Land Deeds Enhance the Family Genealogy Portrait
Genealogy research is a bit like painting a picture. The more information obtained, the more hues and dimension the picture has. Census records are an outline; they are the beginning of your picture. Censuses place an individual or family in a given place at a specific time, but they have their limits. If a family moved two or three times in a ten-year period, those other residences may be unknown. Both Nebraska and South Dakota, the two states I know best, had some off-year censuses - South Dakota more than Nebraska - but censuses are still limited in their information. Land records broaden the picture of a family by adding strokes of color. I like land records. I like finding a specific piece of land on a map. I like visiting a place where an ancestor lived. It gives me a sense of who the person was and what he or she had to deal with. A lot of people seem to shy away from working with land records. I'm not sure why. It could be the process of finding a deed. It could be making ...