Learn from My Mistake and Save Some Gas Money Too

Last week I went to a Massachusetts Registry of Deeds and Probate Court in order to try to find evidence of a connection between a father and son.  I brought family group sheets with me representing three generations.  I did a very thorough search of probate files and deeds for the father, sons and daughters, grandparents and even aunts and uncles.  I was satisfied with the depth of my research.

I didn't find any supporting evidence in probate records but I did find some great indirect evidence in the deeds.  I wish I had found some direct evidence but I was very happy with my results none-the-less.

Yesterday, I reviewed my files.  I looked over both the family group sheets and the deeds that I had photocopied.

I was aghast.  I had a made a glaring mistake.  Can you guess what it was?

I had brought family group sheets for the son, father and grandfather.  I had completely neglected his mother's family.  It is very likely that if probate records existed for his maternal grandmother or grandfather and they died before his mother that they could contain mention of his mother and father and possibly even himself.

Now I've got to pull out the information on the mother's family and do some analysis.  Did her parents die before or after she was married?  If I'm lucky they will have died afterward so that potential probate records will also mention her husband.  If they did die after the marriage, then next I need to see how many of the grandchildren were born before their deaths.  If I'm really lucky the grandchildren might be mentioned in the probate.

If it turns out that both grandparents died before the marriage then I won't bother going back to probate.  I don't need to prove the maternal line for this particular project.  But if they died after the marriage or the birth of grandchildren then I will definitely be making a second trip back.

The Probate Court and Registry of Deeds are 45 minutes from my house.  That's a lot of time and gas I would have saved if I had expanded my research the first time around. Learn from my mistake and research both sides of the family even if it doesn't seem like the obvious thing to do. You'll save yourself time and some gas money too.

Photo Credit: Photo by futureatlas.com used under the creative commons license.

I stopped by the 18th century and bumped into Randy Seaver

Recently I have been working on a house history of an 18th century colonial in Millis, Massachusetts. This project was for a monthly column called “Old House Secrets” which appears in a local newspaper. Public record listed this property as being built around 1790. A conflicting document from the Massachusetts Historical Commission listed the date as 1760. While it wasn’t my goal to find out the exact date the house was built, I wanted to get back as far as possible.

After quite a bit of work I broke the “year 1800” barrier. The earliest record I found at the Norfolk County Registry of deeds was a 1795 deed transferring the property. This is not the earliest deed for the property however. Norfolk County was created from Suffolk County in 1794. Earlier deeds could be found at the Massachusetts State Archives in Boston. For this article, though, I had run out of time and budget to go further.

The 1795 deed transferred the property from Ichabod Seaver to Tisdale Puffer. For my house history research I like to do genealogical sleuthing to discover more information about the people who lived inside the home. I wanted to know as much as possible about Ichabod Seaver. The deed itself provided me with his name, his wife’s name (Rebecca), and his occupation (cordwainer). I can also infer from the deed that in 1795 and for sometime earlier he resided in Millis, Massachusetts.

My first attempt was a broad Google search of the terms “Ichabod Seaver” +Rebecca. I like to include names in quotations so that Google will return only hits with that exact name. The +Rebecca ensured that the name Rebecca would also be found on the same page. The site I was brought to was called “The Descendants of Caleb Seaver.” There I found my Ichabod, with his wife, Rebecca, and information about their marriage and children. I floated to the top of the page to see who the site was created by and what did I find – Genea-Musings’ very own Randy Seaver.

When I started my research, the name Seaver never triggered any bells in my mind. Though previously, I had located a survey sheet on another Seaver house in Massachusetts for Randy. Running across Randy while doing my recent house history research was fun. It was almost like discovering a long lost cousin.

Typically I don’t research the whole lives of my subjects, just the years they lived in the house. But with Ichabod Seaver I’ve decided to go further. Perhaps it was the combination of a cool sounding name, bumping into a colleague and the connection to my home county. Maybe after I have finished compiling all the research you’ll see it here as another blog post.

Have ancestors with confounding common names? Look to a deed for help.

Some ancestors with names like John Smith can seem too difficult to research. An internet search of that name can provide thousands of results. Without additional criteria such as birth and death dates or locations the search can be unwieldy. However, if you know where your ancestor resided at at any point in their adult lives then deeds are perhaps just the tool you need to sort it out.

As a house historian, I frequently research people who owned a house at a particular time. I jump into the middle of their lives without knowing anything about where they were born or died. This can make research a real challenge.

Luckily, deeds provide some clues that make it much easier for both the genealogist and the house historian.

Find the wife’s name

Depending on the time period, the transfer of property may have required a release of dower rights. Dower is the part of the husband’s estate that the wife is entitled to after his death. To ensure that husbands didn’t sell property to deprive their wives of their dower, the wife’s release was required for the deed. Typically a dower release will appear towards the very end of a deed. Armed with the name of the wife, you can separate your John Smith from many others.

I recently researched a 1795 deed where Ichabod Seaver sold property to Tisdale Puffer (I did not make these names up!). In the dower release Ichabod’s wife’s name was listed as Rebeccah. It was just the information I needed to distinguish him from any other potential candidates.

Deeds sometimes provide the name of a spouse even without a dower release. If the property is held jointly, her name will be mentioned as part of the deed. A second place you might find it is at the beginning of a deed where the parties involved in the transfer of property are listed. In this location you might find spouses or parents names listed to further identify the individuals.

Occupations

Another helpful tool you can find in a deed is the listing of occupations. Deeds from the early 19th and 18th centuries frequently listed the occupations of the parties involved in the property transfer. In the case of Ichabod Seaver, he was noted as being a cordwainer (someone who made shoes). Tisdale Puffer happened to be a cordwainer as well. In 1801 when Puffer sold the property, the buyer was Nahum Thayer, a blacksmith. Now you not only have something with which to differentiate your ancestor by in other documents but you’ve learned an interesting fact about your ancestor as well.

The next time you get stuck tracing your ancestor with a common name, consider searching for his land records and see if you can find a deed to help you.