Heartland Genealogy

Serendipity! It’s Saturday Night — time for some Genealogy Fun! This week’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge asks: Serendipity! What happened when you went looking for an ancestor or a genealogical record and were pleasantly surprised to find someone else or something else you didn't expect while you were doing that search? At first, I wasn't sure how I was going to answer this week's question. Then I realized that one of my recent research adventures was a perfect example of genealogical serendipity. Looking for Richard Foster's Land My search began with Richard Foster . I wasn't looking for a new family connection or trying to solve a DNA mystery. I was simply trying to figure out where Richard owned land in Warren County. Using information from a land abstract along with a map showing the area's early landowners, I was studying Richard's property and the people who owned land nearby. That's when one name caught my attention: John E. Stufflebeam...

A Timeline of Richard Foster’s Warren County Property Have you ever looked at an abstract of title and wondered how you were ever going to make sense of it? The abstract I've been working with traces land in Warren County, Indiana, back to my ancestor Richard Foster , who purchased it from the federal government in 1828. But the abstract is much more than a record of that original purchase. It follows the property through more than a century of wills, heirs, deeds, mortgages, court proceedings, and other transactions. And I probably wouldn't have this record at all if someone hadn't found me through my online genealogy research. A Genealogy Gift from a Stranger Some time ago, I was contacted by a woman who had discovered either my online family tree or my Heartland Genealogy blog and recognized my connection to the Foster family. She had an abstract of title for land that had once belonged to Richard Foster . As I recall, she wasn't researching the Foster family as her ...

Have you ever read another genealogist's blog and wondered whether your families might somehow be connected? I've followed fellow geneablogger Linda Stufflebeam  and her blog, Empty Branches on the Family Tre e, for quite some time. Since several of Linda's posts about her Stufflebeam research have mentioned Warren County, Indiana , I've occasionally wondered whether our families might cross paths somewhere in that county. It wasn't until I received an abstract of title for land originally purchased by my ancestor Richard Foster that I had a reason to look more closely. A Familiar Name on the Map Richard Foster purchased land in Section 10, Township 21 North, Range 9 West in Warren County, Indiana, in 1828. While looking at a map of the first landowners in the area, I noticed something interesting. John E. Stufflebeam owned land nearby. Stufflebeam! Since I recognized the surname from Linda's blog, that immediately caught my attention. Then I checked ...

  Following Richard Foster’s Property Through an Abstract of Title Sometimes a genealogy record contains far more of a story than can be absorbed in a single reading. That was certainly the case with an abstract of title for land originally purchased by Richard Foster in Warren County, Indiana . After transcribing the abstract, I decided to experiment with another way of exploring—and sharing—the information it contained. I uploaded the transcription to Google NotebookLM , where I created both an infographic and an audio overview . I then combined those two pieces in Canva to create a video, which I uploaded to YouTube. The finished video provides a different way to follow more than a century of history associated with one piece of land. It Started with Richard Foster The abstract begins on July 12, 1828 , when Richard Foster entered 240 acres from the United States. The property consisted of the northeast quarter and the west half of the southeast quarter of Section 10, Township ...

Do you get 'light bulb' hints? Since I have my RootsMagic software connected to my Ancestry tree, I get a yellow 'light bulb' next to someone's name whenever there is a new Ancestry hint. When I opened the software today, I had several of those hints sprinkled thru the first 5 generations of my tree. One of those light bulbs was for my great-great grandmother, Mary Foster Crawford . That 'hint' was a link to a 'story' posted by another researcher. That story appears to be an obituary clipping from an unknown source.

My husband and I recently returned from a two-day research trip to the Midwest Genealogical Library in Independence, Missouri. This was a chance to immerse ourselves in a large collection of books related to genealogy and history. During this trip, I was hoping to find little clues buried in what are often called 'mug books'. These 'mug books' are county histories that also contain biographies. Many genealogists are cautious about the use of these biographies since the families sometimes 'glorified' the information they submitted to these histories. Even though I'm aware of their common name, I've often found 'little clues' in these county histories. Thus, I was hoping to find such histories for several counties in Missouri and Indiana so I could gleam tidbits to help with my Crawford research.

Were any of your ancestors in the colonies prior to the American Revolution? If so, have you tried to identify ancestors who may have fought in the Revolutionary War? Since I am a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), I already knew that one of my ancestors provided patriotic service during the war: Nathaniel Hammond of Connecticut. I had also started collecting documentation to prove William Buckles on my mother's side of my tree.  Beyond that, I didn't know which of my ancestors might have served. Thus, I needed to create a list of ancestors who might have served so that I could research them in Fold3 and the DAR databases.  To create a list of potential people, I needed to know who was of the appropriate age to serve. I found a wiki on FamilySearch that lists various wars and suggests ' Ages of Servicemen in Wars .'  Using that information, I was able to create a marked group of those whose      Birth date is af...

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to: 1)  Determine where your ancestral families were on 18 May 1919 - 100 years ago. 2)  List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence location (as close as possible).  Do you have a photograph of their residence from about that time, and does the residence still exist? My Grandparents Leon Crawford was living with his parents at 504 Ave G in Dodge City Winnie Letha Currey was likely living with her sister, Myrtle. Winnie traveled from Kansas City to Dodge City in 1918 to help Myrtle with the birth of her first child, Dorothy. Winnie and Leon were married on Christmas Eve in 1919 at Myrtle's house. Edward O. Briles and his wife Pauline (Mentzer) Briles were likely living in Woodson County in 1919. Edward's World War I draft card indicated they were living in Everett Township, Woodson County in June of 1917. By 1920, they had moved to Allen County.