Thursday, February 7, 2013

Entering Deed Information into RootsMagic 6

After abstracting the land records for my 4th-great-grandfather James Vaux (1787-1839), and my 3rd great-grandfather, Samuel Vaux (1816-1880), I wanted to enter the Events into my RootsMagic database, source them, create a Sentence for the Fact and add Media for the deeds.

I listed the abstracts for James Vaux's deeds in Putting the Land Records Together for James Vaux (1787-1839), including finding a useful plat map.  So I will work with the Erie county deeds that I have for Samuel Vaux; here are the abstracts:

*  On 29 March 1845, Samuel Vaux of Aurora, Erie County, New York bought land in Erie county from Seth Sprague for $795.  The land was in the southwest corner of Lot 22 and comprised 53 acres, known as the Sprague farm.  The plot was bounded  North by lands heretofore owned by Lawrence Woodruff, West by the highway, South by the highway, and East by lands owned by Hezekiah Mosher.  The deed was recorded in Erie county on 10 April 1845 (Erie County Deeds, Liber 78, Page 396).


*  On 25 July 1853, Samuel Vaux and Mary Ann, his wife, of the town of Aurora sold land in Aurora township, Erie County, New York to Robert Bartlett of the town of Sullivan, New York for $1,500.  The land comprised 53 acres, and was in the southwest corner of Lot 22, called the Sprague farm.  The land was bounded on the North by land owned by Gordon Pierson, West by the highway, South by the highway, and East by lands owned by Hezekiah Mosher.  The deed was recorded in Erie County on 1 September 1855 (Erie County Deeds, Liber 142, Page 21).

The location of the land in the southwest corner of Lot 22 is shown in a snippet of the 1866 Aurora plat map below:



I had previously created a Deed Fact in RootsMagic, but had not created a sentence to describe the information for the Deed Fact.  After some experimentation, I created a sentence for my Deed Fact of the form:

<[Date]>, <[person]> <[Desc],> < [PlaceDetails],> <[Place]>.

For the first abstract above, I added this information for the Deed Fact:

Date:  29 Mar 1845
Place:  Aurora, Erie, New York, United States
Place details: [blank]
Description:  of Aurora, N.Y. bought 53 acres in the southwest portion of Lot 22 from Seth Sprague

The resulting Fact sentence looks like this:

On 29 March 1845, Samuel Vaux of Aurora, N.Y. bought 53 acres in the southwest portion of Lot 22 from Seth Sprague, in Aurora, Erie, New York, United States.

I could have added as a Place detail of the northeast corner of Center Street and Hubbard Road and it would read:

On 29 March 1845, Samuel Vaux of Aurora, N.Y. bought 53 acres in the southwest portion of Lot 22 from Seth Sprague, at the northeast corner of Center Street and Hubbard Road, in Aurora, Erie, New York, United States.

I think that there is merit to knowing where the land was located on current maps.

I copy/pasted the Deed abstract above into a Fact Note for the Deed Fact.

Now a Source, using the "digital archives" source template (based on Evidence! Explained models) in RootsMagic 6:

"New York, Land Records, 1630-1975," Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 2 February 2013), court clerk transcription, "Erie County, New York Deeds, 1844-1850, Volumes 78-79," Volume 78, Page 396, Samuel Vaux deed in Aurora, N.Y. from Seth Sprague (Lot 22).

And then the Media.  I uploaded the Deed image and the map snippet image (above) and Tagged them to Samuel Vaux and the Deed Fact, as shown below:



Here is the Edit Person screen in RootsMagic 6 for Samuel Vaux with the Deed Fact highlighted:


  You can see the fields for the Deed Fact entry on the right side of the page, and the Sentence describing the Fact in the lower right-hand corner of the screen..

Now I will do the same tasks for James Vaux and Amos Underhill, whose deeds I've also found, captured, abstracted and sourced from Erie County, New York.

The tasks above take significant time to perform satisfactorily, and I recommend doing them soon after the records are found and captured.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/02/entering-deed-information-into.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

2 comments:

BBurton said...

How did you make your deed fact/ source?

Travis LeMaster said...

Thank you for the idea on the Deed fact for RM, I've incorporated it in my database.