The Family Tree Problem Solver: Tried-And-True Tactics for Tracing Elusive Ancestors (15 page)

The following case study illustrates the steps outlined in this chapter.
The objective was to find the family and origin for Isaac J. Murry. The only thing I knew when I began was that he entered forty acres of land at the Springfield, Missouri, federal land office in 1838. He was not head of household in 1840, but was on the 1850 census.

1850 Census Boone Township, Greene County, Missouri

Isaac J. Murry, age 35, farmer, real estate value $700, born Tennessee

Nancy H., age 28, born Tennessee

Leonidas, age 6, born Missouri

Cirelda, age 4, born Missouri

Viola M., age 2, born Missouri

William Davis, age 17, born Missouri

When you encounter a genealogical problem with a man in his thirties, try to find a family for him. The odds that he came alone as a farmer from Tennessee to Missouri are not good. He most likely had family in the immediate vicinity. There were many families named Murry and Murray in Greene County — too many in fact. The problem was that none of the males were the right age to be Isaac's father. Now what?

My first step was to identify known neighbors from the census, as these are always potential relatives. The listing showed: Stephen Dorrell, Elizabeth Glass, William Graves, Nicholas Walker, Andrew Carter, then Isaac J. Murry; and on the other side: James H. Ragsdale, Wm. C. Woodwin, Thomas Alexander, Guien Leeper, Casander Robinson, and Alexander Davis.

The second step was to look for unusual names. Did any of the immediate neighbors, or anyone in the township, have any of the unusual names Isaac had given his children? No, none of these families had a child named Isaac, Leonidas, Cirela, or Viola.

The third step was to check marriages: Did he marry in Greene County? Yes. On 24 July 1842, Isaac J. Murry married Nancy H. White. But there were no families named White living in the neighborhood.

The fourth step was to look at another individual living in the household: William Davis. My immediate reaction was disappointment that his surname wasn't
Latulipe
, or something just as unusual, rather than the common one of Davis. I generally assume that people living in the household are related, and that helps guide my search for records.

Because I knew that Nancy's surname was White when she married at age twenty, William Davis probably was not her brother. Perhaps he was a laborer.

Any Davis families in our small neighborhood search?

1850 Census Boone Township, Greene County, Missouri

Alexander Davis, age 30, farmer, $350, born Tennessee

Lavina J., age 28, b. Virginia

James H., age 10, b. Tennessee

Sophronia A., age 7, b. Tennessee

Julia A.E., age 6, born Tennessee

Mary E.J., age 6, b. Tennessee

Alletha C., age 3, born Missouri

Guien A., age 1, born Missouri

The unusual name
Guien
appeared in the Davis family, and a Guien Leeper was head of household in this small neighborhood. Did Guien Leeper marry someone named Davis? No, Guien Leeper married 28 April 1839, Greene County, Missouri, Malinda Murry. Aha! Even better. Now we have a new family to study. Isaac is no longer alone, he has a probable sister.

Figure 4-6
Guien Leeper household, 1850 Greene County, Missouri, census.

1850 Census Boone Township, Greene County, Missouri

Guien Leeper, age 35, born Tennessee

Malinda, age 30, born Tennessee

James M., age 7, born Missouri

John W., age 4, born Missouri

Guien, age 2, born Missouri

California, age 1 month, born Missouri

What can we learn from a brief review of this household? Let's look at the names. One child was obviously named for his father, but as we know that Malinda's maiden name was Murry, could the full name of the child “James M.” be James Murry Leeper, named for Malinda's father? From the census records, I also guessed that in 1850, Malinda's husband was suffering from a bad case of “gold fever.”

Malinda Murry Davis was even younger than Isaac J. She was just nineteen when she married in 1839, and in that year Isaac would have been twenty-four. Two young people on the frontier. Were they likely to have gone west alone? Who do young people live with before they start their own families? Typically they would live with their own parents, but we can't find a man with the correct name who would be the right age. However, they must have come to Missouri with someone with whom they had a relationship whose name we don't know.

As I mentioned earlier, Isaac Murry purchased his land in 1838, but he was not head of household in 1840. Who was he living with in 1840? He was not with Malinda and her new husband Guien Leeper, nor any other family named Murry in Greene County. In other words, no one named Murry had an extra male in the household between the ages of twenty and thirty.

Let's go back to the neighborhood as it appeared in 1840. Who from the community of 1840 was living in the area where Isaac purchased his land? I looked for a household with an older head (male or female) and a male age twenty to thirty. I looked at thirty families. Only four fit the criteria: the families of William Folden, Thomas Alexander, Isabell Lay, and Thomas Simmons. My search had narrowed considerably.

Returning to Isaac's neighborhood in the 1850 census, only Thomas and Barbara Alexander remain in the immediate area. I checked their neighbors in 1840 and was pleased to find families headed by Samuel Davis, John Murry, and James Murry. Surely we have identified the cluster where Isaac fit. We now have an older family and several associates for whom to search.

Further investigation reveals that Barbara Alexander was a sister to Isaac Julian, another early settler of Greene County, Missouri. She had married a man named [— ? —] Murry who died before 1830. Isaac Julian — an uncommon name — was a head of household in Monroe County, Tennessee, as was Barbara Murry. Her household contained slashes in the age categories that fit both Isaac J. Murry (undoubtedly named for Barbara's brother) and Malinda. About 1837, Barbara Murry married a widower, Thomas Alexander, and they came to Missouri with her five children, three of whom were grown and already married. They were John Murry, James Murry, and Elizabeth, wife of Samuel Davis. Soon after arrival her youngest children, Isaac Julian Murry and Malinda Murry, both married. And here is where the families of Murry, Julian, Alexander, and Davis settled. (See
map
above.) There is no doubt that a study of collateral family lines will solve many genealogical dilemmas.
Remember that the key is relationships and people, not just names.

Figure 4-7
Map of Greene County, Missouri. Note the northwest corner.

A family is made up of relationships; not just names.

Implications for genealogical research: Name changes are frustrating for a researcher, but a relationship remains no matter how many times the individual's name changes.

Sociologists have found that the strongest kin ties appear between women. The strongest and most enduring bond occurs between mothers and their grown daughters.

Implications for genealogical research: The best family sources for genealogical data are probably held by people with a different surname than the one you are tracing.

Studies suggest that, in Western society, ties to the wife's kin are stronger than those to the husband's — unless the male ties are crucial to the husband's occupation.

Implications for genealogical research: The researcher needs to know the occupational and economic relationships of the family as well as the blood ties.

Social relationships among kin are not broken by geographic mobility.

Implications for genealogical research: This is particularly important when one is dealing with records lost through fire, flood, or neglect. Records detailing family relationships may have been maintained by someone geographically removed from the destruction.

Legal records left by family members who did not leave descendants often can be more helpful than the records left by those who did.

Implications for genealogical research: Never forget to obtain all the data possible on each member of a family.

Most genealogical literature and organizations are arranged around surnames.

Implications for genealogical research: Although searching surnames may seem the best way to find other interested researchers, it's probably not the most efficient or comprehensive method by which to conduct research. Too often important female lines are neglected.

Be sure you understand the meaning of kinship terms used in the period you are studying.

Implications for genealogical research: Many false assumptions may be made regarding lineage if a kinship term is misinterpreted. For example,
daughter-in-law
meant something quite different in colonial times than it does today.

People can be tied together in several ways: by blood, law, and emotions.

Implications for genealogical research: Limiting your research only to those who are tied by full blood to your ancestor may cause you to miss valuable clues and documents.

Be alert to clues in records that may indicate the existence of family relationships.

Implications for genealogical research: It is just as important — perhaps more so — to copy the names of those who witness probate records, are named as administrators, live next door, join the same church, or purchase land at the same time, as it is to copy all those with the same surname.

In a bilateral kinship system (as in American society, where ancestry is traced on both the maternal and paternal sides), cousins share both common relationships and ancestors as well as separate family relationships.

Implications for genealogical research: Americans are often imprecise in defining their kinship. This may present a complex situation to the genealogist who is attempting to learn exactly how (and if) two people who believe themselves to be related really are.

Until modern times, it was assumed that after marriage, spousal relatives became the same as your own.

Implications for genealogical research: The terms cousin, brother-in-law, uncle, sister-in-law, etc., were used much more broadly in the colonial era than in modern times. Assuming a relationship such as a marriage from the use of one of these terms alone is common, but presumptuous, in genealogy.

G
etting to really know your ancestors as the people they were is the most thrilling aspect of genealogical research. Identifying them and placing them within a larger family is an admirable goal, but understanding their personalities, their lives, and their communities makes them live again for us and with us. Researchers strive not only to become acquainted with their ancestors but to bring them back to life, and, to the greatest extent possible, let them relive part of their lives through you. Good genealogists are discouraged from reducing ancestors to the skeletons of birth, marriage, and death dates. Let's put flesh on their bones and walk in their shoes — no matter where those shoes may take you.

To truly understand those who came before us it is vitally important that we learn to live in their communities and context, not to make them live in ours.
They couldn't begin to understand the world we live in, but with careful and diligent study we can understand theirs. We have records and history to study in order to better comprehend why they did the things they did, how they got along with neighbors, and how they lived in their community and time. To best perceive the people who came before us, we have to not only be familiar with the history of the times, but know what laws were in effect to govern their everyday behavior. We must know what records might have been created at the time our ancestors lived so that we have some idea of what we should be looking for. We must understand the terms that were used in those documents so that we can interpret them correctly. We can earn about our ancestors' lives by reading history books and articles describing the historical events we believe they lived through. Even more rewarding than history books are the specific documents that pertain to our own family, and court records are the key to finding them.

Within court records are a wealth of details about our ancestors. In records created for legal purposes, it is possible to find clues to family relationships, wives' identities and families, and parents' names, as well as creating a biography for an ancestor. Besides, what is more fun than finding a court case in which juicy facts are revealed about the person we are researching?

This chapter is divided into sections that describe each type of court record and how to pull the best genealogical information out of them. These records include:

• records created concerning inheritance procedures [probate].
  

• records created during land transactions [deeds].
  

• records created by officials to collect revenue for the community [taxes].
  

• records to settle differences between individuals, or between individuals and the State [civil or circuit, criminal].
  

Probate is the court procedure pertaining to the settlement of wills, guardianship, and the administration of estates. The probate process transfers the legal responsibility for payment of taxes, for the care and custody of dependent family members, for the liquidation of debts, and the transfer of property title to the heirs of a deceased person. This chapter assumes that you are aware of the basic definitions of a will, a codicil, a testate proceeding, an intestate administration, and a guardianship.

A variety of records can be created by a probate proceeding.
The Source
, rev. ed., edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1997) provides a checklist on page 208 of eighty-one different types of documents that may originate from a probate proceeding. Many of those provide valuable information for the genealogist.

After a death occurred the principal heirs petitioned the court for authority to begin the probate process, usually within ten to fourteen days. This petition often appeared in the legal notice section of local newspapers. Depending upon whether there was a will, either letters of administration or letters of testamentary would have been issued. With this application there was often a listing of the known heirs and their last known location. (See
Figure 5-1
.)

The individual requesting administration was usually the surviving spouse and/or the sons or sons-in-law of the deceased. A widow may have relinquished her right to administer the estate in favor of a son or son-in-law. This relinquishment is usually found among the loose probate papers, but it may also have been recorded in the probate court minutes book. In a case where there were no issue, the surviving father, brother, or brother-in-law may have been the petitioner. If a man died in the eighteenth or nineteenth century leaving a young widow, in all likelihood she would have asked that her father or brother be named administrator.
For the genealogist, this appointment is a wonderful clue to her maiden name.
It is the responsibility of the executor or administrator to guard the best interest of the estate, provide for the needs of the heirs, and settle the claims of the creditors.

If this was not accomplished satisfactorily, courtaction may have been taken on the part of the heirs or creditors. William J. Cannefax received letters of administration on the estate of his father, Joseph Cannefax, in the 1850s. On 22 August 1859, the circuit court revoked those letters and issued them to John Edwards. The court learned that William Cannefax had used the estate's money to pay his own bills and had not paid any of the creditors. In another case, Peter Apperson's letters of administration on the estate of Cornelius Terrill were revoked because one of the heirs reported that Peter was drunk all the time. These may not be things you would like to learn about your ancestor, but they certainly add personality and character to the people you are researching.

Figure 5-1
Application for administration of the Stephen Mead estate.

The order in which a person is entitled to be appointed administrator differed from state to state, but in general the order was spouse first, then one of the children, parents, grandparents, brothers or sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, first cousins, creditors and then public administrators. It is important to pay careful attention to those appointed administrators and executors. They were almost always members of the family, and if there were two, one may have been from the wife's side and the other from the husband's. This is not a rule, but a clue. Administering an estate was often time-consuming and complicated. If a public administrator was assigned to administer the case of your ancestor, it does not mean that none of the above people were available to perform the administration. It means none
wanted
to do it.

To illustrate the likelihood of administrators being family members, I selected at random ten people from my study of the Ozarks who left probate records. I then determined the relationship of the executors and administrators. I ignored obvious cases where the executor was the widow or one of the known sons. Here are the results: The first name is the deceased; the second, the administrator; third, his relationship to the first.

Be sure you consider not only the administrator and securities (the individuals who supported the bond placed to administer the estate) of your ancestor's estate, but the people for whom your ancestor was the executor or administrator. If the name of the administrator is not familiar to you, check the identity of the wife of the administrator. You may find that she was a sister to your ancestor. A married woman was often not allowed to be either an administrator or a guardian, so she would likely want her spouse to ensure that her brother's estate was administered properly.

As you read through the settling of an estate, you may encounter the legal term
administrator de bonis non
. This was an individual appointed by the court to administer the effects of a decedent not included in the will, or not included in a former administration of the estate. If an
administrator de bonis non
was appointed by the court, either a former administrator had died or resigned before the estate settlement was finished, or there was property not disposed of in the will. This property may have been real estate or personal property, including slaves.

Proving the will was the next step and obviously applied only to testate cases. The will was presented to the court and usually ordered recorded in the probate book. The original will was filed among the loose papers. The witnesses to the will appeared before the court and attested that the deceased individual had signed the will, was in sound mental condition, and had given the statements of his or her own free will. Sometimes one of the witnesses had died by the time the will was proved. This situation may help to establish a death date perhaps not recorded elsewhere. Someone usually attested to the signature of the witness, bringing in another associate of the ancestor. Wills judged invalid were not proved and thus not recorded in the will book. Sometimes these may still be found among loose or miscellaneous papers. Invalid wills do not appear in the probate index.

In 1693, William Robinson of Newton, Massachusetts, made a nuncupative will (verbal rather than written) but failed to name an executor. In this will he mentioned his son, William of Newton, but he left the entire estate to Elizabeth Robinson, his eldest daughter, stipulating that she care for his sons David, who was lame, and Jonathan, only thirteen years old. This did not sit well with the court. Leaving the estate to a daughter when sons were living was against the common law and custom in Massachusetts.

The court refused to prove the will for the conveyance of the house and land. Two witnesses then came forward and testified that the omission of the other children from the will was “not for want of affection to them, but only out of his tender care for the providing of his lame and youngest child.” They also stated that William had appointed Elizabeth to be the sole executrix, but the scribe had omitted this in haste. The purpose of this testimony is unclear, but the court refused to appoint a married woman executrix. On 21 October 1695, the court issued letters of administration to the eldest son, William. He then claimed the twelve acres of real property by birthright, and the remainder was divided into seven equal parts to be paid by William, reserving to himself a double portion. We learn from the administration, not from the will itself, that there were six living children.

In this case, documents regarding the entire estate gave much more insight into the life of this family, including the names and ages of all the children and the personal and economic circumstances of the father at his death, than the unrecorded will itself.
Whenever a situation deviated from accepted practice, additional helpful information was often provided in the probate file or court records.

The next step in the probate process was posting a bond. The administrator and at least one other individual, usually two, posted a bond equal to the approximate worth of the estate to ensure faithful performance. Until recently, bondsmen commonly were also members of the family. If the widow was made executrix of the will or administratrix of the estate, make careful note of the bondsmen — they may have been her relatives and provide clues to her family of origin.

The law required publication of the pending probate so that creditors would know to come to court to make their claims. Debtors were also expected to come forward, but they probably were not as eager. In early times, notices were tacked on courthouses, town halls, and churches. Later, they were published in newspapers. At first glance, this would seem to have no real significance for genealogists. However, in the case of a burned courthouse, a newspaper notice may be all you have that gives the approximate date of death, the administrator, and the bondsmen or securities.

In one case, the notice added evidence to support the claim that the Samuel Strain who had administered the 1783 estate of James Strain in South Carolina was the man I was searching for, rather than a man of the same name. Within the very small estate packet, I found mention that the notice had been tacked on the door of the Long Cane Creek Church in Abbeville District, South Carolina. This was the church that “my” Samuel Strain attended and was near his residence, and thus added strength to my argument that the man who had died was indeed a relative. It is important that you carefully examine each surviving piece of paper among the loose papers and minutes, as important clues might go unnoticed if you just look for a list of heirs.