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Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Finding David Auble's Land Records in Sussex County, New Jersey

At the Chula Vista Genealogical Society Research Group meeting today, I sang the praises of using the FamlySearch Catalog to find digital microfilm of  vital, church, land, tax, probate, etc. records.

I promised to demonstrate the process in a blog post so that other society members (and all Genea-Musings readers) could benefit by the example.  Here is my example:

1)  I wanted to find the land records for my 2nd great-grandfather David Auble in Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey.  I knew he lived there for a short time after his marriage to Sarah G. Knapp in 1844, and I hoped to find more Auble or Knapp land records.

2)  In the FamilySearch Catalog (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/search), I searched for Sussex County, New Jersey:


After I typed "sussex" in the field above, I got a list of possible standard names - I chose "United States, New Jersey, Sussex" and clicked the "Search" button.

3)  On the list of Sussex County, New Jersey record types, I clicked on the Land and property" link to see the collections available:


The "Deeds, 1785-1901; index, 1785-1930 (Sussex County, New Jersey)" collection is the one I want.

4)  I clicked on the link for that collection, and saw the description of the collection:


And further down, the list of "Books" available:


This list also has the actual Deed volumes further down the list.

5)  For deeds, I want to look in both the Grantor and Grantee Indexes, so I clicked the "Grantor index, A-C, 1785-1930" link to see the index for Auble.

The Grantor and Grantee Indexes are alphabetical. In this case, with the AU names on a page after the AT names, but the surnames are mixed on a page - the page below has all of the AU entries:


On the left-hand page of the image above, I can see that there is a listing for David Auble.  The information available is:

*  Year:  1846
*  Grantor:  David Auble et ux
*  Grantee David L. Foster
*  Volume:  E4
*  Page:  333

I wrote that down on a piece of paper.  If I have many of them from the indexes, I use a Microsoft Word table so that I can order them by Volume number when I search for the records.

6)  I went back to the list of "Books" and looked for Volume E4.  There are two volumes on the set of digital microfilm - Volumes D4 and E4. 

I clicked on the link for Volumes D4 and E4, and found page 333 of Volume E4 on image 564 of 718:

The deed is on pages 333 and 334 (on the next image).

7)  My next step was to download the images using the "Download" button in the upper right-hand corner between the "Print" and "Tools" button.

I did that, and the images downloaded to my computer's "Download" folder with file names like "record-image_3Q9....jpg"

After the images downloaded, I clicked on them and changed the names of the images to, e.g.:

"DavidAuble-1846-Deed-SussexCoNJ-VolE4-pg333-toDavidFoster-image564of718"

I then moved the downloaded files from my "Download" folder to my file folder for the David Auble family.

Next, I entered the event into RootsMagic using the "Deed" event, the date it was executed, the location, and a short description of the transaction.  Then I wrote a source citation for the deed event.

In the near future, I will abstract the deed, transcribe the deed, and write an Amanuensis Monday blog post about it.  I will also try to find the location of the land on a map.

8)  There were several more Auble and Knapp deeds in the Sussex County Land Records, and I have found, downloaded, renamed, relocated, and sourced them also.  

9)  I hope this helps my colleagues and readers find land records for their ancestral families.  There often are surprises in these records that can help prove relationships and residence locations.

10)  I told my CVGS colleagues that FamilySearch digital microfilm is their new very best friend online - they all need to learn how to find records for their ancestral families using these FREE resources.  It's not hard to do - a researcher needs to be logical, adventurous, willing to learn this skill, and then apply it and they may have plenty of records to work with.

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Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver

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4 comments:

  1. I absolutely love doing these kinds of searches Randy. If you recall, I recently located a probate record in much the same way. Such fun. Hope all your readers will join us doing these searches.

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  2. Hi Randy

    As always great tips on how to find out more about our ancestors.

    I signed into FamilySearch and tried to replicate this for my mother's Steever family in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania and got "no matching results". I then tried the Sussex County, New Jersey and no matching results.

    Does this have to be done from a Family History Center Library computer?

    Thanks,
    Bill Greggs

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  3. Hi Randy
    Thanks for posting about the Sussex Co land records. I have a Doty connection and visited their Courthouse a few years ago. I did find the deeds I wanted but couldn't lift the deed books to carry them to an old printer. So I made notes but this morning I downloaded the deeds in less than 20 minutes. Thank you!
    Barb DiMunno

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  4. Thank you, Randy! I never knew this was possible. What an amazing resource!

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