Heartland Genealogy

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 ...