Heartland Genealogy

Following the Land Through Generations Have you ever wondered what happened to your ancestor's land after they died? Did the farm pass to a son or daughter? Was it divided among several heirs? Or was it sold to someone outside the family? One of my favorite tools for answering these questions is a county range index. Most Kansas counties kept range indexes, although Doniphan County did not. I've used these indexes extensively to track land owned by my ancestors. I find them particularly useful when an ancestor was an original landowner, since they provide a way to follow the property through subsequent transactions and, sometimes, across several generations. Unlike a traditional deed index, which is organized by the names of buyers and sellers, a range index is organized by the land itself. That difference makes it an incredibly useful tool for genealogy research. What Is a Range Index? A range index, sometimes called a tract index, organizes recorded land transactions accordin...

Digging Through the Paper Trail Do you remember the days of “paper genealogy,” when every record, note, and photocopy had to be filed somewhere? That is how my genealogy journey began. Like many researchers, I accumulated file drawers full of paper. At some point, I learned about the Dollarhide Method for organizing genealogical research. William Dollarhide is probably better known today for his maps, but he also proposed a system for numbering and filing research materials. My version followed this pattern: Surname.State Abbreviation.### By adding that number to a citation, I could trace the source back to the appropriate paper note, photocopy, or document in my files. Then scanners changed everything. Instead of relying on paper files, I could scan documents and attach the resulting image directly to the citation in my genealogy software. In theory, that eliminated the need for all of those old filing numbers. There was just one problem. I had to actually scan everything, identify i...

Nostalgia as a Hook: Why You Should Think Twice Before "Restoring" an Old GeoCities Site If you spent any time on the web in the late 1990s or early 2000s, you probably remember GeoCities . Long before social media feeds, many of us staked our digital claim in "neighborhoods" like Heartland , carefully hand-coding HTML tables, uploading tiny animated GIFs, and publishing family lineages or local history research. Recently, an interesting message arrived in my inbox from a service offering to build a "free preview" restoring my old GeoCities website. At first glance, it sounds wonderfully nostalgic: your old, lost corner of the web brought back to life with a single click. But behind the appeal of a blast from the past lies a modern digital marketing tactic that requires a healthy dose of caution. How Did They Find a 25-Year-Old Website? When GeoCities shut down its US operations in 2009, its content didn’t vanish completely. Digital archivists, including ...