Genealogy Happy Dance!

A new database of browse-able images on FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/search/collection/show#uri=http://familysearch.org/searchapi/search/collection/2078654): New York Land Records! YAY!

Current workings....

1829 Mentor Twp, Geauga Co, Ohio, personal property tax records. From FHL microfilm.

Two current projects I'm working on. Trying to discover the name of the first husband of Anna (Richardson) Bartholomew Harrington, who married Otis Harrington in 1832 in Geauga Co, Ohio. (Hence the tax records from that county.) It appears that Otis Harrington got his first piece of land in Geauga Co in 1831, so now I am off to land records. I also went looking to see if, when Lake Co was set off from Geauga in 1840, if the family moved or was just "moved" by the change in the county lines.  It appears not - as by 1840 they had moved from Mentor Twp to Willoughby Twp further west. Between land records and tax records I will hopefully be able to pinpoint a year for that move.

Secondly, to use the probate of two siblings who died childless in 1883 and 1891 in Livingston Co, New York to identify the descendants of their other siblings. Jasper and Abigail Powell, brother and sister, never married. At their subsequent deaths, they each had wills that left their estate to some of the children of some their deceased siblings. Right now I am only looking at the original wills and codicils, plus the newspaper announcements listing the heirs, but it appears that perhaps at least one branch of the family was "missed." I'm trying to prove (to myself) that the first wife of Charles Sowersby of Allegany Co, New York, Linn Co, Kansas, and Wright Co, Missouri, was Rhoda Powell, daughter of Stephen Powell and Lodaecy Powell. Lodaecy was the daughter of Rowland Powell and Rhoda Richardson. Stephen Powell's first wife was Lodaecy's sister Rhoda. (What a tangled web we weave!)

However, looking for evidence of that branch led me to a website (http://www.kscourts.org/dstcts/6linnppq.htm) for probate records in Linn County, Kansas.  That lists records for Powell children after, it appears, the death of their mother and remarriage of their father. The website lists a phone number so it looks like I might be making a phone call to Kansas next week!

Other items I have crossed off my top do list: I sent six death certificate applications to the state of Pennsylvania last week. I know it will be awhile before those requests are fulfilled, but they include multiple lines of my mother's family. The problems above are only on Dad's side - trying to follow all those Richardson branches to the present day. I'm hoping that, like on the other lines, I might eventually get living descendants to contact me.

Also have been looking through a pension file from Fold3.com for Phebe Ann (Harrington) Richardson Hayes, who appears to have...not been completely honest with the federal government regarding her remarriage after the death of her first husband Orlando H. Richardson in the Civil War. It appears that both civil and criminal charges were brought against her and two of her witnesses. I have to reread through the whole file again and put it in chronological order, but it is a doozy!

Back to work! (Well, lunch first.)