It’s Saturday Night – 

time for more Genealogy Fun! 

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to:

1) What is your favorite genealogy research resource?  Not a website, but a type of record, like census, cemetery, tax, etc. Why is it your favorite?  [Thank you to Linda Stufflebean for suggesting topics!]

My favorite record is

LAND RECORDS

If I counted correctly, I have over 160 sources for land records. That’s close to 3 percent of my 5544 citations. The only record type that likely has more sources in my file would be census records.

So, why do I like land records so much?

• Land records have helped me track the migration of an ancestor.
• Land records have placed one of my James Crawford families in Barren County, KY — which means the family went SOUTH before going NORTH to Preble County, Ohio
• Land records suggested a search of court records and also provided the first hint I uncovered for the death of an ancestor
• Land records identify several of my ancestors as the first land owners in a county
• Land records have helped establish family relationships

Thankfully, FamilySearch digitized much of the county records in their collection, including land records. Thus, it is much easier to locate these records than it was when I first started my genealogy research.

A search of my blog for the word ‘land‘ will show the various posts I have made about my research of land records.

While land records are my favorite, they are only one part of my toolbox.