Postpone that genealogy road trip . . .

. . . and take a good long look at your target records and counties in the Family History Library catalog.

If the records you want are on films that have been digitized (those are camera icons in the right-hand "format" column), then you may get to have a genealogy staycation instead.

I just viewed the index books (also digitized) and pulled two key deeds for an ancestor in Ashtabula County, Ohio, whose property was sold to satisfy a court decree in 1844 (after he had paid the then-princely sum of $2400 for it six years earlier). Most likely he borrowed money on it and couldn't pay, but we'll see.

Actually I still need that road trip, because the underlying court records -- which hopefully will explain how he got into this fix -- were not filmed, and due to the current Microfilmpocalypse may never be. But now I can zero in on them instead. Jefferson, Ohio, is nice in the summer.

from OZinOH  per Creative Commons 2.0
www.flickr.com/photos/75905404@N00/1317676029

Scary Evidence Evaluations I Have Known, Plus an Update

Wording tweaked, thoughts preserved, names omitted to protect the guilty...


More people have posted this than anything else.

Several people entered this, but some of the dates are different.

Go by the earliest census record.


Do you have a favorite?


In less scary news, I have updated my list of the numbers of all the Family History Library microfilms that were on indefinite loan at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center as of 13 October.



Harold Henderson, "Scary Evidence Evaluations I Have Known," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Find FHL Films Locally

Note to northwest Indiana researchers: before you spring for $5.50 to borrow a film from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, check out this listing of FHL films on "extended loan" to the Valparaiso Family History Center. You too can cause an "extended loan" by borrowing a film three times in a row. This is a nice listing in that it fully enumerates individual items within each film.