Project submitted

A week ago Friday I submitted my four generation project for accreditation with ICAPGEN. I have worked on the family lines I submitted off and on for the last 20 years. It is very satisfying to have the project at a place where it was ready to be submitted. If you're not familiar with the accreditation process, may I suggest that you go to their website and see what's involved. Everything has to be very well documented and cited.I'm hoping my report will pass on the first try but I know many have not done so and so I won't be too disappointed if it doesn't. I know I will be in good company.

The fun part of my report is the information on the last generation where I could not find one piece of direct evidence to tie the three brothers who went to Henry County, Tennessee from Wake County, North Carolina. As a result, there is a large body of indirect evidence that was used to tie the families together. Among these were deed records, probate files, and marriage records. I even found evidence of a slave that was given to the wife of one of these brothers mentioned in both the father-in-law's will and in the estate inventories of my relative, his son-in-law. The will was made in Wake County. The probate of the son was in Henry County, Tennessee.

I love genealogy and especially when you can put together a project like this. Wish me luck in passing the review of the report on the first try!

The Tennessee North Carolina Connection

Last week I had three three days to work on my Crowder family research. As part of the process of trying to receive Accreditation as a professional genealogist, I am working on a four generation project about this family who lived in Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. The project as well as the accompanying report has to be well-documented and stand up to intense scrutiny. My problem has been how to prove that three Crowder brothers born around the turn of the 19th century in Wake County, North Carolina are the same three Crowder men who later live and die in Henry County, Tennessee?

One obvious solution would be to find a deed record that said that Hardy, James, or Isaac Crowder, of Wake County, North Carolina had purchased land in Henry County, Tennessee but such a record does not exist.

The next possible solution would be to find some sort of vital record such as a death certificate or a marriage record that would state where these men were from. A primary source record like this also has not been found but I did however find a cemetery record for Hardy that stated that his parents were Thomas Crowder and Fanny Rhodes and that he was born in North Carolina.This sounds great but no source is given for this information but it does form a start for the construction of an indirect evidence case.

Census records for Hardy and Isaac who both lived past 1850 indicate that they were born in North Carolina. James did not live to see 1850. Land records show that Hardy and James both lived in the same area of Henry County, along the same watercourse. All three men were trustees for the Methodist Episcopal Church South which bought land to construct a house of worship to be built in their area of the county. So now we've got more evidence linking the three men together.

The next searches involved court records, such as probate and civil cases, which found that Hardy Crowder was an administrator for the estate of James and if my memory is accurate, Isaac was involved in the probate of Hardy's estate. (I don't have the records in front of me right now to verify).

It would seem we have a pretty good case for the three being brothers, or closely related. but how about connecting them back to the family in North Carolina. One of the men had a wife who was given a slave in her father's will. The name of this slave appears in the probate records of her Crowder husband. Another brother had a son who went all the way back to Wake County, North Carolina to marry his first cousin, the daughter of his uncle (brother's brother). This same couple was involved in land transactions in Henry County, Tennessee.

All of these little pieces of evidence have helped to build an indirect evidence case for the three brothers from Wake County, North Carolina being the same three Crowder men who went to Henry County, Tennessee.

BURNED COUNTIES!!!

Recently I was given a family to research who had roots in Hanover County, Virginia. It is understatement to say that I was sorely disappointed to find it was a burned county! So what can you do with a burned county?

Usually land records are a good bet because they are so important that they are usually always re-recorded. Unfortunately for Hanover County they begin too late for the family I was researching. The county was formed in 1720 and the earliest and best land records don't begin until 1782. You can easily miss at least one and maybe two generations during that time lapse!

There are some early land records that have been extracted from land patents, parish vestry books, and other miscellaneous random records. In a case like this these are some of the best possibilities you can hope for.

What about probate records you might ask? Well a burned county means a burned courthouse and that usually includes ALL the records that were stored at the courthouse. One little book of deeds, wills, and inventories exists for the years 1733-1735. Everything else starts in the 1780s.

It was not a fun experience to research in Hanover County and to borrow from an old phrase from Mr. T. "I pity the fool who has ancestors from this county!"

Free Land in Florida

I wrote this blog entry for the Price and Associates blog but I also wanted to share it here because it pertains to Southern States research.

Recently while exploring the roots of a Spaniard who came to the southern United States in the early 1800s I came across a way for settlers to get land that I was unfamiliar with. The “Armed Occupation Act” established in 1842 by the United States Congress. Its main purpose was to help get parts of Eastern Florida settled. It was like a homestead grant in that you had to prove that you were a resident of the state of Florida for at least five years. The settler was required to clear and cultivate at least five acres of the land in the first year and build a house to live in. The owner and his heirs were then required to live there for at least five years. The area to be settled was “south of the line dividing townships numbers nine and ten south, and east of the base line.” All who applied could get a quarter section of land, or 160 acres.

As with a homestead grant you had to provide documents proving that you had met the requirements. These affidavits and letters are kept at the National Archives in Record Group 49. As of this writing I am eagerly awaiting copies of these documents in order to learn more about the Spaniard I mentioned previously.

Copies of the permits are filmed and can be found both at the Florida State Archives and at the Family History Library in Salt Lake. The records are called Armed Occupation Act Settlers Records. If you have ancestors who may have lived in Florida you may want to consider checking them out.

Source - A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 – 1875
Statutes at Large, 27th Congress, 2nd Session

Sharecroppers

A while back I was asked to try to locate proof that an African-American family was involved in sharecropping in Louisiana. My first inclination was to check the land records. I knew that I had seen crop contracts in Arkansas which indicated liens on crops planted to cover debts incurred in raising the crop. It seemed like a logical step to try to locate sharecropping contracts among the land records.

After a careful search of the land records for Caldwell Parish, Louisiana where the family was known to have lived I came up empty. I found no such records among the deeds. Not quite sure where to go next I tried looking in Land and Property Research in the United States by E. Wade Hone. I found no information to lead me to the possible location of sharecropping contracts.

A fellow researcher I was working with on this project but who was involved in more of the historical context research suggested that I try Freedmen's Labor Contracts. A catalog entry was located in the Family History Library Catalog for the labor contracts for Caldwell Parish. These can be viewed at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City or they are available through the National Archives.

These records are not indexed but are filmed by parish. At the beginning of the section for each parish you will find a list of all the plantations where the contracts came from. In order to find the people you are looking for, you have to search each page.

The header of the contract gives the contractual details of the agreement. Below the contract header you will find a list of all workers for whom the contract applies, giving their names and ages and in some cases, their occupations if it was something other than farmer. It was my experience that people were generally listed together as families much like a census although in very few records did the contract actually give relationships.

When I got to the section for Caldwell Parish, you can imagine my delight when the family I was looking for was on the very first contract. Their wages according to the contract were to be 1/3 of the proceeds of the crop, after expenses. This was to be shared among all the people listed on the contract. As you can imagine, sharecropping was only one step above slavery.

If you would like to learn more about sharecropping, I recommend Slave to Sharecropper an informative website sponsored by PBS. The life of a sharecropper was tenuous at times. Everything hinged on getting a good crop in order to have a successful outcome. This was a transition from slavery to freedom that really had few of the markers we associate with liberty. I encourage you to learn more about this topic.

Virginia

Here is a website for Virginia that I like to use. It is for the state library of Virginia. They have a lot of good documents digitized and searchable on their website. Sometimes the best clues to finding southern ancestors are found in land records. If you do land research, you will appreciate the land grants database. Virginia is not an easy state to do research in but this website is helpful. There is no fee to use this site.

The Library of Virginia