Covers all of the United States.
Genealogy of the descendants of John Walker of Wigton, Scotland, with records of a few allied families : also war records and some fragmentary notes pertaining to the history of Virginia, 1600-1902
This article helps you access the Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrants for free. Following two simple steps, one to search, and the other to browse the actual microfilms, you can quickly find your ancestors Revolutionary War pension record, or Bounty-Land record and download the images. During 1800-1900 the United States issued more than 80,000 pensions and bounty-land-warrants to soldiers of the Revolutionary War, their spouse, or their children. Was your ancestor one of them?
Use this page as a quick link to all of the United State Census images available at FamilySearch.
Edmund Ingalls, son of Robert, was born about 1598 in Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, England. He immigrated in 1628 to Salem, Massachusetts and with his brother, Francis, founded Lynn, Massachusetts in 1629. He married Ann, fathered nine children, and died in 1648.
3,907 land management tract books containing official records of the land status and transactions involving surveyed public lands arranged by state and then by township and range. These books indicate who obtained the land, and include a physical description of the tract and where the land is located. The type of transaction is also recorded such as cash entry, credit entry, homesteads, patents (deeds) granted by the Federal Government, and other conveyances of title such as Indian allotments, internal improvement grants (to states), military bounty land warrants, private land claims, railroad grants, school grants, and swamp grants. Additional items of information included in the tract books are as follows: number of acres, date of sale, purchase price, land office, entry number, final Certificate of Purchase number, and notes on relinquishments and conversions.
Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.
Ancestry has placed 1266 historical newspaper’s in it’s collection covering a wide range of years. To make it easier to understand what is available, we have broken these down into states, and then alphabetically by name of the newspaper. The description contains the year(s) available for the newspaper, the number of issues is unknown. The newspapers can be browsed or searched using a computer-generated index. The accuracy of the index varies according to the quality of the original images. The images for each newspaper can be browsed sequentially, or via links to specific images, which may be obtained through the search results. Over time, the name of a newspaper may have changed and the time span it covered may not always be consistent. The date range represented in this database is not necessarily the complete published set available. Check the local library or historical society in the area in which your ancestors lived for more information about other available newspapers.
These township plat maps began with the Public Lands Survey in the United States initiated by the Land Ordinance Act of 1785, and this collection includes maps for all or parts of Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. Maps were prepared from survey field notes taken by deputy surveyors and can include physical details and man-made improvements. They also indicate township and section lines, section numbers, acreage of holdings, and sometimes names of landholders.
The following is a list of medical terms and diseases that will appear on historic documents. Feel free to print out and share this! Abdominal typhus – A type of typhus fever characterized by bluish spots appearing on the abdomen a few days after the disease is contracted. Ablepsia – Blindness. Abluent – A substance which thins, purifies, or sweetens the blood. Ablution – Washing the body externally or internally with diluting fluids. Abracadabra – A cabalistic word, used as a charm, and believed to have the power to cure illness and disease when written in a triangular arrangement and … Read more
Small Town Papers gives you free access to the people, places and events recorded in real time over the decades or even centuries! Browse and search the scanned newspaper archive from 1846 up to the current edition! Their archives contain millions of names of ancestors not found anywhere else. Enhance your Ancestry research with their high resolution scanned newspaper archive. Find distant relatives and discover your ethnic heritage by reading the articles about family and friends written back in the day.
INS did not create ship passenger lists. The forms were completed by steamship companies, who then submitted the forms to the government. In some cases immigration officials annotated the lists to clarify or correct information. In other cases immigration officials later added information to the records as a cross-reference to certain naturalization papers.
There were few federal laws governing immigration into the United States prior to the late 19th century, and those tended to address immigration from Europe or Asia. The Steerage Act of 1819 regulated passenger travel and mandated the creation of records documenting the arrival of immigrants at seaports. Some passenger vessels arriving at United States ports sailed from Central or South America, but the majority of passenger vessels and passengers came from Europe. Not until 1891 did federal law provide for the inspection of immigrants arriving at land border ports. Nevertheless, the Immigration Act of 1891 maintained Congress’ focus on … Read more
The year following his failure to secure the contract, Houston spent writing letters defending his acts and denouncing the officials who had been discharged. In addition to the Indian officials, he poured his wrath and denunciation on Colonel Hugh Love, a trader on the Verdigris whom Houston accused of being in league with the Indian Agent to rob the Creeks; Love replied to Houston with some spirited charges against the latter. Stung by the contents of an article appearing in a Nashville paper, in a burst of passion Houston gave to the press of Nashville a most intemperate letter, July 13, 1831, beginning:
In February, 1828, the vanguard of Creek immigrants arrived at the Creek Agency on the Verdigris, in charge of Colonel Brearley, and they and the following members of the McIntosh party were located on a section of land that the Government promised in the treaty of 1826 to purchase for them. By the treaty of May 6, 1828, the Government assigned the Cherokee a great tract of land, to which they at once began to remove from their homes in Arkansas. The movement had been under way for some months when there appeared among the Indians the remarkable figure of Samuel Houston. The biographers of Houston have told the world next to nothing of his sojourn of three or four years in the Indian country, an interesting period when he was changing the entire course of his life and preparing for the part he was to play in the drama of Texas.
Trailing through broad and verdant valleys, they went, their progress often arrested by hundreds of acres of plum trees bending to the ground with tempting fruit; crossing oak ridges where the ground was covered with loaded grapevines, through suffocating creek-bottom thickets, undergrowth of vines and briars, laboring up rocky hillsides and laboring down again, the horses picking their way through impeding rocks and boulders, until on the twenty-ninth of the month, two hundred miles from Fort Gibson, General Leavenworth and his staff reached Captain Dean’s camp, a mile or two from the Washita, where there were quartered two companies of … Read more
A glossary of terms associated with researching border crossings to and from Mexico.
Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 comprises thirty-one volumes which contain accurate reprints of rare manuscripts. They were carefully chosen from the mass of material descriptive of travels in the North American interior which this century of continental expansion (1748-1846) provided, and no manuscript has been included unless it possessed permanent historical value. The result is a series which the casual reader will find interesting, and the historian, teacher and scholar, will find invaluable, as it makes available sources of information without which the development of the West, its history and its people cannot be fully understood. The editor has provided numerous footnotes and an introduction to each volume which contains a biographical sketch of the author, an evaluation of the book reprinted and bibliographical data concerning it. The closing volumes are devoted to a complete and exhaustive analytical index to the entire series.
Tobacco has been one of the most important gifts from the New World to the Old. In spite of the attempts of various authors to prove its Old World origin there can be no doubt that it was introduced into both Europe and Africa from America. Most species of Nicotiana are native to the New World, and there are only a few species which are undoubtedly extra- American. The custom of smoking is also characteristic of America. It was thoroughly established throughout eastern North and South America at the time of the discovery; and the early explorers, from Columbus on, speak of it as a strange and novel practice which they often find it hard to describe. It played an important part in many religious ceremonies, and the beliefs and observances connected with it are in themselves proof of its antiquity. Hundreds of pipes have been found in the pre-Columbian mounds and village sites of the eastern United States and, although these remains cannot be dated, some of them must be of considerable age. In the southwestern United States the Basket Makers, an ancient people whose remains are found below those of the prehistoric Cliff Dwellers, were smoking pipes at a time which could not have been much later than the beginning of our era.
Throughout the Southeastern United States can be found “old families” in rural areas whose appearance is not quite the same as the European or African peoples who colonized the region, but also not what a person with substantial indigenous ancestry looks like either. In earlier times they might have called themselves Cajun, Black Irish, Redbone, Black Dutch, Portughee, Old Spanish, Melungeon or Part Injun. In more recent years they are likely to say that their great-grandmother was a full blooded Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Catawba, Shawnee or Blackfoot. She may have been, but that is not always the case. Many … Read more
A Native American’s look at Brant Kennedy’s Melungeon DNA study by Richard Thornton, part of his series of articles on the early Appalachian colonists.