Monthly Archives: July 2014

July 31, 2014 · 9:09 pm

Census Data Once Again Provides Answers

Today was one of those genealogy days where I ended up going down a trail that was not my original destination.  I was on Ancestry.com and got an alert that there was a military record associated with one of the people in my tree.  It was my great grandmother’s first husband, Pleasant Frank Johnson.

I was a few years into my research before I realized that my great grandmother, Sarah Johnson West, had a first husband.  I had information verifying that Sarah Johnson had married my great grandfather Benjamin Franklin West in 1865, at age 22, and they had four children together one of which was my maternal grandfather.

In spite of much searching I could never find any parents for my great grandmother Sarah.  There were several Sarah Johnsons to be found in the census records from the 1800s.  However, something always proved them not to be my Sarah Johnson.  Then one day I saw a record of a Sarah Ferguson marrying a Pleasant Frank Johnson at age 13 in 1856.  He died in 1862.  Looking over census records I found that living in the house with my great grandparents were the children Catherine Johnson and Frank Johnson.  These were the children from my great grandmother’s first marriage and at last I knew I was tracking the correct Sarah Johnson.  It was then easy to find her parents, who were Horatio Ferguson and Sarah Barton.

All of which brings me back to today and finding a military record for Pleasant Frank Johnson.  It got me thinking about not having parents listed for him in my tree. I hadn’t pursued looking for them as he was my great grandmother’s first husband and not related by blood.  However, as long as I was entering info for him I decided to look again.  The military record showed that he was born in Alabama and I went to http://www.familysearch.org to see if I could find census data for his earlier years before he married Sarah.  It is always worth rechecking previous research as new records are being added regularly.  Sure enough I located an 1840 census showing his mother and children on the same census page as Horatio Ferguson and his family.

The 1850 census has Pleasant Frank Johnson (16), his mother Hannah and his brother James (18) living in the same neighborhood as eight year old Sarah Ferguson and her family.  In 1860 Sarah and Frank Johnson are married and living next door to his mother Hannah Johnson and a few houses down from Sarah’s father, Horatio Ferguson, and his family.

I love it when finally all of the data you have triangulates and you are positive beyond doubt that you have connected the right people!  So many people with the same names, so much data, so many doubts as to whether you have made the right connections.  Having it all come together is always rewarding.

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July 31, 2014 · 11:06 am

A Sense of Accomplishment

Today is a day of celebration for me. Years of research has finally led to me plotting each piece of land allotted to my grandmother and to her, then minor, son on the appropriate plat maps.

The steps to accomplish this were numerous. Some of the steps had to wait for additional records to be digitalized. The final step was for me to spread out dozens of pages of notes and copies of documents and meticulously read through each legal land description and locate the land on the plat maps.

This research was somewhat complicated by my grandmother’s Dawes Allotment Application Package. There were pages and pages of documents. My grandfather acted as her legal representative and first picked one plot of land and then came back to the commission and said he had changed his mind.

In addition, two of the pieces of land that my grandmother had been allotted were disputed as having claims from others. One of those cases was settled in her favor, the other was not.

The dates on the materials in her packet range from 1905 to 1910. During that time my grandmother moved from Indian Territory to New Mexico. She also changed the power of attorney from my grandfather to her married sister in 1910.

Because my grandfather changed his mind about one piece of land, and another was taken back and replaced because of a dispute, originally all I had was a copy of a certificate obtained from Tahlequah saying that my grandmother’s land allotment had been cancelled.

I did not give up and a few days after getting this information I located copies of the Dawes Allotment packets online. At the time I was in Tahlequah conducting genealogy research. I took the land descriptions that I found online in my grandmother’s Allotment packet and spent hours in the Wagoner County courthouse the next day tracing the history of my grandmother’s and uncle’s land from the time it was allotted until it was no longer in their possession.

The day before I left Tahlequah to return to Washington State I drove out to my grandmother’s land and stood on it. It was an overwhelming feeling to be standing there.

My Grandmother's Dawes Allotment Land Oklahoma

My Grandmother’s Dawes Allotment Land Oklahoma

It has been almost two years since I was in Oklahoma. I will return this October to continue my journey into my family history. While there I will visit Craig and Nowata counties where some of my grandmother’s allotment land was located and once again stand on soil that belonged to my grandmother.

My next post will explain the process and resources that I used to go from a Dawes Roll number to plat maps with the allotment land identified.

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