Last time we looked at one statement that led to the deed for the “Old Williams Farm” that S. C. Dimick purchased. This time a clue to land prior to his purchase of the Old Williams Farm.
The second statement from the sketch: “After working on his father’s farm for a time, he removed to Wisconsin, where he was in the lumber business for a year, and, on the expiration of that time, went to southern Minnesota, where for a year and a half he had charge of a government farm on the Indian reservation.”
At this time, land was often acquired from the Federal Government by special acquisitions such as homestead, timber, and mining claims, or by a cash sale. This led me to the Bureau of Land Management website: https://glorecords.blm.gov This website has a database of land obtained from the Federal Government, searchable by name, location, land description, etc. Thinking about the above statement, I looked for S. C. Dimick in both Wisconsin and Minnesota. I searched by the surname only first. I did not find any records for him in Wisconsin, but I found some intriguing information for him in Minnesota.
BLM Website Searching for Dimick in Minnesota.Search Results at BLM website.
There are a lot of entries for Chester Dimick. Do you remember Samuel’s father’s name? It was Chester! Well, I thought there might be the possibility of a man by the same name, so I took a closer look at one of the original documents.
Chester Dimick, (Morrison County, Minnesota), Land Patent No. 886; Bureau of Land Management, “Land Patent Search,” digital images, General Land Office Records (www.glorecords.blm.gov/PatentSearch : downloaded August 2015).
The original patent names the purchaser as “Chester Dimick of Grafton County, New Hampshire.” I fairly certain we are working with the same family.
Here is a summation of the land obtained by Chester in Minnesota:
Fifteen different land patents
Cash sale entries ($1.25-2.00 per acre)
Dated on 3 separate days between 1857-1859
Totaling 1607.44 acres in Morrison and Mille Lacs counties
To give you context on where the land was located:
The following shows the sections the parcels of land were located in in these three township/range. The land was near each other but not all of it was adjoining.
I have not yet looked for the deeds of sale to determine just how much Chester might have made on this land investment. I just haven’t taken the time yet. However, it is on my genealogical to do list.
As far as I can tell, Chester never lived in Minnesota. He was always found in New Hampshire in the censuses. This appears to have been an investment situation. S. C. Dimick was only in Minnesota for a year or two, working on an Indian Reservation. We will look at those records next.
There were a few statements in S. C. Dimick’s biographical sketch that led me to examine land records.
First: “In 1875, we find him a resident of Center township, Wood county, where he purchased 120 acres of the old Williams farm, and has here since made his home. He has one of the best orchards in the township, and his excellent farm has been brought under a high state of cultivation by industry and good management, with its attendant hard labor.”
Wood County, Ohio, Deed Book 48:123 (1876), County Recorder’s Office, Bowling Green, Ohio; FHL microfilm 409,648.Close-up, describing the 120 acres purchased.Ohio, Wood County, 1886 (Philadelphia: Griffing, Gordon & Co., 1886), 17; digital image, Historic Mapworks (www.historicmapworks.com : accessed 15 March 2015).
This map shows approximately where that 120 acres were located. This is after he sold some of the 120 acres to some relatives of his daughter-in-law.
Samuel bought this land outright. It was not a military warrant, or homestead, or some other acquisition from the Federal Government. So, this did not answer why he moved his family to Ohio. We will keep looking at the clues.
Last we found S. C. Dimick in the census records, in 1870 still in Lyme, New Hampshire and in 1880 he was living in Wood County, Ohio. Let’s look at other clues in his biographical sketch that lead me to other records.
Newspapers
I found several news articles for S. C. Dimick who was involved in the Wood County Farmer’s Institute. In 1886 he served as the president! The institute also resolved to thank various people. Included was a thanks to Mrs. S. C. Dimick for her paper on “Butter Making and Marketing” as well as an essay by Mr. S. C. Dimick on “Ensilage.”
“Farmer’s Institute,” Perrysburg Journal (Ohio), 12 February 1886, p. 3, c. 4.
I also located his obituary stating that he “died from grief” just days after his wife died.
“Died from Grief,” Marietta Leader, (Ohio), 3 May 1903, p. 3, c. 4.
Neither of these news articles gave any clues about when or why they moved to Ohio from New Hampshire.
Just a quick note to let everyone know that our 2023 NGSQ study groups are now forming.
These are hosted by either myself or Cyndi Ingle (of Cyndi’s List). We will read and discuss one National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ) journal article per month as posted on the website NGSQ Study Groups. We will study these articles with a focus on principles taught in Mastering Genealogical Proof (MGP) by Tom Jones. We will discuss topics on the genealogy standards, evidence analysis and correlation, writing, citations, and more.
For more detailed information, the schedule, fees, and to sign up, visit this page.
The registration links are also below:
NGSQ/MGP Monday 1:00 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cyndi Ingle – Register Here
NGSQ/MGP Monday 3:30 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cyndi Ingle – Register Here
NGSQ/MGP Tuesday 1:00 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cari Taplin – Register Here
NGSQ/MGP Tuesday 7:00 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cari Taplin – SOLD OUT
If this doesn’t fit into your schedule this year, sign up to be notified when the 2024 NGSQ study group registration is open, add your name to the list.
This week, I’m pausing my discussion on county histories to remember a friend with a shared love of genealogy that we lost too soon.
My good friend and genealogy buddy, Annette Sands Botello died on 17 November 2022 at about 1:30 in the morning. I was able to visit her on the 16th in her hospice bed. She was not really “there” though she looked at me once, accidentally kicked me when she moved her leg and she uttered a “sorry,” and smiled occasionally as I chatted with her husband Ys about good times we’ve had and our fond memories. It was only about four weeks between diagnosis and her death. It was quite sudden and none of us were prepared for it.
The last trip Annette and I took to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in 2018.
Annette and I took a couple of genealogy trips together, usually to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. We would research all day, take a sack lunch to eat outdoors in the beautiful gardens of Temple Square, and work on our findings in our room at night. One time, we went to Charleston, South Carolina for an NGS Conference. One afternoon we played hooky and took a little drive to visit some ancestral lands of some folks she was researching. We also stopped at a beach and put our toes in the ocean.
Just two girls from Colorado with our toes in the Atlantic.Annette with her feet in the ocean. Annette on the wooden walkway that leads to the ocean.Annette and I on one of our many visits to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.From left: Henrietta Christmas, Denise Miller, Me, Ruth Ratliff, and Annette Botello. At one of our trips to the Family History Library, this time in June 2010.
Annette was very passionate about her family history. She gave several fantastic presentations here in Colorado, usually case studies on the work she’d done with her ancestors. She facilitated a Mexico genealogy group in Denver and helped many learn how to work on their genealogy. She always had time to meet up at a coffee shop and talk genealogy. Most recently we met up at Starbucks on a warm summer day and she shared with me her plan for an upcoming trip to West Virginia to meet up with many cousins she hadn’t seen in a long time. She really wanted to find a particular cemetery and conducted all of this research in old and modern maps to locate it. She had a fantastic trip and shared her stories with our little genealogy group when she returned.
This is our little genealogy club at our favorite coffee shop. From left: Annette, Deb, Me, Birdie, Denise, and Ruth. This was taken in February 2010.
I met Annette near the same time I met Birdie Holsclaw. Most of us attended the Boulder Genealogical Society. Denise Miller wanted to start a “support group” for those of us interested in getting our genealogy certification. Our group consisted of Birdie, Denise, Annette, Deb Skoff, and Ruth Ratliff. We met about once per month at a little local coffee shop. We did that until I moved to Texas for a while. During that time we tried to do Skype calls but it was too noisy in the coffee shop and the internet wasn’t great so it was a bit frustrating for myself to try to attend remotely. Then came the pandemic and we all started meeting on Zoom and our group was restored! It may be the only great thing that came out of the pandemic, me getting to meet with these ladies on the regular again!
I know for a fact that Annette was not “done” with her genealogy, nor was it in a state to be left for others to pick up. She was always working on it. She always had plans for more. And she thought she had more time. I am taking this as a sign that I need to get my genealogical affairs in order so that if the end came suddenly for me, all of my hard work would be in a reasonable state for someone else to take over or benefit from the work I’d done.
Annette hasn’t only been a genealogy friend. Her family has been so welcoming to my family over the years. Her husband Ys helped my son one school year with his math class when he did homeschooling. My son was not really a math person and having someone other than mom help him with a difficult subject seemed to do the trick. I’m forever grateful for Ys helping us through that year of school! When we moved back to Colorado in August 2020, we moved in two stages. Our daughter Ellie and I came to Colorado so she could get started in school while my husband stayed behind in Texas to get the house ready to sell and to pack up the remainder of our stuff. We lived in a rental for the first part and we kept our lawn mower in Texas so Seth could keep the yard looking nice. Ys kindly came once a week to lend his mower and his labor to help us keep the rental house lawn mowed until Seth got there. I got to know their daughters and have watched them grow from young teens into fine young women each with their own interesting path, yet always a close and loving family. It was a real blessing to have the Botellos in our lives. As they move into this new phase of their lives, I can only imagine the hole they must feel without Annette by their sides. And I know they all had a very strong faith and know she is in a better place.
I just imagine her hanging out with Birdie again, taking genealogy and movies and technology, and it makes me smile.
You will be missed, Annette.
There is a fundraiser to help the family with expenses, if you are so inclined.
When looking at the details found in Samuel C. Dimick’s biographical sketch, let’s start with a basic one. Let’s look at him in the census. For each of my research subjects, I try to find them in every census they should be in. For Samuel, we will just look at a couple that I focused on because I primarily wanted to know why he came to Ohio from New Hampshire. We can’t always answer ‘why’ questions in genealogy but we can make some good educated guesses if we find the right information. So, I wanted to figure that out if I could.
1870, Lyme, Grafton County, New Hampshire
In 1870, Samuel was living with his wife Mary in Lyme, New Hampshire. He was 34, she was 35, and they had two sons, Marshall, age 2, and Burton, age 6 months. Samuel’s occupation is hard to make out, but it looks like “R.M. & Tin Plate Manuf.” I only knew he was a farmer from my earlier research.
1880, Center Township, Wood County, Ohio
By 1880, he was living in Center Township in Wood County, Ohio, which is near Bowling Green. He is listed as a farmer.
These two censuses at the bookends to his migration to Ohio. Sometime between 1870 and 1880 he and his family made the move. We will continue to look for clues about his life in the county history and see what more we can learn.
In the last blog post, we looked at the general family information we found in Samuel C. Dimick’s biographical sketch. Now let’s discuss all of the minutiae and details that we (and by ‘we’ I mean I) might gloss over the first (or second, or tenth) time we read a biographical sketch.
When I began researching Samuel, I didn’t know anything about him, of course, so the details that were important to me at that time were the main biographical points we looked at in the last post. However, as time moved on, I gained more experience, and I wanted to know more specific information about him and his family, I started focusing on some of that minutiae. Sometimes we just aren’t ready to absorb information from a source. And that’s ok, as long as at some point in your process (this could be many years later), you go back and review your previous research.
After really digging into the details, I was able to compile a list of other sources I needed to examine to verify those details and get more information:
Census Records
Newspapers
Obituaries
Land Records
Land Ownership Maps
Vital Records
City Directories
School Records
Agricultural Census
Indian Reservation Records
Revolutionary War Records
Expand search to other states mentioned in the sketch: New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Minnesota
Over the next several posts, we are going to look at some of these in detail. I won’t go over each and every one, because, well, that could get boring. But, there are some highlights I want to hit that really opened some new research avenues and helped me understand Samuel’s life better and in more detail.
“We now come to the personal history of our subject, who, after attending the district schools of Lyme, entered the high school of Orford, N. H., where he completed his education. After working on his father’s farm for a time, he removed to Wisconsin, where he was in the lumber business for a year, and, on the expiration of that time, went to southern Minnesota, where for a year and a half he had charge of a government farm on the Indian reservation…
“In 1875, we find him a resident of Center township, Wood county, where he purchased 120 acres of the old Williams farm, and has here since made his home. He has one of the best orchards in the township, and his excellent farm has been brought under a high state of cultivation by industry and good management, with its attendant hard labor…
“Mr. Dimick was married at Lyme, N. H., in 1860, to Mary Marshall, who was born in 1835, and they became the parents of two children, the younger of whom, Burton C., born November 4, 1869, died July, 1889…
““…Marshall C., born December 13, 1867, was educated at Toledo and Bowling Green, and now has a half-interest in the homestead farm, to the cultivation and improvement of which he now devotes his energies. He is a young man of good address, genial and industrious, and is one of the most enterprising and progressive farmers of Center township…”
I only shared some of the most vital or interesting bits about Samuel in the quotes above. In the full sketch, some of the things we learned about him include:
Born: 23 June 1835, Lyme, New Hampshire
Married: 1860, Lyme to Mary Marshall
Children: Marshall Chester and Burton Cook
Occupations: Farming, lumber, hardware store, can manufacturing
Other locations: New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin
Land ownership: bought 120 acres of the “Old Williams Farm” in Wood County, Ohio
Extensive details on Mary Marshall’s family background
We have also been able to reconstruct family groups from this biographical sketch. Here is what we learned about Samuel:
We were also able to reconstruct his wife’s family:
Next time, we will start looking at some of the information in more detail and discuss following every lead from these sketches.
Biographical Sketch of Samuel C. Dimick in the county history for Wood County, Ohio.
I know this image is incredibly tiny and I’m not expecting you to read it. I’m going to share some of the main points and highlights and some things I’ve learned and some things I’m still working on from this particular biographical sketch. If you want to read the sketch in its entirety, click here.
Samuel Cook Dimick is one of the ancestors I focused on early in my genealogy-hood. My paternal grandmother, Marge, was a Dimick. She was very interested in the Dimick family history and we were able to take her on a trip to New England to visit some ancestral towns and cemeteries. She had a copy of this book in her possession. So this was a book I was familiar with early on. This biographical sketch shares so much information about Samuel C. Dimick and alerted me to things I had not found in other records.
The sketch contains many of the usual things you would find such a general genealogical birth, marriage, death information.
“Samuel C. Dimick is the proprietor of one of the most noticeable homesteads in Center township… He comes from sturdy New England stock, and was born in Lyme, N.H. on June 23, 1835… “His father, Chester Dimick, was also there born July 6, 1802, and was a son of Samuel Dimick, a native of Dorchester, Mass. The latter aided the Colonies in their struggle for independence, and was married in the Bay State to Abigail Cook, who was born August 12, 1767, and was a daughter of Samuel Cook, of Vermont, who was also one of the heroes of the Revolution. This worthy couple passed their last days in Lyme, N. H. and to them were born twenty-one children.”
Pretty typical of general biographical sketches in county histories. This one traces ancestor back to the Revolution. The county histories generally were a celebration of our immigrant ancestors the formation of the country. We will continue exploring this sketch in future posts.
If you haven’t used a county history or found your ancestors in one, I encourage you to look. Later in this series we will get to some search and locating techniques. Let’s discuss what you might expect to find in a county history.
Many county histories have two parts, even if they are not formally called out. Generally speaking, there is the part that discusses the history of the county, of the place, itself. This section will contain information on topics such as: early geography, geology, Native American tribes in the area, early settlers, the first towns in that county, the first government officials, the first churches, schools, and so on.
Table of Contents from the Wood County, Ohio county history.
From the table of contents for the history from Wood County, Ohio, you can see several topics just from this one section of the page that would be of interest to genealogists: newspapers, medicine, military, churches, schools, early pioneers, agricultural societies, etc.
You might find more modern publications such as Patterns and Pieces from Lyme, New Hampshire. As you can see, many similar topics are included.
Title page from Patterns and Pieces.
Then there is the second section, the section with the biographical sketches of our ancestors. These biographical sketches usually followed a male and his lineage back to the immigrant ancestor. Sometimes you will also get a lineage from his wife back to her immigrant ancestor, usually along her father’s line. If you are lucky, you might find a photograph or a sketch of your ancestor (I have not been that lucky yet.)
Next time, we will look at one of my favorite biographical sketches.
Genealogy Pants 