21 November 2013

An Estate Pays Taxes in Linn County, Iowa

A receipt from the estate packet for Belinda Newman in Linn County, Iowa, contained the following receipt from the Linn County Treasurer's Office:


Receipts can provide quite a bit of information. This one certainly did.

Belinda's estate paid taxes on the following pieces of property:

  • The NorthWest quarter of the NorthWest quarter of section 20 in township 85-8--40 acres
  • Part of the South West Quarter of the North West quarter of section 27 in township 85-8--5 acres
  • The North East quarter of the South East quarter of the South West quarter of section 17 in township 85-8---10 acres.
The receipt indicated that Belinda owned three separate parcels at her death. Immediate research goals are to determine how she acquired those properties and how they were disposed of after her death. I will need to look at local property records in order to do that. 

I also should map out these properties to determine how close they are to each other. Two of them are in very close proximity to each other. The other one is a few miles away. 

Since I found this receipt in the estate papers for Belinda, I already knew she had an estate settlement record in Linn County, Iowa. If I had not already had a death date for her from other, reliable sources, the date the taxes were paid may have helped me to approximate when Belinda died.

We will have an updated blog post with more details on Belinda's property. Stay tuned.

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I'm a strong believer in citations and in my work (and in Casefile Clues) I cite material in the spirit of Evidence Explained. Here on the Rootdig blog, I have a different philosophy. Posts made here have enough information that the reader could locate where the material was obtained.