30 June 2009

Deed Indexes in Public Land States

This is part of a deed from 1920 in Hancock County, Illinois.
It makes an excellent point of why it is important to search for the names of all relatives and not just the direct line. George and Ida Trautvetter are my great-great-grandparents. This deed is part of the settlement of his father's estate. Had I not looked for the last names of his siblings I would have overlooked it. Because the deed lists Louisa Mundy first, that is how it appears in the grantor index. Deeds with multiple grantors (as many "heirship" deeds are) are typically only indexed by the name of the first grantor.
This deed comes from Hancock County, Illinois Deed Book 177, page 579. More discussion of this record will appear in an upcoming "Casefile Clues" column in Dick Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter.