Wednesday, February 3, 2016

My Day at the Family History Library - 2 February 2016

Tuesday was my day at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City ib this trip to the RootsTech 2016 Conference.

I tried to plan my search for the items on my to-do list.  After I straightened up the to-do list, I printed out a form for each task, and put them in the approximate order that I wanted to attack them.  There were 19 forms.  My expectation was that I would work on about ten of them.

Here is the first form:


 I took a photo of the microfilm box on top of the form so I could verify I had the right microfilm, and then took photos of the pages of interest on the film.  I also wrote down the number of pages for each target document.

The records that I managed to obtain included:

*  Ichabod Kirby (1710-1794) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.
*  Rebecca Kirby (1674-1773) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.
*  Richard Kirby (1633-1720) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.
*  Robert Kirby (1673-1757) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.
*  David Kirby (1760-1832) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.

*  Nathaniel Potter (1637-1704) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.

*  Benjamin Soule (1719-1803) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.
*  Jacob Soule (1687-1747) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.

*  Joseph Tripp (1633-1715) probate packet papers of Bristol County, Mass.

*  Amos Plimpton (1735-1808) probate court papers of Norfolk County, Mass.

*  Nathaniel Guild (1712-1796) probate court papers of Norfolk County, Mass.

*  Humphrey White (1758-1814) probate court papers of Glocester, R.I.

*  Sibel White (1764-1848) probate court papers of Glocester, R.I.

*  Humphrey White (1758-1814) deeds in Glocester, R.I.  There were 4 deeds copied.
*  Sibel White (1764-1848) deeds in Glocester, R.I.  There were 3 deeds copied.

*  Jonathan Oatley (1790-1872) and Amy Oatley (1798-1865) of Killingly, Conn.  I listed only the deed volumes and pages from the grantee and grantor indexes.

*  Ann Auble (1790-1860) death record in Sussex County, New Jersey vital records.

*  David Auble (1817-1894) and Sarah Auble (1818-????) deeds in Vigo County, Indiana.  There was only one deed between 1860 and 1800 which was copied.

For the probate court papers and deeds, I usually had to look through the probate dockets and grantee/grantor indexes, note the names and volume/page numbers, then find the right microfilm in the FHL Catalog for the specific deed.  This was a much slower procedure than the probate estate papers where I could find them in specific microfilms.

All in all, I worked from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., but there were several interruptions for conversations.  I made 157 photographs of the papers over the 7 hours of working on 12 tasks.  Many of these records will show up in my Amanuensis Monday and Treasure Chest Thursday posts, and will enrich my family tree database while adding to my knowledge of my ancestral families.

I still have lots to do on my research on these microfilms at the FHL.  I hope that some of the probate records in Massachusetts in Suffolk County come online in the near future so that I don';t have to use microfilm to find them.  Land and probate records in Rhode Island and Connecticut would be very helpful, as would land records in New Jersey, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Colorado.

I look forward to my visit to Salt Lake city next year for RootsTech 2017, and another crack at the records hiding on microfilm in the Family History Library.

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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

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4 comments:

Michigan Girl said...

Good work Randy.

Dana Leeds said...

Wow! That's a lot of success! And, it's nice to see how you actually plan & work at the library... I've not been (yet)!

Team Spice said...

Humphrey White (1758-1814) probate court papers of Glocester, R.I.

Did this solve our problem? So happy to see your list. Gold

Jan said...

Pretty impressive day at the library, I say. I like your worksheet approach to maintain focus at the library.

I'm familiar with Joseph Tripp as he's in my direct ancestral line. Hope to see him again in a future post.