Mam-ma's Southern Family

I am working on a project to learn more about the neighborhood where Robert Lancaster lived in Shelby County, Kentucky.[1]  On 5 December 1821, he purchased 231 plus acres of land from Thomas Hanna and his wife, Mary. This land was located on the waters of Floyd’s Fork and Luteses Run, being a branch of the Bullskin Creek.[2]  The land description named other neighbors: Joseph Williams’s land was on one stretch of the property and he had purchased the land also from Hanna. Samuel Ellis was a neighbor Charles Ellis was a neighbor A Neal was a neighbor (first name not listed) The land platted out looks like this. This plat doesn’t help me locate it on a map. There are too many straight corners but the names of the neighbors will be helpful. I plan to use the full-text search at FamilySearch Labs to locate any deed that names Robert Lancaster as a neighbor. I will also look for the deeds of the neighbors listed in his deed. I have the program DeedMapper that allows me to place mu...

Three deeds in a row, almost all identical, tell the story of farmers in Erath County, Texas, who leased a portion of their land for oil and gas exploration in 1915. Oil Well Drill, Texas Patent 732,925 Portal to Texas History Ebenezer Loveless, George W. Lancaster, and William Carlton Lancaster leased land to the Healdton Oil & Gas Development Company. [1] They received a dollar for the “sole purpose of exploring, mining and operating for oil and gas, and of laying pipelines and of building tanks, powers, stations and structures thereon to produce, save and take care of said products, with right of ingress and egress and all conveniences necessary to said operations.” The company had within a year to demonstrate whether there existed gas or oil in paying quantities in or under the lands, they were to put in a test well and the lease would be valid for five years. If oil or gas was found within that first year, then the lease would remain in effect until the oil or gas was exh...

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-grand...

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past . I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. I am very thankful for digital records I can use for genealogical sources. Being able to view images of the records I need from the comfort of my home has been a god-send. This speeds up the research process. In the past, I either had to save a list of films I wanted to view and either order the films from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, or wait until I made a trip to SLC to personally view the films at the library. Though, I do enjoy a trip to the mecca of family history, the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. Currently, I’m working on land records in Copiah County, Mississippi, which are digitized at FamilySearch , through the catalog. Many of the deeds are also digitized online at the Copiah ...