1784 Grand Jury

1784 Grand Jury

Lincoln County Kentucky

as found in the Court Order Book, 1783-1786 for the Kentucky Supreme Court of Lincoln County

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March 5th 1784

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

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Crawford, Mary - Poe, William 587

Barren

Have you ever re-looked at some tax records and discovered that you can now figure out who these people might be when before they were just a list of names found in that county?

Well, that has been my experience as I'm going back thru some of my Crawford Kentucky research in hopes that it leads me back another generation.

I've recently re-looked at Madison, Lincoln and Garrard county tax lists and combined with land records, I have a much better understanding of who the various Crawfords listed in these tax roles are. Since I have deeds indicating James Crawford (husband of Martha Knight) lived in Barren County, Kentucky, I decided to re-look at those tax records.

I first searched the Barren County KY tax lists some time ago. Based on the "V20-0014" notation on my notes, I'm guessing I used the American Genealogical Lending Library to research these records at home.

Barren County Connection

Have you ever questioned whether an ancestor lived in a certain place because the migration path was illogical?

Well, that is the case with our Crawford research. James Crawford and Martha Knight were married in Lincoln County, KY in 1793. James Crawford and Sally Duggins were married in Garrard County, KY in 1799. Both families migrated to Preble County, Ohio.

So when clues pointed to at least one of them being in Barren County, KY (South of Lincoln and Garrard), those clues were questioned because it seemed illogical for these couples to migrate South before migrating North to Ohio.

That gut feeling was proven incorrect when a Barren County deed was discovered. This 1821 deed was for the sale of land by a James Crawford of Preble County, Ohio. Records place both James Crawfords in Preble County, Ohio at the time. So far, no record has been found for a third James Crawford in Preble County, Ohio in 1821.

Since the deed identifies the wife of James Crawford as Martha, this deed places James and Martha owning land in Barren County, KY. Another set of deeds for the sale of land in Garrard County, KY by Rebecca Crawford and James Crawford, both of Barren County, provide additional evidence that James Crawford was in Barren County, KY (See Rebekah's Land)

Arrival in Ohio

Have you ever 'lost' an ancestor for a period of time? That's my situation with my ancestor, James Crawford.

James and Sally Duggins are married in Garrard County, Kentucky in 1799. In 1813, there is a land record where James Crawford has made full payment for the NW 1/4 of Section 14, Township 7, Range 2. Thus, I'm trying to figure out where James and Sally were living shortly after their marriage. The county history suggests that James was living in Preble county by 1810. Unfortunately, there are TWO James Crawfords living near each other. This makes it difficult to determine which James Crawford is being referenced.

Since Kentucky tax lists have been helping me figure out who was living where in Lincoln, Garrard and Madison counties. Unfortunately, the Preble County, Ohio tax lists do not begin until 1816.

However, these tax lists contain two clues that I overlooked the first time I used them.

• James Crawford owning the NORTHWEST quarter of Section 14, Township 7, Range 2 appeared on the tax lists at a later time than the James Crawford owning the SOUTHWEST quarter of the same section
• The James Crawford owning the NORTHWEST quarter was referred to as James Crawford Junior

Big Tree Same Name Issues

Do you have 'same name' issues in your genealogy research? I know I have them in mine:

• Hiram Currey
• Noah Briles
• James Crawford
• William Thompson

Thus, I'm a little sensitive when computer algorithms merge them together. 

I first encountered this with Ancestry's One World Tree when my James Crawford research was merged into one profile. 

Recently, Randy Seaver has been writing about Ancestry issues. His recent post, A Reader's Take on Ancestry Problems, Part IV: The Ancestry Big Tree discusses what he has learned about Ancestry's Big Tree. Randy also discussed the Ancestry Big Tree on today's session of Monday's with Myrt. 

I evidently browsed thru Randy's post since I didn't pick up on the Google search aspect. However, when Randy demonstrated a Google search on Monday's with Myrt, I started wondering how the Big Tree would handle my same name issues.

Thus, I started searching.

My first search was for my ancestor, James Crawford. James was born about 1772 in Virginia and died in 1854 in Preble County, Ohio. I was pleased when I found his profile - without any of the other James Crawfords mixed in.

Resolved Indexing Issue

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about issues I was seeing with this blogger site not being found by Google. (Why Not Indexed).

After several days of digging thru Google discussions of the issue, I think I found the solution. My early searches kept pointing to an issue with the sitemap. At that point all I was finding for a sitemap url was one that placed

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

after the root of the URL. When I would try to use my Google Search Console to enter the site map, it acted like it was taking the site map. However, when I would return to the Search Console, no sitemap would be listed.

So I kept digging and finally came across a post indicating that Google had changed the site map URL. The new URL ending is much simpler:

sitemap.xml

Thus, I entered that into my Google Search Console and waited. Each time I've returned to my Google Search Console, the site map is listed with the word 'SUCCESS'. I've also been able to search Google for my blog posts and find them -- including very recent posts.

Thus, I think my issue is resolved!