Lancaster County Online Deeds, Books I-M
The next Lancaster County, PA Online Deeds Indexes Book, covering deed books I through M, is going through its last review. Hoping to have it available for purchase very soon.
Why America Adopted Race-Based Slavery
The birth of race-based slavery in America from an excerpt of Peter Wood’s Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America.
A Quick Status Update
Editing and formatting. Formatting and editing. Hard at work on the next Lancaster County, Pennsylvania online deeds index. Coming soon.
Now in Paperback
An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Books A-D, 1729-1760 is now available as a paperback book. You can purchase it on Lulu.com for $14.95.
Coming Soon in Print
An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds
I’ve been working on a print version of my An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Books A-D, 1729-1760. The proofing for the print format is almost complete. I want to review it one last time in hard copy, then it should be available for purchase through Lulu.com and eventually Amazon and other book sellers.
The book includes indexes arranged by both grantor and grantee, the location of the land or type of deed (i.e. mortgage), and, if provided, the name of the spouse. It also includes both the deed book page number and the online film image number for easy access to the appropriate online image file. It will be sized 8.5″ x 11″ for easy skimming.
Stay tuned for the announcement.
An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Books A-D, 1729-1760 is now available as a paperback book. You can purchase it on Lulu.com for $14.95.
Book Review: Our Daily Bread Gaining Insight into German Village Life
I’ve been working on “A Hacker-Hocker Family” recently and decided I needed to add flavor to the narrative. I wanted to provide some social and historical context to help bring my ancestors to life as real people.
Since most of my ancestors were German and continued their customs and traditions, bringing their way of life to the New World when they immigrated, I needed to understand life in a German village. Unfortunately, while there are scads of information about historical events and personages, I wasn’t able to find much on the day-to-day lives of the common people—people like my ancestors.
Until, that is, I found Teva Scheer’s book Our Daily Bread: German Village Life, 1500-1850 (affiliate link). The author created a fictitious village called Hochfeld am Neckar in southwestern Germany and tells the story of village life through the events in the life of her main character, Johann Adam Mann, his family, ancestors, and neighbors.
The book sets the groundwork in the first three chapters, covering peasant status, religion, and war. It, then, expands to cover family, “the daily aspects of villagers’ lives: their families, livelihoods, inheritance customs, self-governance practices, and village institutions such as the school.”1 And finally, the author wrote about the immigration experience, both leaving Germany and settling in America.
Although as the author claims, “this is not an academic work,” she does provide extensive footnotes throughout the content and a bibliography at the end. While most of the events she wrote about occur in the 1800s, they are still applicable to earlier generations. Nor does she ignore earlier historical events that shaped the villagers lives—the Reformation, the 30 Years War.
The book was both informative and easy-to-read. I bought the Kindle ebook, but it is available in paperback, as well. I would recommend it to any genealogist with German ancestors.
Buy Our Daily Bread: German Village Life, 1500-1850
This is an affiliate link. If you purchase the book by clicking this link, Amazon will pay me a little money. It won’t affect the price you pay.
Announcing An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds
Books A through D, Covering 1729-1760
An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Books A-D, 1729-1760 is now available as a paperback book as well as a Kindle ebook. You can purchase it on Lulu.com for $14.95.
My latest endeavor—An Index to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Online Deeds, Book A-D, 1729-1760— has gone live at Amazon as a Kindle book. It’s creation was fraught with indecision and frustration as I tried to figure out the best way to take the information from spreadsheet to the limited format of the Kindle ebook.
I once read somewhere that the majority of Americans have ancestors who lived or passed through Lancaster County at some point. That’s certainly true for my family—nearly my entire paternal line lived in Lancaster County after immigrating to America. This book indexes the buyers and sellers of land in the earliest days after the county’s formation in 1729.
Land was wealth to our ancestors. And deeds, which record the transfer of land between people, are an excellent place to learn about them. Not only will a deed place a person in a specific place at a specific time, but it can also teach us about the relationships between people—not only the buyer and seller, but sometimes the previous owners, as well. Deeds also name spouses, occupations and neighbors. In the case of estate settlements, deeds can even provide the make-up of a family by naming the heirs—most often children, but sometimes cousins, grandchildren, etc.—and their spouses. Tracing the ownership of a piece of land through multiple deeds can often provide data on multiple generations of a family.
This books indexes the online images of Lancaster County deeds found at the county’s Recorder of Deeds website. Although deeds are available online for the years 1729 through 1986, only those after 1981 are searchable.
Each listing in my book provides the following:
• Grantor (name of each individual)
• Grantee (name of each individual)
• Book
• Volume (as required)
• Page number
• Image number
• Date of deed
• Date recorded
• Property location or type of deed (e.g., quitclaim, mortgage, etc.)
There is only a loose correlation between the page and the actual film frame number, so I’ve provided both the page and image number for each entry to provide direct access to the correct online page. Instruction for using the online efilm reader are included in the book and can also be found here on my website.