A War of 1812 Discharge Certificate

Bounty Land application files are wonderful and I've used several of them in my research on my children's ancestry, but this is the first actual discharge certificate I've encountered. Fortunately for James Kile he held onto it for forty years until he needed it to prove up his bounty land application.

We will be writing about this bounty land application and redeemed warrant file in future posts, but this is an interesting set of documents. James died after he received the warrant and before a patent was issued for any specific property. Consequently his heirs obtained the property after his death--meaning there is a wonderful set of documents documenting his eleven children who survived him.

Stay tuned....

Items Set off for the Widow of James Kile

In an earlier post about the estate settlement of James Kile of Mercer County, Illinois, it was noted that there were crosses after certain items on the inventory. There was no indication on the inventory what the crosses were for.

A reader made a comment that was in line with my suspicion: the marks were an indication of what items were set off for the widow. Sure enough, the "inventory of personal items...set apart to the widow" on 16 April 1852 contained exactly those items that were marked on the inventory--except for the $6 lot of corn.

Apparently there were a few items that the widow ended up not needing or wanting. It's also possible that those items were not allowable to her by state statute, had exceeded the value of items she could be allowed, or that she was concerned that the money from those items would be needed to cover the debts of the estate. There is no notation as to why six of the items were on the list only to be later relinquished. In some cases state statute was fairly specific as to what property could be set off from the estate as the widow's award.

The widow, Elizabeth Kile, is named only once in the entire set of estate documents for her husband. She is mentioned several others times simply as the widow.

The Kiles Find a Horse in 1810

Genealogists often use estray books as evidence that a person had lived in a certain place for at least a bare minimum amount of time. Notices of strays were also published in the newspaper as well.

This 1810 notice from the Chillicothe, Ohio, newspaper (obtained on GenealogyBank.com) does more than document the existence of a lost horse. It also suggests that John Kile and James Kile were living in or near Truro Township in Franklin County, Ohio, in the late 1809-early 1810 time period.

Digital image obtained on GenealogyBank.com

James Kile found the horse and John Kile was one of the appraisers. There is nothing in the notice to indicate the men were biologically related, but the reference does suggest they were relatively near neighbors of each other in 1810.

And in some cases, a newspaper mention be the only record that a person was in a specific place at a specific point in time.

Even if the owner of the horse cannot be found.

Those Kiles on the Hill are Killing Me

It's not often you get "in-your-face" proof of alternate spellings, but this Bureau of Land Management Tract Book from Chillicothe's Military Lands (Volume 1-entry 6818) for James Kile indicates that he was also referred to as James Hill and James Kill. James made his initial purchase payment in 1818.

It's easy to see, given the handwriting of the time, how those alternate interpretations of the name might have happened.

And that gives me more alternate spellings to use in my searches. Kyle was one I always used, but I need to keep these in mind, especially during this time period of the early 19th century.