First of all let me say, the surnames I was dealing with while doing the
following were not ones from this list. I'm just passing on a valuable
inexpensive place to possibly find death certificates and wills.
There are people who go into genealogy looking for money, that would be
my friend D. There are people who do it looking for the pieces of their
family quilt and the stories of the lives that wove together to make us.
That would be me.
Sometimes the two work hand in hand. No, I didn't find great wealth, I
just found where my grandmother wasn't getting all her mineral right pay
outs like she should and because I knew how to document genealogy I was
able to help her get the back money owed her a few years ago.
Just prior to her death she spoke of some other rights, from another
family member that she might should have inherited. She made my db and
I promise to check on it before she died. We did.
By checking
missingmoney.com and
foundmoney.com we discovered there was
definitely some on hold, but whether or not it was hers we weren't sure.
One of the big sticking points was the ancestor's will. It would tell
exactly who was suppose to get what percentage of those mineral rights.
Unfortunately they died in another state, and despite all of our
requests for look-ups no one had to date volunteered to check for us,
even for a reasonable fee.
So yesterday my db and I went back to the county courthouse where the
mineral right and property records were kept and started digging through
the books trying to figure out if maybe those rights had in fact left
our branch of the family years ago.
This was our fourth trip to do this and we'd searched every record, so
we thought, each time. We had even checked in the will and probate
department to see if a copy of the out of state will had been filed
there because of property owned in this state. We had been told no.
As in all government offices the right hand apparently does not tell the
left hand what they are doing. Yesterday, quite by accident my db
turned to the next page following an oil lease and there a page away was
the will we had been hunting for for two years. Not in the will and
probate area, but in LAND records. Further searching turned up FIVE
death certificates for various family members that I would have normally
had to pay $5 to $15 a piece for through the health department of the
various states they came from (TX, OK, AR, CA and CO) I paid $1 each for
xeroxes, which is all I really need for my documentation, and $1 a p
age for the will that proved that the mineral rights did NOT go to my
grandmother.
So if you are at a dead end on finding a will or death record, check
land and mineral right records. You just might find what you are
looking for.
So, even though that 1/8th of the mineral right doesn't go to us as her
heirs, I found some valuable genealogy info that solved a mystery for
me, and got it far cheaper than if I'd gone through normal channels. Oh
yeah, while on
missingmoney.com, we found where my brother had some
utility deposits from several years ago coming back to him. It wasn't a
lot, but it will cover the $20 we spent on copies!
Jan who thought this important enough to share in OK