Family Homestead

Finding the Family Homestead

Ever wonder where the William E. lived after he moved to Jaffrey? Did he rent or did he own his own home? I wanted to know. I wanted to see the house if it still existed. Could I get a tour of the house and property?

This is how I got my answers.

Introduction

Step 1 – Information gathering

Step 2 – Where to go.

Step 3 – search the Index

Step 4 – retrieve the deed.

Step 5 – Now what

Introduction

It has been several years since I began expanding on the genealogical record that was left to me by my mother and grandfather. It was a great place to start. It has many generations of dates and places. Being an Information Technology professional I entered all the data into a computer and began looking to add more information. I found that just dates and places made for rather dry reading. What could I do to add more life and color to this family story?

I also have a hobby of building and selling houses so I decided that my efforts in title searching may provide some added information that would help to bring the story to life. I began with my grandparents farm in southern New Hampshire and found the deeds where they purchased and then sold the farm. It added dates and cost to the picture that could be added to the personal story that I remember about the farm. Still that did not seem like a lot to add to the story.

This began a search for many pieces of property that were related to the family either as homes, business, or speculation. This looked more promising. In the end I was able to add a very significant piece to the story and in some cases I could actually go to town and see the actual house or business that my distant relatives once owned and operated. This was proving to be adding some spice to the story that was lacking.

What does it take to do this search on your own? Should it be left to professionals? The answers are less and more than you think and you can do this work very nicely yourself. When you do it yourself you get the added feeling of being part of the story rather than just reading it. My recommendation is to do it yourself wherever possible.

Step 1 – Information gathering

You should begin by gathering all the information that you can about the family. The more information that you have the easier and more accurate your search will be.

What is the time frame? Since not all information was recorded immediately, you should have a date in mind or a range of dates. If your great uncle Henry Smith lived in Jaffrey from 1845 to 1895 then these are the years that you would start to search. You can further restrict it by logical conditions. For instance not many people bought property before they were twenty years old.

You will encounter many of the same problems here as in other areas of genealogy. Personal handwriting is sometimes difficult to read. Names and variations seem to change at will. i.e. Elizabeth or Bettee or Betsey or Lizzie all refer to the same person at different times. Local designations may also have changed. I found that several towns underwent border changes during the early years of development. Towns annexed or gave away some large pieces of land because of the logistics of the day and nearness to a meeting house. Fortunately Jaffrey stayed pretty much intact.

At the very least you should have

the name of a person (not always the male side either). As in all genealogical work, more information is better. Was it Joe Smith on Main St. or Joe Smith on High St.?.

You should also have a town, county, and state for obvious reasons. You should also consider neighboring towns because of the flexible borders referred to previously.

Ideally you will get the following data:

Name: Joe Smith,

Date in town: 1845 to 1895,

Town: Jaffrey, Cheshire, NH, USA.

Step 2 – Where to go.

Next you should contact the town or municipality where you want to conduct your search. Many towns do not house the records you seek. They may be part of a larger town system, part of a county recording system etc.. The towns may only keep the most current information for taxing purposes and send the rest to the state or county for the permanent recording. There may have been a fire that destroyed the local records While getting this info you should also get the location, hours and cost and availability of copies of deeds, etc.. Armed with this information you are ready to begin your search. Allow sufficient time to the search.

In Jaffrey the local town office will have recent information.

Keene will have the historical information.

Step 3 – search the Index

Once at the site of the records you should proceed to get the Grantee (buyer) list or Grantor (seller) list. These lists will be arranged alphabetically for a given time period. You may find all surnames from A to D for the period 1700 to 1810 located in one book. All records should be included in this listing. Remember each book is alphabetical by the type of book (Grantee/grantor or buyer/seller). Every land transaction should also have an entry in each book, but you can only find the name if you are looking at the proper side of the transaction. If you want to find the deed for when Joe sold the property in 1895 then look for Joe Smith in the Grantor book for 1895.

When you find the person in either the grantee or grantor list you will find the following information:

Date of the transaction or recording date.

Grantee name.

Grantor name.

Book volume and page where the actual document can be found.

Location of the property usually by town.

Description of the property. (very brief)

This list will provide interesting data but is really only an index to the real data. The lists may vary slightly from town to town or state to state. Some lists have additional data that describes the type of transaction such as wtty for warranty deed, mtg for a mortgage transaction, or advt for a municipal action like a tax lien. Talk with the people running the site to get the translation for these abbreviations. These will help weed out some documents that you may not want. I found that these other document also provided more insight into the people. Did they need to borrow money or did they pay cash. Maybe they were delinquent in their tax payments etc.

Step 4 – retrieve the deed.

Now you can pull the book that contains the document. These books are stored by volume which you got from the index list. Get the book and go to the page indicated. Now you can read the actual document that you relatives used.

These documents usually have several parts depending on the type of transaction. For a deed you will see the following general sections:

Seller, Buyer, consideration and date.

Next a description of the property. Although it is not required or a given there may be a backward pointer to the volume and page where the last transaction on this property is recorded. Obviously there are no forward pointers into the future. Some pointers are only references to the prior owner or name the land was known as.

Signatures and witnesses and dates.

You will see that they may have signed their name or marked with an X indicating that they could or could not write.

Step 5 – Now what

Most records were actually done by a professional so the handwriting can be very legible. Does the description match anything you are looking for? Was this the family farm or was it a business or were they just buying or selling a piece of property that may have been rental? You decide if this document is important to your story. I have always tried to record all transactions for deeds. I have used the other information to fill out the story of the person. I have found that being farmers they were regularly delinquent on their taxes, because of planting and harvesting cycle, but never to the point of any action such as foreclosure or forced sale for taxes.

If you are looking at the grantor list did you find the same property in the grantee listing where your relative bought it. I also record the amount as it is very interesting to see that they bought 140 acres for $2,000 in 1825. Land prices have certainly risen.

You should be able to trace any piece of land backward or forward. Forward is much more tedious because no specific data about the next transaction was available at the recording time and you will need to search all indexes for the next transaction.

Now that you have found property that you are interested in what next. I find that the job is not complete unless I get the current status of the property and actually see it for myself. If you have properly traced the property forward you should be able to get the precise location of the land from the tax record and map for the current owner. When you do this the original land may have been subdivided etc. What was once a 140 acre farm could be many 1 ½ acre housing lots. Armed with a map you can go to that part of town and see what is there.

Now that was relatively easy. You can also pick up information that you had no idea about. I found that my grandfathers father also had property in town but just across the river. I found that the house my grandmother had was bought from a family named Adams which was also the maiden name of her grandmother. Was there any relation or was it just coincidence. I will try to get that information at a later time as that would involve yet another state.

I have taken pictures of houses that are very much the same as they were 150 + years ago. I have also found that some have been destroyed by fire or neglect. If the house is not there you can still see the land that they occupied. I knew that my gr. gr. gr. gr. Grandmother died when here clothes caught fire when she was over ninety years old. The house is no longer there as it burned many years ago and was rebuilt several times. The old house foundation and barn foundation are still very much present. Did the fire that killed her also lead to the destruction of the house? As it turned out the current owner had some very interesting information. As he was digging around the old foundation he discovered a wedding ring among the charred wood. It was my gr. gr. gr. gr. grandmothers ring that was lost in the fire.

You can take the information that you have found and add much to the texture of your family story. Here is one such addition.

William Elias Home

William Elias moved to Jaffrey in 1822 and bought the house at River Street. Since they did not sell this house until 1853 we can assume that the five children were born in this house. William bought a saw mill in 1825 just a mile up the river from the house.. Here he would have used the water power to both saw lumber and grind the wheat from the local farms including his own. From a town history we see an entry where the mill burned in 1848. They sold the mill property shortly after that in 1849. In 1853 they sold the house on River Street and moved to a house on Main Street which they did not sell until both had died in 1861.

Hint: I have also found that old maps can provide much needed clarification to your search. I have found the exact properties I was looking for on a map. In this case it was an 1850 map of the town. On it I can locate 3 family homes.