Just when you think you've got the whole family . . .

Few things genealogical are more fun than finding a probate that reveals a supposed bachelor marrying, fathering five children, and dying -- all within the 1880-1900 "little dark age." Without the probate they and their mother would have been difficult or impossible to find. We're talking Pennsylvania here, no marriage records. And so far this branch of the family appears not to have been in communication, even though it was one of the few who remained in Erie County. Did somebody have a quarrel?

Never ignore childless siblings!

One of my immigrant ancestors had six children between 1795 and 1815, one of whom apparently died young. Two of the six were daughters who married but had no children. Their husbands both left wills.

One husband's will left everything to his wife if she survived him. If she did not, he divided his estate in half -- one half to be divided among his surviving siblings, and the other half to be divided among his wife's siblings . . . He named them all, including the one we thought had died as a baby, with her married name. Both had common names, there was no other way to find her.

When I started reading his will, I thought, well, this is pretty far out on a limb. But in genealogy, "out on a limb" is a wise place to be.

La Porte County Indiana Early Probate Records 1833-1850

Everybody dies. Many have probates. A few leave wills. Therefore, all serious genealogists consult probate records in their research. Now it will be easier for those whose research takes them to La Porte County, Indiana.

Almost four years ago, Dorothy Germain Palmer, Mary Leahy Wenzel, and I divided up the county's earliest probate records and started abstracting them. Dorothy took Probate Order Book A, which recorded the daily activities of the local probate court from the founding of the county up to about 1842. Mary took Probate Complete Record Book A, which recorded the larger probates in detail from the founding of the county up to 1848. I took the first microfilm reel of loose papers (AKA estate packets), which run from 1836 up to 1850.

Once we had abstracted them, we indexed every name excepting judges, clerks, and attorneys in the bound volumes; in the loose papers we indexed all decedents, heirs, administrators, buyers at estate sales, those providing security (bail), and those who signed decipherable names (on receipts, for instance). Since almost all individuals connected with every probate are included, researchers can use this book to place many people in early La Porte County who did not themselves die during the 1830s and 1840s.

Some probates appear in all three records (the county's first will book starts about 1850). Some appear in only one. This book allows the researcher to get an overview of where any given individual appears, and to find him or her readily in the original records in the county clerk's office. The original records may contain additional information; in a few cases, diligent administrators compiled what amount to credit ratings for those who owed the estate money. (The consolidated approach is unusual, and it would be difficult to use in any projects covering later years, as the bound volumes and the loose papers all become more out of sync with each other.)

The resulting book is 290 pages long and sells for $29.95. All royalties will go to the La Porte County Genealogical Society. Copies can be purchased either via the society website or from the publisher, Genealogical.com, whose people were very helpful in getting the book properly formatted.

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.]

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.]

Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist

Included in the new Hoosier Genealogist: Connections (Fall/Winter 2012), published twice a year by the Indiana Historical Society, are Randy Mills on writing memoirs ("Give yourself permission to write that lousy first draft"), Christina R. Bunting on the old French Lick resort, more on John Wooden's boyhood, and Cathy Callen on mysterious relative (or is it relatives?) Allen H. Neff.

The Neff article is interesting in that the author still has questions about the fellow's identity, and a new on-line index from the Indiana State Digital Archives might help by making Marion County court records more accessible.

Meanwhile, west of the Wabash, FamilySearch now has on line more than 1.1 million images of probate records from 44 Illinois counties (none of the big ones unless you count Rock Island and Champaign)! These are browseable and include the print indexes, but the images themselves are not indexed, so it takes some work to get to the original images.



Harold Henderson, "Illinois Probates, Indianapolis Courts, and the Hoosier Genealogist," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Records in Unpredictable Places

One more thing probate records do: make unexpected connections between unexpected places in unexpected ways.

The largest county in the Midwest -- Cook County, Illinois -- is also a burned county. While abstracting probates three counties away in Indiana, I came across three pages copied from pre-Fire Cook County probate court records from the 1840s. The originals turned to ash in the Great Chicago Fire 141 years ago.

These records connect two early Midwestern movers and shakers. Micajah Terrell Williams -- an Ohio politician-entrepreneur with an interest in improved transportation and a founder of Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- had died in Cincinnati. William B. Ogden, Chicago's first mayor and a transportation leader cut from much the same cloth, was making a claim on Williams's estate. Following Williams's death, Ogden had been involved with land Williams had owned in (among other places) La Porte and Porter Counties in Indiana. Williams's probate appears to have been a tangled and lengthy affair, and there may be more to the story.

Only because a wealthy Cincinnatian invested in some Indiana farmland did a bit of long-gone Chicago history survive the fire in this courthouse 60 miles away. This piece of history will be a lot easier to find once we get these probates abstracted and indexed!


Micajah T. Williams estate no. 336, loose papers, La Porte County, Indiana; microfilm E-1, County Clerk, La Porte.

Harold Henderson, "Records in Unpredictable Places," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 October 2012 (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.]

Probate: Open Your Present!

Archives.com has just published an article in which I ask why genealogists look only for wills when the best stuff is often deeper inside the courthouse . . . and explain why we should: "Probate Records: A Gift Many Genealogists Fail to Open," featuring loose papers, with the Thrall, Webster, and Ambrose families in supporting roles.


Harold Henderson, "Probate: Open Your Present," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Top 5 MWM Posts for June 2012

1. Professionals and Amateurs, Together Forever (June 29)

2. Continue Growing (June 1)

3. Are You On Board? (June 7)

4. Midwestern Deeds On Line -- More or Less! (June 5)

5. Don't Assume Probate Courts Only Do Probate! (June 17)

The first three ran well ahead. I'll list the favorites from July in early September once the dust has settled.

Least viewed:

IGHR Samford Day 2 (June 12)


News not blog related: I'll be speaking about lesser-known Midwestern archives a week from now, Saturday morning the 11th, at the South Suburban Genealogical and Historical Society in Hazel Crest, Illinois. Check out their web site in any case -- they have some records you won't find anywhere else!



Harold Henderson, "Top Five MWM Posts for June 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Two Simple Things Probate Papers Can Do

Beyond wills . . . beyond the probate court books . . . there lie the handwritten papers turned in to the court. They're not just for identifying heirs or deducing the date of death. They can show where the deceased came from and which of his neighbors were friends. The estate papers of William M. Otis, who died in the summer of 1845 in La Porte County, Indiana, contain both.

One paper in his file is a judgment from a Justice of the Peace Court in Chautauqua County, New York, where he paid a $7.19 judgment on 20 June 1843.

Another lists who purchased his personal property (livestock, a sled, a double tree, and more) -- and who guaranteed that purchaser would pay. If you were wondering whether Branson Parker (who offered $5.75 for two hogs) was any kin to William D. Parker, it would be of great interest to know that William gave a note for Branson's purchases.

The first is fairly straightforward. The second can be trickier to find. Lacking a good every-name index to years of county probates, you might have to resort to checking for all the deaths within a certain distance of your research target's home.




Harold Henderson, "Two Simple Things Probate Papers Can Do," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 23 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Volunteer

The best thing I ever did for myself as a genealogist was to attend the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and IGHR at Samford University.

The second best thing was to volunteer to abstract and index local courthouse records under the auspices of my local genealogical society.

Those two things may seem incommensurate, but they're not. No class, no course, and no brilliant instructor can substitute for hanging out with the records a few hours a week, especially when you're starting out.

I was reminded of this last week, when I was wading through 1840s-era handwriting in loose probate papers and found a relatively clear diagram drawn up by a diligent executor. He listed 19 debts owed to the estate, and for each he then listed the amount he deemed likely to be collectable. In effect, it was a credit report for a handful of individuals living in La Porte County, Indiana, in late 1844. And while the record appeared in a probate file, the people being reported on were not dead, nor were they heirs.

You could do a lot of personal and client research and not run into this kind of item. And of course such things are not readily accessible unless someone has indexed the loose papers -- or unless someone turns the courthouse upside down and shakes it by investigating associates of associates, Elizabeth Shown Mills style. (If you want an example, check out JAMB's recording of her "Margaret's Baby's Father & The Lessons He Taught Me!," presentation F-144 from FGS Philadelphia 2008 -- one of the great genealogy experiences.)

It's not the only form of continuing education, but it's a good one. And it contributes to the profession as well.

(Not that you asked, but #3 would be joining the ProGen Study Group, #4 entering the NGS writing contest, and #5 attending the best national conferences [NGS and FGS].)




Harold Henderson, "Volunteer," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 16 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Common source vs. obscure source SMACKDOWN!

In the course of a volunteer local abstracting project, I recently came across the roster of 71 individuals who bought items at the estate sale of Valentine Cattron in early October of 1840 in La Porte County, Indiana.

I was thinking what an obscure record this is. Many people do genealogy for years without going near a probate file (yes, I was one of them). By contrast, everyone uses the census, early and often. And -- hmmmm! -- this obscure record, buried in a microfilm reel of loose papers in a probate case, was created only a few months after the 1840 census.

One way -- by no means the only way -- to evaluate a source or a research tool is what it can find for us. Did the 1840 census pick up everyone who attended that sale? Or can this obscure sale list expand our reach? Why not find out? (Note that the timing of this test favors the census; an 1845 sale of similar size might well catch even more people not in the county for either 1840 or 1850.)

After working the Ancestry.com census index and reading through two counties (the deceased, like every other ancestor, lived near a border), and very conservatively counting everyone who was doubtful as "identified," I still ended up with sixteen individuals who bought at the sale but who were not enumerated in the 1840 census.

16 missing out of 71 is 22.5 percent. Call it one out of five. That's a lot, especially if your guy is one of them. That's a reason to index or abstract those sources and make them available, and to use them when you can. (There are other reasons, but that'll do for today.)

BTW, we can crowdsource this if anyone has the leisure time. The sixteen purchasers who do not appear in the 1840 census in either Porter or La Porte counties, according to me, are James P. Cain, Isom Campbell, Hezekiah Cattron, John Eaheart, Edward Evans, Wm. Lynn, Daniel Mahony, Daniel Main, Samuel Maine, James McCord, Samuel Parkinson, John Pattee, Wm. Petro, E. J. Simmons, Edwin A. West, and Daniel Wooley. Let me know if you find any of them -- or if you've wondered where they were hiding in 1840!

(A good word for Ancestry.com's indexing, too: I did find one individual in the read-through who I had missed when working the index, but I think I should have been able to find even him by creative searching.)

Why would they be missing at census time? Most, I suspect, were "hidden" in relatives' households, because only household heads were named in 1840. Some were probably elsewhere in June but not in October. And perhaps some were missed, or fell victim to bad handwriting and random spelling.


La Porte County, Indiana, estate no. 160, Valentine Cattron, sale record 1-2 October 1840, loose papers; microfilm E1, 48th item on roll, County Clerk, La Porte.

Harold Henderson, "Common source vs. obscure source SMACKDOWN!" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 30 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Ohio Genealogy News Spring 2011

The Ohio Genealogy News -- the genealogy newsmagazine that outdoes some other states' quarterlies -- focuses on Civil War genealogy research this quarter. But I'd say the whole issue is worth it for explaining where to find the Cleveland District Round Table's index to the Cuyahoga County probate record images that FamilySearch has posted only in browseable form.

In other news, Ohio Genealogical Society's 50th annual conference begins later this week in Columbus. See you there!

Elkhart County, Indiana

Genealogists love free stuff, and if you have research targets in north central Indiana, resources have been kindly provided by your colleagues that you may not know about, although it is not technically news: an on-line index of microfilmed loose probate papers (and some related court cases) known by the acronym CRIMP.

You can read the full story there; the index was compiled by Ned and Bea Parcell. You can tell it was done by genealogists, because in addition to the numbers needed to access the records, they included a sprinkling of other names involved on each set of probate papers, so that readers of the index can get a notion of whether these are indeed the people they're looking for.

The index then allows you to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, or visit a local Family History Center and order the appropriate microfilm (using a conversion table to get the right number, available on the above site). Or you can visit the Elkhart County Historical Society library located in the county historical museum in the former Bristol High School, where the films are available for viewing. It's also possible to download your selected images onto a thumb drive -- all at no charge. The amount of embedded effort involved in making one local record set accessible is hard to calculate, or appreciate. And one of the best ways to repay is to help add more records to the store.

Looking after their own

Christopher A. Schnell writes in "Women and the Law of Property," in In Tender Consideration: Women, Families, and the Law in Abraham Lincoln's Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), pp. 150-151:

As early as 1828, and with increasing frequency through the next three decades, women in Sangamon County wrote wills to maintain control over the division of their property.... In almost every instance the author assigned her assets to her children, either directly or by trust.... Several wills exhibited the propensity of women to favor female heirs, often transferring trust property from their own name to their daughter's or granddaughter's name. Women who transferred property exclusively to their daughter(s) sought to control their property so that their daughters had at least the same measure of support that their mother had garnered, without interference from husbands. Jane McCann put all her property in trust for her daughter and specifically excluded her son-in-law from access to the title to the land. Thus, no matter what became of her daughter's marriage, Jane McCann ensured some financial support for her daughter.

Plus more examples. Read the whole thing.

October News from Wisconsin

The new issue of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society Newsletter (membership required) includes a bird's-eye view of the combined libraries of the Marathon County Historical Society and the Marathon County Genealogical Society. The available goodies include high-school yearbooks from 1919, wills and probates 1850-1918, Wausau city directories and telephone books from 1883, various church records 1860-2003, school censuses 1919-1962, plat books from 1882, and a marriage index 1899-1960.

It's a must-see if you have research targets in north central Wisconsin. As always, call ahead to check on hours and availability.

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.

Eavesdrop on the lawyers

Texas-based researcher Debbie Parker Wayne has a nice list of legal books and resources with genealogists in mind, including some by state (there's something for all five of our focus states). This is more than just a law dictionary, it includes current statutes as well as some histories of pertinent matters like marriage and inheritance laws.

Maybe this post belongs under methodology, as Tom Jones makes a strong case in his lecture "Inferential Genealogy" that you have to know the law in order to interpret the evidence, or even to recognize it as evidence. So in Wayne's phrase, you probably do have "ancestors hidden in the statutes."

Breaking news: Just out from Stanford University Press is Lawrence M. Friedman's Dead Hands: A Social History of Wills, Trusts, and Inheritance Law. I haven't seen it, and the blurbs focus on current hot-button issues -- leaving it open whether he goes back far enough, and deep enough, to interest genealogists. But any book with a title like this has real potential. Hat tip to the Legal History Blog.

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.