April Meeting of the Genealogical Society of Rockland County Date: Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 Time: 7:00 PM Place: Auditorium of the New City Library North Main Street New City, NY 10956 Speaker: Barbara de Mare, Esq. Subject: "Petitions for Partition: Genealogical Gold; with some comments on other obscure genealogical documents" Copyright 2006 by Barbara L. de Mare Barbara de Mare, a member of our society, has practiced estate and real estate law in New York and New Jersey for over 35 years. Additionally, she is involved in several county and state genealogical societies. As a result of the interaction between her vocation and her avocation, she was able to identify a document given to amongst a group of papers as a petition for partition. One glance, and she realized she had struck gold. The document was a petition for partition involving land in Thiells. By careful study of this document she was able to identify about 50 descendants of Daniel Phillips and Hannah Osborne, none of whom she previously knew existed. Her identification of these individuals meets the current genealogical proof standards. The main thrust of her talk on Tuesday night will be to explain how to identify such documents, and once identified how to extract the most information from them. She will bring with her the descendancy chart showing the individuals identified from this one document, and will explain how each identification appeared in the petition. Handouts will also be available for further explanantion. Sticking to true stories from this same family line, she will also describe some common puitfalls of which we should all be aware. These include innocent-looking commercial family histories and notes found in Family Bibles. Finally, if time permits, she will say a few words about the invaluable New York probate and administration packets as well as deeds and wills which transfer property to heirs. Meetings of the Genealogical Society of Rockland County are free and open to the Public.