Familiarize Yourself with your Ancestors Neighbors

Get to know your ancestors neighbors. What where their names, and what roll did they play in your ancestors life.

How to get started, in the last blog I make a spreadsheet of everyone in the 1870 census that where five pages before and after my ancestor. Then I was thinking what was the path that the census taker took to record every household. I found a 1872 plat map of the county that I  have in question. That is Grafton township, McHenry County, Illinois. And I took the 1870 federal census and the plat map and try to lay out the census taker trails. To my surprise the census taker went from West to East for a few section lines, and before I knew he was traveling down South, then he jump back East or West maybe to catch the family at home that was not their previously. Then I was thinking then how do you know if five pages before and after you ancestor in the census would be far enough. So I took a compass and made a two radius circle around my ancestors home. Two miles on horse back would take about 30 minutes one way. Farmers always had a lot of work to do, I don't think they would travel very far because of the work that needed to be done that day. I compare these names along with the names that was compose from the census.  And I found a lot of names that where not included in the census list.  Remember not all the names on the plat map, meant that the owner lived on that land, the land might of been rented out.

Now, we have a good list of names to go by to see if any of these names show up in our ancestors papers.