Did you know that the U.S. Government Bookstore (part of the Government Printing Office) sells a CD-ROM that contains all the Homestead and Cash Entry Patents issued before 1908? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- General Land Office Automated Records Project, Minnesota: Pre-1908 Homestead and Cash Entry Patents (CD-ROM) </actions/GetPublication?stocknumber=024-011-00187-5> Description: Spine title reads: General Land Office Automated Records, Minnesota. Contains information from 167,000 land patents dated before 1908 for the State of Minnesota. Indexed by patentee name, land office, or legal description. Item 600-D-01. Year/pages: 1995: CD-ROM in plastic case with paper insert. Price: $16.00 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Similar CD-ROMs are available for Arkansas, Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Michigan, Ohio, and Alabama. Go to http://www.gpo.gov/ and search for Bookstore. Then search for General Land Office. Best regards, Dick

I *think* someone asked recently what use the BLM land records were to genealogical researching. I was too tired to respond at the time and have already deleted that message. But I will try to give a short run down of it now. The land records state which piece of property is being purchased, by whom, and on what date the transaction occurred. The date may be prior to statehood, if your family was among the early settlers. The property description lets you figure out exactly where they owned land (and probably lived) in a particular township. People usually attended church and are buried very near their property - often within just a few short miles. Those early church records can be an absolute gold mine and I encourage everyone to do their best in finding those for their own family research. Dick has a *great* description of land records and township layouts on his Becker Co. pages: http://www.rootsweb.com/~mnbecker/land.htm I put some links to various sites for the Federal Township and Range system on the cemeteries page for Faribault County (not to be confused with Faribault city in Rice Co.): http://www.rootsweb.com/~mnfariba/cemeteries/fcemeteries.html Uh, oh. My links for the "Map of meridians & base lines from the BLM web server" are down apparently. Probably because they seem to be having web server difficulties today. Kathy -----Original Message----- From: minnesota-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:minnesota-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Dick Campbell Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 12:12 PM To: Minnesota Mailing List Subject: [MINNESOTA] General Land Office CD-ROM Did you know that the U.S. Government Bookstore (part of the Government Printing Office) sells a CD-ROM that contains all the Homestead and Cash Entry Patents issued before 1908? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ General Land Office Automated Records Project, Minnesota: Pre-1908 Homestead and Cash Entry Patents (CD-ROM) </actions/GetPublication?stocknumber=024-011-00187-5> Description: Spine title reads: General Land Office Automated Records, Minnesota. Contains information from 167,000 land patents dated before 1908 for the State of Minnesota. Indexed by patentee name, land office, or legal description. Item 600-D-01. Year/pages: 1995: CD-ROM in plastic case with paper insert. Price: $16.00 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ Similar CD-ROMs are available for Arkansas, Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Michigan, Ohio, and Alabama. Go to http://www.gpo.gov/ and search for Bookstore. Then search for General Land Office. Best regards, Dick ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to MINNESOTA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

On another one of the list I am on there is a lady that goes to 2nd hand store's and buys old pictures that have the studios name on it and a name of a person on them and then try to research them to get them back to there families. I am a nut on going to my family homes with lap top and scanner and scanning there pictures . I am trying to get a pictures album done . I have 350 pictures in it so far. Well today I went into a 2nd hand store in Luverne Mn and sat and looked at old pictures from Camby and a few from Minneapolis / St Paul area. Some from Rushford are that had names on them I bought and gave to a friend to see if her family may know some of the people in the pictures . There are pictures that said " Ida's husband " Of course I said Ida who. There was a 5 x 7 picture in a frame with no name of studio or nothing written on it. It was 4 ladies with 1 little boy in the middle of them . It had to be some ones 5 generation picture. So sad that this great pictures is lost to the family .. So as we do our researching do not forget these great pictures they are so important to our history . I have found the names of so many of my new ( Old ) pictures with putting them into my computer and then putting 2 up to compare . I get so excited when I finally figure out who it is . I also e mail them to family and say who is this . One I got 3 different answers all wrong . I did know the answer on it . Also go over your pictures you have taken over these years and put in the names Loretta