Heartland Genealogy

Following Samuel M. Crawford’s Ford County Homestead Sometimes a Friday Find isn't a newly discovered record. Sometimes one record leads to another—and then another—until a much fuller picture begins to emerge. That is what happened as I continued investigating Samuel M. Crawford , a man who lived in the Dodge City area and who may—or may not—connect to my Crawford family. My earlier research into Samuel centered largely on newspaper articles. Those records told me about the death of his daughter Nellie in 1901, Samuel's work as a railroad engineer, and his own tragic death in Torreon, Mexico, in 1902. More recently, a cemetery record led me to theorize about Samuel's family. Now land records are adding another layer to his story. A Ford County Homestead The Bureau of Land Management records contain a federal land patent issued to Samuel M. Crawford on June 10, 1891. The patent describes his property as: Lots 1 and 2 and the East half of the Northwest quarter of Section 18...

When researching a difficult ancestor, sometimes the people surrounding that ancestor become almost as important as the ancestor himself. That's certainly true in my continuing effort to untangle the various Crawford families of early Kentucky. One of those people is Moses Dooley . Moses isn't a Crawford, and I currently have no evidence that he was related to my Crawford family by blood or marriage. Yet the more I learn about him, the more convinced I am that he belongs in my Crawford FAN club. Why? Because Moses Dooley keeps showing up in the same places as the Crawfords I'm trying to understand. From Virginia to Sugar Creek Moses Dooley was born about 1748 in Virginia. By 1780, he was involved in Kentucky land acquisition. A survey for 500 acres on Sugar Creek was completed for him on May 26, 1780. He later filed land entry papers and received a grant for those 500 acres. Moses was also an early Baptist preacher associated with the Old Sugar Creek Meeting House in what...

Marjorie Louise Machado Today's find from my CRAWFORD files is another obituary from a Dodge City newspaper, this one for Marjorie Louise Machado . Marjorie was the daughter of my great-aunt Helen Marjorie Crawford Horton, making Marjorie my first cousin once removed . Like much of my early genealogy research, my file contains a handwritten transcription rather than a copy of the actual newspaper article. The notation "KHS Newspapers" on the page tells me that I viewed the Dodge City Daily Globe on microfilm at the Kansas Historical Society. Marjorie H. Machade—Rites Here Monday A.M. Graveside services for Mrs. Marjorie Horton Machade, formerly of Dodge City, who died last week in Phoenix, Ariz., will be conducted by Rev. Arlon G. Ebright at 10 a.m. Monday in Maple Grove Cemetery. The body will lie in state at the Hulpieu-Swain Funeral Home until 9:45 Mon. Besides her parents and her 2 children, Mrs. Machade is survived by a brother and a sister. Mrs. Josie Crawford of ...

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...

 A Short Life Remembered: Oren Wesley Lighter Have you ever discovered additional information about an ancestor simply because a newspaper you previously searched became available online? Years ago, I spent hours scrolling through microfilm of Dodge City newspapers, looking for mentions of my Crawford family and their relatives. During that research, I discovered two newspaper articles about the birth and death of an infant in the Lighter family. Now that these newspapers have been digitized and made available on Newspapers.com, I can search for a surname instead of scrolling through page after page of microfilm. A recent search for the surname Lighter led me back to those original articles—and helped me discover a second death notice that I had missed! A Birth Announcement The January 25, 1900, issue of The Dodge City Globe included this brief announcement on page 5: BORN—To Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Lighter, yesterday, at noon, a boy. This announcement establishes that a son was born to...

  One of the challenges of researching the Crawford surname in the Dodge City area is determining whether every Crawford who appears in the records belongs to my family—or is simply another Crawford living in the same place at the same time. Samuel M. Crawford is one of those people. Samuel lived in the Dodge City area and worked for the railroad. In 1900, he married Carrie Tuttle, apparently a second marriage. His daughter Nellie Crawford, likely from an earlier marriage, died in Dodge City on March 6, 1901, at only 18 years of age. Just over a year later, tragedy struck the family again when Samuel himself was killed in a railroad accident in Mexico. While I don't yet know whether Samuel connects to my Crawford family, four newspaper accounts of his death provide an unusually detailed picture of his final days. From Dodge City to Mexico Samuel was an experienced railroad man. According to the Journal-Democrat , he had worked for the Santa Fe until the railroad strike of 1894, whe...

Do you ever feel as if DNA results are breaking family connections instead of verifying them? That has certainly been my experience with my Kentucky CRAWFORD research. For years, many researchers have identified William, James, and John Crawford , who lived in the early Garrard County, Kentucky, area, as brothers. That relationship appears in online family trees and has become part of the commonly accepted reconstruction of this Crawford family. But what happens when Y-DNA says otherwise? Testing a Descendant of William Crawford Some time ago, I asked a descendant of William Crawford of Madison County, Kentucky , whom I will identify as RC , to take a Y-DNA test. Since Y-DNA is passed from father to son along the direct paternal line, I hoped RC's results might help confirm William's connection to the other Crawford men living in the area. Instead, the results created another Crawford puzzle. RC's Y-DNA placed him in the R1b-05 group of the Crawford Y-DNA Project. More rec...

According to ChatGPT Have you ever wondered what artificial intelligence would say about you if you gave it permission to be completely unhinged? I recently read Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings post, The Completely Unhinged Life of Randy , and couldn't resist trying the same experiment. I opened ChatGPT and entered a very simple prompt: "Please write an 'unhinged narrative' about me." Since I've spent considerable time chatting with ChatGPT about my genealogy research, historical society projects, blogging, and adventures with technology, I was curious to see what it would come up with. The result? A rather entertaining account of my so-called retirement, my ongoing battles with the Crawford family, and my tendency to ask AI to create images with absolutely NO PEOPLE! Of course, ChatGPT didn't get everything right. It invented children and grandchildren for me, neither of which I have. That's a good reminder that even when AI appears to know us well,...

Do you have old newspaper photocopies tucked away in your genealogy files? As I continue looking through my Crawford-Kansas files, I am finding newspaper clippings and photocopies collected years ago—records that deserve another look and, more importantly, a place in my digital research. Today's Friday Find is the obituary of Nelson Garfield Crawford , brother of my great-grandfather Judson Foster Crawford . Nelson was a son of Washington Marion Crawford and Mary Foster . Like Judson, he grew up in the Dodge City, Kansas, area after the Crawford family moved west. His obituary provides more than the basic facts of his death. It gives us a glimpse into a long career with the Dodge City post office, his involvement in the Methodist Church and Masonic organizations, and his place in the community. One detail that particularly caught my attention was his 47 years of service with the post office . According to the obituary, Nelson served as Dodge City postmaster from March 1928 until A...

Do you struggle with figuring out who’s who in records created before the 1850 census began naming everyone in a household? I certainly do—especially when researching the CRAWFORD surname in Kentucky. While using FamilySearch Full Text Search for records involving William Crawford in Madison County, Kentucky , I uncovered a 1792 court document that caught my attention. Among several men summoned to testify was: William Crawford, Junr. That little word “Junr” immediately raised a much bigger question. Which William Crawford Was He? Was this William Crawford Jr. the son of the William Crawford who later migrated to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri ? Or was he simply a younger William Crawford living in the same area who was unrelated—or perhaps only distantly related—to the older William? The designation Junior is an important clue, but it does not by itself establish a father-son relationship. Historically, Senior and Junior could be used simply to distinguish two men of the same name livi...

Following the Crawfords from Kentucky to Ohio One of my longstanding genealogy questions concerns my ancestor James Crawford , born 17 April 1772 in Virginia. He married the widow Sarah "Sally" Smith Duggins in Garrard County, Kentucky, in 1799 and later settled in Preble County, Ohio. Who were his parents? I still don't know. However, marriage records, land records, tax lists, migration patterns, associates, and Y-DNA are beginning to reveal a network of Crawford and Sellers families that may eventually help answer that question. Instead of looking at my James Crawford in isolation, I'm now asking a broader question: How was my James Crawford related to the other Crawford families living in the same part of Kentucky? The Crawford-Sellers Connection One of the first clues comes from marriage records. In 1791, James Sellers married Mary Crawford in Lincoln County, Kentucky. Rebekah Crawford gave permission for Mary to marry. Five years later, in 1796, William Sellers...

Have you ever encountered someone with the surname you are researching living in the same place—and immediately wondered whether the two families were related? That is exactly what happened when I recently found an 1836 Jefferson County, Indiana, court case involving the dower rights of Jane Crawford, widow of Thomas Crawford. Since I have spent years researching James Crawford (b. 1758), his wife Rebecca Anderson, and their descendants in Jefferson County, my first thought was obvious: Could Thomas Crawford be related to James Crawford? Following Thomas Back to Virginia The court case referred to the "heirs of Thomas D. Crawford," so I began searching my records for Thomas. When I did not find him among the Crawford families I had already researched, I started digging into Thomas Crawford and his wife, Jane Todd. That search led me back to their 1794 marriage in Rockbridge County, Virginia. I then located the will of Thomas's father, James Crawford, in Rockbridge County....