My Family in the Civil War, Part Eight: Edward and Susannah Moore and Plotting Land Records

This is the eighth in a series on my Civil War ancestors

Edward Windsor and Susannah Bryant Moore

I will share a few search tips today, along with the family info.

Edward and Susannah were married in Orange County, Indiana September 4, 1823 by John Moore, a Justice of the Peace. This was probably Edward's older brother, who also settled in Orange County.

Orange County, Indiana Marriage Records

I don't know their exact whereabouts before 1838. They were in Orange County up until then except for a brief visit to Illinois where other family had gone. It appears they liked Orange County better and came back.

On September 1, 1838, Edward Windsor Moore (and this is the only time I can recall him spelling out the Windsor) purchased 40 acres of land. 

Edward Moore Land Patent 1838

I found this document on Ancestry, but you can search land records free on the Bureau of Land Management's site, General Land Office Records. I typed in Moore, Edward, Indiana, and Orange County. It gave me a list of properties fitting these criteria. By clicking on the icon next to mine, I could view this exact same document at no charge.

Handwritten into the form is the property description. Happily, Indiana uses the Township and Range system.  It looks like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but if you parse it out, you can go look at this property as it appears today on Google Earth. Want to see it, or some property your ancestors owned?

First, have your property description handy. Then go to this site, Earth Point. This is another free site. Down the menu bar on the left, in the section called Township & Range, click on Search by Description. Fill in all the drop-down menu choices there, then click Fly To On Google Earth. (By the way, Google Earth is also free, and can be lots of fun to mess around with.) I'll show you what I got for Edward's land description. First, a general overview showing his 40 acres in purple. The town of French Lick is nearby to get your bearings.

Edward Moore's 40 acres  at T1N R2W Section 14

Now to zoom in a little.

Edward Moore's 40 acres zoomed in

And finally, I wanted to see where this property was in relation to Moore's Ridge Church and Cemetery. I typed "Moores Ridge Cemetery" into Google Earth and got this picture.

Edward Moore's 40 acres relative to Moore's Ridge Cemetery

The property is outlined in purple. The church is the little yellow symbol near the bottom right. You might see the church, and the cemetery stretches out to the east of it. I am related in some way to nearly every person there. Susannah's grandmother is believed to the first person buried there.

Grave of Sarah Barbara Thrush Alspaugh Crout at Moore's Ridge Cemetery

And how did I get these pictures? When you are satisfied with what you have on the screen in Google Earth, go to the File menu, down to Save, then select Save Image. It will put a little .jpg on your computer for you. Tada!

I've spent a lot of time with using the land records here, so let me briefly describe the Moore family when they got this land. Edward was nearly 36, Susannah 34. They had six children living with them on their farm, including Sarah age 14, Barbara age 10, William Bryant age 8 (my ancestor), Martha age 6, Edward age 4, and Clarissa age 1.  They had already buried their firstborn son, John. He had died in 1832 at age 6. I learned from the pension file that they pretty much lived on what the farm produced with little extra to sell, like many families at that time.

More on the family before the war next time.

If I Liked it Then I Shoulda Put a Pin In It; or, My Budding Relationship With Pinterest

There's a bouncy pop song from way back in 2008 called "Single Ladies" by Beyonce. The gist is, if you didn't want to lose the girl, you "shoulda put a ring on it" and made her yours.

I have to say, as a genealogist, I have flirted with a lot of websites lately. I've been looking. A lot. Can I remember all their names? Not really. Some had flashy pictures; some had wonderful long lists of data. There were a few offering up some new techniques I wanted to try. But when I try to remember which god-forsaken corner of they internet they were located on, I can't come up with it for the life of me.

I''ve tried bookmarking them. That's like writing their names in a little black book. There's a name and a number, but what was it about? What piqued my interest there? I hate actually calling up the page and having to say, "Oh, sorry; it wasn't you."

Enter Pinterest. Now don't run off screaming into the night. It's not just for recipes and funny cat memes. If you've never heard of Pinterest, it is a website that offers you a visual way to bookmark websites and sort them into categories. You get a sneak peek at what the site was about to refresh your memory.

Pinterest is free to sign up for and use. You can sign up via email or a Facebook account. Once you have an account, you can create "boards" or categories that you want to sort your pages into, or "pin" the pages to. You can add new boards any time. If you would like to see what boards I currently have you can check them out here.

As of this writing, I have a few boards labelled "Surname SoAndSo" for when I find a page specifically about a certain family I'm researching. I've created one for Naturalization Sources; this is a new area to me because most of my lines are colonial, and I'm getting schooled on some unfamiliar types of records. A few others, self-explanatory I believe, include Civil War Information and Historical Fashion. Again, you create the categories, so they are tailored to your personal interests.

Two things I've found that make pinning really easy: the mobile app and the Pin It! browser button add-on. If you are using a mobile device, you can get the free Pinterest app in the same manner you get all of your other apps. When using your device, if you are on a page you want to save or "pin," you use the "Share" option in your menu and you can choose Pinterest there from among your other programs such as Facebook and Instagram.

As for how to add the Pin It! button to your browser, I'll let Pinterest tell you how. It is very easy to do, and places a small button in the top right corner of your browser that lets you pin whatever site you are on with the touch of, well, a button.

A warning, gentle readers: Pinterest is one of the greatest time sucks known to man. Be prepared to waste a little time your first few visits. Once the new wears off, I hope you will find it a useful tool in your genealogy research.