George Smith Warrant and Grant

This is the mysterious George Smith.  I don’t know how he related to the other 3 Smiths, but I suspect that if MY John M. Smith is related to anyone, he comes through George’s line.  I can find very little on George Smith, so I’m hoping for some treasures in the land records that I’ve [...]

Read Full Post »

Prepping for Land Records

Last weekend, I was able to order 5 land deed films to help in my research of Smiths in Mercer County, Kentucky. (BTW, I LOVE the new online ordering from FHL!!!)  My plan is to “follow the land” to see who the original settlers sell/give their land to over time. So today, I transcribed the [...]

Read Full Post »

Ruling Out 1812 John M. Smith?

I was able to spend a couple of hours yesterday at the library and I was able to look at a book called Record of abstracts, pension records; soldiers of the revolutionary war and 1812 war, who settled in Mercer County, Kentucky, Harrodsburg (the county seat) by Annie Walker Burns. In that book, there was a [...]

Read Full Post »

War of 1812 John M. Smith

The book snippet that I posted yesterday mentioned John M. Smith followed by Nancy Smith.  I think this pension card from the was of 1812 is certainly them, I just don’t know if they’re mine! I found this on the Fold3 web site, but the file itself has not yet been scanned. I know NOTHING [...]

Read Full Post »

Could this be MY John M. Smith?

I was looking through the book, “Early Days in Danville” by Calvin Fackler and my heart skipped a beat when I found “John M. Smith” listed in the index.  Could this be MY John M. Smith? I copied 4 pages and I will transcribe it here.  There are LOTS of clues to follow up on [...]

Read Full Post »

A Better Look at the Map

I had downloaded a digital version of the 1784 Filson map of Kentucky before, but it wasn’t a large enough file to be able to zoom in and read any of the words.  Today, I found a great digital file at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/3/ If I were to print the map at 100%, but would be about 7 [...]

Read Full Post »

Thinking about John M. Smith’s date of birth

If I’m believing the information given in the Oscar Smith biography, John M. Smith was an early pioneer of Danville, Kentucky.  The wording in the biography – “the pioneer of the family in Kentucky” – made me think of researching the first settlers in Kentucky in nearby Fort Harrod, but maybe that’s not quite right. [...]

Read Full Post »

1st Land Grants of (Current) Mercer County, Kentucky

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kymercer/grants.html – Also has a nice history of County Formations for the area. Smith Zachariah 400 Harrods Run 02-07-1780 1-9 1000 Harrods Run 05-29-1780 1-56 Zachariah had a brother named John…

Read Full Post »

Naming Patterns – Thinking Out Loud

I’m still obsessed with John M. Smith (1760-ish – 1835) and trying to make a connection between him and a Smith family from the first permanent settlement in Kentucky – Fort Harrod.  John has been a brick wall for a long time, and some of the information I’ve discovered in the last year has given [...]

Read Full Post »

First White Men in Wayne County, Kentucky

From “A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky, 1800-1900” on Ancestry First white men of Wayne County – “Long Hunters” – summer of 1770. James Knox Richard Knox William Allen *captured by Cherokee Joseph Drake Obadiah Terrell John Rains Uriah Stone Henry Smith – even if this isn’t my direct line, perhaps this is a connection [...]

Read Full Post »