Womble Property Search Happenings

I mentioned in my previous post, Census Research Update, about my plans for searching for the land that John Washington Womble lived on in Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District.  I’ve been searching through deed books W and X for records pertaining to land located in that specific area and have made copies of whatever documents I’ve found located in that area.  I’ve created some plats of the various tracts I’ve found and tried assembling them into what I think is the proper orientation.  So far, I’ve only been able to match up a couple of tracts with their correct neighbors, while other tracts end up being matchless and thus far have become random pieces of land that seem to fall within the vast space of Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District.

As I worked through what’s become a bit mind numbing a   I started toying with the idea of taking a research trip out to Bolivar in Hardeman County, Tennessee and visiting their courthouse and looking at plat maps which would likely tell me the orientation of the various plats of land I’ve found and where the land that John Washington Womble lived on was located.
Thinking about the project, my thoughts turned to how I could make this go faster or go about getting the information I want more easily.

The thought occurred to me to contact the courthouse myself and see if plat maps of Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District were available.  I own a book, County Courthouse Book by Elizabeth Petty Bentley that I haven’t used much since receiving it as a Christmas gift many years ago.  I wasn’t sure if the information about the Hardeman County courthouse officials would be accurate, so I googled the courthouse and found their website.  The information on webpage about the Registrar’s office correlated with the information found in Bentley’s book an email address.  I sent an email to the registrar asking about plat maps for the area I’m researching and was told that they had some old copies of records that might be useful to me. 

I was elated at the news and gave the registrar my address so copies could be mailed to me.  About a week or so later, I received an envelope from the courthouse and opened it.  Inside were some maps, but they didn’t show individual plats for the area I’m researching.  One of the maps was nearly identical to one I already owned and had photocopied from a library book.  This one however contained notations on various roads or streams and other areas that I had read about in the various court records, road work orders, and deeds I’ve looked at.  Needless to say I was disappointed by what was sent to me.  It’s still not clear to me if the courthouse has plat books with the information I’m seeking.  However, I appreciate the registrar with providing me with these maps, because in its way there’s now more of an impetus to travel to Bolivar to seek out the information I want to find.

I’ve finished searching for deeds in the Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District in books W and X and plan to move on to searching for land in Civil District 11, range 1, section 2 of the 10^th Surveyor’s District.  While reviewing the copies received from the courthouse, I did determine a factor in my searching.  That is that the location of the property I’m looking for is located near the Bolivar road.  I’ve seen this mentioned in a few other documents and know that some of the collateral Womble kin to my ancestor were assigned in the past to do repairs on this road.  I’ve collected a lot of deeds that follow the Hatchie River, but based on one of the maps sent to me the road is pretty much directly west of this river, so any properties I see that mention the river likely aren’t in the immediate vicinity of where John Washington Womble lived.

I likely realized this bit of geography when beginning this quest.  My thought probably was that if I platted all of the various land tracts within that specific region that I would be able to create the layout of what the neighborhood looked like.  Some research methods in National Genealogical Society Quarterly articles that I’ve read appear to demonstrate that the author has tried to focus on the land owning neighbors of an ancestor and using the census and deed records to build or recreate the neighborhood that way.  I’ve been attempting to do this, and am finding it challenging due to the fact that the names of the neighbors sometimes change over the years and it has appear nearly impossible to try to pin down when person X lived near person Y.  It almost seems that whoever is recording the deeds is going by their own memory or that of the person whose deed they’re recording.  Since there appears to be no check and balances in the accuracy of the names of the people being mentioned in the deeds how can one determine where these properties are really located within a specific county?  It seems surprising that a county government would have such a relaxed approach to recording their property records in the past.