Almost a Genealogy Blog and searching for the Erb Family in Richland County, Ohio Land Records

The Separate Genealogy Blog Question

In a post about a month ago I pondered the question of whether my genealogy posts should be in a separate blog. I really appreciated the comments, including one from the king of genealogy blogging, Thomas MacEntee, who manages a group of over 900 genealogy bloggers at GeneaBloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com). He clearly has a Google alert set up for the words "Genealogy Blog"!

Thomas recommended a separate blog and others said they would like all the content in one place. For the time being I've compromised. I've added a link in the navigation bar at the top of this blog to my genealogy content. You can also go to the genealogy content directly at

http://marionvermazen.blogs.com/marions_blog/genealogy/.

Searching for the Erb Family in Richland County, Ohio

My Dad's Mother, my Grandma Ruth was an Erb. She told me that her Grandparents were Joseph Erb and Mary Harris Erb but she didn't know a lot more about them than their names and the fact that they lived in Wabash County, Indiana.

Over the years other family researchers and I have discovered that Joseph Erb's father was also named Joseph. Joseph Senior was born in 1788 in Maryland. His wife's name was Elizabeth. They show up in the census in Allegany County, Maryland.  He was drafted and served for a few months in the war of 1812. In the early 1830s Joseph and his family which by that time included 8 children moved to Richland County, Ohio. In the mid 1850s they moved to Wabash County, Indiana.

In my genealogical digging the questions about Joseph Senior and Elizabeth that I am working on right now include:

1. Where and when did Joseph die?
2. What was Elizabeth's maiden name?
3. Where and when did Elizabeth die?
4. Who were Joseph and Elizabeth's parents? (An Ancestry.com family tree may take the Joseph Erb family back several generations. The tree shows that Joseph's father was Michael Erb. There is a Michael Erb of about the right age on the same page as Joseph in the 1820 census but I'd like some real proof.)
5. Did Joseph have siblings?

In addition to these specific questions I like to fill in details about my ancestors to make them more than just names.

So....... I am currently working on finding the land records for Joseph and Elizabeth and their children in Richland County Ohio. I ordered the microfilm of the Grantee Index for the Richland County Ohio Deed Books (film # 388652) from the Family History Library and it arrived while I was gone on my road trip. A couple of days ago I spent several hours pouring over the index and extracting all the entries for the names Erb, Arter, Caldwell and Calwell. I created a Google spreadsheet of the relevant entries and I took digital pictures of each page that had an interesting entry.

The next step is to search the Grantor index and to start looking at the Deeds. I have the microfilm of the Grantor index to the deed books and  the microfilm of deed book volumes 13-14 on order. I love doing research and solving mysteries. I'll keep you posted on what I find out.

Her is a picture of Joseph Erb Junior, my Great Great Grandfather.

Comments

[Marion]

1.

Nick,
Yes, I think when I get the time to do some research I am going to try doing some DNA research
Thanks,
Marion

[Nicholas Blasgen]

2.

Have you thought about using a service like 23AndMe.com to find out your family history based on genetics? Since you know your family as far back as the late 1700's, I think you'll actually have some progress with 23AndMe. 23AndMe isn't designed for genealogy but it does a good job of tracking your material line because the eggs codes don't change generation to generation.