John Coor of Copiah County Made an Agreement with Joel Hoggatt

This week at RootsTech 2024, FamilySearch announced a new feature that an every-word search was available for U.S. deeds and probates. It is still in the trial mode and can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/.

This is the search screen. It clearly states it is for US land and probate records and Mexico notary records. You can do a keyword search or if you click on the “more options” you can add a name.

My Find
I immediately gave it a try and searched first for records of the COOR family using the keyword search. Up first came deeds from Wayne County, North Carolina. 

At the top, you can filter using record year, record type, record place, and collection. For the past few days, I have mainly filtered by record place. I filtered down to Mississippi. You can even filter to the county.

The first entry was a document I had not seen before. It was an 1826 agreement between John Coor and Joel Hoggatt to build a set of grist and sawmills. John Coor is my 4x-great-grandfather John Coor (1785-1838). This was pretty exciting.

I tried locating more information about this possible mill, but I have not yet found any information. My next step is to do some research on Joel Hoggatt and see what I find about the mill. It is entirely possible that the mills never got off the ground.

Game Changer
This new feature is a game changer in genealogy research. It is now possible to find our ancestor’s names in deeds as witnesses, neighbors, or the et. al. in deed indexes. We could use the search to locate all the people who lived on a particular watershed to help in the platting of deeds of our ancestors and their neighbors.

This can also locate ancestors who moved or purchased land in another location that you had previously not known. You can also search multiple names and locate deeds that name different people. Perhaps this will help you discover the maiden name of a female ancestors whose maiden name was unknown.

There are so many possibilities. Give it a try!

Copyright © 2024 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.