Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Research Problem and Lessons Learned

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has another mission for us:

It's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!



Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:

1)  Think back to when you first started doing genealogy and family history research.  What was one of your first real research problems?  How did you attack the problem?  Did you solve the problem?  If so, how?  What lessons did you learn from this experience?

2)  Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook.

When I started out doing genealogy, my friend, Susan, showed me how to find ancestors using the U.S. Federal Census records on microfilm. I wrote about it here. I found the first families in the 1920 census and began to work my way back.

This method worked very well by finding most of my father’s and mother’s ancestors, at least back to 1850. Earlier census records had only the head of household shown on census records with tick marks indicating the sex and age of other members of his household, who could or could not be family. Not really very helpful to this beginner.

I had found my 4x-great-grandfather, Ellis W. Lancaster in the 1850 census in Lewis County, Missouri. This census told me he was born in Virginia about 1803, his wife, Elizabeth was born in Kentucky about 1811, and the children living in the household were all born in Missouri. The eldest was Sarah at age 17.[1]

He was also in the 1840 census in Lewis County, Missouri, as well.[2] That has still not gotten me back to Kentucky or Virginia.

At this point, the beginnings of FamilySearch came online and their site had mostly indexes of their Ancestral File, the IGI, and some other sources. It was pretty exciting to see these indexes online because then I didn’t need to look at CDs at the local Family History Center.

I found a mention of Ellis Lancaster marrying Elizabeth S. Neel in the IGI. This record gave the date of the marriage as 10 Jun 1831 in Shelby County, Kentucky. Ah, a new place to look for the Lancaster and Neel families.

So I checked the 1830 census indexes for Lancasters in Shelby County, Kentucky, and found James Lancaster on page 265 and Robert Lancaster on page 276.  Robert’s entry had a male between 40 and 50 and another between 50 and 60, either old enough to be Ellis’ father, and a male between 20 and 30 who could be Ellis.

James Lancaster (indexed as Hanry Lancaster on Ancestry now), was a male 50 to 60 with boys 5 to 10 and 10 to 15. His wife was 40 to 50, and had girls under 5 and 5 to 10. Although he had no son the right age of Ellis, I couldn’t rule him out because he was old enough to be Ellis’ father.

So I brought this up at dinner while we were all at the Family History Library for the 2002 research trip. I wanted to figure out which Lancaster man might be the father of Ellis Lancaster. Susan suggested I look at probate and land records.

Oh wow, I’d not looked at those types of records yet, but I was willing to try. I was at the best place to try. Lots of records were available on film and there were others in our group to help me if I got stuck.

I checked the deed index for grantors first. I found one dated October 27, 1840 between Mary Lancaster and the heirs of Robert Lancaster. It was in Book G2 on page 231.

Oh what a jackpot! The deed was between Mary Lancaster, widow of Robert Lancaster of Shelby County of the first part and Ellis Lancaster, John Lancaster, Creath Neill & Lenis Ann his wife, Robert N Myers & Mary E his wife, Josiah Lancaster and Eliza Jane Lancaster of the second part.  Robert had died intestate (without a will) and one third was to go to his widow, Mary and the parties of the second part agreed to pay Mary $2800 in cash and give her a negro girl named Tusan (or Susan, hard to read), along with furniture she brought to the marriage. She was relinguishing land (on Bullskin Run) and property (livestock, slaves, and personal property)  to the parties of the second part.[3]

From this deed, I had clues about a possible parent for Ellis. I also had possible siblings for Ellis: brothers John and Josiah, and sisters Lenis Ann, Mary E, and Eliza Jane.  I was very excited.

Of course, I continued collecting more deeds, which included a land partition that really spelled out the heirs, and then looked at Robert’s probate.

I think that evening at the Family History Library was really a turning point in my genealogical research efforts. I had been keeping notes as I researched, but now I was using more advanced records that can help solve more complex problems.


[1] 1850 U.S. census, Lewis Co, Missouri, pop. sched, p. 707 (355 stamped), dwelling 355, family 415, Ellis W. Lancaster, digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 Jan 2011), citing NARA M432, roll 404.
[2] 1840 U.S. census, Lewis Co, Missouri, pop. sched., p. 186, Ellis Lancaster, digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 20 Jan 2011), citing NARA M704, roll 225.
[3] Shelby County, Kentucky, Deeds, Bk G2, p 231, Mary Lancaster to Lancaster heirs, 1840, FHL 259241.

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

Comments

  1. Linda StufflebeanMay 27, 2019 at 1:25 PM

    Hands on research is always the best, isn't it? Especially at the FHL. I'm still amazed at how many people don't really use land records while they research. Probably because many county records are still not digitally available.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lisa S. GorrellMay 27, 2019 at 1:41 PM

      I think a lot of them think they're boring--just talking about land. But there are hidden gems in the records.

      Delete

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