Saturday, March 21, 2009

Mortgages

I've been reading a lot about real estate lately, which got me thinking about mortgages. Not just the mortgages that are a result of our latest financial crisis-but mortgages that were taken out by your ancestors.

Tomorrow, my Social History website for the day, will be an article on the history of mortgages at http://www.thehistoryof.net/history-of-home-mortgages.html. (Daily, I post a social history website on Twitter. To see my postings on Twitter, follow me at genaortega).

Mortgages can be yet another way to track down information on your ancestor. It's just one more piece of paper in your family trees paper trail.

Using the Family Search catalog, www.familysearch.org, and conducting a subject search on the term 'mortgage' you will find listing fro mortgage records from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. However, a keyword search for the term mortgage will bring up over 3,000 titles having to do with deeds and mortgages.

What type of information can you find in a mortgage. At the very least you will find your ancestor's name and the name of the lender. The address of the home/property that was being financed. This information helps you keep track of where your ancestor was in a place in time.

This information can also lead you to a county's grantor/grantee indexes with information on deeds and plat maps.

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