An Unusual Source to Find a Deed

Timeline courtesy of INGenweb.org

What do you do when you've looked for a deed in all the usual places - county property appraisers office, FamilySearch.org or other online databases, and even probate files but you come up with nothing? I was fortunate to find deed records in an unlikely place and you just might find this useful.

I wanted to locate a deed record for my John Duer (1801-1885) because I was trying to discover which wife might be named on it.  John married Mary "Jane" Morrison (1804-1866) on 29 July 1827 in Trumbull County, Ohio.  The couple would go on to have 11 children together and relocate first to Killbuck, Holmes County, Ohio by 1840 and then to Liberty, Mercer County, Ohio by July 1860 when they are found together living two residences away from one of their married daughters, Maria Duer Kuhn. 

The census does not state if the residence was owned or rented.  The couple owned property both jointly and separately when in Holmes County.  I'm not exactly sure when they relocated but the last deed of sale I find for them in Holmes was 27 April 1854.  

I began to look in Mercer County, Ohio for deeds between 1853 (when they sold another piece of land in Holmes-I figured they may have relocated then but couldn't sell the other lot they owned until the following year) and 1864 when I knew John had remarried.  I tried all the usual places but came up with nothing. The property appraiser site found no John Duer.  The site doesn't say how far back the records go but one of the options for age of buildings is 1800.  I then looked for old deed books at the various online genealogy sites and found nothing for Mercer County, Ohio.  I even tried the Familysearch.org image search that I blogged about two weeks ago but came up with a big zero.

Sometime after July 1860 and before 11 December 1864 John and Jane split up and John remarried widow Margaret Ann Martz Searight.  They had a child together, Charles Edward, born in February 1866.

Since emigrating from Germany, Margaret lived first in Hardin County, Ohio but relocated to Adams County, Indiana, perhaps after her husband, George Washington Searight died 8 April 1863.  John and Margaret, after their marriage, lived together in Adams County, Indiana.

My next search was for property in Adams County, Indiana as I knew, from John's will made in August 1884, that he was leaving Margaret the property.  That meant she had not been a co-owner. He possibly bought the land prior to their wedding or for some other unknown reason, decided to buy land separately from his second wife as he had done in Hardin County, Ohio with his first wife.

His will states, in the case of Margaret predeceasing him, the property would go to some of his children (why he selected only 3 children in his will I do not understand.  He names the two children he had with Margaret and one of his children, Angeline, he had with Jane. Angeline had married and was living in Adams, Indiana.  What is odd is two of his sons, John B. and James William, were also living in Adams. Why he excluded them from his will I hypothesized in my last blog, Missing Tombstones.)

The Adams County, Indiana property assessor's office website is not very user friendly and I got lost in the clicking. I eventually found that "NEW! Electronic Records" were available but there is no link to where.  Trying to click on what appears to be a link stating "Adams County is now ready to electronically record all your documents through e-recording." also didn't work.  In small print, there is a note that the records are from 1990 to present.  Oh well!

I continued to click and thought maybe "History" would be helpful but it was just a few facts about the 12 townships in the county. Under "Residents," I decided to click on "Genealogy."  I was taken to INGenWeb for Adams County.  I was so excited to find a search box so I entered "Duer" and found 59 items.

At this point I had to decide, did I want to derail my search for a deed, which I figured wouldn't be placed here, or just get more info about the Duer's who had lived in Adams County.  I decided to stay focused but to do a new search for "John Duer" hoping that it would eliminate all of the other Duers except for John's son, John B., known to also be living in Adams.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the search results were for 53 items. 

What immediately caught my eye on the first page (10 items show per page) was "Estate of David Tressler2 - 1862.xls."  Who was David Tressler - certainly no one in my tree and how/why was John Duer associated with him?  Intriguing!

The image (above) was a timeline followed by scanned documents of David Tressler's estate from 1862.  Using the Find trick (hold down the Ctrl and F keys and type in the box) I quickly found that John made a deed to purchase Tressler's real estate on 8 September 1862.  Yippee!  So John had purchased the property IN HIS NAME ONLY prior to his marriage with Margaret which explains why she was not on the deed.  This also tells me that either he and Jane were having marital problems/separated/divorced by this time since Jane was also not a co-owner. 

After doing my happy dance, I went back to explore the remaining Duer findings on the site.  I was surprised to find another deed record - on 28 June 1860 John Duer purchased from Benjamin Shafer, the estate administrator for John Tressler.  Interestingly, this purchase was made ONE MONTH BEFORE the 1860 census records showing John in Mercer County, Ohio, which borders Adams, Indiana.  Jane's name was not on that deed, either.  It's likely the couple was already having problems with their marriage at that time.  The property description matches the property he left Margaret in his will.

So John Duer planned to relocate to the next county over even before he and Jane divorced.  (Yes, it would be wonderful to discover their divorce document but I have been unable to locate it in either county.)  

Of course, every find leads to more questions.  Now I want to know where and when John met Margaret.  Her first husband died supposedly at age 35 but I don't know where.  I checked to see if he had enlisted in the Civil War but did not find him.  I can't verify his date of death; he's not on Find-a-grave/Billion Graves.  The date is unverified and comes from online family trees.  He was last known alive in Dunkirk, Cessna, Hardin, Ohio in 1860. 

My guess is one of Margaret's sisters or step-sister was living in Adams and as a widow with a young daughter, Margaret moved to be closer to family.   I will have to search them to discover if that theory is correct.

It appears from plat records I also found on INGenWeb that Margaret owned 20 acres of her own land in 1880 in Adams, Indiana.  I don't know when that land was purchased - before her marriage to John or after.  More research is definitely needed. It's now clear where John met Margaret; they were property owners in the same neighborhood.

Moral of the blog….when you can't find what you are looking for check out the local genealogy sites.  Kudos to those at INGenweb.org as they have done a phenomenal job in preserving local records and uploading them for FREE.  I also love how they insert a timeline of the scanned original documents.  I am deeply appreciative of your efforts.

Missing Tombstones

Photo courtesy of Cousin Becky, Find-a-grave

Last week I wrote about my awesome find locating the deed for one of John and Jane Duer's children, Mary, in Mercer County, Ohio.  I mentioned that no one knows where John Duer was buried and that it is my guess he is buried next to his first wife, Jane.  

It is frustrating when we can't find a burial location so before I get into why I believe that is where his body lies, I want to take a moment to list reasons of why someone may not have a tombstone.

1.  Lack of Money - many families, especially if a breadwinner died in his/her prime, would have certainly been impacted by the loss of income.  If it is between feeding the children and memorializing the dead, it is understandable that the living become a priority over the tombstone. 

2.  Family Dissension - unfortunately, as we all know too well, families don't always get along.  In my own, I know of a brother and sister who lived only a few miles from one another but did not speak after the death of their mother due to a disagreement over the mother's care in a nursing home in her last year of life.  The sister had no other living relatives when she unexpectedly passed except her brother and a few step-siblings that lived far away from her.  The sister's friends reached out to the brother when she died, taking up a collection and paying for the cremation.  They wanted to know what to do with her ashes but the brother stated he didn't care.  The brother emailed me two months after his sister's death to inform me she had died.  He never told me about the ashes or the disagreement.  I sent my condolences via an online memorial site.  The friends saw my post and contacted me inquiring what I would like to do since I appeared to be the next closest relative to the brother.  I accepted the ashes.  I paid for the internment in the cemetery where the mother is buried as the friends stated that was the deceased's wish.  I did not pay for a stone as I believe that would be out of line while the brother is still alive. Perhaps I will have a small stone placed there someday. But what happens if the brother outlives me?  Then there will most likely never be a stone.  If a researcher ever checked with the cemetery, the records will clearly show that I requested the internment and where the location was.  I do not own the rights to the deceased's Find-a-grave or Billion Graves memorial so no information has been placed there.  Perhaps someday I will and then I will add the burial location.  Sadly, in the interim, no one seems to have been concerned where the cremains were interred.  

3.  There is NO Burial Site - Regarding cremains, the family may have scattered the ashes as requested by the deceased. Placing a tombstone in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico just isn't an option!

4.  Deceased Requests No Memorial - The family may be keeping with the wishes of the deceased who wants the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" to be literal.

5.Religious Preference - My example here is poor because I really don't know if this was the case with my husband's 4th great paternal grandfather, Wilson Williams (1754-1831).  He is buried next to his wife, Margaret Hicks Williams, in Christ Church Cemetery, Nassau New York.  She has a lovely stone.  He has zilch.  The family could afford a stone and there is no indication that there was family dissension.  Although his death location is not noted in the current church's records, it was recorded in an old work of cemetery transcriptions by Josephine C. Frost in 1913.  (Thank you, Josephine!)  In what appears to be empty space next to Margaret was once  "a common field stone marked W.W."  In a past blog, I wrote that Wilson was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church and a common burial practice was marking a grave with a field stone.  Over the years, the stone has been lost and for a time, so, too, was our knowledge of where Wilson was buried since the church cemetery records are no longer in the church at that site.  If not for the Frost transcription we would still be wondering.

6. The Missing - for those individuals that are no longer in touch with their family for any number of reasons, a falling out, an abduction, etc., the location of their burial is unknown so family cannot place a stone.  Some families do place a memorial to the deceased in a cemetery as evidenced by the many fallen soldiers interred overseas who have a memorial in their hometown.  

7. Avoid Remembering - deceased murderers often do not have a stone to ward off those who seek out the grave to disrespect it.  Being eternally unnamed and forgotten is a final punishment for heinous crimes committed.

8.  The Stone was Lost - tombstones sink, they fall over, they are vandalized or some idiot decides they would make great construction material and steals them.  My 4th great paternal grandfather, Thomas Duer's stone had toppled over in a rural Ohio cemetery that had become abandoned.  A local genealogy group righted the stone and moved it to be in line with the other stones but its present location is not exactly where he was buried.  

9.  The Burial Site Relocated -My husband's 2nd great maternal grandfather's child, Lincoln Mordecai Harbaugh's (1846-1847) was once interred in a cemetery adjacent to the family church in Waynesboro, Franklin, Pennsylvania.  The church sold the property long after he died and the family relocated to Indiana.  His remains are interred in a group burial site in Green Hill Cemetery after the new owners wanted to expand the building.  

10. Chaos Following an Emergency - In some parts of the world today, due to the pandemic, those who have died are being buried in mass graves.  This is not a new phenomena.  During an ongoing emergency the need to inter takes precedence over individual burials.  Whether the site will eventually be marked with a memorial may or may not occur.

Perhaps you can think of more reasons why tombstones might not be found. 

In the case of my John Duer (1801-1885), I can only point to examining further family dissension as the reason why he doesn't seem to have a stone.  At the time of John's death he had a second wife and 8 surviving children, 4 of whom were prosperous and have elaborate tombstones of their own (Maria, John B., Sarah Jane and James William).  John died in Jefferson Township, Adams County, Indiana where he was residing with wife Margaret Ann Martz Searight Duer.  He knew he was ill as he made a will in August 1884.  He did not name his prosperous children in the will or his daughter Mary Ann, possibly because they didn't need the money or perhaps, because he was not on speaking terms with them.  Children Angeline, Charles and Lucinda were all named to receive John's property, along with his wife.  I also know from the will that John requested "that my body be burried (sic) in a manner suitable with my condition in life." John wasn't well to do but he did own 80 acres that he farmed and had few debts at the time of his death.  A tombstone was not against his religious beliefs; he was raised Presbyterian as a child but there is no church membership found for him as an adult.  

Mary "Jane," his first wife who died after his second marriage and a few months after he had a son with his new wife, is buried in Kessler Cemetery, Chattanooga, Mercer, Ohio.  The cemetery records are not complete and do not state who or when her plot was purchased.  The family owns a plot next to her that is sunken and may contain the body of John.  Family tales state he is buried in Kessler.  His second wife is also buried in Kessler but not close to Jane.  There are tombstones on both sides of Margaret's gravesite so he is not buried next to her.  

No death certificate has been found for John, nor an obituary or church records that may shed light on where he was interred.

Perhaps John's older children did not think he needed a marker as his name is on Jane's stone.  It would have been awkward putting a stone next to Jane's that said "John Duer, husband of Margaret."  Perhaps the children decided to ignore the situation and leave his plot unmarked.  Since Jane died AFTER John's remarriage, her stone's inscription of "Wife of John Duer" holds a clue.  Perhaps she didn't remarry as she believed that one only marries once.  Maybe she had no preference but her surviving children had the stone engraved as a way to voice their unacceptance of the second marriage.  

The only way I'll ever know if someone is buried next to Jane is if ground penetrating radar is used and I'm not planning on doing that.  Even if someone was found to be buried there I wouldn't know for sure it was John unless the body was exhumed.  So, I'll have to leave this Duer mystery unsolved for now.  Sigh.

A Unique Genealogical Find on Christmas Night

I absolutely adore those unexpected finds, don't you?!  During my two week hiatus I decided I'd try to solve a John Duer (1801-1885) mystery.  I wasn't able to do that yet but I have made some tremendous progress and want to share how I came to put the pieces together to answer my question - Why is it written on Mary Jane Morrison Duer's 1866 tombstone "Wife of John Duer" when John was married to Margaret Ann Martz Searight Duer at the time of Jane's death? I have never found a marriage record for the 2nd marriage nor have I found a divorce record for the first wife.  Was there more than one John Duer? (Yes, there are many!) Was John polygamous?  (Could be but I haven't found that in the Duer line.  They were Quakers, Presbyterians and then Independent Christians.) 

John and Jane are my paternal third great grandparents.  No one ever mentioned them but in all fairness, I was not close to my father's side of the family so I never got much family information about anyone. Duer cousins I have connected with have no information, either.

I love researching the Duers for several reasons - 1.  They are complex in that they reuse the same names every  generation - John, William, Thomas, and they all have large families so separating who is who is a wonderful mind puzzle.  2.  Records are scarce - they don't leave many records and they just disappear in thin air.  3.  Somehow, every time I go back to working on those lines a strange event occurs to help me find the information.  That kind of happened again Christmas night which I think was the most perfect gift I received.

The week before Christmas I re-analyzed all the information I had on the family and began to sort out some anomalies.  I discovered that a Find-A-Grave memorial for a John Fred Duer is in error.  I've written to my distant cousin to have it corrected.  The mistake was in plain site on the page and I'm embarrassed I didn't catch it years ago.  The memorial shows that the man was 102-3 when he died - possible but unlikely.  Looking at the individual who requested the tombstone, I realized that two Johns - John Fred and John B. had been merged.  The birthdate for John B. was entered with the death date for John Fred.  The tombstone does not provide a birth date.  

John B. was John and Jane's son; John Fred[eric] was the son of Charles Edward and Almeda Buckmaster Duer.  Charles Edward was the son of John and 2nd wife Margaret Martz Duer.  John Fred's mother had requested the military tombstone for her son who had served in World War 1.  John B. was dead before World War 1 and too old to serve.

I can understand how the mistake happened - most of John and Jane's children are buried in Kessler Cemetery, Mercer, Ohio.  John B., however, is not - he is buried in Backestro Cemetery, Adams, Indiana.  John and Margaret lived in Adams, Indiana so you would think they would be buried there but Margaret, Charles Edward and John Fred are buried in Kessler.  No one knows where John, husband of Jane and Margaret, was buried.  My guess is Kessler in an unmarked grave.  I've checked with those who oversee the cemetery and there is a depression next to Jane's grave that was possibly an interment.  My guess is that the family didn't pay for a tombstone.  More on that in another blog sometime.

My working theory is that some of John and Jane's children were not wild about  his second marriage to Margaret.  Hence, they would put the "wife of John" on Jane's tombstone to validate their mother's marriage to their father.  I wanted to narrow down the time period of when the couple split and try to determine how John met Margaret since she was in the next state.  I'll write more about that another time, too.

My thought was to check out, in detail, all of the players - meaning looking more closely at all of the children of the two couples and their spouses.  I used Excel to list all of them, the date and the place where I had a record they could be found.  I realized there was a lot I did not know.  I'll be writing in the next few weeks about some of the interesting and sad finds I made but for now, back to the Christmas night find.

I was using FamilySearch.org image feature which I highly recommend.  If you haven't used it you must because almost all of the wonderful information I have compiled lately on this family is from this unindexed, convoluted place.  You must try it! Images do not mean pictures as in photos. Images mean they are a picture of a document.  They look just like the other microfilmed documents that are indexed on the site.  The images are not always orderly, meaning you might find a death record next to a marriage consent.  You must take it slow, examine closely and click away.

To use images, sign into Familysearch.org, on the ribbon click "Search" and the "Images." Under "Place" type whatever area you are researching.  In this case, I was looking for a deed record for Mercer County, Ohio because John and Jane were last found together there in July 1860 in the US Federal Census.  I entered in Place "United States, Ohio, Mercer" and clicked Search Image Groups. When I try to duplicate that search today, however, it will only let me enter Ohio, United States.  Don't know why it's been changed but no worries!  On the left hand side of the screen "Places Within" is a drop down so I will scroll to Mercer [County]. There are 321 record types to look at - woo hoo, that's a lot of info that may or may not be relevant.  

The 1860 US federal census showed John and Jane living two residences away from their married daughter, Maria Duer Kuhn, in Liberty Township, Mercer, Ohio. Liberty Township should have been where I was looking for a record of the deed for the property but I didn't find that township specifically.  (I first tried the Mercer County, Ohio property appraiser site and did not find the record there).  With the options limited, I clicked on FamilySearch.org on Celina, Land Record 1834-2003, etc.  I was thinking that Celina was the county seat and that's where the deed may have been recorded. 

Remember, these images are not indexed so I decided I would open the page to as full a view as possible (meaning I clicked the > on the right hand side and was just mindlessly clicking image after image zeroing in on the years 1850 (when I last knew the family was in Killbuck, Holmes, Ohio based on the census and 1866 when John and Margaret had their first child together and Jane died. Sometime in those 16 years perhaps there was a deed in Mercer and I wanted to know which wife was on it.) Turns out that wasn't correct but that's another story...

It was a very good practice that I had first become familiar with children and their spouses.  After just a few minutes, on image 130 of 1112, I discovered the record at the top of the page.  Look at the second from last entry above for Grantees Ceraldo, John F. & Mary Ceraldo.    

John and Jane's daughter, Mary Ann, has been elusive and here I found a deed record for her and her husband in 1887.  I about jumped out of my chair!  

All I knew of Mary was that she had married twice, to a James Furman in July 1875 and to John L. Ceraldo in April 1879, both in Mercer County, Indiana.  I can't find her in the 1860 or 1900 census. There is a child, Daniel, listed with the couple in 1870 US federal census, however, it must be from a previous relationship of John's.  That is the only record for the child I could find. No marriage record for a possible first wife.  No burial records.  Nada!

John Ceraldo was a naturalized citizen having been born in Mexico and serving in the cavalry for the Union during the Civil War.  He could not read nor write so his name is spelled in multiple ways in the few records found.  The couple eventually ended up in Michigan where Mary died in 1909.  Sadly, John, the informant, knew John Duer was Mary's father but did not mention Jane as her mother.  The mother space is recorded as Unknown.  Jane, having died in 1866, probably never met John but why didn't Mary ever talk about her?  This seemed to be a pattern with the younger children of John and Jane as James William and Angeline's death certificates list an incorrect first name or record unknown.  More Duer mysteries!  Why was Jane forgotten by her youngest children?

What was so awesome about this find was that I wasn't looking for it.  I also was able to place the couple in Ohio as they had not yet relocated to Michigan. The gap between 1880 and 1900 is large so any find in that period is just wonderful.  I also discovered they continued living in Jefferson Township, since at least 1870, and not Liberty Township where siblings had settled.  

I don't know the relationship of Daniel Webster, also listed as a Grantee, is to the couple.  That's another clue I have to pursue.  

I'm looking forward to more Duer finds this year.  Since my top 10 blogs from 2020 showed that my readers love the unexpected, I thought you might enjoy the following article in the Washington Post (3 Jan 2021) Near the End of life, my hospice patient had a ghostly visitor who altered his view of the world, by Scott Janssen, originally published in Pulse - Voices From the Heart of Medicine.  If only John or Jane would give me a visit!

With Heavy Heart, Comparing Ancestor Patriots to Those Who Stormed the Capitol

Today's blog contains a lot of images that Blogger was having difficulty showing.  Please read With Heavy Heart, Comparing Ancestor Patriots to Those Who Stormed the Capitol on my website, genealogyatheart.com.  Thank you.

Top Genealogy At Heart Posts from 2020

Welcome back to another year of Genealogy at Heart.  Here's hoping your holidays were quiet, safe and delightful!

I'm longing for the comfort of ritual traditions that were discarded last year due to all the chaos.  In keeping with how I have started every past January blog, here's my review of the top 10 Genealogy at Heart posts for 2020:

That Creepy House in Your Neighborhood 4 Oct  

More Tech Safety Suggestions 12 Sep 

A Strange Way to Select a Genealogy Research Project 11 Oct 

Evernote Info to Keep Your Info Safe 5 Sep 

Time Sensitive – Saving Your Ancestry.com Messages  29 Aug

DNA Ethnicity Surprises 20 Sep 

Your Family and the Neighbors 27 Sep 

US Census:  An Interactive Timeline 2 May 

Free Sites for Genealogy in April and Onward 11 Apr 

Stuck on Where to Find Family Records – Try This Underused Resource 16 Feb 

What's odd is that there was only one article that made the top 10 that was B.C. (Before Covid). Maybe you were all too busy in the first three months of the year to read my blog?!  

I'm not surprised by the others listed as I know, dear reader, you are interested in stretching your cash as genealogy can get expensive.  You also want to keep your hard work safe so you care about tech safety.  Keeping up with trends, such as DNA, and realizing the importance of seeking out new records in out of the way places and then analyzing closely what was discovered is something you value.  

I do think it's hilarious that two of my more other worldly posts are in the top 3. Next week, I'll be writing about a weird find I made Christmas night.  See you next week...