Old Newspapers and Land Patents

I have discovered a couple of very cool websites today that I just couldn't keep secret (although I'm sure many of you out there know about these or have heard of them).

First off, I was curious about searching old newspapers to find more information on some ancestors, specifically the Early Virginia Vaughts.  I searched in Google for "early Pennsylvania newspapers" (trying to confirm a snippet quoted to me in the past about John Paul Vogt in Ben Franklin's newspaper of 1734).  What came up was a particular site entitled Historical Newspapers Online from the University of Pennsylvania.  This is a listing of searchable newspapers that have been completely, or partially put on the internet for your use.  It has newspapers from most if not all 50 states and is simply fantastic.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything in Pennsylvania, however, I did find The Virginia Gazette, courtsey of Colonial Williamsburg (if you have never visited this amazing piece of living American history, I urge you to do so, it's an experience you'll never forget and may even bring you closer to your ancestors by showing you the way they worked, lived and fought!).  It was fantastic! 

While a search for Vaught and Vogt didn't turn up much of anything, I decided to search on another line of research I'm currently working on: proof that Gasper Vaught (my direct line ancestor) and his brothers fought in Lord Dunmore's War of 1774-1775.  Family lore has it that Gasper (sometimes known as Casper) was part of Captain William Love's company of frontier militia that accompanied Lord Dunmore at the Battle of Point Pleasant.  There's a significant lack of information on this time period in our family history, so anything would be useful.  'Lo and behold, I found an entire article about the battle where Captain Love and his men were mentioned.  It had been scanned from the original newspaper in 1775 and posted online---remarkable!  I'll post some more just on this line of research later...

The next website I want to tell you about is from our US Government.  I was trying to find some patents for ancestors of ours in Indiana and stumbled across the Bureau of Land Management's record office.  They actually have millions of government issued land patents digitized and ready to view and save.  You can also order certified copies (for only $2 each!).  The system is very user friendly and easy to search.  I looked under Indiana, typed in Vaught and let it fly.  I was surprised to see my great-great-great-grandfather, George Washington Vaught and his brother, Andrew Jackson Vaught, listed as getting patents from the US Government in Indiana.  I quickly got a digitized copy of the official certificate in .pdf form. 

Once I get the actual document in the mail, I'll scan it and post it here!

Check out your ancestors on these sites and see what you can find!

The Cherokee family legend: Spicey Jane Smith



Josephine Elizabeth Pinner in 1938.



My paternal grandmother's name was Josephine Elizabeth Pinner Vaught (1916-2002).  She was married to my grandfather, James Albert Vaught on the 5th of April, 1941.

 The Pinner family, at least my branch of it, were settlers of Florida before it became a state.  In fact, the first Pinners to move into the Sunshine State arrived in the late 1820s and served in the Indian Wars of the 1830s.  As the American army moved south into Florida pursuing the Seminoles, settlers followed---many of whom were soldiers who when they mustered out stayed in the new land.

 William Pinner (son of Arthur Pinner from South Carolina, who was in turn the son of the first Pinner I know of, another Arthur, also of South Carolina) moved with his young family to what is now Alachua County, Florida in the late 1820s.  He is listed on the Alachua County Census for 1820 but since his family didn't arrive until from South Carolina until a few years later, it is assumed he was merely laying claim to his future homestead.  By 1850, he had moved the Pinners to Putnam County.

 The 1860 Putnam County, Florida Agricultural Census shows William Pinner owned 180 acres of land, 45 acres of which were improved and 135 were unimproved.   The estimated value of his land was listed at $900 (the 1860 value).  His farm implements were valued at $60 and the value of livestock was $250.  In 1850, the U.S. dollar was worth 4 times what it is today.

William’s youngest son Arthur (born in 1825 in South Carolina) married an interesting woman named Spisa Jane Smith.  Family oral tradition has it that Spisa, also known as Spicey Jane Smith, was a full Blooded Cherokee Indian.  The only information I have on her is that she was born (supposedly) around 1824 on Cherokee lands in southwestern South Carolina.  She (again supposedly) died sometime after 1860 (she was listed on the Putnam County 1860 Census but there is nothing after that). 

Spisa/Spicey, as the story my grandmother told me goes, left her husband and family in 1838-1839 to travel the "Trail of Tears" with her people.  She was supposed to have had a "brood" of children she left behind...however, all my data points to the fact that her first child, Arthur A. Pinner (my grandmother’s grandfather) was born in 1843, well after the Trail of Tears.    Perhaps she traveled with relatives who had a lot of children?

My grandmother used to tell my sister and I when we were children that one of her ancestors was an Indian, but she always thought it was a Seminole.  The information I reported above was a combination of family legend I’ve gathered from other relatives and my grandmother (who swore up and down there was an Indian in her ancestry).

This is a fascinating brick wall I’ve encountered, but I’m not giving up.  Unfortunately, the usual first place to look for Indian ancestors are the various “Rolls” the US Government produced as a sort of Indian Census.  However, these rolls, I have come to understand, only cover Indians who were transferred to a reservation recognized by the United States and/or were granted land there as well.  Since everything I have points to the fact that Spisa/Spicey---if she did go west with the Cherokee at all---came back to Florida and her husband where she began having children and remained the rest of her days.

This is one “problem” I love coming back to, time after time.  There’s something that draws me to this story.  For one thing, many people (including my grandmother) have commented that my grandmother looked like she had Native American roots.  Is it true?  I have no idea.  But I’d like to find out, if nothing else than to justify my grandmother’s beliefs.  Only time will tell, but when I do find something, I’ll post it here!

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there!

Like Mother’s Day, I can’t help but think about family history on Father’s Day.  I always take a moment to think about all the fathers in my family tree and reflect on everything they sacrificed and fought for over the centuries, to allow me and my immediate family to live the way we do. 

And each year I take the time to thank Mel Gibson.

I know what you’re thinking…whaaaaaaat?  Mel Gibson?  What does he have to do with Father’s Day?  Isn’t he some sort of a celebrity pariah now?



Swordfights!  Yeah!



Well, I have to thank him because he got me interested in my family history.  When I was a junior in high school, the epic movie Braveheart was released in 1995.  I went to see it with my father---what red blooded American teenager wouldn’t want to see a 3 hour swordfight??  I had never heard of William Wallace and had no idea what I was in for...but the previews I saw on TV looked cool!

That movie stirred something inside me that I never knew was there: a fascination with Scotland.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  In the months after I saw Braveheart, I went to the library at my school and checked out every book on Scotland I could get my hands on---folk tale anthologies, histories, textbooks, it didn’t matter.  If it was about Scotland, I was reading it.  The funny part was, I had no idea why.  It was like I was learning stuff that I should have known but didn’t, and didn’t even know why I should have known about.  It’s hard to explain.

Then on a family vacation to Florida later that year, I passed a bookstore that had a display in the window of Braveheart books---the novelization of the movie, based on the screen play written by Randall Wallace.  I couldn’t resist.  In the foreword, Mr. Wallace wrote about being on a trip of his own in Scotland, where he saw a statue of William Wallace (for those of you who don’t know---he’s the sort of the Scots version of George Washington) and got curious about whether he was related or not.

That one sentence literally changed my life.  I asked my dad about our last name---where did Vaught name come from?  He explained how he wasn’t sure, but he thought Germany.  He had done some genealogy research years back before I was born and found out some stuff from his grandparents and aunts and uncles, but then lost interest when his children were born.

When we got back home from that trip, the summer before I went off to college, I begged my father to pull out all his research and we spent a weekend pouring over everything.  It was all handwritten, black and white photocopies, and old photographs.  About 15 years of research stuffed into one large manila envelope.  My entire family history. 

When I got to college, I was introduced to the joys of a T1 internet connection in the dorms at the University of Delaware.  I got myself a family history computer program (Family Tree Maker) and the Internet opened up a whole new world of genealogy.  By the end of my first semester in college, I had more than doubled the size of our family tree, confirmed about 98% of the “family legends” my dad had recorded and was thoroughly hooked on Genealogy. 

That was 11 years ago.  I now have close to 9,700 people in my database and it’s still growing because now I’m really focusing on my mother’s family tree.  I know my place in the long chain of Vaughts, Tuckers, Snows, Denunes, Pinners, Wards, Cramers, Wells, Scotts and a host of other families.   If you’re reading this blog, then chances are either you fat-fingered the web address or you’re addicted to genealogy too.  And if you’re a fellow family historian, then likely you’ve had that “Eureka!” moment too, when the dark veil of ignorance was suddenly lifted from your eyes and you saw a path to your past clear as day for the first time, ever.  And it made you feel complete---like you belong. 

And you loved it.

In 2008 my wife and I took a belated honeymoon to Scotland and England.  While we were there, visiting the Isle of Skye, I had an experience that, while not exactly spiritual, came pretty close, genealogically speaking.  I’ll go into details when I do a post on my connection to the Denune family, but to make a long story short, on the Isle of Skye, a local woman informed me over tea that I “had the look of the Campbells down south”.   When I came home and did some more research, I located the Scottish homestead I was looking for: Dunoon, Scotland, deep in the heart of the lands held by Clan Campbell.  More on that later… 

Now that I am a father of two myself (I still can’t get used to that idea!), the ability to pass on the knowledge that my father and I have pulled out of the dark obscurity of time and into the light of present memory to my children is something precious to me.  So many people in this world go through life without that anchor to the past, without knowing who they really are or where they’re from.     

It still makes me smile (and my wife roll her eyes) to think that I owe it all to watching Mel Gibson strut around in a kilt with a big sword and speaking with a Scottish accent.  So this Father’s Day, once again I’ll thank my father, and his father and all the fathers before us for all that they did. 

And I’ll raise a wee dram to Mel and say Thank You for starting me on the path to my history.

Thanks Mel!!!