When It's Not There

 

When we find a specific detail about an ancestor's life, of course we first want to locate a document to verify the assertion. Last week, I encountered information through Harry Wright Newman's book, Anne Arundel Gentry, which indicated that a deed verifying the relationship of Elizabeth Plummer not only to her father Thomas, but also to her husband William Iiams had been destroyed by a courthouse fire. Not to worry, though—at least, according to the Newman book—for many of the records destroyed in the 1704 fire were re-recorded when residents voluntarily brought in their own copies to again be noted in the court documents.

But when I headed to the FamilySearch Labs' Full Text search to locate such a record, I wasn't able to find anything quite like the quoted document from the Newman book. This means finding alternate ways to locate the alleged document, if possible. If it is not available through FamilySearch, then another possibility could be the Maryland Archives. Besides that, someone posted a copy of a will pertinent to Elizabeth's own family on Ancestry. As the Newman book mentioned Elizabeth Plummer Iiams' death as occurring in 1762, that became my next goal to locate. Again, no results for my search.

Using other researchers' writings as a guide to locate documents can work to our benefit, and there are other resources out there for locating these collateral lines connected to our William Ijams (or Iiams) family. Even the extensive notes attached to the Find A Grave memorial for Thomas Plummer, Elizabeth's father, provide a guide of the book and page numbers for records of interest, which may be findable through the Maryland Archives.

I'll be gathering more of these hints to compose a to-do list for my document hunt. Somewhere, those records should be findable. It's just a matter of determining which repository has the actual document. Hopefully, somewhere, the records I need will be findable online. After all, it's a long way to Maryland—unless I can do my research "travel" virtually.