Bureau of Land Management

This past week I received 2 CD's in the mail. Now when you order BLM (Bureau of Land Management) Records you have a choice: 1) Receive the information in paper form or 2) Receive the information on a CD. The National Archives who has the BLM records charges $40.00 per order no matter how many pages there are in the record. The 2 records I ordered are as follows

1. Richard Teed Huyck purchasing land in Ohio. His file was for a cash purchase of 80 acres of land and the record only had 4 pages. This is the smallest I have yet to see. It just Lists his intention, his receipt and the front and back of the folder it was in. Not much for $40.00.
2. Erland Christofferson, my emergent  2great grandfather, purchasing land in North Dakota. His file was for a Timber Culture for 160 acres. In the file there were pages telling how many acres he plowed, how many acres he planted in trees and what kind of trees. Also it contained information about his citizenship and when he came over. I had always assume (I know never assume anything, but you have to start somewhere) that he came through a US port, but he did not he came through Quebec Canada. I never really worried about his ship passenger record to much since I had enough information to find him and his family in Norway, but now I Know where to look for this elusive record. Quite a bit for $40.00.

As I said you never know what you will find in BLM Records.

It's been awhile since I last blogged, but I have had some Health problems and then kept putting off writing on my blog, because of the time that had has past. It just is hard to go back to something after you've been away awhile.

Well, I did get Reuben Miner's land records and have since transcribed them. There wasn't anything about his parents, but I did find out that he was able to finish khis homestead paper work in about 2 and one half years. i think that might of been because he had a disability discharge from the military. He had lost his leg while serving in South Dakota during the Civil War. He was out hunting for food the his unit and the gun went off while lhe was taking it out of it's holster and shot his leg. It was bad enough for him to lose his leg.

Reuben Miner Land Records

Well I took the plunge and ordered Reuben Miner's land entry case file. I had located the deed papers on the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) site and it diected me to the National Archives site. If I understand right, I should get Reuben's application records and the records that tell what he did to improve the land. It's a leap of faith that will take up to 2 months to see what happens. If they find the records then it will cost $40.00, if they don't find anything the search is free. As I was looking at the form I couldn't tell exactly what was going to be included in the search. There was a place to put extra information. I put down that I wanted the land entry records, that I already had the deed from the BLM website. We'll see if I understood the information right.

Land Records

I've been reading about ways to go around brickwalls in genealogy research. One of the suggestions is to use Land Records. So, I got on the BLM (Bureau of Land management) and looked up Reuben F Miner, my 2ggreat-grandfather. Although I have alot of records on him and his children, I have very little on his father. I figured I would just start on Reuben and maybe get a better understanding of him. I found the listing of the deed in 1876 and can even get a copy of the original deed, but I'm not sure how to find the additional records I've read about. I would like to find out what happened to the land, since in 1880 he was living in another state and in 1883 he was back in Wisconsin, and endless he was logging on it, he was some where else. in Wisconsin. His wife Mary Lucy Starkey Miner, supposedly died a few months after giving birth and they were staying at a logging camp at the time of her death.

I guess I'll have to do some studying about land records and deeds before I can really use them. I have some other people I'm researching, that it might help useing land records, but I need to learn how to use the ones I can find easily first. Since I live in Arkansas and all my research is in the Northern states I rely on the Internet and films alot. I can't just go down to the court house and look the records up. Although I would like to do some research like that some day.