RLP 380: Love County Courthouse Land Records

Nicole (1s):
This is Research like a Pro episode 380: Love County Courthouse Land Records. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com.

Nicole (43s):
Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (46s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (48s):
I’m doing well. How are you? What’s going on?

Diana (51s):
Well, I’ve been having some fun digging into my Dillard research and trying to figure out where this little group of Dillards in Cassia County, Georgia came from. Trying to see if they have any connection to my Cynthia Dillard, who everybody has heard me talk about and knows she is my brick wall. So anyway, it’s always fun to look at a new group of people and see what you can discover about them. I found a possible connection to Lauren’s district or county, you know, in South Carolina. And at first I thought, oh, I dunno if that makes sense. But then looking at the map, it’s just a straight across migration and there was this big gold rush in Cassia County in the early 1830s, which drew in people from all over.

Diana (1m 38s):
So anyway, they’re very common names and so I’ve been going through censuses and trying to eliminate other candidates and other locations, which is kind of tedious, but kind of fun to see what you can do in a strategy like that.

Nicole (1m 53s):
That’s great. Well, for announcements today we have the Research Like a Pro webinar series on October 21st with Melanie Whitt. Her topic is Parents for Ellen Cecilia Scott: a 19th-Century Irish Immigrant. It’s a DNA case study and she’ll be talking about an orphaned Irish American born in 1860 and there’s some conflicting records, but she uses autosomal DNA and pedigree triangulation to figure it out. So it should be great. Melanie is a professional genealogist. She has a master’s degree and UK accreditation. She specializes in international research and DNA analysis and has solved biological family identity cases for clients. So it’ll be fun to have her on.

Nicole (2m 36s):
The next study group for Research Like a Pro with DNA begins February, 2026 and if you’d like to be a peer group leader, you can apply on our website. Also, don’t forget to join our newsletter that comes out every Monday for new posts and upcoming lectures.

Diana (2m 51s):
All right, so today we are gonna talk all about the treasure hunt that you had at the Love County Courthouse, which is so fun. And it’s fun because I was just at the courthouse a few weeks ago, so I didn’t do the land research that we’re going to talk about today, but I’m excited to just talk out for what you did. So the Love County Courthouse is located in Marietta, Oklahoma and we have a lot of family members there. And so what started out as a search for one specific 1913 deed that was in a newspaper article led to over 20 records documenting land transactions, oil leases, and property dealings of our Harris family during that transition from Indian territory to Oklahoma statehood.

Diana (3m 42s):
And we’re going to talk all about that today.

Nicole (3m 47s):
So for this trip I did a lot of preparation. One of the things I did is I called the Love County Courthouse to find out if they would have any closures on the Tuesday through Thursday that I was going to visit. And I told them I was gonna look for my ancestors’ deeds and they said that the deed indexes were organized, organized by township range and section. So they said that I would need to know the section that I was gonna look in because there are a lot of deeds for each township in range. And I knew there had to be a deed for my third great grandfather, John C. Harris because of a newspaper article from 1914 that mentioned a land transfer from Alan B. Collins and his wife Ava to John C.

Nicole (4m 28s):
Harris. The article mentioned that the parcel of land was in part six of seven south one east, which translates to section six of township seven, south range one East. And so this is from the township range public land system and this is just that standardized method used for federal land states to divide and describe land in all of the states that are not state land states, particularly areas that were once public domain and the system creates a grid of squares and townships are six mile by six mile squares while ranges indicate how far Easter west a township is from a designated meridian line.

Nicole (5m 10s):
And each township is further divided into 36 1 mile square sections and they are numbered one through 36 and they go back and forth in kind of a serpentine pattern starting from the top right corner, the northeast corner. And so understanding this public land system is really important for finding land records, especially at this courthouse. And so for example, section six, township seven south range one East pinpoints a specific square mile of land making it possible to figure out exactly where they lived and owned property. So it’s great that way while I prepared for the trip by reviewing the locations that I had for John C.

Nicole (5m 53s):
Harris in Love County with a map of the county showing the townships and the sections and I used RandyMajors.org, which is a super helpful site. It’s a free website that can show the public land survey system overlaid on a Google map of present day locations. And so I highly recommend that.

Diana (6m 15s):
Yeah, that’s a great website and it is really good just to dive in and learn all about that federal land system because until you do, you don’t quite get what all the different little notations are. So let’s talk a little bit about John C. Harris and where he lived. So as Nicole was going through all the records, she found several different locations where he lived in 1900. He was in Indian territory and that was the federal census. And the locality at the top of his page in the population schedule said Indian territory, Chickasaw Nation and the township or other division is that land survey.

Diana (6m 57s):
So it said township seven SR one W, enumeration district number 177. And so page one of Township seven south range one West also stated that the name of the town or village within was Burneyville Village. And today Burneyville is in section 34 of township seven South range one West. So that was fun to see that correlation. Now in 1905 the Marietta Monitor newspaper reported that Uncle Johnny Harris was a business visitor to the city from Leon on Monday.

Diana (7m 37s):
And Leon is located in sections five and eight of township eight South Range two West. Then in 1908, John C. Harris lived in Pike in 1908 when the newspaper announced his marriage to Arza and it said JC Harris of Pike and Ms. Arza Spry of Leon were married in Burneyville. And Pike is within section eight of Township seven South and Range one West with Pike Cemetery located in the section just south of Section eight and section 17. So then we have the 1910 census where John C. Harris is living in Marietta City, which is within Love County and they were part of Ward two and living on Creek Street.

Diana (8m 24s):
And this is section 20 of township seven south range two East and it includes almost all of Marietta. And Marietta also spills over into section 17, 18, 19, 30, 29 and 21. So none of these locations were in section six, township seven, south range one east. But knowing he bought land there and knowing the other places he lived, Nicole felt like she’d know where to look for records for him.

Nicole (8m 53s):
Right, I had all these different places I could check in the the index, but I did think it was strange that none of the places he lived were where he bought that land from the newspaper notice. So I just put it on the list as another place to check. Well, we flew into Dallas on a Monday. My husband had a work trip there, so we went together to Dallas and then the next morning I dropped him off at work and took the rental car and drove an hour and a half up to Marietta, Oklahoma pretty much straight north from Dallas. And it was exciting to arrive at the beautiful Love county courthouse and be in the place my ancestors lived and once walked, it was about 10:00 AM when I arrived and I entered the courthouse and enjoyed looking around the halls and soaking it all in for a few minutes.

Nicole (9m 35s):
I noticed where all the different offices were and kind of got my bearings and took a few pictures of cool maps on the wall. And then when I was feeling ready, I went into the county clerk’s office and introduced myself to one of the ladies working there and let them know I was hoping to research for my ancestors’ deeds. And so they showed me back to the room housing the deed books and indexes and said, here you go.

Diana (9m 60s):
Well, and that’s a beautiful courthouse. So that’s fun that you took a little bit of time to get your bearings. That’s a great idea. Well what do you have to do first when you go into an research room like this is look around and figure out where everything is. And so in this case there were two counters that were slightly angled so you could put the big deed books up on those and one was by the edge of the room near the windows and the other was in a center like an island and there were shelves lining the walls and a few rows of additional shelves. So Nicole noticed that some of the books had deeds labeled and others just said miscellaneous records and some were labeled as town patents.

Diana (10m 41s):
And then there were some index books located near the door below the windows and volume. One of the deeds was across the room and the later volumes of recent deeds were in the rows of shelves. And so as you pulled out some of those index books, you learned they each covered a different township within Love County and some were combined and they had year ranges on the cover, usually starting in the 1910s. So in the blog post we have a image of what those books look like. So they’ve done a good job of trying to label it and give you some help at least. So luckily Nicole, you had done a lot of preparation and so you were able to pinpoint the index book for that township seven south Range one West where John was, we know specifically in 1900 in the census that gave us that.

Diana (11m 34s):
And then potentially in Burneyville, which is in section 34. And that also he was of Pike, which is in section eight. So you know, you had to do a lot of work beforehand before you got there and could start looking. So that’s a good thing you had done all that.

Nicole (11m 53s):
Right. Yeah. And I was glad that I had called ahead and asked them if I could do the research there and they gave me that tip that I would need to know township range section so I would be ready. Well, as I opened up the index for seven South one West, I started paging through the sections one through eight to get to section eight. But I stopped on section seven because at the very top of the index page I saw the name of my great-great-grandfather Dock Harris, and that was so exciting. The grantee was Dock’s nephew, John R. Defoor, who was the son of Dock’s, older sister Margaret Cinderella Harris John R. Defoor Bone. And she was 18 years older than Dock.

Nicole (12m 33s):
He was kind of like the younger child. And so John R. Defoor, although he was Dock’s nephew, they were like the same age, so kinda more like cousins than Uncle-Nephew. So the index entry was for a deed from October, 1915, recorded in book eight, page 579. So I took a picture of the index page to document the information on the page and remember my step by step experience in finding the deed. And then I located the deed record book eight and opened it up to page 579. And it was so exciting to see not only Dock’s name on the deed but his wife Ali Harris, which is Alice’s nickname.

Nicole (13m 14s):
And she was included in the deed. It recorded a sale of 126.2 acres by Dock and Ali Harris to John R. Defoor in 1915 for $43. So I took a picture of the page using my phone and then I turned the page to make sure there wasn’t anything else on the next page. And in this deed book they had forms that just took one page so there wasn’t anything on the next page. And then I decided to like take my phone up really high and get a picture of the whole spread. And then I realized, oh, I need to take a picture of the front of the deed record book. So I would remember in my photo album, you know which deed book this was from so I could write the source citation including that info.

Nicole (13m 56s):
And so I decide I kinda made the decision I was going to document through photos everything I needed instead of like taking notes and taking photos just to simplify. So that’s when I made the decision that for the rest of my research trip I would document which book I’m looking at by taking a photo of the front of the book or the spine first. Then I would know that every picture that followed that would be images from that book until I took another picture of the front of another book. And this protocol worked really well for my research in the courthouse and then later in the historical society when I found records there as well. And then this enabled me to make accurate source citations when I got home. And now let’s have a word from our sponsor.

Nicole (14m 37s):
Have you ever wished you could step back in time and see the world your ancestors lived in? With newspapers.com you can. It’s like having a time machine right at your fingertips. With a simple search you can explore more than a billion pages of historical newspapers dating from 1690 to 2025, from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and beyond. Uncover the details that bring your family’s story to life in birth notices, wedding announcements and obituaries. But it’s not just about facts, it’s about experiencing the moments they lived through. Imagine reading through the same headlines they saw or finding an article about your great-grandfather’s farm. Newspapers.com doesn’t just show you history, it helps you feel it. Start your journey today at Newspapers.com because sometimes the past isn’t just history, it’s a story waiting to be discovered.

Nicole (15m 21s):
Come make infinite discoveries today on Newspapers.com and use promo code FamilyLocket for a 20% discount on your subscription.

Diana (15m 30s):
Well let’s talk about some additional records that you found for Dock Harris that was so exciting when you found the deed for him. And in the index it also showed that there were two additional records for him. There was one that was just labeled as cert CERT and that was in book 12 and then another deed in book 11. So you know when you saw Cert, you weren’t sure if that would actually be in the deeds or the miscellaneous book and sadly the index didn’t really tell you that. So you looked in the deed book, didn’t find it, and then tried the miscellaneous book. And sure enough there was a certificate of purchase from the Department of the Interiors Commissioner to the five civilized tribes showing Dock Harris and JR Defoor’s bid of $441 and 70 cents for 126 acres of land.

Diana (16m 22s):
That is so cool. And that this land, this was approved on June 4th, 1913. So the bidders had paid $66 and 25 cents so far, which was only 15% of the purchase price. And they were allowed to immediately use and possess the land but weren’t allowed to cut and remove any timber or drill for oil or gas or take any mineral from it until the full purchase price was paid. So what an interesting record seeing that transition from the Chickasaw Nation and letting that land be now purchased. So interesting. Well the deed in book 11 was from the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations to Dock Harris and JR Defoor and it completed the conveyance of the 126 acres and this was done in 1916.

Diana (17m 15s):
So you kind of saw the progression there. And then the index page had three more entries with only JR Defoor’s name, which you decided to check in case Dock was also involved. And the first was in miscellaneous record 15 and it was a right of way contract where JR Defoor and his wife Daisy gave permission to a Missouri company called Producers Refining Company to lay a pipeline for the transportation of oil and gas through his property for $17 and 88 cents. And that was in 1915. So we’re seeing this land starting to get developed. Well, miscellaneous record book 12 also had JR Defoor’s Oil and Gas Lease to Plains Oil and Gas Company.

Diana (18m 2s):
So Nicole, you noticed that while you were getting these miscellaneous volumes off the shelf, there was a large green book sitting on top and you pulled it down and saw that it was titled the Township Maps of the Chickasaw Nation. And a letter taped to the first page stated it was from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and contained the township maps of the Chickasaw Nation and this would show original Indian allotments and the map for seven south one West included Dock Harris and JR Defoor in section seven. So the maps were so neat and a visual index for those land records. And this really shows that transition period, which is so fascinating to see these records between Indian territory and Oklahoma statehood and how that land was dealt with.

Nicole (18m 51s):
Yeah, it really was interesting and I had always wondered that I had a lot of questions about how was it that the land that was part of Chickasaw nation began to be sold to the white settlers like the Harris family. So this was just extremely illuminating and helpful to really understand that all. Although I did find all these records like so quickly and it was exciting. I didn’t fully understand exactly what was happening in the story of Dock’s life, you know, from what I found. Yet I needed to read everything, analyze, transcribe the information, but I felt so rushed for time because I knew there were more things to find for his father, John C.

Nicole (19m 33s):
Harris. And so I didn’t wanna stop and read everything, I just took pictures and there’s a risk to doing that that you’ll miss something. And I did miss a couple things that I had to get later from emailing the clerks, but I found most of everything there was so much to find in just that one section. I do think it’s genealogical best practice to read, analyze, and log the records you’re finding as you go. That’s what I’ve heard other people teach. And that way you can recognize when one record you found is leading to another and you can make sure to find that record as well, which I did kind of follow that idea by, you know, getting all of the additional records from finding that one deed from for Dock Harris to John R.

Nicole (20m 16s):
Defoor and following up and kind of following the trail of John R. Defoor with the land going forward to make sure I got everything along that, you know, that had to do with that section of land. And so it is important to kind of notice if there are any other connected records and I tried to do that, but like I said, I was planning on using my photographs as my informal research log and then filling in the blanks of my actual Airtable log when I got home. So taking pictures of the book covers, index pages and record pages and making sure to turn pages and not miss the end of any records that might be on the next page was kind of my strategy. And I also planned to spend some time that evening to analyze what I had found in my hotel room so that I, ’cause I was coming back for the next two days, so it was a three day research trip and I was going to the courthouse each day.

Nicole (21m 4s):
But it did kind of backfire that plan because that evening we went out to dinner, we went to the gym, we were tired out. So I didn’t have that much time in the evening to analyze and prepare for the next day. So I spent a like 20 minutes reviewing and making a plan, but the deed analysis would really wait until I was home and had time to fully digest everything and correlate it with the records I already had.

Diana (21m 28s):
Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with that because you had limited time. So you do the best you can do. Well now you really wanted to find John C Harris’s land purchase and so you went to the page in the index to section eight where you thought the area of Pike would be and that’s where John was living and you found the deed from E.L. Carlisle to JC Harris in September of 1916. So it’s always so exciting when you turn the page and there it is. So this was in deed book 11 and for $460 JC Harris and Arza Z, he was, his wife purchased the northeast quarter of the southeast quarter of the northwest, quarter of section eight in that same township seven s and range one west.

Diana (22m 14s):
And it was less 1.25 acres for the town of Pike, Oklahoma. And this was on September 13th, 1916. So the deed didn’t say how many acres of land were sold, but it can be calculated by starting with the 640 acres, which is the size of a standard section in the public land survey system. And so calculating that is kind of complicated, but the northwest quarter of section eight would be 640 divided by four 160 acres. And the southeast quarter of that 160 acre parcel would be one 60 divided by four would be 40 acres.

Diana (22m 55s):
And the northeast quarter of that 40 acre parcel would be 40 divided by four or 10 acres. So the description then includes an important exception, less 1.25 acres, which has to be subtracted from that calculated total. So the final calculation is 10 acres minus the 1.25 acres and that’s 8.75 acres. Nice. Good job on your math.

Nicole (23m 24s):
Yay. Right. Sometimes it’s funny when there’s so many quarters being talked about in a row, like do I have four again and divided by four?

Diana (23m 32s):
Yeah.

Nicole (23m 33s):
Well as I continued reading that index for section eight, I found that Arza Harris, John’s second wife had an oil lease in conveyance of royalty in miscellaneous record book 61. And these were unique records because they actually included details about Arza using those eight acres in 1935, 17 years after John died. And so he, they bought this land in, I think it was 1916, right at the end of his life. He died in 1918 and then she got remarried again. And so it was cool to see her continuing to use that land and her second husband, JM McNeil as well as her children were listed.

Nicole (24m 13s):
So JC Harris, (John Chiven Harris), which at first I thought what it still says John C. Harris in 1935 when he was dead. But I realized that was Arza’s son John Chiven Harris, not John Christian Harris, and then JM Harris for Jesse Mathis Harris and then Ruthie Harris. So it was interesting, one of the fun things about it is that they called her an heiress. So in the oil and gas lease it said Arza Z Harris now McNeil an heiress. So that was kind of fun. She had inherited the land from her deceased husband and still in 1935 she was an heiress.

Diana (24m 52s):
Awesome.

Nicole (24m 52s):
So that completed my search of section eight of township seven, south range one West.

Diana (25m 0s):
Okay, so next you check the index for section 34 and that’s where you had located the town of Burneyville and there was nothing in that section. So you went back to the Pike area and searched SE section 17, which she knew was where Pike Cemetery was located and didn’t find John C. Harris or Dock Harris. But did find two records for John’s daughter and son-in-law, Benjamin Moore and Martha Rosetta Harris Moore, and they were listed as B.H. And M.R. Moore and they leased the southwest quarter of section 17 to S. Westheimer, Max Westheimer, D. Daube, and S.

Diana (25m 42s):
Daube for $240 in an oil and gas mining lease. And so you recognize that name Westheimer as a business person to whom Dock owed money and that had been in the newspaper. So that’s a fun connection. So you eventually asked where the index book for seven south one east was located because it must not have been obvious and someone else in the room, maybe a paralegal showed, showed you where to look and it was under the center island in a different spot than the first index books. So that’s always an adventure tracking all the books down when they sometimes aren’t where you think they should be. And then you were able to come to section six and you know, reading through the entries that showed the grantor the grantee type of instrument volume page in year and you knew it was for 1914 between Collins and Harris but couldn’t find anything like that in section six and searched more sections and still came up empty.

Diana (26m 42s):
So you know you had the feeling the deed was somewhere in that room but you’re just looking in the wrong index and then it’s like a treasure hunt, right? Then you looked for index books for the area where Marietta City was and couldn’t find those. Looked in the indexes of Township eight south range two West where the town of Leon was located and this was John Harris’s residence in 1905 as well as another index book. And luckily you took pictures of the index book covers to remember that you’d already looked through those ’cause you didn’t wanna have to do those again. And after a while I’m sure all those numbers were just swimming around in your head and then after 30 minutes of reading indexes and not find anything, you went back to seven South one west and that’s when you found it.

Nicole (27m 32s):
Yeah, it’s so funny ’cause that’s where I originally found so much. Before I go on and talk about the big discovery, when you were reading that about Martha Harris Moore, B.H. and M.R. Moore, the, the record from that section 17 in the Pike area, it’s interesting because at the time I didn’t know that the name Daube, how you said Daube, I think it might be do Dube or some kind of French name Max Westheimer and De Dabe do Dube. I’m not sure how to say it, but that name appeared later in the Harris family when I was looking for marriage records for one of the daughters who, so John’s daughter Millie, I didn’t know that she ever got married but in the Bible record we have it does say that her last name was Duvet or something like that, which we had never really figured out why.

Nicole (28m 29s):
But when I requested that a marriage record for her, I found one for her marrying a Frederick Duvet or Daube or however you say that. So that’s still a mystery. I’ve tried to identify that Frederick Duvet but with no luck at all. And he was from Louisiana according to the marriage record. So, and then she died right after they got married. So he just probably disappeared, I don’t know what happened, but interesting connection there that there were some other Daubes in the county doing business with Max Westheimer.

Diana (29m 5s):
Interesting. Well it’s relatively rural, you know, there’s not like a ton of people there and especially at this time. So everybody probably knew everybody else I would think.

Nicole (29m 13s):
Yeah.

Diana (29m 14s):
You know, lots of interactions among the residents there.

Nicole (29m 17s):
Yeah, the family must not have stayed long. They were there in between censuses. I didn’t find them on census records, but their name is difficult and I think that’s part of the problem is that it’s spelled so many different ways, like D-O-U-V-E or D-A-U-B-E. There’s a few different ways I’ve seen it.

Diana (29m 35s):
Yeah, Interesting.

Nicole (29m 36s):
That one’s been hard. But I would like to learn more about Millie Jane Harris’ husband, who he was and where he came from and what happened to him after she died. Hmm, someday. So after looking through all those different indexes and not finding anything, I returned back to the index book for seven South one West where I knew John and Dock had lived and had all those deeds. Well I started with section one and I read each index page carefully for the years 1907 to 1920, which was usually the first page for each section. And so I would kind of skip through the later deeds until I got to the first page of the next section, so section one and section two. And when I got to section six, I finally found the deed for John C.

Nicole (30m 19s):
Harris that I had seen in the newspaper and it was from Alan Collins to John C. Harris and it was in volume seven of the deeds. I also saw two deeds between Dock and John C. Harris and a deed between Dock and John Defoor and two records for just John R. Defoor and a deed between John R. Defoor and T Harris and an oil and gas lease for TJ Harris. So in all, there were eight records about my family on the first page of the index for section six, which is so funny because I had just kind of skipped over it going to section seven or eight, I think it was trying to go to section eight. So it was just funny that I had missed it.

Nicole (30m 59s):
It was exciting to see so many relevant records on one page and it just made sense because section six is near Section seven and near the town of Pike. So it made sense that the Collins deed was there since it wasn’t in the index for seven South one east, the newspaper just had a mistake. It was one letter off and the actual land description should have read part six of seven South one West, not east. So I located deed book seven and opened it to page 363 and I reviewed the parties, the land description and the date and recognized the deed as the one in the newspaper from Alan B. Collins and Ava Collins to John C. Harris on October 9th, 1913. And I had finally met my goal of finding that transaction I felt so successful and it was basically in 1913 for $150 the Collins conveyed a one half interest in the southwest quarter of Section six, township seven South range one West being part of a track number 515 with the assumption of the balance with interest due the government on the purchase price.

Nicole (32m 3s):
So that was an interesting one, kind of a different one, a one half interest and it, and I returned then to the Chickasaw Nation Township Maps book. It was really big, a beautiful green cover. I had left it open on the counter and looked carefully at section six, which showed Alan B. Collins and Doc Harris as joint owners of that quarter of section six and it was directly above section seven. So I was starting to kind of put together that Alan Collins and Dock Harris might have purchased that tract of land together.

Diana (32m 38s):
Absolutely. Well and I love that the map that you have an image of in this blog post has all the sections and it shows the names of people. That’s such a fun map showing that. Love that. So how did you complete this section six research? Well, you located and photographed all the records except for a mortgage for John Defoor because the mortgage books weren’t available and one of his oil and gas leases. You know, here’s a case where you just didn’t quite get that one photographed and that’s what happens sometimes. So one of the things that you didn’t recognize was how important Alan B. Collins was, and you should have located and photographed two additional records indexed for him in section six.

Diana (33m 25s):
So there was a 1914 plat map by the Department of the Interior in 1914, and the deed from C and C nations to Alan B Collins in 1915. But you didn’t realize the importance of these records until you were home writing about it, transcribing the deeds, making citations, and writing the story of Dock and John C Harris’ lives. So this often happens though. And so it became clear when that Dock was probably the joint grantee on the 1915 deeds. So you were able to email the county clerk and ask if they would send you those deeds and she sent them out the next day, which was awesome.

Diana (34m 5s):
And that was kind of surprising because you had tried earlier to email them for a deed, but maybe it was because the location of the deed you asked for was printed incorrectly so they couldn’t find it. So maybe they tried and just like you couldn’t find it, well, they couldn’t find it

Nicole (34m 22s):
Right, when I realized that I thought, oh, maybe that’s why they didn’t respond. So they’re like, well, we’ll have to try again. And they just got busy. So it was really nice to have the email with the deeds come in because I was in the middle of writing my portfolio for certification and I really wanted to include that information. So that was great. Well, I reviewed all the other sections in seven South one West, and when I was done with that index book, I spent some time reviewing the plat maps, again, looking for any related names. It was nice to see like a visual form of index. And I did find Ali Frazier Harris’s brother, Dock’s wife, Coleman Frazier owning land in seven South two West.

Nicole (35m 3s):
So I photographed four of his records as well. And lastly I found Thomas J. Harris, which was a stepbrother to Dock Harris in the plat maps and recognized him and I found his certificate of purchase from the commissioner to the five civilized tribes in 1912. And a note about that is that the C and C nations that you mentioned that stands for Choctaw and Chickasaw nations and often they were referred to in the index as C and C Nation. So that was an interesting notation.

Diana (35m 30s):
Oh, that makes sense. That is interesting.

Nicole (35m 34s):
Yeah, so at that point of the clerks walked through and I asked her a question and then she also let me know at that time that I wasn’t allowed to take photographs of the index pages, just the deeds themselves. And so I felt a little silly for not noticing the sign about that, but it was good to know that I could take pictures of the actual deeds.

Diana (35m 52s):
Thankfully else you would have been writing everything down that would’ve taken so long. So grateful that we have cameras now that let us just our phones that let us just quickly snap those shots. Well wrapping up that session, so by the time you finished that, it was 12:45 PM and you had done so much in just two hours and 45 minutes, you had located 22 index records and photographed 20 of them. So you were really on a roll, but then you still felt like you had only scratched the surface and you needed to figure out those indexes for Marietta City and figure out more about the tax and court records. Luckily you had another day that you could go back and work,

Nicole (36m 34s):
Right. Yes. Also, I wanted to share that writing this blog post that we’re talking about today, you can go read it and see the pictures and stuff, but it was hard to remember all the steps I took in the clerk’s office. It was fun to go back and look through all my photos in the order that they were taken and try to recreate the experience for this blog post. I recommend that even if you don’t have time to do all the research logging while you’re there and the notes and the analysis that you really want to try to do some kind of voice recording or journal entry that’s easy to do about the experience to help you remember what you did. I luckily had talked to my mom, I talked to you on Marco Polo after going to the courthouse. So it was great to go back and Marco Polo in my archive and review the videos I took, which are just me talking about the things that I did that day.

Nicole (37m 23s):
And it’s funny to see some of the things that I said back then on that day I said, I’m overwhelmed with the wealth of records and tax records deeds, it’s just so fun. I’m geeking out completely. So it really was an amazing experience and hopefully you gained lots of ideas and tips for if you want to do a courthouse visit. I know a lot of you are good at courthouse research who are listening and we’d love to have your comments on this podcast episode or the blog post about what works for you, strategies and tips that you have. I think a really important one is to call ahead to find out if there’s any unique indexing like this one that you need to know the the township in range before you come in the section.

Nicole (38m 3s):
And then just finding out their hours and their access policies, photographing policies. And I really enjoyed mapping out the known locations before my visit using tools like Randy Majors and just making sure I had all of the most detailed information about my research subjects on hand so that I could like have that information to help me find more about them. And then also another tip you may have noticed that we talked about was researching related family members and gathering details from the records about known siblings and in-laws associates who might appear in the same records. I tried to gather those if I could, and I had a little bit of time, it wasn’t too hard to photograph a few more deeds and there were more that I could have gotten that I didn’t because I wanted to make sure I did find the people I was looking for and not just all the friends, associates and neighbors, but gathering some of those friends, associates and neighbors did help understand the local history and context of that time.

Nicole (39m 5s):
And of course you’ll always are hoping that some of those FAN club records will illuminate your ancestor as well, which some of them did. So it was helpful to have them later. So yeah, my tips are just to prepare in advance and be ready to have changes in your research plan depending on what you find and hopefully you can find some of those friends, associates and neighbors along with your people as well.

Diana (39m 32s):
Well I think a really key point to this was calling ahead to see that those indexes were by the township and not just alphabetical like they are in many other courthouses because can you imagine if you’d walked in thinking you could just look up the Hs for Harris, right? And have everything right there. Well, you would’ve been in a a world of hurt because it would be difficult at that point to go figure it out. So good lesson about calling ahead and figuring out exactly what you should be looking at. Well, it’s been so fun to talk through all of this research that you did and what I found the most fascinating was the whole idea of the oil and gas leases because you know, we all have heard about Texas and Oklahoma and all the oil that was there.

Diana (40m 18s):
And so this is, it’s kind of sad that that’s what was happening to the land that they were going to get all the oil and gas out of the ground probably, I don’t know, maybe it, maybe they didn’t wreck things too much when they did that, but it is showing the development of the area, which we’ll talk about in another episode, that transition. So anyway, this was, this was fun to talk through and hopefully you know, any of our listeners, if you haven’t done this type of research, maybe you got some ideas and some tips. So we hope you have great luck in your own research at the courthouse and we will talk to you next time. Thanks for listening.

Diana (40m 58s):
Bye-bye.

Nicole (40m 58s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.