--WebTV-Mail-825833276-1998 Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit For those who may be new at family history research, here are a couple of tools which I have found to be extremely useful: 1. Use of Grantee and Grantor indexes to deeds. (These are also known as Cott indexes. Cott is the name of the man who has indexed many of the deed records throughout the country, I believe.) These indexes can be requested of the Register of Deeds in whatever county you are researching. In your request, specifiy the surname and the time period for which you need the indexes. Once you have obtained the Grantor and Grantee indexes, you can begin to order the actual deed records which you believe to be relevant to your research. The indexes will provide the name of the seller (or grantor) and the buyer (or grantee), a brief description of the property being conveyed, dates, and witnesses. Such information can be very, very valuable for several reasons, among them that often relatives bought and sold property among themselves and witnessed each other's property transactions. Often, when there was no will, this is the only way to learn the names of the heir(s) of a property owner, because heirs are usually the sellers (grantors) in a transaction conveying the property of the deceased. Creditors often pressured the sale so that they could be paid whatever debt was owed them by the deceased, so it was usual that the transaction occurred within a short period after death. Knowing the date of the property transaction can help one to estimate the year in which one's ancestor died. 2. Use of actual census records - not just the indexes to same. In the actual census records, it is wise to copy the names and other information pertaining to the ten households preceding and the ten households following that of your ancestor. This is because families who were related to each other often migrated and settled together. Also, it was not unusual for parents to deed portions of their property to their married children so that they could keep them nearby. Neighbors' children often married each other, and clues can be gained from the census records in this way, also. Once you have the indexes to the deeds, and perhaps the actual deeds as well, you can compare names thereon to the names in the neighboring households in the census records, and this may well help you to collect a whole new set of clues with which to work. Hope this helps someone! Pip --WebTV-Mail-825833276-1998 Content-Disposition: Inline Content-Type: Message/RFC822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Received: from mailsorter-102.bryant.webtv.net (mailsorter-102.iap.bryant.webtv.net [207.79.35.92]) by postoffice-171.iap.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.5/po.gso.24Feb98) with ESMTP id GAA11059; Sat, 26 Sep 1998 06:53:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fp-1.rootsweb.com (fp-1.rootsweb.com [207.113.233.233]) by mailsorter-102.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.8/ms.graham.14Aug97) with ESMTP id GAA14959; Sat, 26 Sep 1998 06:53:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from [email protected]) by fp-1.rootsweb.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA16591; Sat, 26 Sep 1998 06:51:14 -0700 (PDT) Resent-Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 06:51:14 -0700 (PDT) From: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 09:52:55 EDT Old-To: [email protected] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 214 Subject: [RATLIFF-L] Parke County, Indiana Resent-Message-ID: <"kbIHjC.A.8CE.SFPD2"@fp-1.rootsweb.com> To: [email protected] Resent-From: [email protected] Reply-To: [email protected] X-Mailing-List: <[email protected]> archive/latest/336 X-Loop: [email protected] Precedence: list Resent-Sender: [email protected] I am new to the list and would like to correspond with anyone descended from Miles Ratcliff and especially those Ratcliff's in and around Parke County, Indiana. Thank your response. Tom D. ==== RATLIFF Mailing List ==== If you'd like to search the List archives, please visit http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl Type in Ratliff and go from there. --WebTV-Mail-825833276-1998--