Michael John Neill's Genealogy Website
Last week I wrote about an 1845 Michigan State census entry in St. Clair County, Michigan, for the very elusive Benjamin Butler. The Butlers lived in only two Michigan counties: St. Joseph and St. Clair. Part of my work on them is documenting their time in each county. Part of my problem is that the names of […]
I’m working on translating and citing this document that I obtained when I was in Salt Lake at the Family History Library. Fortunately when I saved the file, I included part of the microfilm roll number as the file name. The immigration records were the only item on the film, so a specific item number […]
The Bureau of Land Management Tract Books are unindexed by name and are organized by geographic location of the property. These tract books only contain entries for successful and unsuccessful attempts to obtain property in the federal domain (usually through cash sales, military bounty land warrants, preemption claims, homestead claims, timber claims, etc.) The […]
[reprinted from 26 February 2014] In all honesty, I thought this letter to the editor of the Prairie Farmer in 1944 would be about grain prices. Was I ever in for a surprise when I received a digital image of the letter my great-grandfather Ufkes wrote in 1944. I knew my great-grandfather had two sons who served […]
Blog posts with illustrations generate more interest and more traffic. It’s a simple fact. There is only one real problem I have with this: I hate to include a picture with a post simply for the purpose of “having a picture.” I also don’t like to waste time looking for “just the right image,” getting permission […]
It has been fun…but… After nearly 5 years, on 22 August we’re going to close our genealogy webinar saleson our website so that I can direct my genealogical efforts elsewhere. I’m a one person enterprise and it’s time to devote my energies in other directions. We’re keeping the newsletters and the blogs, but webinar […]
This is one of the prime reasons for looking at the Bureau of Land Management Tract books in states where homesteading took place–cancelled homestead entries. Those who started the homestead process would have to had completed the same initial paperwork as someone who completed the process. For immigrants who homesteaded, this would have meant filing […]
Between being out of town and getting hit with spam on this blog, I’ve had to take a short hiatus from blogging and from approving replies to posts. I think I’ve gotten all responses that were created by real humans approved, but feel free to submit again if yours didn’t make it through. We’ve installed […]
