Thrifty Thursday: Johnston County, NC Records

Facts to know when researching your ancestors in Johnston County:

• Formed in 1746 from Craven County
• In 1752 a part of Johnston County was taken to form Orange County
• In 1758 the eastern part of Johnston became Dobbs County
• In 1770 a part of Johnston County was taken to form Wake County 
• In 1855 a part of Johnston County was taken to form Wilson County
• Has the largest Civil War Battlefield in NC, Bentonville Battlefield

Johnston County Records available online

My goal here is to have resources other than your everyday census, cemetery, and obituary records. If you know of additional resources that can be found online, please let me know to add them.

1700s (some 1800s & 1900s)

• 1784-1787 Census
• 1779-1853 Marriage Bonds
• 1750-1860 Deeds
• 1750- Quit Rent (Tax List)
• 1750- Quit Rent List (Tax List)
• 1751- Quit Rent (Tax List)
• 1760-1922 Wills Index

1800s

• 1849 Freemasons
• 1852 Freemasons
• 1850-1895 Bastardy Bonds

1900s

• 1902 Voter Registration Records
• Assorted Court Records

Other

• Slave Name Index
• Cohabitation & Slave Marriage Index
• Confederate Soldiers
• Marriages

General Links:

• Johnston County Wikipedia article
• The Heritage Center
• Johnston- rootsweb
• Johnston- ncgenweb

Can I copy that picture?

Since gathering up old historic and genealogy photos I've wondered, what photos can I copy & reprint without breaking copyright laws. I am about to do a project with these photos so I'm researching copyrights & will share with you what I have learned:

Date of Work		Term of Copyright
Published before 1923		In public domain. No Copyright (Free to copy! YAY!)
Published between 1923-1963	When published with notice or registered in the U.S.	In public domain, unless the copyright has been renewed in which case they are protected for 95 years from the copyright/publication date.
Published between 1964-1977	When published with notice or registered	Protected for 95 years.

There are additional regulations for things published after 1978, but I don't have to worry about that for the picture I plan on copying and reprinting.

More info can be found here at the Library of Congress.

Thrifty Thursday: Wake County, NC Records

Facts to know when researching your ancestors in Wake County:

• Formed in 1771 from parts of Cumberland, Johnston, & Orange Counties 
• 1787 some parts of Wake were taken for the formation of Franklin County
• 1881 & 1911 some parts were taken for the formation of Durham County

Wake County Records available online

late 1700s to 1800s

1770s - late 1800s Deeds
1772-1881 Bastardy Bonds
1781 Wake Tax List (partial)
1785-present Land Deeds & Real Estate Records
1789 Wake Tax List
1799- early 1900s Wake County Deaths

1799-1893 Marriage & Death Notices

1800s to present Wake County Obituaries

late 1800s to early 1900s

1872-1944 Wake & Raleigh Directories

1899-1900 Raleigh City Directory

1891 Farmers & Landowners

1905/1907 Wake County Public Schools Biennial Report

General Links:

• Wake County Wikipedia article
• Wake- ncgenweb 
• Oakwood Confederate Burial Index
• Revolutionary & Military Service

Thrifty Thursday: NC (& Other) Census Records

As a poor college student with little money and a hobby for genealogy I have had to find as many free records as possible over the years. So for this Thrifty Thursday, some of the most important records genealogists have at their disposal: Census Records! Most of these links are for North Carolina censuses, but pages are available for all states on these sites.

• CensusFinder

A compilation of sites, by state and county, that offer free transcriptions & indexes of census records. Some counties have "Other" types of records as well, like tax lists. 

• The USGenWeb Census Project 

Set up almost like a spreedsheet, the USGenWeb Census Project shows the online transcription status of every census record and the provider of the transcription. 

•  Census Online

Similar to CensusFinder, Census Online connects users to other sites which have transcriptions & indexes of census records sorted by year and county.

Thankful Thursday: Census Images on Heritage Quest

I'm thankful for several things today--

#1 Census Images--because they allow you to see a spatial relationship between two or more families

#2 Heritage Quest-- I love Ancestry.com, but I don't have a subscription right now, so instead I use my local libraries access for Heritage Quest. Having more than one place to find census images is also useful because transcriptions are different on the two sites, so a road block on one might not be present on the other.

I was especially thankful earlier this week while I was writing & "updating" Matrilineal Monday: The Daughters of Frances Buffaloe & Larkin Wood. I hated connecting the daughters to their husbands based off of the single marriage records I found on FamilySearch.org.

What if there was more than one Fannie Wood and I was chasing after the wrong one?!?! But lo and behold, I found an image that subsided some of my fears--one that had several of the families I was researching all on one page.

There are at least FOUR connected families on this one page (and possibly more just from my cursory glance at the other surnames on the page):

Image of Ervin Mann & Hattie Wood Mann (daughter of Fannie Wood).

Image of William Castleberry & his children. Two months after the census is recorded he will go on to marry Minnie Wood (shown in image below).

Image of Fannie Wood and several of her unmarried children: Minnie, Rena, Lena, and Kelso. 

Image of William Hunter, his wife Fannie Wood Hunter (daughter of Fannie Wood), their children, and William's mother & sister. 

These images come from the
1900 United States Census; Series: T623, Roll: 1221, Page: 284
White Oak Township, Wake County, North Carolina
Enumeration District: 153, Sheet No. 22B

Thrifty Thursday: North Carolina Digital Collections

NC Digital Collection screen shot

One of my favorite ways of researching my ancestors online is to find free resources online. Not only does this save me a trip to the local library (& the gas money), but it also provides faster digital searches and an opportunity to save digital copies for later use. Here are just a few of my favorites....more to be added later of course!



North Carolina Digital Collections
By the Archives & Library of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

The NC Digital Collections offers up great free digital resources like

• NC Family Records

One of the more popular collections, the NC Family Records provides bible records, marriage & death notices from NC newspapers, and cemetery photos all searchable by family name and recently updated as of June 13, 2011

• NC Maps

 This collection offers historic maps from the late 1500s to 2000. It can be searched by location, date and subject; and their is an interactive historic map overlay which compares historic maps with current road maps. 

• NC Newspaper Digitization Project

 This collection provides select digitalized newspapers that date from 1751-1890s, mainly from the cities of Edenton, Fayetteville, Hillsboro, New Bern, Salisbury, & Wilmington.