Homesteaders and Land Owners

I'm long overdue for a blog post.
In April, yes two months ago, I spoke in Colorado to the Swedish Genealogy Society of Colorado about homesteaders. In doing so, I showed them one of my homesteaders and the many (over 20) pages of documents online in his homesteading file. They were surprised that you can find naturalization information in a homesteading record. That is because they had to prove their citizenship.

Well since then, I thought I should look up ALL my possible ancestors who might have homesteaded or otherwise owned land.
Some sources for homesteading and land records include the following:
1. glorecords.blm.gov (This stands for the General Land Office records at the Bureau of Land Management)
2. Fold3.com (subscription)
3. Ancestry.com (subscription)
4. NARA
5. FamilySearch.org and Family History centers
6. Homestead National Monument in Beatrice, NE
7. University of Nebraska at Lincoln libraries (8 of them on two campuses)

Okay so I started looking up my ancestors.
On my mom's side I tried the Seggermans: The only Seggerman who homesteaded is not MY ancestor but a cousin of some sort: Henry Seggerman who homesteaded in Montana in 1919.

On my dad's side I have the following:
1. Lars Jorgensen in Kearney County, Nebraska: He was my example for my presentation, a pioneer settling in 1885 and then getting more land in 1890. He is the one I found over 20 pages on Ancestry of his homestead record.
2. Jesse Fields in Madison County, Nebraska: His record is from 1879-1884. As a Civil War veteran, he paid less than $20 for his 160 acres of land.
3. Charles William Hanks in Madison County, Nebraska: He is the son-in-law to Jesse Fields. His record is from 1886. He paid less than $10 but only had 40 acres.
4. Emeline Mary Nelson in 1891 in Frontier County, Nebraska for 160 acres. I'm nearly certain this has to be my ancestor. She was a single mother who came over from Denmark, so she had to do something to support them.

So now my mom's side:
1. Felix Regnier in Baca County, Colorado in 1906. Along with Felix, several of his 10 children also owned land in Baca County, Colorado: my great-grandfather Roy, along with his siblings Carrie, Iva (Ivy) and Louis. Carrie and Iva (Ivy) were single women their entire lives, so I am sure Felix thought he should try to provide for them. I heard there was a town in Baca County called Regnier, Colorado, and there is some proof to that here: https://history.denverlibrary.org/sites/history/files/Place_Names_of_Colorado.pdf on page 510 (although you may need to go to 525 on the site).
2. John B. Regnier in Washington County, Ohio in 1825: So this was pre-homesteading days and John B. Regnier was actually deceased by 1825 so it was his heirs, or as the document says "heirs at law" who owned this piece of land.
3. Levi Barber in Washington County, Ohio in 1832: Also pre-homesteading days, and this is a joint record, so I'm not really sure if Levi owned this land or if he was representing someone. He was along with Seth and Andrew Fisher, and the document states "Levi Barber, (absignee?) of Andrew Fisher". That word is hard to read, but later on the document acts like the land is "to have and to hold" by Seth Fisher and Levi Barber. Don't you love the language there? Not sure how you "hold" the land, but it sounds like they married it.
4. Katie C. (Dacy) Regnier in 1905 in Cimarron County, Oklahoma: This document is great because if I didn't already know, it gives her maiden name and her middle initial. I did know her maiden name, but not her middle initial. Her parents passed when she was pretty young, so my guess is an older sibling or someone set up this homestead for her. There were several woman homesteaders back in the day, although it was less common.

Part of Katie (Dacy) Regnier's homestead document

There are many books on homesteaders if this interests you. Message me if you would like some recommendations, or you can do a search. Who knows? You might find a book about one of your relatives. 

1888 Stromsburg book

Last fall I helped digitize church records. So this got me thinking about more digitizing. A discussion on Facebook led to noting a few books in the library that are irreplaceable. No, they're not your Danielle Steel or Stephen King collection. It's those OLD local history books. Copyright lasts for approximately 70 years, so anything before that should be in the public domain. So I took pictures of this book. I was going to post it on GenWeb but Rootsweb is down and I haven't gotten around to moving it. Someone suggested my blog, so here are the photos of that book. I apologize for blurriness on one picture. I must have moved. I did scan this one too. Just takes a bit more time to put those on. I should work on my digitization, maybe get a better camera and a tripod to avoid some of this.

STROMSBURG, NEBRASKA Advantages and Needs
Published by the committee of John D. Haskell, Chairman; A. Coleman; P. T. Buckley; Lewis Headstrom and Alex Scott.

Review of 2017

The first day of the year.... Our thoughts turn to reviewing the last year and planning for next year.

Genealogy wise I try to separate into 3 sections: personal, professional and volunteer. I admit I never put concrete goals down (on paper or computer) this year. Seriously I have a spreadsheet titled 2017 genealogy goals but it has these three titles on it and that's it. Blank! But I still made some progress.

Personal:
1. I made progress on my DAR application. I got accepted into a chapter pending approval of my application. I filled out an application and got one more record. So I need to review what else I need to submit my application.
2. Thanks to a new genealogy friend, I made progress on my Danish line.
3. Thanks to two of my cousins for doing a DNA test which may have been helpful or at least interesting.

Professional:
1. Mainly I spent quite a bit of time this fall contacting churches for digitization of their records and driving there for Arkiv Digital. This was a big project but mostly temporary  although there is a little left to do.
2. I applied for a scholarship for a genealogy training (SLIG, GRIP or DC). My first time applying so wish me luck.
3. I attended several of my APG meetings (mostly virtually), as well as a few genealogy Twitter chats (#genchat). I attended one conference (see below).
3. Also I had several clients this year and think I was successful in helping them. Also I  helped track down my boss's classmate so they could visit when heading that way, although maybe that was volunteer. Lol

Volunteer:
1. I added a ton of photos and a good number of memorials on Findagrave, specifically over 2300 gravestone photos and over 500 memorials. That brings my totals to 9000 memorials and 16,830 photos.
2. I coordinated a large conference for NSGS with D. Joshua Taylor as featured speaker. It was a successful conference with our largest attendance ever, even if we didn't quite make a profit on it.
3. I updated the local cemetery directory, and tried to keep the county GenWeb site maintained.
4. I also made progress indexing marriages.

That's all I can think of for now. Hopefully 2018 is another productive genealogy year.