WHERE DID MY ANCESTOR LIVE? Flowcharting: another way to discover where your ancestor lived

Why was it important to know? Once I knew where he lived, I could do more in depth research to: discover clues about other surnames to search for (i.e., neighbors) Discover clues about the culture and customs of that area Discover possible reasons why MY ancestor ultimately left the area

How should I go about doing this? FIRST, I conducted a fairly exhaustive research of the area using the following groups of resources to locate deeds/patents/grants that were part of the original 5200A land grant of 15 Sep 1657 to Gervase Dodson, and found the following resources: Virginia land office patents (24) Virginia Northern neck grants (14) Stafford County Virginia Deed Book entries (The Antient Press) (16) A total of 54 entries

what should I do with the entries from these documents? SECOND, I transcribed all 54 entries into a Word document: I chose not to abstract them, so that I would have the full text of the original document to work with if I needed it in the future and to harvest any clues that might be “lurking” in the documents. I could also use Word’s powerful search capabilities to find anything specific that might be helpful as well.

My initial experience with flowcharting software? I knew what I needed was flowcharting logic I had explored some flowcharting products on the market earlier I quickly discovered that it took a lot of effort to get the Configuration I needed & to maintain the supporting documentation

Why did I switch to tmg for my genealogy flow charts? I realized that all the logic I needed was built into its descendant box chart report, if: I entered parcels of land as females (their surnames change when they marry) Mother Daughters I entered the county in which the parcels resided as males (they retain their name at marriage) This could all be entered into the same file as my “real” family genealogy

how did I enter data into the details window? I entered parcels of land (e.g., 35A near machodoc dam) as females (daughters) I entered the county in which the parcels resided as males (STAFFORD) I set up tag box columns in the details window to indicate which of the following additional information was available for each “person/deed” Age (shows number of years from the 5200A grant until that parcel was sold) Memos (contained the full text of the deed) Sources (ANTIENT Press books, early colonial settler website) Witnesses (witnesses named in the deed help establish a “neighborhood” for that “person” Exhibits (for adding maps of selected parcels created using deed mapper 4.2 software, and maps of the general area using AniMap software)

Data entry standards The male (M) is the RELEVANT county For each new deed, the county usually stays the same (i.e., Stafford co., va) The female (f) is a particular parcel of land within the county For each new deed, the number of acres and description of the land is unique There can be multiple deeds within each county The deeds are permanently associated with the county

Formatting of INFORMATION USING TMG’S BUILT-IN FUNCTIONALITY, I Could EASILY USE COLORS TO DISTINGUISH DIFFERENT ATTRIBUTES FOR A DEED (future effort) IN MY CASE, I had recently USED GREEN TO COLOR ALL OF THE BOXES for deeds EXCEPT FOR two WHERE MY DIRECT LINE ANCESTOR WITNESSED THE DEEDS I COLORED HIS DEED BOXES YELLOW TO MAKE THEM STAND OUT

TRACKING THE DESCENDANTS OF MY ANCESTOR’S DEEDS THROUGH SEVERAL GENERATIONS Using tmg, i was able to add “DAUGHTERS” TO EACH ORIGINAL “DAUGHTER” using the appropriate county (father) This allowed me TO trace THE descendants of the LAND (5200A) AS they were SOLD AND/OR DIVIDED

Source Materials for deeds I was very fortunate to already have the sources with the information I needed to create the chart Virginia Land office patents 2,3,4,5 & 6 (lop) – available online Virginia Northern neck grants 1,3,4,F (nng) – available online Northumberland county VA deeds and wills 1662-1666 (ANTIENT press) Stafford county va deeds 1722-1728 (antient press) When you create your own charts, you will have to locate the necessary land documents from the appropriate sources

Using tmg to create the land descendancy charts Once I had all of the appropriate source materials, the hard work began! For each deed, I entered the following data into the tmg tag entry screen type of deed (births (of land “daughters” in my case) , marriages, deeds, etc.) Date of the deed transaction The number of acres in the detail box Stafford in the county box In the memo box, I entered the grantor and grantee names (since I was not actually entering “real” deeds, it didn’t do all of this for me and I had to devise my own way to get the information into the system)

Next steps Add witnesses First, this required going back to the full text of the deed to locate the witnesses, and then entering the witnesses into tmg on the tag entry screen Add citations required identifying the sources for each patent, grant and deed (NNG, LOP, ANTIENT press books for Stafford county deeds) Creating and entering these sources into tmg using the proper format Entering citations as appropriate

Adding sources I add sources for each of the deeds in the chart Most of The information was available in a 35-page document titled “Gervase Dodson 16-Sep-1657 Patent descendancy chart” that I had created earlier The document contained the transcription of 58 documents (FRoM LOP’s, NNG’s, ANTIENT press deed books) I was able to copy & paste most of them into the Memo fields

BUT WHAT DID THE DEED REALLY LOOK LIKE? AT THIS POINT, I SWITCHED TO two COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE PROGRAMs THAT HELP VISUALIZE WHERE THE LAND WAS AND THE SHAPE OF THE PARCEL: DEEDMAPPER 4.2 ALLOWS THE USER TO CREATE MAPS FOR EACH OF THEIR DEEDS IN 3 DIFFERENT FORMATS: TEXT FORMAT GRAPHIC FORMAT LISTED IN A TABLE WITH COLUMNS (YOU CAN SELECT THE ONES YOU WANT) Animap 3.0.2: can choose from county locations at a variety of dates

MY DEED

Web: http://www.DirectLineSoftware.com CONTACT INFORMATION FOR DEEDMAPPER Phone: 617 527-9566 Web: http://www.DirectLineSoftware.com Email: deeds@DirectLineSoftware.com

Contact information for Animap plus 3.0.2 Web: http://www. goldbug.com