Samuel Anderson Will

Madison County, Kentucky
Family Search
Mixed Probate Records, Vols. A-B 1787-1819
FS Film 183266 DGS 007553082

Will
Vol. A
page 351 (Image 184)

Dooley

Have you ever seen a name in a deed or court document and thought to yourself, 'Hey, I've seen that name before?' Well that was my situation when I was looking at tax records for Barren County, Kentucky.

Since I found James Crawford with 200 acres of land on the Marrowbone listed on the 1800 tax list for Barren County, KY, I started looking for other people owning land on the Marrowbone. That's when I found Moses Dooly Junr also owning 200 acres of land on the Marrowbone.

Not only was Moses Dooly Junr in Barren County, but so was his father and brothers.

Crawford vs Cox

Gowns, Petticoats and Silver Spoons

Have you ever seen a court case ordering the sale of the household goods -- including the gowns and petticoats -- to pay a debt?

I admit I haven't looked at a lot of court records - but this one is new to me.

I found the court case when looking for documents relating to CRAWFORD family members in Madison County, Kentucky. The index for the Court of Quarter Sessions case files led me to Case #588 for William Crawford vs William Cox.

Venture into Court Records

Do you try and find every record you could on an ancestor? I used to think that I did. However, I have to admit that I haven't always researched all available records for a community. I often stop with the indexed records and often avoid those non-indexed records.

It turns out I likely need to be  using those records. A local historian from the Garrard County, Kentucky area contacted me last week. She had seen my blog post about not finding land records for the SELLERS families in the area. She provided lots of hints. One was a rumor that the Sellers acquired their land in Garrard County by trading a horse for it. She said that if the rumor was true, I might not find a deed. Another hint was to dig thru the court records -- especially since there were a lot of legal battles over Kentucky land.

So, I've started my journey into court records.

I've started with the Madison County, Kentucky Court of Quarter Sessions. These court documents have been filmed and are available on the Family Search site -- and there is even an index to them!

Madison County Kentucky
Court of Quarter Sessions case files 1789-1802, indexes, 1789-1802

Case Files, 1-778, mixed dates ranging 1789-1802
FS Film 2115181 item 3 DGS 7838115

Image 45

Crawford, Mary - Poe, William 587

My Retirement Task - Puzzling It Out

The number one question I've been asked in the last month has been, "How do you like retirement?" Quickly following that question is one wondering what I do with all my time. My answers to the 2 questions are 'loving it' and 'researching my family'. Since they rarely understand that I could spend all of my time working on my family history, I quickly follow my answer up with the fact that I'm volunteering at the Nemaha County Historical Society.

For me, researching my family history is like doing a jigsaw puzzle.