The Use of Family Maps

Family Maps are a very important research when searching for your family.  There are a series of books that have plat maps with the names of the owners of the land on them.  Gregory Boyd has created these styles of maps for many different states. The benefit of using these maps is that they might tell you if your family owned land in the county they were living.  For counties, like Barry County, that have had their records destroyed, we can still go to the county and look at the land records.

While researching the Burketts, I ran across the Family Map book for Barry County, Missouri.  I decided that I would look for my family and found the land that Charles and his son Aaron Burkett owned.  

Next post will have the results from the previously mentioned Power of Attorney Records.

Podcast of Brantley Baird

As mentioned in last weeks post, I interviewed Brantley Baird about his grandfather Burkett.  It was a very interesting interview and I was able to learn a lot about the family that I did not know previously.  In the interview Brantley spoke about the memories and characteristics of his grandfather.

In the podcast, located on the right hand side of the page, Brantley speaks about the characteristics of his grandfather.  Since the podcast was for a class, I was only able to fit the portion about the characteristics in the time limit.  I hope you all enjoy the podcast.

Oral Interview

This last week I did an interview with my Grandpa, Brantley Baird.  He is the Great-Grandson of Charles Burkett and the grandson of Columbus Otis Burkett, youngest son of Charles.  While interviewing my grandpa, my grandma found a document in which McDonald County, Missouri had interviewed Columbus.  This was done in order to honor Columbus and his family for everything they had done for the county.

In the interview, Columbus talked about his father and mother.  He explained how Charles had married twice and had nine kids with each wife.  According to Columbus, Charles and Margaret were married in a Methodist church.  It was interesting because I had been told growing up that the family was Missouri Southern Baptists.

For anyone who has information about the Methodist church, do they keep any kind of records that I can search?  It would be very helpful for trying to find information on the rest of the family.

Mortality Schedules

I would like to talk about the importance of using United States Census Mortality Schedules.  While researching Charles Burkett I found out about this very useful tool.

I had done a census search for the entire family and could not find when Charles' first wife, Elizabeth, passed away.  She was in the 1850 census but in 1860 Charles is married to Margaret.  I assumed that Elizabeth had passed away between 1850 and 1860 but had no proof.  When I searched the Mortality Schedules on Ancestry for Elizabeth there was no results.  I then assumed that she had died from 1850-59.

I then went up to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, UT and I decided to verify all of the census research that I had done with the census index books.  They have an 1860 mortality schedule for Barry County, Missouri.  When I went and checked the index for Elizabeth I found her.  Not only did I find Elizabeth I found out that she died of "female complaints" (Lisa Lamp, Barry County, Missouri Mortality Schedules for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 and Slave Schedules for 1840, 1850, 1860: Indexed (N.p.: n.p., 1994), 2) and that there was another possible son for Charles and Elizabeth.  This son's name was Jessefat, who died a few months after birth.

The moral of the story is that when you use Ancestry for census research they do not have all of the extra schedules.  When searching through the schedules you need to use multiple websites and look through the printed indexes in order to find information that will not come up on any one website.

Gone

Well to anyone who is watching my blog, I will not be posting any updates on the family this week.  I am gone to RootsTech in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I will post more next week. 

Benefits of using Google with Ancestry.com

During class we learned about the importance of how we word our Google searches.

While searching for a Charles Burkett through Google and I was able to find a website that had the names of people who were given power of attorney in Wayne County, Tennessee.  In this record Charles Burkett and his son Aaron B. Burkett each had their own documents in which they were placing Charles M Burkett in charge of monies owed to them by John Churchwell.

Not knowing who the Churchwell’s were I went to the 1850 census just to see if there were any Churchwells living in Barry County, Missouri.  In the 1850 census right after the Burkett family is the Calvin Churchwell.

The Burkett family is in household 285 and the Churchwell family is in household 286.

Stay tuned for an update of what the entire power of attorney says.

Charles Burkett Life Sketch

Charles Burkett was born around the year of 1819.  He was born in the state of Tennessee.  I do not know a lot about his early life.  He married his first wife, Elizabeth, in Tennessee.  Between the years of 1847 and 1851 Charles and Elizabeth moved to Barry County, Missouri.   Charles owned a plot of land Barry County.  The United States Census gives the family's place of residence as Shoal Creek.

Charles and Elizabeth had 8 children before her death in September 1860.  Elizabeth died due to problems following childbirth.  The son born that was born also died.

Charles married his second wife, Margaret Rice, December 13, 1860. Charles and Margaret  had 8 children as well.

Charles' death date is unknown.  I assume, due to census records, that Charles died between 1880-1900.  Margaret appears in the 1900 census as a widow.