I've been playing around with uploading my own content to Footnote.com. The marriage license for Asa Landon and Mrs. Mary Sargent from 1849 in Winnebago County, Illinois, was something I added to Footnote.com a few days ago.

Of course, I can make annotations for names and places, which I did. Comments can also be added. Site users can interact with uploaded images just like other Footnote.com content. Uploaded images can be viewed for free, even without an account. If you want to "interact" with user uploaded content, or upload your own, you'll need an account.

Those who want to see the Sargent-Landon marriage license on Footnote can do so here. It provides a nice overview of how one actually views and interacts with the site's content. And the nice thing is that if someone does a search for Asa Landon on the site, the image I loaded will be pulled up. If they are related to Asa, hopefully they will contact me.

Mary Sargent was the mother of an Ira Sargent (born. ca. 1845 in Canada). I am thinking this Ira Sargent may be the same as my Ira Sargent who first appears in Hancock County, Illinois, in 1880.

Labels: footnote, sargent

Labels: ftm2008, sargent, trautvetter

A search of the Illinois State Marriage Index indicated Asa Landon married Mrs. Mary Sargent in Winnebago County, Illinois in 1849.

This copy of the marriage license was obtained from the Illinois Regional Archives Depository at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois.

The date agreed with the entry in the index. This was not a copy from book I, as referenced in the index, as that is the marriage register entry and this is the actual license.

Hiram Lake was a neighbor of Asa Landon. Lake purchased property in the same section as Asa Landon.

I'm still trying to connect Mary Sargent's son Ira, with my Ira who first appeared in the 1880 census in Hancock County, Illinois.

Labels: sargent

We've posted two articles on our site on searching the 1870 census. The discussion is applicable to other years as well and focuses on alternate spellings for names, variant last names, places of birth, and other issues with locating people in the census. The focus is on organizing and thinking about what you want to search before you start mindlessly entering names in search boxes.

• Ready to Try 1870
• 1870 Census Finds

The second article centers on an analysis of entries located while trying to search for Johann Ufkes (born 1838 Ostfriesland, Germany) in the 1870 census and provides some ways to analyze entries.

Unfortunately I have not found either person (Johann Ufkes or Ira Sargent) I was looking for in 1870. But the search continues.

Labels: 1870 census, census, sargent, tips, ufkes

The image to the right shows the 1856 census enumeration for an Ira Sargent in Davis County, Iowa---who may be my missing ancestor.

An article on my search
for Ira appears in this weekend's edition of the Ancestry World Journal .

The census enumerations are not crystal clear---but that's not unusual for census enumerations. Coimpounding the problem with this family are the two marriages of the mother, which are not hinted at in other records.

Labels: articles, sargent

Clark Sargent purchased federal land in Winnebago County, Illinois on 1 March 1848. I think he died shortly thereafter and the Mrs. Mary Sargent that married in Winnebago County, Illinois to Asa Landon on 6 January 1849 is his widow. I have tracked Mary and Asa in the 1850 (Winnebago County, Illinois) and 1860 census (Christian County, Missouri), but am trying to find out if Clark Sargent who purchased the property is the Sargent who was the husband of Mary. One of the Sargent children living with Landon is Ira, born ca. 1844. I lose the Landons after 1860.

Labels: sargent

Labels: sargent

Perhaps my biggest brick wall is my great-grandmother, Ida May Sargent Trautvetter Miller (1874-1939). The image on this post comes from her 1939 death certificate, although other sources do indicate her mother was a Florence (or Ellen) Butler, who was born in Missouri in the 1850s.

Ida's date of birth (1 April 1874) is given relatively consistently in the records, her place of birth however is not. She has been located in all censuses from 1880-1930, none providing clues as to her parents beyond their general places birth. Her tombstone provides little additional data. Her second marriage application provides no new information either.

Her parents apparently were "dropped" in Warsaw, Hancock County, Illinois in 1880 when they were enumerated in the 1880 census. Her mother "evaporated" a few years later, and supposedly was never heard from again. Her father Ira (as William I. Sargent) married again to Martha Morris in Adams County, Illinois, in 1888. Ira died in 1916 in Limestone Township, Peoria County, Illinois, and has no burial location or stone. The most precise place of birth obtained for Ira has been Canada (although one census does indicate he was born in Quebec). Martha cannot be located in the 1920 census and the one child she supposedly had before her marriage to Ira has never been located. She has no stone at the cemetery where she is buried.

This discussion of Ida is somewhat informal. Records of Hancock and Adams Counties in Illinois have been exhausted in an attempt to locate more on this family. Suggestions are welcomed... mjnrootdig@gmail.com

Labels: brickwalls, sargent

Of course, work on a family never centers on one document (or at least should not, if at all possible). In the case of Martha and others, her death certificate should be analyzed in light of other evidence. And it should always be remembered that documents can be incorrect. Her death certificate had information provided from someone outside the family--a prime source of potentially incorrect information.

The 1900 census for Rocky Run Township, Hancock County, Illinois even has the last name as Sargin instead of Sargent.

Martha's 1900 census entry (itself prone to errors) gives a different middle initial for her and a year of birth off from the census, but not radically different.

Labels: sargent

Labels: sargent