There are people who do what George has described for a living. Having done some of that I vote for abstracts! <g> May I suggest that you consider making a copy of the abstract[s] and donating the copies to the Logan County G&H to help others in the future. One of the interesting things about the abstracts is that there are deeds in mine that are from the prefire period, ie, from February 15, 1839, to the courthouse fire on April 15, 1857. If you missed George's detailed message the first time through I'll leave it below. Cheryl Rothwell [email protected] Logan County ILGenWeb www.rootsweb.com/~illogan Central IL Regional Coordinator, ILGenWeb Clark, Downing, Harding, Lucas, et al -----Original Message----- From: George & Shiela Irwin [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 7:51 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ILLOGAN] Abstracts Following up on Cheryl Rothwell's notes on title abstracts: I have recently been doing some genealogy work using the same data source in a different way, and thought the procedure might be of interest to some readers of this site. My objective was to trace land ownership of my immigrant ancestor and his 7 children during their first 50-60 years in Illinois, rather than to follow a single piece of property through all changes in ownership. So I was looking at a cross section over a number of abstracts -- perhaps an expensive purchase from an abstractor firm. You can, of course, do your own work. The records are public, in the County Recorder of Deeds office. It is just a matter of searching through them and copying the appropriate documents. It can be an interesting genealogy exercise, but very time consuming, and you have to travel to the Recorder's office to use the records. The saving grace is that it only has to be done once, if done without error. That is the benefit of an abstract of title -- you are the second purchaser of work someone has already paid for -- provided it addresses the question you are interested in.. The technique is the same as in preparing an abstract. You advance or retrogress in time, stepwise from one transaction to the next. You start out with a buyer or seller (a grantor or a grantee) in a transaction on a piece of property. It can be the most recent owner of a property or the original owner. (You can search either backward or forward). The county records, likely not computerized until recently, record actual deed documents in the order they were filed, probably in large volumes in a vault in the office of the Recorder of Deeds. Particularly in early years, the date of filing can be well after the date the deed is signed. The Recorder creates two supplemental indexes at the time the deed is filed, and these are the source volumes you use to find deed documents. These indexes record each deed transaction in two places. The first index is by the name of the seller, and is called the grantor index. The second index is by name of the buyer, and is the grantee index. In each, the names are in order the deeds were filed, and contain a reference to the volume number and page where the actual deed is located. The indexes also contain the name of the other party to the transaction, the price, and a brief description of the property. There will be a deed book, a grantor index, and a grantee index for each time period. The number of years included depends on the volume of deed transactions handled. Within this time period, the indexes may be subdivided with different sections for each first letter of the last name, to simplify searches. But you still have the items within a section in order of date filed, so searching is necessary. The process, once you have a beginning or an ending owner for a targeted property is to find out when they bought/sold that same property, by looking through the grantor or grantee indexes. This can be carried on repeatedly, guided by the question you are answering. There is also a filing of mortgage and chattel deeds on a property, which can be used to trace financing on a piece of property, and when the financing was paid off (released). These may also be recorded in the grantor and grantee indexes, but the reference will be to a volume and page in the mortgage books. I have found that a computer spreadsheet is essential to organizing the notes taken during repeated forays to the Recorder of Deeds office, in order to create a timeline. As Cheryl Rothwell notes in describing the contents of a single abstract on a piece of property, the individual documents copied from the deed book can be quite revealing. It is equally informative in tracing the history of an immigrant German farmer and his family from 1848 to the early 1900s. While deeds for purchase of a property are often in the name of the husband only, sale deeds ordinarily contain name of the spouse, because she has dower rights that must be handled. Such deeds, along with estate filings, also may have identification of descendants or ancestors that you have been seeking. Has anyone else on this list worked with this data source? ==== ILLOGAN Mailing List ==== To unsubscribe from the Logan County List if you are in mail mode, send to [email protected] If you are receiving messages in the digest mode, send to [email protected] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 266.11.14 - Release Date: 5/20/2005 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 266.11.14 - Release Date: 5/20/2005