{"id":817,"date":"2009-12-18T15:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T21:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/diving-into-land-records-with-a-splash-of-webster-parks\/"},"modified":"2013-07-10T20:58:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T01:58:08","slug":"diving-into-land-records-with-a-splash-of-webster-parks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/diving-into-land-records-with-a-splash-of-webster-parks\/","title":{"rendered":"Diving Into Land Records, With a Splash of Webster &amp; Parks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time lately on my Oakland County, Michigan clan.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve been studying up on land records, so I thought I\u2019d put my learnings to the test.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Since my Michigan clan had located there when it was still a territory, I figured I\u2019d find some federal land patents for at least some of them.\u00a0 So my first step was to check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.glorecords.blm.gov\/\">Bureau of Land Management\u2019s General Land Office<\/a> records online.\u00a0 While my clan was located in other areas of Michigan, my focus was on the surnames of Webster and Parks in Oakland County, Michigan.\u00a0 I found several records (with images) for those I know are related, as well as a few others that I\u2019m not sure about at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>Following the advise of Christine Rose in her book, <em>Courthouse Research for Family Historians<\/em>, I made a list of all the people I found with the surnames I was seeking, and then placed them in context on a section map.<\/p>\n<p>There are 36 entries on my list.\u00a0 I included the following headings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Document #<\/li>\n<li>Name(s)<\/li>\n<li>Aliquot Parts<\/li>\n<li>Section<\/li>\n<li>Township<\/li>\n<li>Range<\/li>\n<li>Meridian<\/li>\n<li>Issue Date<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once I had them entered, I sorted the items first by township, then by range, so I could visually see them grouped together.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0px none;\" title=\"spreadsheetSS\" alt=\"spreadsheetSS\" src=\"http:\/\/lh4.ggpht.com\/_udfzp1vLXt0\/SyvtR03xrdI\/AAAAAAAAFRM\/JybsRVXTVWU\/spreadsheetSS%5B3%5D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"490\" height=\"192\" border=\"0\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1 \u2013 Screenshot of my land listing for Oakland County, Michigan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I then took my list and placed the names in the corresponding section on a township map.\u00a0 My biggest group, with each of the two surnames, was for Township 2N, Range 11E.\u00a0 It includes Robert Parks, Aaron Webster, and Luther Webster.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0px none;\" title=\"townshipSS\" alt=\"townshipSS\" src=\"http:\/\/lh4.ggpht.com\/_udfzp1vLXt0\/SyvtSX7DCdI\/AAAAAAAAFRQ\/B5-9ojRf-7Y\/townshipSS%5B3%5D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"490\" height=\"589\" border=\"0\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2 \u2013 Township 2N, Range 11E, Oakland County, Michigan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The close proximity of Aaron Webster and Robert Parks could explain how Aaron\u2019s son, Calvin, and Robert\u2019s daughter, Betsey, came together and married in Oakland County in 1825.<\/p>\n<p>Next, I hand-drew the six sections that are clustered together, to see what pieces of land were owned by whom, based on the descriptions.\u00a0 This gives me a better idea of how close these families were location-wise.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 492px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0px none;\" title=\"section\" alt=\"section\" src=\"http:\/\/lh4.ggpht.com\/_udfzp1vLXt0\/SyvvRv8WqBI\/AAAAAAAAFRY\/6sjEUn4mffs\/section%5B8%5D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"492\" height=\"713\" border=\"0\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 3 \u2013 Hand-drawn map of Sections 5, 6, 7, 8, 17, 18 in Township 2N, Range 11E, Oakland County, Michigan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Here I can see that Robert Parks and Aaron Webster did not share property lines.\u00a0 However, Robert did share property lines with Luther Webster, who was Aaron\u2019s son.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Next Steps<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Most of the names on my list I recognize.\u00a0 Some are common in my tree and will require further investigation as to whether or not they are related (e.g., I have several William Websters and some John Parks that could have been in the area during this time period).\u00a0 There are some names I am not familiar with, but given that they are related surnames and in the same general vicinity, it\u2019s worth looking into them.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what I plan to do next:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Investigate who else owned land in Township 2N, Range 11E (especially in Section 5 between Aaron Webster\u2019s two pieces of land).\u00a0 Then devise a plan to investigate local land records for these people in hopes of determining if they are related.<\/li>\n<li>Devise a plan to investigate local land records for the people I\u2019ve already identified in order to determine a trail of ownership.\u00a0 In the case of those unknown to me, it should also help determine whether they are related, and if so, how they are related.<\/li>\n<li>Right now, my list contains 10 different townships in Oakland County.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to see how they all fit together in the larger picture, as opposed to just the individual township.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time lately on my Oakland County, Michigan clan.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve been studying up on land records, so I thought I\u2019d put my learnings to the test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25,26],"tags":[328,346,389],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","category-personal-research","tag-family-parks","tag-family-webster","tag-location-us-michigan","cat-27-id","cat-25-id","cat-26-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-db","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3855,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions\/3855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}