connection to the grantee? Careful reading of the deeds provided answers to these questions and more."

If you can stop reading there and turn on the TV, you're not a genealogist.

Secrets of eastern Indiana

Don't overlook college campuses in your tour d'horizon of local resources. I'm not thinking of just the archives and special collections for the moment (although I did blog one set here), but the humble catalog itself. For instance, Ball State University in Muncie has possessed itself of several series of microfilmed records from Delaware County, Indiana: marriage, property, probate, and circuit court order books. And that library is usually open until 3 am, which is more than you can say for the off-campus variety! These goodies are collectively numbered 2303 in Bracken Library's microfilm numbering system.

Online Plat Book Indexes, an idea whose time has come?

If your research targets lived in Monroe County, Wisconsin, the Local History and Genealogy Room allows you to search for them in the county's 1877, 1897, 1915, and 1948 plat books. More counties should get on this bandwagon, reminding on-line folks of the importance of land records (few of which are digitized or indexed on line), and of geography itself as a part of genealogy.

The good folks at Census Finder have state maps with counties and links to online maps of some of them, including plat maps. You can check out your favorite state either by scrolling halfway down the main page and picking a state to see its county map and list -- or by simply typing http://www.censusfinder.com/mapxy.htm into your browser's address bar, substituting the state's two-letter postal abbreviation for "xy."

I found many Midwestern counties with beautiful graphic displays of one or more plat books, but only two others with actual indexes: Eau Claire County, Wisconsin for 1910, and Lee County, Illinois, for (hold your breath) 1863, 1872, 1900, 1921, 1935, and 1941. Lee County may be small but it's mighty in genealogy. My great-grandparents lived there for many years but owned no land.

Ironically, censusfinder.com doesn't have Monroe County's plat book indexes listed yet.

Midwestern News from New England

Valerie Beaudrault of the New England Historic Genealogical Society keeps on finding Midwestern research resources in NEHGS's eNews:

One is Worthington Memory, an "online scrapbook of Worthington history" -- so far, 1373 items from 1803 to the present from this Franklin County town. In the cemeteries database, you can choose to search Flint Road, St. John's Episcopal Church, or Union cemeteries individually or all together. The Worthington News index so far covers one full year 1812-1813, and nothing more until 1925-1942, 1950-1956, and more recent years. A link to the Worthington Historical Society leads to some information (and the chance to order more) on estate records 1803-1850, Scioto Company members and descendants, and genealogical gleanings from property records.

Another is from Hartford, Michigan. Under the title "Pearls from the Past" are many photographs, a scattering of obituaries from 1918 to the present, transcriptions of three local histories, and accounts of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, who have survived and persisted in the area.

Did Your Ancestor Own Land in Illinois After 1859?

If so , you may be in luck. The Illinois State Library has a fine collection of land ownership maps and atlases, the oldest of which cover Hancock, Stephenson, and Winnebago counties in 1859. These were commercial products and coverage is uneven both as to counties and specific dates.

No, they're not on line; what makes this collection special is that most of it circulates via interlibrary loan. The full checklist of maps is on line (PDF); talk to your local librarian. Just one example: these maps can be used to generate a list of nearby neighbors if you trying to identify a woman's maiden name (even better if you can correlate them with a near-time census listing, not forgetting Illinois' state censuses on the 5's).

(Hat tip to Cyndi's List.)

You wish your ancestors stopped in Kane County, Illinois

This northern Illinois county, now a cluster of Chicago suburbs, is the only county I know where the county recorder has put its tract books on line. Tract books, in case you slept through that part of genealogy class, are property records organized by a particular tract of land. Not all counties have 'em, at least not back to the beginning.

Kane County's tract books consist of typed abstracts of property transactions -- to research the actual deeds you have to go there. And they're not indexed by name, so you need either to be really lucky (not me) or know exactly where your ancestor was (more specifically than just the township!). So it may or may not substitute for (or prepare for) a trip to the courthouse.

That's the beauty of property records -- they weren't created with us genealogists in mind. That's also the horror of them -- they weren't created with us in mind. Now, what I'd really like is to see the grantor-grantee indexes digitized!

Land Records

Are you one of the many genealogists who search far and wide for vital records, but fight shy of land records? Two recent online items may encourage you to take the leap into some of the oldest and most easily accessible sources of evidence on ancestors:

* A new blog -- you never know if these things are going to stick around -- called In Deeds is an ongoing series of land research chronicles from Michigan, with sidelights on George Armstrong Custer.

* The Family History Bulletin at WorldVitalRecords.com reprints from Everton's Genealogical Helper a Republic County, Kansas, study by Mary Clement Douglass, CG. Using the tract book or numerical index to follow a particular parcel of land in Republic County, she shows how she traced a family "through 4 generations and throughout the United States. It has given us legal name changes, clues to marriages, death dates, locations to pursue probate cases for deceased members, and evidence of the family scattering in the Twentieth Century across America. All of this information was found in less than two hours in the Republic County Register of Deeds office." Go for it.

(And if you have research targets in Kansas, take a look at her brand-new book on Kansas research.)