Land Grant Applications
Don't overlook land grant applications as they can be goldmines of information. We have the original land grant and attached application for my great-great-grandparents for land in Arkansas in the early 1800s. My grandfather received 120 acres. The application provided information on where he was coming from, who was traveling with him, what household goods they brought, livestock, slaves, and more. Our ancestor brought "wife, 3 children, wagon, 2 mules, general household and personal goods, a milk cow, a goat, and 1 slave" from Tennessee.

This land is still owned by a member of our family, and these documents are a valued documentation of what they had when they started clearing and building on the land, and the hardships they faced.

Jerrie Sanders

AAA Tour Books
Get out your old AAA Tour Books and check out the towns and cities of your interest. Here's what happened to me:

When looking for a map in the Mid-Atlantic AAA Tour Book, I turned some pages then looked up a town in the Virginia county I've been researching. The town description mentioned a library in a certain building. I looked up the building on Google and brought up the name of the library that has a link for "genealogy". I plugged in the surname I was searching and found that the library has a family file for that name. I left a query, which was soon answered, and I was told about the contents of the file. I hope this may happen to you.

Madge (Hazlett) Johns

Googling History
Just for curiosity I recently took an idea from the Ancestry Weekly Journal. I typed in "the year was 1895" in Google in my Web browser (my grandparents' year of marriage) just to see what came up. To my surprise there were a considerable number of items that could be considered trivia as well as just plain interesting stuff. One single item was during that year Henry Ford met with Harvey Firestone for the first time to look into a new tire concept for one of his cars. A lasting friendship and a well known product line developed from that meeting.

Try it--I got 930 hits. It will add little tidbits of history to your family history.

Pat Bowen

If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: Juliana@Ancestry.com. Thanks to all of this week's contributors!

Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Weekly Journal please state so clearly in your message.

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