Locating Ancestral Land in Maryland Land Records

William Biggerstaff was an ancestor of mine. A letter from Elizabeth Davis Thompson, back in the 70s, when I was just starting to dabble in genealogy, mentions several of his land records from 1744 - 1762. Pieces of land with names like Pleasant Level and Long Bottom, mentioning Tom's Creek and Antietem Creek, Frederick County, Prince George's County, and Hampshire County, Virginia.

Growing up on the farm in Iowa, our land didn't have official names. It had a legal description based on township, range, section, and portion of section. But when I was told to go out and plow, it wasn't go plow T5 R34 S34 SW4 NE4. It was go plow the back 40. Or cemetery hill. Or God forbid, goat hill.

If I told you the legal description of the land where I grew up, you could do a bit of research and find it on a map with little uncertainty. I've done this with ancestral land in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, and Ohio. But this Maryland land, with a name and strange (to me) rivers and creeks and conflicting county names, how was I to find it?

Mrs. Thompson wrote that William Biggerstaff entered a patent for 50 acres call "Pleasant Level" in Prince Georges County in 1744 and sold Pleasant Level in Frederick County in 1748/9. Prince George's County is a long way from Frederick County today. Montgomery County and Washington DC lie in between. But obviously, Frederick County hadn't been formed yet. Wikipedia states that "Frederick County was created in 1748 from parts of Prince George's County and Baltimore County. Prince George's County Historical Society states that prior to the split, the county extended all the way to Pennsylvania. So that explains why Pleasant Level could be in both Prince George's County and Frederick County. But, Frederick County is a big area. Where is this land, exactly?

A little research led me to the Tracey Patent indexes. There is a lot of information on this page and it is tempting to start scrolling through pages of images, but believe me, that's the hard way. Mid-way down the page is the actual index. All that shows is the alphabet across the page with each letter being a link to the tracts of land names starting with that letter. So, in this case, I selected "P" for Pleasant Level. I soon found William Biggerstaff's Pleasant Level among all the other Pleasant Levels, valleys, meadows, hills, etc.

This doesn't tell me where the land is, but it does point to the actual land patent records. Highlighted in yellow are the lines "P G 1713" and "Sheet 283". This is patent number 1713 in Prince George's County, and details are on page 283 of Tracey's map images. More importantly, though, are the coordinates listed above, D 50. Going into the CFW images of the main Tracey page we quickly find those coordinates.

The land is in the highlighted area, an area of 1 square mile. If we zoom out a bit, we can determine roughly where this is.

Obviously, no towns are shown. The only landmarks are rivers and creeks. This land appears to be downstream from Friends Creek and Tom's Creek, which are tributaries of the Monocacy River. You can see Turkey Creek and Middle Creek nearby as well. The two top tiers, A and B of the grid, are in Pennsylvania, so we can tell this land, in the D tier, is only a mile or two south from the Pennsylvania line. With a little work, one can match this map up with a modern map, such as google maps and get within a mile or so of the land. So far we don't have the description of the land, and that will be necessary to really pinpoint it. I really need to see the detail provided on Tracey's images. The index card above points to sheet 283 and I found that sheet 1 is on image 259. I have found these images to be very slow in loading, so its nice to try to hit the right image pretty quickly. Eventually I found sheet 283 on image 562.

There's William Bigerstaff and Pleasant Level.We get a decent plat, gives us the shape, and the arrow points north so its upside down, but the only thing new it tells us that the land is on the south side of a tributary of Tom's Creek.

Another useful site in the Maryland Archives is the Prince George's County Circuit Court Records. Searching those leads us to the copies of the original patent. It provides a full metes and bounds description, but still no more information on the exact location of the land, i.e., where is the white oak tree on the south side of the creek and what creek is it?

At this point, I haven't found a way to pinpoint the property. Best I can do is to locate the features of the maps above on Google Maps.

Further online research into neighboring tracts of land might be helpful. But at this point, I think research in the courthouse might be necessary. Zooming in on Google Maps shows modern tracts of land, but the tracts don't match, which isn't a surprise after over 200 years.

Other ideas are welcome.

Where's the proof?

I absolutely love online genealogy. When I started genealogy in high school, in the mid 1970s, there was no "online". Computers were being used to make indexes, and that really helped, but the research had to be done with actual books and microfilms. Now, with records being scanned and processed with optical character recognition, genealogical records are being made available at an incredible pace. And people are sharing more than ever. The popularity of genealogy has increased steadily over the years, in large part due to the ease of going online to access records. But something really bothers me.

What bothers me is that there is a lot of incorrect information online. While the copies of original records are tremendous, the data shared by genealogists must be taken with a grain of salt. When I see information in personal family trees that is shared over and over again it is tempting to assume that it is correct, because it is so prevalent. But unfortunately, a lie told over and over again is still a lie. Of course, that is way too harsh. Most people have no interest in spreading something that is not true. But they are interested in extending their lines, and hopefully to some interesting ancestor, or even to just break through and continue their research. And sometimes information is posted, not as fact, but as theory, to encourage discussion and collaboration.

I've said that the online records are extremely valuable. But it is important to remember that they are never complete. Even if all the known records for a locality and time are online, it is possible that a birth didn't get recorded, that a page was missed, or records lost. It is too easy to adopt somebody as an ancestor just because they have the right age or name and nobody else can be found. Although that might be a good guess, it isn't proof. That new found ancestor extends the line, perhaps into some well-known line, maybe getting you back to that immigrant. But is it right?

Certainly, that person should be researched. Most people will look at the possibilities. Is the person the right age? Did he/she live in the right place? Could he/she have been the father/mother of the last known ancestor? Often, the answer is "yes". Is there evidence, or is it just the best guess available? Sometimes there isn't much evidence available. Sometimes it's circumstantial. We have to make assumptions. This is where we get into trouble. We need to go a little farther.

What we need to do is to attempt to prove that the proposed ancestor cannot be ours. If we eliminate him, we are closer to the truth. Below is an example from Ancestry.com. I have an ancestor, William Scofield, who was born in Connecticut ca. 1801 and lived in Cass County, Michigan. His adult life is reasonably well documented. But there were more than one William Scofields from Connecticut of his age, so its not a simple job to trace him back to his parents, even though Connecticut records are very good.

If we search the public trees of Ancestry.com for William Scofield, b ca 1801, Connecticut, d. ca. 1863 Cass County, Michigan, we find perhaps thirty or more trees suggesting that this William's parents were Daniel Hoyt Scofield and Abigail Trowbridge and show "William" as "William T." Clearly, the records show that William T. Scofield was the son of Daniel and Abigail, but was he the same as William of Cass County, Michigan? It is easy to blindly accept that as fact, and obviously many have done so.

When doing my search, one tree caught my eye, one tree with different parents listed. This tree, published by Ancestry user "evongohren", includes articles about William Scofield which prove that he cannot be the same person as William T. Scofield. He proves this is not possible by simply reviewing marriage and census records that show William T. stayed in Connecticut while William was in Oswego County, New York and Cass County, Michigan. Evongohren's  research paralleled mine in proving that William was not William T. But he has gone further and proposed other parents for William and has provided his reasoning for that, based on genealogical standards of evidence.

It is better for our research to end at a roadblock, than to accept an incorrect ancestral line. Perhaps we need a way to consider possible ancestors and make it clear that they are not proven.

What Growing up on the Farm Taught Me about Genealogy

I grew up on an Iowa farm. We had a small dairy herd, which required a lot of attention. And we grew corn and soybeans. Preparing the fields for those crops provided a lesson that I remember at times most wouldn't think were relevant at all - probably several lessons. But one in particular applies to general life and specifically to genealogy.

Lesson - When you are tilling the field, and the field is getting muddier, don't skip ahead.

I learned this when I was discing a low field in the spring. I'd pull the disc back and forth across the field, each round a bit closer to the drainage ditch. The ground was very level and didn't have any obvious low spots, although one could reasonably guess that the field would be lower and wetter when approaching the ditch. But it wasn't obvious to me as a 15-year-old kid. When the tires of the tractor started to slip and spin and ball up with mud in the increasingly wetter peat ground, I thought that it would be nice to get a little farther before sunset. It was actually a fun challenge, trying to get that discing done in those conditions. But I knew that I was lucky to have completed the last round without getting stuck. I convinced myself, though, that this was just a single, low, wet spot, that I could skip over. So I took a guess as to where the field would be drier, and started down the middle of  the untilled part of the field. I figured that if I got in trouble I'd just raise the disc and head home. But what I hadn't counted on was how fast I would get in trouble. The front wheels started to sink and ball up with mud, the back wheels started to slip and spin and dig deep as the tractor struggled to pull the heavy disc through the wet soil. Before I could stop the spinning and raise the disc out of the ground, I was stuck.

Getting stuck wasn't unusual. Getting stuck in the middle of a wet field was. Here was the tractor, sunk in mud, with no dry soil around. We brought the other tractor out to the field to pull out the stuck one, but without a known dry spot to work from, we ran the risk of two tractors stuck in the middle of a wet field. I hadn't thought of that.

The moral of this story is: Work from the known to the unknown. Start with what you know and stay close to it or else you could end up in deep. In genealogical terms, the dry ground is what you know, what is proven. Skipping the proof on a few generations, or ignoring obvious evidence to the contrary, so that you can claim to be a descendant of the Mayflower, is like tilling the wet ground. There might be some good genealogy there, but it isn't necessarily yours.

Sometimes genealogists get stuck. Sometimes they have to venture out into the unknown. This is a good thing if it is in an effort to uncover new information to extend their tree. Always try to tie back to the known. Understand the evidence and how good it links new information back to the known.

Another application to genealogy is in understanding ancestor migrations. Our ancestors really didn't venture into the middle of the unknown very often. Sure, there were a few people who were adventurers, explorers, hunters, trappers, traders, etc., but most of our ancestors weren't that adventurous. They probably had families to keep safe, and weren't about to move to some unknown parts without support of an extended family. Moving to unsettled territory was like discing the middle of a wet field. You could get into trouble without any available relief. So when tracing an ancestor, assume that he/she had relatives or friends with them. Finding them will give you more clues as to the origin of your ancestor. And if you don't find those relatives, then you've learned that your ancestor was quite the adventurer.

And back to the original lesson in the wet field... fortunately we got the tractor unstuck without too much trouble. Sometimes, it isn't as much being adventurous as it is not considering the consequences.

1860 Census Taker's Mistake Hides Robert F. and Salucia Squibb

We want to believe what we read, but we have to be careful, especially in genealogy. In the case of census records, we take some things with a grain of salt. Sometimes the family member answering the questions didn't really know the ages and birthplaces. Sometimes they lied.  No big deal, we accept that. And census takers were human, of course, and they made mistakes. Sometimes their mistakes could essentially hide a family. This could lead to false assumptions that the family lived elsewhere at the time, a couple perhaps wasn't married yet, or maybe they were just missed and there is no information to be found for that particular time. So something like a last name, that we would usually accept as being misspelled at worst, may be totally wrong, and lead a genealogist in the wrong direction.

A family missing from a census where they are expected to be found deserves a closer look. The following example is a case of of a young family in early Iowa. Robert F. Squibb and his wife Salucia are found in Clinton county in 1870, with a young family, including a ten year old daughter (Martha) Jane, next door to his parents, William and Jane Squibb. One would expect to find this couple in the 1860 census, possibly with a new baby Martha Jane. But a quick search of the census index reveals nothing. Robert and Salucia just don't seem to be there.

Robert is listed in the 1856 Clinton county Iowa census with his parents and siblings. He married in Clinton county Iowa in 1857. Only his parents and siblings are in Clinton county Iowa in the 1860 census. But he is listed next to his parents in the 1870 census of Clinton county Iowa. One could reasonably expect to find him in the 1860 census as well. Its worth a closer look, at relatives there, at the township and the entire county if need be. Fortunately, in this case, we don't have to look far.

The 1860 census has entries for Caleb and Adam Squibb in Clinton Township, and their father, William Squibb in Center Township. William, himself, is hard to find, because Squibb is spelled Squbb. That changes the soundex number and the indexing. But he's there.

Look at the family next door, just below William, Jane, Margaret and Sarah. It's the Symbly family, with Robert F., Solicium, and Martha J. The similarity of first names with Robert F., Salucia, and Martha Jane Squibb is quite a coincidence. But Symbly isn't close to Squibb, especially when the census taker came so close with William Squbb above.

Then there are blank lines after Martha J., which normally suggests the census taker finished a township. But turn the page...

The township enumeration continues. It's a whole new set of kids, listed from oldest to youngest - Mary, Margaret, Gustina, and Caroline. No parents, no place of birth, just name, age, and gender. And preceded by two blank lines on the previous page, and Robert F., Solicium, and Martha J. Symbly (a baby). And to top it off, its different handwriting - a different census taker. Compare the Ms of Martha J. and Mary.

Its hard to speculate as to what the census takers did. I think the second one found just the four Symbly (Sibley?) girls home, left space for the parents, took down what he could, and made a note to revisit the Symblys, But then later, with a quick change, the first made Robert F. and Salucia their parents, combining two families, and saving another trip out to the Symblys.

There are several strange things about this record:

• This census taker listed a baby, Martha J, ahead of older children, which wasn't normally done.
• He left blank lines between members of a family, which wasn't normally done.
• A different census taker finished recording the family.
• Robert's family lived next door to William in 1870, so it wouldn't be unusual for them to have lived next door in 1860 as well. But to find a different family with similar first names is very coincidental.
• And, we would expect to find Robert's family somewhere, but we don't.

Individually, these oddities don't mean much. Together they indicate a problem with the record and I am confident that the family next door to William Squibb is in fact, Robert F., Salucia and Martha Jane Squibb, and that the actual Symbly parents went unrecorded.