I was searching for Lubbe Albers in the Nebraska homestead records on Ancestry.com. My searches for him were not going very well and I decided to simply search for homesteaders with the first name of Lubbe in the records.
After all, there shouldn't be too many of them. There weren't. One of the entries was for a Lubbe Aden. Being related to some members of the Aden family, I decided to quickly review Aden's homestead for any clues that might have bearing on my research-or just something that would strike my interest.
Aden completed a homestead in section 20 of Township 14 N Range 1 East in Butler County, Nebraska. At this point, I have no idea whether he remained there after obtaining the homestead or whether or not he is related to the Adens in which I have a peripheral interest.
However, in reviewing the documentation in his completed homestead file, I ran across a copy of his naturalization from 1871--in Hancock County, Illinois. That's where many of my Ostfriesian families settled at about the same time Aden was there naturalizing.
It doesn't mean that this Aden is connection to me. However, people did migration in clusters and chains. I also know that there are homestead claims that are incomplete and currently unindexed by name. I know that these unindexed incomplete claims can be located on the Bureau of Land Management tract books. I can't look at the tract books for the entire state of Nebraska.
But....
I can look at sections of the tract books for those areas of townships where I know that other Ostfriesians settled in hopes of locating a few of my "missing" people in those records. Since Aden was an Ostfriesian with a Hancock County, Illinois, connection who completed a homestead claim. there may be others Ostfriesians with Hancock County connections who at least started a claim in the same location as Aden. The tract books will tell me that and provide me with the names of those individuals. The incomplete homestead applications are not online, but I can obtain them from the National Archives.
I can also search based upon locations in the database of these Nebraska homestead records on Ancestry.com. The patents can be searched geographically at the Bureau of Land Management website. Both of these sites only search for those individuals who completed the homestead process.
My Genealogy Search Tip of the Day contained links to the tract books and the tract book guide on FamilySearch ("Guide to the BLM Tract Books"). There is more about my webinar on using the BLM tract books here.
