A Pennsylvania Dutch Genealogy
the genealogy & family research site of Kris Hocker
Have you ever wondered what is included in an intestate probate record? Part Five of Vita Brevis’ probate record series starts their coverage of intestate records. Take a look.
This post covers Letters of Administration and the Administration Bond. Up next: the appointment of appraisers and the inventory.
I’ve been reading communion lists and calculating dates recently. Here are some of the days I saw that I had to look up.
Many of the lists indicated the date of the church service by the number of Sundays after Trinity, making it a useful date to know.
Looking for some of the sources used in Our Daily Bread, German Village Life, 1500-1850, I found the Reviews in History website. While books reviews may not be an ideal source, I was able to pick up several nuggets of information from reviews of books by Sheilagh Ogilvie. Obviously, the book itself would be a better source—or the original documents referenced in the work—but when you can’t get the book (or can’t afford it; some of these textbooks are expensive!)—a discussion of the content may provide some valuable information you might otherwise not have found. For instance, I learned that “Women could work in guilded occupations only if they were the wife of a master or if they were a guild master’s widow, and had inherited his guild licence.”1 This provided a possible source of income for the widow of my ancestor—a shoemaker in his village—and explained one reason why she might have been able to wait several years to remarry, even with a household of young children.
Timelines are a great way to gain perspective and understanding of the historical period in which your ancestor lived. GenealogyBank has posted a wonderful graphic showing early American colonial events on an infographic entitled “Settling America.” Their blog post also lists newspapers in their Early American Newspaper collection, including newspapers from the late 17th and 18th centuries from the American colonies.
Courtesy of: GenealogyBank.com
Click through to read the entire blog post on the GenealogyBank site.
The New England Historical Genealogical Society is digitizing city directories and adding them to their Digital Library & Archive. A recent post on their site Vita Brevis explains the benefits of adding this record type to your go-to research sources.
Was your ancestor too poor to trace them in historical records? Quick Tips over at Evidence Explained offers some insight and suggestions for searching for that elusive, not-too-wealthy ancestor.
My latest endeavor—An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Book A-D, 1729-1760— has gone live at Amazon as a Kindle book. It’s creation was fraught with indecision and frustration as I tried to figure out the best way to take the information from spreadsheet to the limited format of the Kindle ebook.
I once read somewhere that the majority of Americans have ancestors who lived or passed through Lancaster County at some point. That’s certainly true for my family—nearly my entire paternal line lived in Lancaster County after immigrating to America. This book indexes the buyers and sellers of land in the earliest days after the county’s formation in 1729.
Land was wealth to our ancestors. And deeds, which record the transfer of land between people, are an excellent place to learn about them. Not only will a deed place a person in a specific place at a specific time, but it can also teach us about the relationships between people—not only the buyer and seller, but sometimes the previous owners, as well. Deeds also name spouses, occupations and neighbors. In the case of estate settlements, deeds can even provide the make-up of a family by naming the heirs—most often children, but sometimes cousins, grandchildren, etc.—and their spouses. Tracing the ownership of a piece of land through multiple deeds can often provide data on multiple generations of a family.
This books indexes the online images of Lancaster County deeds found at the county’s Recorder of Deeds website. Although deeds are available online for the years 1729 through 1986, only those after 1981 are searchable.
Each listing in my book provides the following:
• Grantor (name of each individual)
• Grantee (name of each individual)
• Book
• Volume (as required)
• Page number
• Image number
• Date of deed
• Date recorded
• Property location or type of deed (e.g., quitclaim, mortgage, etc.)
There is only a loose correlation between the page and the actual film frame number, so I’ve provided both the page and image number for each entry to provide direct access to the correct online page. Instruction for using the online efilm reader are included in the book and can also be found here on my website.
I’ve been using the “York County, Pennsylvania Orphans Court Records index, 1749-1840” in researching the families associated with Ulrich Hoover of Adams and York counties. Since I’ve had to go back several times, I’ve been bookmarking the start of surname starting letter sections as I use them.
Randy Seaver suggested in one of his Follow-up Friday posts that bloggers who use the “browse only” databases on FamilySearch.org should “expose these records to the masses, and te[a]ch them how to use them.” So, I thought I’d share these bookmarks to help other York County, Pennsylvania researchers quickly start browsing the index. Then—since it’s a snowy afternoon and there’s nothing else to do—I thought I’d complete the list of links so that it includes each starting letter.
There are 128 film frames in this index. Here are links to the first frame for each surname starting letter:
Why should you care about the Orphans Court records?
Despite the name, these records don’t pertain only to orphans. The Orphans Court dealt with probate issues for those who had died intestate (without a will) and with the appointment of guardians for estate matters for minors. In these records you will find:
You may also find the details of who received the real estate owned by the intestate. This usually includes how much they were ordered to pay to the other heirs or legatees and the names of these heirs. All very useful information.
In order to use these records, click on a link above to go to the starting page for the first letter of the surname you want to research. Each individual volume—book A, book B, etc.—is indexed by name separately. The dates the volume covers are listed with each volume. Scroll through the pages to look for a volume that covers your target time frame, then look for your surname. Don’t forget to look at volumes for the years after your target. Estates can take years to settle.
Once you’ve found the volume you want to view, click on the county name—”York”—to view the list of books available. Volumes A through 2X are available for York County, Pennsylvania. Click on the appropriate link to pull up that set of volumes. (Sometimes it’s easier to open a second tab so you can keep the index pages available to view.)
You’ll probably need to jump through the images a bit to find the correct volume and page. Just remember, in these volumes one image covers two pages. To skip 100 pages ahead, you’ll only need to move 50 images forward.
Take some time to explore a bit. You’ll get the hang of it! And if you have questions, just let me know. I’d be glad to help.
When judging a document to determine whether or not it applies to your ancestor, it’s always a good idea to keep in mind how old they were. If they weren’t old enough to buy land, then maybe that deed belongs to someone else.
But do you know how old they had to be?
Today, we need to be eighteen to vote or join the military, twenty-one (in most states) to drink alcohol legally, and sixteen in order to obtain a driver’s license. In colonial times, there were also age-based restrictions and they often varied from state to state.
If you’re researching in colonial Pennsylvania like me, you’re pretty lucky; it’s very clear cut. A person obtained legal age at 21. Before that they were required to have a guardian for their estate and that guardian was responsible for all legal actions on their behalf. Before the age of 14, the Orphans Court chose and appointed a guardian for a child. After the age of 14, a child could request a specific person to be appointed as their guardian by the court.
But what if you don’t know how old they were?
Knowing the age-based legal restrictions can help you to estimate a time frame for person’s birth. A child who requested a guardian would have to be between the ages of 14 and 21, giving you a seven year date range for their birth. A man who appears in a Pennsylvania tax list would have to be 21 years-old, giving you a year that he would’ve been born in or before.
For more information on this subject you can read “Legal Age in the Colonies” by Robert Baird or the series “How Old Did Folks Have to Be?” on the Legal Genealogist.
Do you ever wonder about the laws governing colonial Pennsylvania? You can read William Penn’s charter and the early laws of the colony online.