Genealogy Jottings

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The Reed family left Kentucky for eastern Illinois on my great-great grandfather’s eleventh birthday in 1829. As I work back in time, I now need to do some Kentucky research to learn any more about this Reed branch. Family events reportedly took place in several Kentucky counties including Shelby, Nelson, and Spencer.

I do know that as the country developed, states carved new counties from earlier ones. This occurred in my family’s area of Kentucky during the time they lived there. Nelson and Shelby counties were carved from the earlier Jefferson County in 1784 and 1792. Spencer County came later, in 1824, from Nelson and Shelby. So where should I begin, and which county should I look at first?  I need to find out when the Reeds arrived in Kentucky, where they settled, and whether they moved around once there.

Often one hears genealogists tell of finding records in various counties even though their family lived in just one place. Records lie in whichever courthouse was the county seat at a given point in time. I have not encountered this situation of evolving counties in my previous research, so answering these questions will be a new challenge for me.

The first problem to sort out is the Kentucky birthplace for my great-great grandfather and his siblings between 1803 and 1822. Family lore says he was born in Elk Creek, Spencer County, but Spencer was not created until after he was born in 1818. What county was it in 1818? Were the other children born at the same place?

The research adventure begins.

Our cousins often have family records and mementos that can help us in our research. Recently a distant cousin of mine sent me a Valentine card written by my grandmother over 60 years ago. What a thrill for me to see her familiar handwriting again. This same cousin has also sent me several family photos and other records, and I have sent him family trees and some copies of family wills.

Professional genealogists tell us to keep writing to our cousins, and one wag even advises writing to the oldest and sickest ones first. Over the years I have tried to follow this advice. I have received numerous precious photos and a lot of family information from these people. I always try to share what I have with them. Together we can compile a much more comprehensive family history than any of us could do alone.

Locating and corresponding with cousins is one of the pleasures of genealogy. I will keep writing to all of them as long as they are willing to hear from me.

Adam Smith, who wrote Wealth of Nations, said that land is the basis of all wealth. Everyone knows that millions of fortune-seeking Americans in the early years of the Republic acquired land from the federal government, either through low-priced cash entry, by homesteading, or in receipt of bounty lands earned via military service. Many members of my own family did so including Thomas and Caleb Reed in Illinois, Petronellia Sherman Reed in Wyoming, Ole and Sofie Bentsen in Montana, and Laura Riddle in Nebraska.

Yet no record of government land acquisition has been found for great-grandfather Samuel Reed (1843-1928) who lived during the prime homesteading years. Why not? He grew up on a farm, so he certainly possessed the skills needed by a homesteader. Why didn’t this man who loved the west ever file on a claim or buy government land?

Perhaps it was because homesteading was hard work. Family legend has it that Samuel was not the most industrious man around. Supposedly he preferred the role of land speculator to farmer. He bought and sold tracts in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma during his lifetime. He is said to have sold them mostly at a loss until his inheritance was gone. This man from a prosperous family did not die wealthy. He probably would have been better off had he stayed in Illinois to inherit his father’s farm on land his father acquired for cash from the government beginning in 1841.

Samuel did not follow the example set by his grandfather, his father, and even his ex-wife. Instead, he pursued get-rich-quick schemes and missed the biggest opportunity of all.

In the past, a squatter was someone who settled on public land without legal authority. Many squatters settled in southeast Kansas around 1870 on lands within the Osage Diminished Reserve. The most famous of these was probably Charles Ingalls, father of the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder. The squatters had to leave in 1871.

My ancestor Samuel Reed lived in southeastern Kansas in Neosho County during this time period, and he also left in 1871. Because of the strong correlation in the time lines for the  Ingalls family and my own, I wondered whether Sam was a squatter, too. I searched for Kansas historic maps and ordered the land records from Neosho County.

From the maps, I learned that Neosho County was outside the Osage Diminished Reserve. This area officially approved for settlement was called the Osage Ceded Lands. Sam’s name appeared in the county records. Strangely, I could not find a record of how he acquired his property, but he did convey it by warranty deed when he left Kansas and returned to Illinois. Apparently, he was not a squatter.

More meetings! This week, the Colorado Genealogical Society and its sub-group, the Computer Interest Group (CIG), kick off the fall season. These meetings usually inspire my enthusiasm for more research, but CIG fell short this time.

At their Monday meeting, I learned about the new website, Fold 3, formerly Footnote.com. I have not found much of interest on this site in the past although it does have records from the  Pennsylvania archives. Now Ancestry.com has purchased the site, and in the future, it will focus on military records. Ancestry plans to charge separately for access to Fold 3 so I probably will not use it.

The local library system subscribes to Ancestry but is unlikely to add Fold 3 to its databases. To get a free look, I will have to use it at the local Family History branch (hard to get computer time) or else travel to the National Archives in Lakewood. If I come up with a new ancestor who may have served in the military, it might be worth the trip, but I certainly do not have enough military research needs to warrant a subscription to this site. I wonder how many people do. Perhaps that is why they sold out to Ancestry.

Tomorrow’s program at the Colorado Genealogical Society will not inspire more research either. The scheduled topic, self-publishing family histories with Lulu, will instead offer new ideas for sharing one’s research. In the past, people aspired to write books about their ancestry, but publishing one was very expensive and there was a limited market for it. Self-publishing websites have cropped up, and I am looking forward to learning how other Colorado genealogists are using them.

Much as I love the research aspect of genealogy, periodically I need to digest, synthesize, and preserve what I have found. Maybe at this month’s CGS meeting, I will find some inspiration for doing that.

Here it is September, and all the clubs begin to meet again. This week the German group gathered in small groups to discuss best research practices in various states where Germans first settled. I attended the Missouri group to see if I could get some advice on tracking Tony’s mysterious ancestor Katherina Woermann. She was married in a Catholic church in St. Louis and moved to Minnesota some time after that. We have not found any information about her immigration or her family. Sadly, no one in the group could recommend any magical source in Missouri that would reveal everything about her.

I did get one hint from a man in the group who has done extensive research on his own German lines. I mentioned that Tony had found many different spellings for Woermann. The man said that Woermann (or with an “o” with an umlaut in place of the “oe”) is probably correct although it may also have had an “h”. He thought our best plan would be to do further work in the Catholic records.

The baptism records for the church where Katherina was married are available on microfilm from the LDS library. Our first step should be to look at those to see whether Katherina and her husband had a child in St. Louis before they left. If they did, the record could give us some good information–perhaps parents’ birthplaces and names of family members who served as godparents.

Years ago, when I worked for Big Oil, occasionally our boss required us to clean our offices. (Yes, we had offices, not cubicles). We would all take a 2-hour block of uninterrupted time, and no telephone calls would be put through. Everyone would purge and file like crazy. After that, it seemed much easier to work without the mess that invariably accumulates at a busy desk.

Last week I cleaned up my desk at home. It took way more than 2 hours because I had not done it in a long time.  No genealogy got done, but this week, at a clean desk with everything neatly put away, I can work much more efficiently.

Already this morning I have corresponded with a second cousin in a search for his family photos, exchanged common ancestor information with a distant relative, and looked at a roll of microfilm. Sadly, it was the wrong roll of microfilm (again!), but that is another story. I can easily find something else to work on when I sit behind a clean desk.

I use The Master Genealogist software program to keep track of my work. One thing I like about it is the Task feature. For each person, you can keep an electronic list of research tasks to do. But thanks to a helpful researcher at the Computer Interest Group, last spring I learned you can also sort these lists by keyword. He puts county names in the keyword field whenever he creates a task. Later, he can pull up a list of all tasks to do in a given county! I am using this trick again this week. My great-grandfather’s first wife owned land in Trego County, Kansas, and recently I contacted the courthouse to find out if her estate had been probated there. The answer was “no”.  So I will create a new task that includes the Trego County keywords to remind myself to look at the land records there. Someday. Not a high priority.

Last week I said I would focus next on the newspaper microfilm from Charleston, Illinois. That plan did not work, because when I eagerly arrived at the library to look at it, I found they had ordered film from Charleston, South Carolina by mistake. So the reels went back, and the staff placed my order again. Microfilm reading will have to wait–probably another 6 weeks. In the meantime, I learned of a new Ancestry.com database of membership applications for the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Because I have several ancestors who served in that war, I decided to take a look at them. One who fought from Virginia was my great, great, ever-so-great uncle, Joshua Reed, and our family records show that he had just three daughters. I had assumed his line had daughtered out. When I looked at the applications submitted by his descendants, I was amazed to find that someone had applied for membership based on descent from Joshua’s son. He had a son? A new avenue to investigate! I am not sure yet where I will put this on the research priority list, but I am glad I took the time to search a new database.

Suddenly, several tempting research avenues have opened up for me all at the same time. Yesterday, my dad’s cousin called with information on the location of photos of various family tombstones. Today, the library called me to say 6 rolls of newspaper microfilm came in for me to view. I need to get marriage records for my grandfather’s siblings, including one in a city I will be passing through next week. I have promising leads on my great-grandfather’s dealings in Indian land. I can hardly decide which to tackle first, but I think it better be the microfilm. It has a due date!