The Genealogy Research Blog » family history research

More Ideas on Photographing Cemetery Stones for Genealogy Research

geneadmin — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:08:05 +0000

Continuing our discussion about photographing cemeteries and gravestones for genealogy research, we can make a list of items you should bring. By following these lists you should have everything you will need to successfully photograph a cemetery for genealogy research.

For your own comfort you may need a water bottle, mosquito repellant, suntan lotion, gloves, hat, good shoes and socks, a GPS and a note tablet and pencil. For your own safety you will need a cell phone, flashlight and maybe some maps. Cemeteries are not always the safest place, so be careful. Once when we were in Kentucky doing cemetery research, we were in a very secluded, yet gorgeous, cemetery and we nearly had an encounter with a group of drunken local teens. But this very rarely ever happens, as most people have an unwritten respect for cemeteries.

You will need some items to potentially clean gravestones. Bring along a spray bottle full of water, rags for wiping dirt off of stones and a soft toothbrush for detailed cleaning. Do not use any wire brushes, sealants or harsh detergents!

You will want to be careful when cleaning gravestones for genealogy research, as many of them are easily damaged. Over the years a gravestone will accumulate a build up of lichens, fungus, mold and dirt. If a gravestone was made of limestone or sandstone, as most early ones were, because they were easy to carve, it will not be very hard. Marble is also soft but not as soft as limestone or sandstone. Granite is a more modern choice for cemetery stones and it is the hardest of the stones used for cemeteries. With granite you can be a little more vigorous in your cleaning technique.

Always keep in mind that if you are cleaning some other family’s gravestone for genealogy research that you must respect it. To be on the safe side it is best to ask permission, of the cemetery keepers, to do cleaning if you will be doing several of them on you genealogy research adventure.

There are several things you will not want to forget for your camera when doing cemetery genealogy photography. Make sure you have that extra set of batteries, a strap for your camera (that you will want to actually use), extra card for your digital camera and a very soft cleaning cloth like a man’s hankie or eyeglass cloth.

As well as all of the supplies you may need to do cemetery genealogy research and photography, you should be in good enough shape to take a lot of bending and squatting. Fall or spring is a good time for a cemetery adventure as it is cooler out and not as humid.

Cemetery photography for genealogy research can be really fun for those of us into family history research. Most cemeteries are peaceful, historic and picturesque in their own way as well as full of genealogy information.

Why Use Land Records For Research?

geneadmin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:38:12 +0000

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Several good reasons exist to use land records in your family history research. The most important ones are talked about below.

Revolutionary War Bounty Land Grants

The nine states that awarded bounty lands in their western reserves or on their western borders (directly affecting the future states of Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Ohio, and Tennessee) are Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. (The basis for the Connecticut and Georgia awards, by the way, differ from the norm.)

The nine state governments created a patchwork of records, and it was therefore no easy task to create a master index. Typically, however, each entry in this index contains the name of the claimant, who is usually the veteran, the state of service, the rank held, the date of the record, and the acreage. Altogether about 35,000 names appear in the index, including duplicates. While the arrangement of matter is strictly alphabetical, there is also a separate index to heirs, representatives, and other assignees mentioned in the records.

Bounty and Donation Land Grants in British Colonial America

From Nova Scotia south to Florida, the British Crown awarded land to approximately 6,500 soldiers and sailors for service in the various colonial wars. Grants of land were generally made on the basis of rank, with veterans from colonies with no vacant lands sometimes taking up land in other colonies; certain Massachusetts soldiers receiving grants of land in Virginia, for example; or Virginia militiamen drawing land in Kentucky. Land grants provide the clues for such migrations, while other grants sometimes reveal group migrations from coastal settlements into the interior of the country.

All 6,500 soldiers known to have received land grants for their participation in the numerous conflicts with the French and their Indian allies, as well as in various colonial insurrections, are listed here with details of their place and dates of service, rank, military campaigns, location of bounty land grants and donation land grants, acreage, and, most importantly, assignment of title to heirs, relatives, and friends.

In family history research, no other records go farther back in time than land records, such as property tax lists, deed indexes, deeds themselves or real estate transactions. Land records are usually more complete than other records as well. A good example is the Doomsday Books, which are property tax lists from the 11th century. They are the earliest English records known that list the common farmer or tradesman by name.

In the United States land records were so important that after courthouse fires, of which there were many, land deed records were generally the first records reconstructed, if destroyed. This was common after the Civil War in states such as Georgia. A person counted his wealth on the land he owned, so it was important.

Around 90% of adult white males owned land before 1850. This means that land deeds and land grants are an excellent way to see if your ancestor was in a certain locality at a certain time. Almost all deeds are recorded at the county level courthouse where the land is located. People wanted the protection of a legal document so the buyers and the sellers of land were usually very anxious to make sure a deed was recorded. On the rare occasion some land may have been transferred privately and no deed recorded, but this was the exception (and almost impossible to trace).

If you are having trouble finding the name of a man’s wife, you may find it on land records, although many times you won’t get the last name. Dower Rights was a concept held over from England. These “rights” existed in the United States into the 19th century. Dower Rights entitled a widow to one-third of her husband’s estate when he died. This did not have to be specified in the husband’s will as it was common law and practice. But as a result of the dower rights concept a married women is usually mentioned in early land deeds because she had a legal interest in the land, if land was ever bought or sold by her husband. A little known fact is that a wife could veto the sale of her husband’s land due to her interest in the ownership. Some early court documents still exist that indicate the wife’s prevention of the sale of land, even though under English law, a woman could not own land in her own name.

Sharing Family Photos in Genealogy

geneadmin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:56:02 +0000

You will work with many family photos in your genealogy research and eventually want to share them, perhaps at a family reunion. It used to be that if you wanted to share family photos you had to make extra prints to give out. Today, you can share your family history photos the old-fashioned way, or you can share digital prints in many different ways. If you have a computer and a digital camera, you can share your family photos with anyone else you know that also has a computer without spending a dime on processing costs. You can even share your photos via your cell phone if it works with photos. Though not all phones can do this, most of the newer model phones can handle not only photos, but videos as well.

The problem I have had with sharing family photos is that some of my family is not online. Though most of my relatives used to have a computer, some no longer do. Many have had computers that died long ago, and they have yet to replace them. Others have computers but no internet access. I can however, share my family photos with my parents, my sisters, my brother, and several other family members via the Internet. This makes sharing photos so much easier; it also saves me a lot of money. Though my digital camera was expensive, in the end I save money by not having to make so many prints. For old family photos I have scanned I can email them instead of printing them out.

When sharing family photos online, there are a few things you should remember. When you post pictures of your children on the Internet, you cannot control who sees them. If you e-mail them to your family they are likely to remain private. However, if you put them in a public website anyone with access to a computer may view your family photos. Though not everyone is concerned with privacy, many people are. Consider the subject matter and content of your family photos before you post them where anyone can see them. As well you may want to consider posting family photos on the internet but not labeling them. This will keep the subjects names from being seen at least.

There is an even better way to share old or new family photos with those who may not have access to a computer and/or the internet. You don’t have to make prints, but you may have to spend a little money. You can put your old family photos and new ones on CD’s and pass them out at your genealogy reunions. CD’s are only about 50 cents apiece when bought in bulk. Just recently, I saw a new product in the store that I thought was pretty amazing. It was one of those things that made me think I wish I had thought of it first. What I found was a digital photo album that not only stores family photos, but can store videos as well. All you have to do is upload your photos into the frame, and you can give it to anyone you wish. Simply follow the instructions that come with the product and you will have a unique genealogy gift.

How to Get Rid of an Entail on Land

geneadmin — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:57:30 +0000

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Previously we discussed the use of “entailing land”. A brief summary of that would be land that was removed from being in Fee Simple (similar to how we own land today) to Fee Tail, in which the land could not be sold mortgaged or passed down in a will. As we discussed previously you may find, as a family history researcher, wills that pass land down with the phrase “heirs of his body” or “unless he dies without issue.” This usually means the land has been entailed. So subsequently you will not see mention of the land in future wills of the descendants because in essence the land has already been designated as to how it is passed down.

So what happens is that the land gets “lost” in the will records because it is possibly not mentioned again. Only the original will that entailed that land mentions it, and in subsequent wills it is implied. This makes it almost impossible to tell how common entailing land was. Entail was a device used mostly by the wealthy, so generally you will not find it with common people.

Was there a method to abolish entails?

Eventually an heir usually came about who wished to sell, or pass down, his land the way he wanted and so wished to get rid of the entail. This was called “docking” the entail, or eliminating it. Was there a way to turn land back from Fee Tail to Fee Simple so the heir could do what he pleased with it? Most authorities seem to agree that, in Virginia, docking was very hard, even harder than in England itself. There was a difficult method of doing it. It required and act of the legislature, which usually means you needed connections. All the potential heirs had to agree on it as well. Sometimes the entailed land had to be substituted with another parcel of entailed land of similar value. I personally feel that it is possible many parcels of entailed land simply got lost in the records once enough generations passed and so the entail was eventually ignored.

In 1734 Virginia passed a law that allowed docking of entailed land that was valued under 200£, if you got approval in the form of a writ from the secretary of the court. This of course only involved very small pieces of land since 200£ was not that much. It was a measure that was to help those descendants who mistakenly had their land in Entail from the way an ancestor mistakenly wrote his or her will. Deeds that came about from this may have been filed with the General court rather than the county court.

In 1776, entail was abolished by Virginia. Between then and 1785, primogeniture (the standard unwritten practice of passing assets down in lineal fashion to the oldest child) was the rule. Inheritance law was then enacted in 1785, which distributed land equally among the children. All the southern states abolished entail and or primogeniture around the time of the Revolutionary War.

For family history researchers this all makes our hobby that much more exciting.

Entailing Land and How Land was Passed Down

geneadmin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:18:22 +0000

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You must be able to interpret the laws in relation to land and succession of land when working with early land records. Following the ownership of land from one generation to the next is very useful for family history research, as well as exciting. The term Entail is one we will concentrate on here.

Land could be held in fee tail or fee simple. Fee simple is similar to how we own land in modern times. It is an unrestricted form of ownership. The reverse is fee tail which was a restricted form of ownership. With fee tail, land could not be mortgaged, devised by will or sold. You can think of fee tail as being more of a tenant relationship to your land, where you did not really own it but were a tenant for life.

Here is where Entail comes in. Land held under fee simple could be converted to fee tail. This is called Entailed. Once the land was entailed in this fashion it remained so forever. By the time the colonies were started, entailing land had been widely used in England for hundreds of years. The purpose of entailing in England might be obvious. There the land was scarce and society was stratified, so entailing allowed large estates to remain intact over long periods, by disabling future generation’s ability to sell off parts of land. Entailing in the American colonies was apparently held over from old English practice.

As a family history researcher you must look for examples of phrases that indicate land had been entailed. Land could be entailed by a will or deed as long as it was written in a special way. If you see in a will that a father left to his son land but the will says something like “…to Michael Johnson and the heirs of his body”, that indicates that the father intended the land to be entailed. The phrase “heirs of his body” meant the land was not to be fully owned by Michael Johnson but is to be passed down to his lineal descendants eternally. The phrase “unless he (or she) dies without issue” essentially meant the same thing. This is why when later looking at Michael Johnson’s will you will not see him mentioning the land. He had no ownership to it. How the land was to be passed down had already been directed by Michael’s father (from father to oldest son or child, and on and on), unless Michael had no heirs or at some point in the chain no heirs were produced.

Primogeniture determined who got the land in cases when land was entailed. Primogeniture was the standard practice in inheritance law, for land ownership, and simply dictated how land passed down in a lineal fashion, when any kind of heirs existed or when entailing took place. This practice was most common in the south.