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Visiting History: James Stephen's Texas Land Grant

Last month, the Hubs and I took a camping trip in south central Texas. We stayed in LaGrange and that put us just a short drive to where his fourth great-grandfather owned land back in the 1830s. Field trip time! James Stephen (abt. 1795-1857) received a Spanish land grant in 1831 after settling in the area in 1829. He was granted a league of land ( 4,428.4 acres),  on the Caney Creek in Washington County by the Coahuila y Tejas government on 8 March 1831. 1   James Stevens (sic) land shown on a 1976 map. 2 At the time of Stephen's settlement, witness Samuel M. Williams, swore that Stephen was, "...married and a man of very good habits, much honesty and industriousness." 3 This endorsement met all the criteria of Stephen F. Austin's conditions for settlers, demonstrating that Stephen had "the most unequivocal and satisfactory evidence of unblemished character, good morals, sobriety, and industrious habits..." and "...sufficient means to pay for their l...

Behind the Stories: A Peek Behind the Research Curtain

Do you want to peek behind the genealogical curtain? 1

Have you ever wondered how I come up with information for my blog posts? It should come as no surprise that the stories all flow from research discoveries.

Genealogical research can be as simple as ordering a vital record, like a birth or death record. Or, it can be as complicated as researching multiple generations of a family line for a lineage society, or looking deeply at a person or event—and take several months to complete.

The constant in all my research? I invariably find many interesting stories along the way to answering a specific research question, and these stories beg to be told.

I recently focused on my Croatian great grandmother for a two-part blog series. The information I uncovered was the product of the "Research Like a Pro," research process I use, created by genealogists/podcasters Diana Shults Elder and Nicole Dyer. They kindly asked me to write about my project for their FamilyLocket blog.

So, if you'd like to peek behind my "genealogical curtain," dive into the blog post, "Identifying Reasons for Emigration Using the Research Like a Pro Process."2

Until next time...

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NOTES

1 Sir John Tenniel, Alice in Wonderland illustration, Project Gutenberg (https://bit.ly/2JNrG8s: accessed 6 April 2020). This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net.

2 Diana Elder and Nancy Gilbride Casey, "Identifying Reasons for Emigration Using the Research Like a Pro Process." FamilyLocket, 11 March 2020 (https://bit.ly/2JIvbx7 : accessed 6 April 2020).









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