AmericaGen: Chapter 19 (Government Land)

AmericaGen Study Group

Chapter 19 Homework 

Marceline Beem

Reference: Greenwood, Val D. “Government Land: Colonial and American.” In The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, 4th ed., 469-494. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 2017.

In Chapters 19 and 20, Val Greenwood discusses land records, focusing on government-issued land distribution and local land records, respectively.  The author delves into how the federal and state governments acquired and distributed land. The metes and bounds system was used in colonial states and continued in those areas after the Revolutionary War. In the early 1800s, the government developed the township system, which was used in Florida.

My first extensive use of land records was in colonial l North Carolina, so I'm used to the metes and bounds system. I can visualize the line going from the black oak thence to the white pine thence to the stake better than I can the southwest quarter section of the northwest blah blah blah.  Hence, one of my favorite resources for government-issued land records is HistoryGeo.com. It is a subscription site but well worth the investment if you have ancestors that lived in states using the township system. 

The site holds two distinct record groups, its Antique Maps Collection and the First Landowners Project. I use the First Landowners Project extensively in my research. As the name implies, the First Landowners Project is a map collection of original landowners. It currently contains records for 21 states and is fully indexed. The maps show boundary lines and neighbors, making it easy to visualize where the land was and establish a FAN club.

When you log into the site, you'll be asked to choose the Antique Maps Collection or the First Landowners Project. After making your choice, If you aren't a current subscriber, you'll receive a prompt to subscribe. You can purchase subscriptions in 3, 6, or 12-month increments. After making payment, you can return to the selection screen and select First Landowners Project.

HistoryGeo.com

The first screen is a map of the United States and instructions on how to use the site. I want to look for Sikes in Putnam County, Florida, so I put those terms into the search form.

Search Form

At first the search function loads the results map showing the entire country, but then automatically zooms in on the specified county. The circled numbers tell me how many records there are in that section. I can zoom in to see more details.

Search results for the Sikes surname in Putnam County, Florida

The green number two is about where where my family lived, so I zoomed in on that to view the map in closer detail. Now I can see the landowner's name and the date he received the land. The maps show all of the township, range and section numbers. The purchase boundaries are overlaid on a map with modern-day features, making it super easy to picture where the land is, especially if you are familiar with the area being studied. The maps also show the neighbors, which should be added to the owner's FAN club.

Zoomed in search results

The two landowners are Crawford Sikes and Thomas Sikes, brothers to my great-great-grandfather, Andrew. Clicking on the little green figure representing Crawford's land, I get a pop-up with information about the land sale. 

Search result with details of land purchase

There's even links to view the record on the BLM website. Click on "View BLM Document" to view the patent and other record details.

Related records at the BLM website

Back at HistoryGeo, I can zoom in even further to see what modern-day street Crawford's land was on. I recently delivered some packages near this area, and even today it's back on long, hard-to-drive-on dirt roads. I'll eventually go down to see the area, but it will have to be during dry season so I don't get my little car stuck in the muck! 

Map of Crawford's land, zoomed in to see modern roads

Thomas' land, however, is right off a main highway that I drive frequently. In fact, looking at the map, the highway runs through the southeast corner of his property, so I've been on it many times without knowing it belonged to a relative in the 1880s. 

Thomas' Sikes land

I love land records but using them to find property locations can be intimidating. Learning how to use readily-available resources, both free and subscription-based, are well worth it to make best use of research time and money. Whether you start your search at HistoryGeo or BLM, using these sites together can provide a lot of information in our research.

52 Ancestors: Week Six - Surprise

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a year-long series created by Amy Johnson Crow. I'm a little late getting started, but hopefully I can write weekly now!

My grandfather did not have a good relationship with his father, Arthur Middleton Beem. What few stories he told were less than flattering. When I got serious about researching his life, I knew very little about Arthur Middleton Beem:

•  He was born in Wisconsin but grew up in Mattoon, Illinois
•  He was a Spanish-American war vet
•  He worked for the railroad, which eventually took him to Knoxville, Tennessee
•  He married Frances Horton in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1905
•  Arthur and Frances had five children, including my grandfather
• The family moved back and forth between Knoxville and Jacksonville, Florida until they finally settled in Jacksonville in the 1920s (according to family lore. Census records proved otherwise.)
•  Arthur spent the last few years of his life in Mexico, returning annually to Brownsville, Texas for medical exams, a requirement for his VA pension

Arthur and Frances Beem with granddaughter, Frances, mid-1930s

That's the sum total of what I knew about Arthur's life when I decided to delve deeper.  I started by trying, for the third time, to order his pension record. Thanks to a suggestion of requesting it using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), I actually received a copy of the record. To my great surprise, this is what I received in the mail:

Arthur's pension file as received in the mail, 2016

Yes, that is approximately 1,500 pages of records ranging from 1924, when he first applied for a pension, to 1954, when he died! The cover letter told me to guard this with my life, as the VA would not send this to me a second time!

My mom and I were leaving for a research trip the next day, so of course this went with us. (Fortunately, we were driving and not flying!) We spent the first night in the hotel room skimming through the record. We found several surprises:

• A thorough, although likely not complete, medical history from 1924-1954. Arthur applied for a pension increase almost annually, requiring a new physical each time.
• Arthur was a prolific writer. His requests were mostly denied, prompting him to write the VA pension board, his congressmen, and anyone else he could think of that might help him received the requested increases. He even wrote the congressmen for Mattoon, even though he hadn't lived there for 25 years!
• The family moved - and not just back and forth between Jacksonville and Knoxville. They moved every couple of months and lived in small towns all over North Central Florida. These towns included, but were not limited to, Citra, Montbrook, Green Cove Springs, Ocala, and Reddick.
•  In Green Cove Springs, he was a sharecropper. Eventually he and his landlord had an altercation, and he was shot in the face, losing his vision for several months. Although his vision did eventually return, he never fully recovered it.
•  He lived in several VA homes, including Tampa, Biloxi, and Brownsville (TX).
•  He moved to Mexico for health reasons in the 1940s and remained there until his death. In 1948, he married Modesta Mendoza, a 26-year-old Mexican woman.

These are just some of the surprises contained in the pension record. One of these days, I'll have time to go through the documents thoroughly to create a timeline. I'm sure I'll discover even more surprises when I go through that process and more fully analyze the information in the file.