Finding the Perfect Match

 

Finding verification for family relationships among our ancestors of the 1700s can be challenging. For those hearty souls willing to wade through legal documents—and ancestors also of such an intrepid bent—the ability to locate that perfect match of names in court records is facilitated by one helpful tool: the FamilySearch Full Text Search.

Puzzling over just how many women named Lucy our James Heslop may have loved—as we've seen, it was more than one but court records must have included some late filings—I took my search question to that specific tool. Of the many hits resulting from my search terms, there was one item filed in the deed books of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, which seemed a useful addition to the records.

The document was an indenture, a basic land transaction protocol used in Virginia for transferring the ownership of land when it involved more than simply two parties. This indenture, dated March 14, 1825, was between both James Heslop—one of the Carter descendants I had been following—and his brother Horace Heslop, and, for the second part, a man by the name of William Hart.

Two gifts from this deed, which I at first had considered bypassing since it wasn't a document I was expecting to outline family relationships. The first gift was realizing just how many ways the name "Horace" could be misspelled. In this case, "Horris" will now be added to my list of possibilities for future searches regarding this grandson of John Carter.

The second gift was a phrase inserted into the provisions of this court document. The brothers wanted to specify that, among other stipulations in the deed, this one unexpected provision needed to be heeded: 

...on which land Mrs. Ann Heslop the mother of the said Horris + James at present resides + the use of which she is entitled to so long as she may live....

That same Ann, wife of William Heslop, was a daughter of John Carter. However, in reviewing the death register for two of her children—Sarah Kenyon Heslop and James Heslop—the clerk had entered a disappointing "Wm + N Heslop" for the names of their parents, rather than the expected mother's name, Ann. This unexpected entry, found buried within the details of a random property exchange, provided the assurance needed that "N" of the later death reports should actually have been "Ann."

Bit by bit, I'm piecing together the documents reflecting the Carter family constellation. Some are obvious, such as the wills left by the patriarchs in each generation of the family's line. Others are unexpected gifts, worth noting and saving as additional support in tying together those family connections in an era lacking the records we've become accustomed to using for more recent relationships.