Category: General genealogy

Family Names and Stories

Every genealogist knows that names can be reliable pointers to ancestral lines. And that pursuing your family tree inevitably produces some good stories. I’m sharing some of both here.

Burke

Our first son’s name is William Burke Willis. William is downright generic, but Burke is a solid clue. In fact, my mother’s birth surname was Burke. Her father was William Logan Burke (“WLB”). Thus, our son was obviously named for my grandfather, known as W. L. or “Billy” Burke. That name persisted: Gramps was one of at least five William Logan Burkes in the family.

The first WLB was born in 1860 in Wilson County, Tennessee. He migrated to Waco, Texas, where he became an early Sheriff and U. S. Marshall of McLennan County. The Sheriff’s father was Esom Logan Burke — thus the “L” in those five middle names. I haven’t proved a Logan on the Burke tree, but I’ll wager there is one.

Here are two Burke stories.

My earliest proved Burke ancestor was John Burke of Jackson County, Tennessee. John owned a fair amount of land on White’s Bend of the Cumberland River. Beautiful county, that is. He had a ferry there, owned enslaved persons, and ultimately fathered sixteen children in two marriages. Some of the sons turned out to be what my grandmother would call “no account,” but Esom Logan was a solid citizen, a Wilson County farmer.

John was born in Virginia during 1780-1790. He has accounted for a fair share of my gray hair: I cannot prove his parents. An early family history undoubtedly contains a great deal of truth, but is likely wrong about John’s parents. Y-DNA has not yet helped.

Desperate, I consulted the Draper Manuscripts. This is a vast trove of historical records, including letters, genealogical and historical notes, land records, newspaper clippings, and interview notes, all collected by Lyman Copeland Draper, a Wisconsin historian. The collection focuses on the frontier history and settlement of the old Northwest and Southwest Territories of the US from the 1740s to 1830. Draper’s papers are assembled in 491 volumes.  To describe the collection as labyrinthine would be a massive understatement.

When you are looking for info in Tennessee around 1800 or so and are in a masochistic mood, head for the microfilms of the Draper Manuscripts. First, though, consult a book titled Guide to the Draper Manuscripts or something along those lines.

Lo and behold, I found a John Burke in a Tennessee volume! Draper described him as a renowned teller of fabulous tall tales. The example recounted by Draper: a near neighbor, let’s call him Thomas, was riding home one day and saw John out in the field. Thomas called out to him.

John, said Thomas, how about if you tell me one of your famous tall tales?

John didn’t miss a beat. You don’t have time for such foolishness, he said. I just saw one of your cows loose in your cabbage patch having a fine meal.

The neighbor headed home at a brisk trot. There was no cow in the cabbage patch, of course.

I am not certain that the above John Burke was the same man as my ancestor John Burke of Jackson County. I have not been able to find that story again, hoping it might identify the county where John the storyteller lived. That probably says something about the accessibility of the Draper Manuscripts. However, I definitely know that my grandfather, the second WLB, was also a fabulous storyteller. My grandmother tore out a clipping from one of the Houston newspapers one day and mailed it to my mother, writing on it, “your daddy in print with a big one.” Here is a transcription of  the clipping, a column by Bill Walker titled “The Outdoor Sportsman.”

“A roaring gas flame in the big brick fireplace in the Cinco Ranch clubhouse warmed the spacious room and the several members of the Gulf Coast Field Trial Club who gathered there for coffee Saturday morning before the first cast in the shooting dog stake.

“Usually when veteran field trial followers get together the conversation turns to great dogs of yesteryears and this group was no exception.

“W. L. “BILLY” BURKE related one about an all-time favorite of ours — Navasota Shoals Jake.

“Burke and the late W. V. Bowles, owner of Ten Brock’s Bennett and Navasota Shoals Jake, were hunting quail in the Valley on one of those rare hot and sultry winter mornings. Jake pointed a covey several hundred yards from the two men and out in the open.

“BOWLES suggested they take their time approaching the pointing dog, since he was known to be very trustworthy. When the two hunters did not immediately move to Jake, the dog broke his point, backed away to the cool shade of a nearby tree and again pointed the birds.

“THE COVEY was still hovering in a briar thicket when Bowles and Burke arrived. Navasota Shoals Jake was still on point.”

Lindsey

OK, moving on. Our second son is named Ryan Lindsey Willis. Yep, there are Lindseys on my tree — one of my favorite lines. My nearest Lindsey ancestor’s name was Amanda Adieanna Lindsey Rankin. I loved her as soon as I learned the name; I wish I had her picture. She answered a knock on the front door of her father’s Monticello, Arkansas house one night in 1863, and immediately fell in love (according to her recounting) with “the handsomest soldier you ever saw.”

That was John Allen Rankin, wearing an almost brand-new uniform. The last battle in which he had fought was Champion’s Hill, east of Vicksburg, where the Confederates were soundly beaten. They were out-generaled. The Confederate in charge, General Stephen Lee (no relation to Robert E.), marched his soldiers piecemeal into Grant’s entrenched position.[1] About 4,300 Confederate soldiers and 2,500 Union soldiers were casualties. It was considered a Union victory and a decisive battle in the Vicksburg campaign.

On 19 May 1863, whatever was left of John Allen’s division after Champion’s Hill arrived at Jackson, Mississippi. He was in the 1st Mississippi CSA Hospital in Jackson from May 31 to June 13, 1863. The diagnosis: “diarrhea, acute.” That was near the end of the second year of his one-year enlistment.

On September 1, 1863, now in Selma, Alabama, the army issued John Allen a new pair of pants, a jacket and a shirt, all valued on the voucher at $31.00. Good wool and cotton stuff, presumably. Probably the best suit of clothes John Allen ever owned. That was the last the Rebel army ever saw of him. He was shortly declared AWOL and placed under arrest in absentia.

The next thing you know, he was in Monticello, making Amanda Lindsey swoon.

My earliest conclusively proved Lindsey ancestor was a William who died in 1817 in Nash County, North Carolina.[2]He left a charming will instructing his eldest son John Wesley Lindsey to “see that thay [the younger children] mind thare Stepmother and thare larning bisness and are kept out of all dissepated cumpaney and also to have sum chance of schoolling at least to know how to read the word of God.”[3]

William’s youngest son, Edward Buxton Lindsey — my ancestor — is also a story. When he was sixteen, he attended an auction of a deceased brother’s estate. Undoubtedly under the watchful eye of his brother John Wesley, Edward acquired almost everything he needed to start adult life and continue his larning bisness: a bedstead and linens, a pocket knife, a man’s saddle, a razor, an arithmetic book, a cyphering book, and an ink stand.

Edward married four times, which was a serious disgrace in the eyes of his daughter Amanda. He wound up old and widowed in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana in 1880, raising a young son from his last marriage. I felt sorry for him and tried fruitlessly to find his grave, hoping to pay my respect. I don’t think he got much of that from anyone else, except for two of those four wives: two wives divorced him and two died, including Elizabeth Odom Lindsey, his first wife and Amanda’s mother. I wish I had a picture of him, too. He must have been a charmer.

Estes

Family names are usually a blessing (see Burke, above). Sometimes they create chaos. Case in point: my ancestor Lyddal Bacon Estes (“LBE”). My irreverent husband calls him Little Sizzler.

When I identified LBE as the father of Mary F. Estes who married Samuel Rankin (parents of John Allen, the Confederate deserter), I rubbed my hands in glee. With those three surnames, I reasoned, finding his parents would be a piece of cake. Hahahaha …

The genealogy gods apparently do not like cockiness.

Turned out there were three men named Lyddal Bacon Estes whose lifetimes overlapped (not counting my LBE’s namesake son). One of them probably did not have the middle name Bacon, or at least he left no record of either a name or middle initial, notwithstanding appearances in county records.

All three LBEs trace are from the same Estes line of Virginia. And those three surnames don’t lie: there are both Bacon and Lyddall ancestors on my tree. As it turned out, I had to sift through hundreds of Estes records in Lunenburg County, Virginia, searching for LBE’s parents. Conclusive proof  nevertheless eluded me. I finally proved them to my satisfaction by the process of elimination: there was only one male Estes in the huge Lunenburg Estes family who could reasonably have been LBE’s father. And only one female, also an Estes, who could reasonably have been his mother.[4]

I like the Estes line, too. The original immigrant to the Colonies was an Abraham Estes, a fine given name for the first of the line to arrive here. The Estes family traces back nicely to Kent, England in the late 1400s. They lived on the east coast and were fisherman and linen weavers.

Broadnax

Also in Kent were my Broadnax family ancestors, a set of certifiable bluebloods. The original immigrant to the Colonies was John Broadnax,  a Cavalier, who was undoubtedly fleeing from Cromwell’s. He left his family behind in England. He appeared in Virginia just long enough to have his inventory recorded in  York County.

I don’t much care for the Broadnax line because (1) it has been so thoroughly researched it is not challenging (and is therefore no fun) and (2) my view of my father’s mother, Emma Leona Broadnax “Ma” Rankin is my most recent Broadnax ancestor. Ma was, uh, how shall I say this? Not exactly warm and fuzzy. She was an unsmiling, bigoted, tea-totaling Southern Baptist who kept her house in Gibsland, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, heated to about 90 degrees. No mechanical assistance was necessary to achieve that temperature in the summer, it being Louisiana and all. But the heating bills in winter must have been spectacular, especially considering the high ceilings in that old house.

Ma’s husband, John Marvin “Daddy Jack” Rankin, son of the Rebel deserter, was poor as a church mouse. I once asked my favorite Rankin cousin — Butch, we called him as a kid, so he is stuck with that moniker for life — what Daddy Jack did for a living. All of my Rankin cousins were or are considerably older than I, my father being the youngest of the four Rankin siblings and not becoming a father until the ripe old age of 39. So they all know more than I did about the Gibsland Rankins.

Butch’s succinct response: Anything he could, hon. Anything he could. He was a driver of a dray wagon in one census and a waiter in a restaurant in another. A certificate among my father’s records proves he was Bienville Parish sheriff for one term, another non-lucrative profession.

The cousins once showed me an old popcorn wagon stored under the rear of the Rankins’ Gibsland house, which was built on a steep slope. We all figure Daddy Jack sold popcorn from time to time, perhaps turning a profit when Bonnie and Clyde were killed and their corpses displayed in GIbsland. Ma Rankin took in mending to help make ends meet, although they often did not. The Rankin fortunes didn’t revive until their kids, or at least their three sons, escaped rural North Louisiana.

At the first Rankin Cousins reunion at Butch’s house in 1995-ish, my cousin Diane, a child psychiatrist, asked me why in hell Ma Rankin, from the still-wealthy Broadnax family despite a serious setback after the Civil War, married penniless Daddy Jack.

Are you kidding me, Diane? You remember her, uh, personality? She cannot possibly have had many prospects.

One of the cousins, Ellis Leigh Jordan, brought a movie camera to the reunion. He trained it on each of the seven cousins individually and made us tell something about Ma. The word “strict” was grotesquely overused. All four of Ma’s children turned out to be atheists, not surprising in light of Ma’s relentless proselytizing. Furthermore, a fondness for alcohol persisted in the  family. Nobody knows where any genetic propensity came from. I think being raised by Ma would drive anyone to drink.

I never knew Daddy Jack, who died in 1932 at age 56. But I knew Ma well enough. Gibsland is sufficiently close to Shreveport, where I grew up, to allow for monthly Sunday visits. I hated those visits with a passion. To describe Ma as merely humorless would prove that either my imagination or my vocabulary is failing me. “Strict” isn’t adequate, either. She once stopped a desultory conversation dead in its tracks, a bullet through its brain, like so …

The setting was her hot-as-hades living room at a Thanksgiving get-together. At least three and perhaps all four of Ma’s children were in attendance. Grandchildren were there as well, restlessly squirming in our seats. At least I was squirming: this was 1957, and I was only eleven. My cousin Marvin, the next youngest, was 15 or 16; Butch and Diane were 18. Ma’s favorite conversational topic was usually other people’s gall bladders, her own still being intact. Thankfully, that topic died quickly for lack of subjects.

Uncle Louie, Diane’s father, finally tried to break one of the prolonged silences by commenting on Sputnik, the satellite launched by the USSR the previous May.

Pretty soon someone will put a man on the moon, Louie opined.

Ma, arms crossed over her chest, fired her conversation-ending bullet: If God had meant for man to be on the moon, he would’ve put him there.

My cousins and I fled to the yard, where we pelted each other with pecans. The frigid cold was a respite.

… And now I have gone on too long. It was fun writing this.

See you on down the road. I’m happy to say that another contribution from Spade is in the works.

Robin

 * * * * * * * * * *

                  [1] General Stephen Lee used exactly the same awful strategy at the Battle of Ezra Church, west of Atlanta, and got Allen W. Estes, brother of Mary Estes Rankin, killed.

                  [2] Although I cannot conclusively prove his parents, William Lindsey’s grandfather — was a William of Brunswick Co., VA and Edgecombe Co., NC. William had three proved sons: William, Joseph, and John. Y-DNA establishes that one of them was my William’s father, but I can only prove that it wasn’t Joseph. I suspect it was the other William.

                  [3] North Carolina State Library and Archives, CR069.801.6, “Nash Co. Wills 1778 – 1922, Keith – Owen,” file folder for William Lindsey dated 1817, containing a handwritten will of William Lindsey dated 16 Feb 1817 and proved May 1817.

            [4] LBE’s parents were first cousins: John Estes, son of Elisha Estes and Mary Henderson, and Mary Estes, daughter of Benjamin Estes and Frances Bacon. Elisha and Benjamin were sons of the Lunenburg Estes patriarch, Robert Estes Sr. Robert Sr. was a son of Abraham the immigrant. In yet another illustration of the value of names, LBE’s first son was named Benjamin Henderson Estes. His first daughter, my ancestress, was Mary Frances.

 

Maryland Land Records Online

One advantage of researching Maryland ancestors is the wealth of data available online. For example, https://mdlandrec.net/main/ contains deed records from the beginning of the colony. For first time users, here is a step-by-step guide to find what you are seeking.

First, go to the site at the above link and set up a free account. After log in, you will see a nondescript page that looks like this:

Select a county from the pull-down menu in the toolbar at the upper left. For demonstration purposes, select Talbot County and the following will appear:

If you already have a book and page number from another index source, insert them in the “Jump to new volume” section, click the “Go!” button, and the selected page will pop up. If you do not have that information, you can search for it in an index. To do that, select “Active indices” from the vertical list at the left side of the page, and you will get this:

Toggle the box showing the “Series” of active indices to see the choices, shown below. Click on one of those choices.

I selected the first index to find the earliest transactions. Then click the “Search!” button on the right side of the “Series” box. The following page appears showing four records to choose from … an early period for surnames beginning with the letter A through K, an early period for L through Z, and later periods for both.

Of the four, I wanted the first one to find early purchases by the Blake family. Click on “MSA_CE92_1” in the far right column titled “Accession No.” on the same row as the desired index. The first page of the index document appears as below, with a “command” panel to the right of the image.

Here is where you must do a little guesswork. The index groups all the names beginning with an “A” into a chronological list beginning with Liber 1, page 1 through the end of that book. It then moves on to Liber 2, page 1 and so on for all the “A” surnames through Liber 50 (in this particular document). After that, the listing repeats the process with names beginning with “B” at Liber 1, page 1, and so on through the alphabet. Finding the list with the surname you want is where the guesswork comes in. I was looking for “Blake,” so I needed to find where the “B” list begins.

One alternative is to click on “Next” in the right-hand panel to page through the index one page at a time. A faster approach is to guess a page number, insert it in the “Jump to new page” in the box and click “Go!” You can then adjust from that result to find the beginning of the list you need.

I found the first page of the “B” list at page 15 of the index document, which looks like this:

Next, click on “View document in separate tab” at the top of the right-hand panel. Clicking this button will open a new tab in your browser that gives a full page width view, which is much easier to read, as shown below:

When you are finished copying the data you need, close the tab. Your computer will revert to the previous tab showing the selected page with the panel on the right side. Click the “Next” button on the panel to bring up the next page and repeat the process of opening the document in a separate tab.

I scrolled through five index pages before finding the first Blake surname in Liber 7. The entries looked like this:

As you can see from the above screen shot, the information is in five columns. The first column shows the name of the “B” surnamed person who is a party to a recorded transaction; the next column shows “to” or “from,” indicating the indexed party was grantor or grantee, respectively; the third shows the name of the other party; the fourth column lists the type of transaction or instrument; and the last column has the page number in the deed book. The Liber/book number is set out at the beginning of the list of entries and is not repeated at each line. The entry I am interested in states: “Blake, Chas, Jr/from/Peter Sayer & wife/Deed/102,” and the entries are all under Liber 7. I can now return to the search page for Talbot County and insert 7 and 102 to find the deed from the Sayers to the Blakes.

There are a couple of ways to get to that original search page. On the horizontal toolbar at the top of this page, you can use the pull-down menu under “Select New County” to pick Talbot County, or click “Home” and again select Talbot County. Either way returns you to the screen where you can input the liber and page number that you have just discovered. A shorter method is to click on “Jump to New Volume” in the toolbar, and several boxes pop up for you to insert the liber and page numbers.

Whichever way you get there, insert the book and page number, click “Go!”, and, voilà, the deed in question pops up. The deed at book 7, page 102 shows that on 20 Nov 1694, the gentleman Peter Sayer and his wife Frances of Talbot County conveyed to Charles Blake, Jr. of Hampshire, England, 300 acres of land in Talbot County on the east side of Eastern Bay for four score (80) pounds.

The process is a slow slog at first, but it is well worth it. So far, I have been through 28 pages of the deed index and found 38 entries involving a person named Blake, including deeds, mortgages, and many manumissions of enslaved people.

When I look for data in other states, I often regret they do not have the same accessible information.

 

Articles of “general” genealogical interest (not family specific)

I had an email complaint from a customer this morning. He is a distant cousin who shall remain anonymous. He said this:

“You ought to just rename your website ‘the Rankin-Willis’ blog. I have no interest in either of those families. Why don’t you write something of general interest that might appeal to all family history researchers? Also, please write more articles about the ________ family.”

Huh. Well. That’s actually good constructive criticism, except for the last sentence, which could be viewed as a bit hypocritical. I will keep his complaint in mind, though, and look for more topics that aren’t family-specific.

Meanwhile, since it is possible that he may have missed a few, here are some “non-family-specific” articles that have appeared on this blog.

  • The most frequently read article on this blog is about genealogical evidence and proof.
  • Here is one discussing a few legal principles every family history researcher needs to know. It is amazing how many questions you can answer with just a little knowledge of that kind of stuff.
  • The second most frequently read article on this blog is about the Scots-Irish, specifically the impetus for and timing of their migration. Researching that history gave me a small insight into what was called “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland.
  • We’re recently published two “general interest” articles, one containing  research links for Maryland researchers  and another about finding original county records online.
  • Also not long ago, we published a short primer on YDNA theory.  The article uses a Rankin example to make a point. Perhaps I should start disguising them with an obviously made-up name like “Clemson-Withers.”
  • Here is a short piece about privacy settings in FTDNA accounts. The article was occasioned by an unfortunate experience with a surname project DNA project administrator.
  • If you are a history buff and/or first amendment nerd, you might enjoy this transcription of Madison’s “Remonstrance.” It includes a list of all the signatories at the end of the petition. If you have Virginia ancestors in the last half of the eighteenth century, you might give it a look.
  • Here is a short and simple article about how to determine, for example, whether someone is your second or third cousin.
  • There is also a post about a recent but fairly dumb  genealogy scam.
  • Finally, here is a warning about Ancestry.com’s “leaf” thingies.

We have also posted a couple of articles about “same name confusion,” a plague for family history researchers. One used as an example a Lindsey family and another used an Estes. There are also two posts about using land records to track a family, a valuable tool for family history researchers. I used Estes and Rankin families as examples. All four are so family-specific that I have not included them in the list.

I do hope this keeps my cousin busy for a while. You know who you are. <grin>

And now, back to an article about … you guessed it … two unrelated Rankin families in the same county and how to distinguish them using tax lists.

See you on down the road.

Robin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Research Links for Maryland Researchers

Good news for anyone researching ancestors in Maryland! The Upper Shore Genealogical Society of Maryland (USGSMD) has expanded its website to include more links to online resources. Recently, I provided indexes to several Caroline County Administrative Accounts. USGSMD added links on its site to those indexes covering accounts for the years 1790 to 1805 and 1805 to 1817 . They will soon post a link to a third index for 1703-1776.

USGSMD also provides links to a joint project of the Maryland State Archives, Comptroller of the Treasury, Register of Wills, and FamilySearch.org to index probate records for all the counties in Maryland. This project began in 2013 and is ongoing. So far, Baltimore, Caroline, and Carroll counties have been completed. If you would like to volunteer to help with this project, please send an email to usgsmd@yahoo.com.

The items mentioned above are just a few of the links to information you can find at their resource page. Check it out, and you will be well rewarded in your research. If you find their material worthwhile, I also suggest joining their organization … a nominal cost for a worthwhile endeavor.

Finding original county records online

A few weeks ago, Gary asked me how to find original county records at the Latter Day Saints website. Hazel Townsend, a Rankin researcher who has spent more hours in county courthouses than I have in school classrooms, asked me the same thing. This week, a friend had a question about when a certain will was dated and proved because she couldn’t access the original record.

If three excellent researchers aren’t able to find original county documents online, someone probably ought to write an article describing how to do that. Here’s one. Frankly, it is much more fun to go to county courthouses, but finding records online is faster and far less expensive.

First, create a free account at this website  and sign in.  Not only is it free, but the website won’t pester you with emails. They DO ask for your birthdate and gender, and want to know whether you are a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints. You don’t have to be a member to open a free  account.

Here’s the current page where you can sign in or create an account at the above link  …

Once you have opened an account, click on the “search” link at the center top of the page (see above image) and select “catalog” from the drop-down menu. Below is an image of the “search” page that will appear. The default setting on this page is for a “place” search, which is what you want if you are looking for original county records.

 

The only thing you have to do on that page is enter the desired county in the long horizontal box and click “search.”  If you are looking for a will recorded in, say, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, you would enter “United States, Pennsylvania, Lancaster County.” If you simply enter “Lancaster,” though, the website will produce a list of options for you. You will get a “search” result that is a list of the types of records available for Lancaster. The first part of the list looks like this …

Here is the part of the list that includes “Probate records (15),” which is where to look for a will recorded in Lancaster …

Let’s assume we are looking for Adam Rankin’s 1747 will, so we would select “United States, Pennsylvania, Lancaster – Probate records (15).” When you do that, a list of various materials containing Lancaster probate records will appear. This is only a partial list:

Most traditional books aren’t available online. For example, the first entry in this list is an abstract of wills published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. If you select that option, you will get a record telling you where you can find that book.

If original county records are your target, select an item which names the county as the author.

To find Adam Rankin’s 1747 will, select the last option in the screenshot, the one in purple typeface: “Wills, 1730-1908; Index to Wills, 1729-1947,” authored by Lancaster County.

The result will again be a screen that is too large for me to capture in one image. Here is the top part of the screen …

Notice the option in red boldface: Pennsylvania probate records are available online. I will leave it to you to explore that option. If you are looking for Adam Rankin’s will, it won’t be helpful because that site has a poor photo of the Lancaster will index, and the page number for Adam’s will is unreadable. Hard to find a will without a will book and page number, unless you’re in the mood to search through the film one image at a time.

Let’s stick with what works and will apply to other records, such as deeds. Here is the bottom part of the screen …  it’s hard to read. Sorry. I haven’t figured out how to work around some WordPress limitations and my own techno-ignorance.

Select “Index to Wills 1730 – 1830” by clicking on the little camera in the right-hand column. When films are not available online, the image of the camera will have a “no” sign over it (the red circle with a diagonal line running from upper right to lower left).

Here are the first few of the 158 images in this film. You can see them all just by scrolling down. Click on any one to enlarge it, and you will see that you are in an alphabetical index. By trial and error, you can quickly locate the “R” entries. I’ll save you some trouble: go to image 116 of 158.

At that image, you will see that Adam Rankin’s will is recorded in Will Book J at page 108. If you already had the will book and page citation, that’s great: you could go straight to Will Book J and skip the index.

Assuming you are in the index, go back to the page with the camera images on it and select the image containing Will Book J. The fun begins: trying to fine page 108. You can find it at Image No. 351.

And there you are … “by the mercies of God,” you have an image of Adam’s will as originally recorded in the county will book of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1747.

Keep in mind that the clerk of court made this entry into the will book. He was copying the original will that had been filed with the court for probate. But this is not the original will signed by Adam and two witnesses.

Here is an image of the entire will book entry, which I hope is legible.

If you can read it, you will see that the will is “deated” (sic, dated) May 4, 1747. On September 21, 1747, at least one witness, James Pettigrew, appeared in court to prove the will so that it could be admitted to probate. (Both witnesses may have appeared, but my screen shot cuts off the remainder of the probate court’s boilerplate entry). The dates conclusively prove that Adam died sometime between May 4th and September 21st. He probably died in September, because most executors presented a will for probate as soon as possible – but that’s not proved by this document.

You may have seen claims that Adam died on either May 4thor Sept. 21st. Ironically, those two dates are the least likely to be Adam’s exact date of death out of all the days in the entire four-and-one-half-month period between will execution and proof. All one can say for certain is that Adam Rankin died in 1747 between those two dates.

Now you might want to explore the website and see what other goodies are available. One caveat: family trees posted at Familysearch.org have the same evidentiary weight as trees posted on Ancestry.com. Zero, in other words …

See you on down the road.

Robin