The weekend has rolled around and so has my favorite weekend activity – Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings.

This week’s challenge dovetails perfectly with where I’ve spent the last several days – on FamilySearch full-text search!

1)  FamilySearch Full-Text Search continues to add databases and searchable images to their collections.  This is a gold mine, especially of land, probate and court records.

2)  Pick one or two of your ancestors or research targets and see what you can find on FamilySearch Full-Text Search about them.

Since not so long ago, full-text search found the perfect land deed proving the parentage of my Loyalist John Adams in Fairfield County, Connecticut, I’ve been on a research quest to identifying, correct and flesh out all the descendants of John’s father, David Adams, through his first wife and mother of my John, Susannah Lockwood, and also of John’s half siblings, born to David Adams’ second wife, Sarah Squire.

I’ve been very fortunate with my results because there are several families about which little is known, due to incomplete records and records not accessed by Donald Lines Jacobus when he compiled descendants of the early settlers to post-American Revolution days. There were also a few mistakes tossed in the mix, too.

Thankfully, full-text search enabled me to tightly narrow down documents and make some terrific discoveries:

1. John’s full sister, Ann, married Ephraim Lyon, who died in 1794 in Fairfield County, Connecticut, but whose estate administration didn’t close until 1829. His list of heirs is included in the paperwork. The bottom right is just the first of five pages of heirs, followed by several more pages of details in 1829.

2. Of his half-siblings, Squire Adams kindly left a will, in which his estate was bequeathed to his siblings since he and wife Mary Godfrey, had no children of their own. This provided married names for his sisters.

3. In the following generation, Squire had a nephew, also Squire Adams, and no one seemed to have reliable information about any sons he might have had. Full-text search came to the rescue once again, with an incompetency hearing for Squire, then in his 80s, in 1869. An agreement was drawn up by his four sons, outlining the time period of parental care to be given, that expenses for that care would be divided evenly among the sons and that the order in which each son would take on that care was also specified.

From the appearance of the signatures, I also now have actual handwriting samples from his children.

I’ve uncovered many more items – estate administrations for grandchildren who had no children of their own, a couple of wills, and a few land records proving relationships.

David Adams’ son, David Adams Jr., left Connecticut for Otsego County, New York. Full-text search helped me around the black hole that is New York research, in general, and I was able to piece together several families in the first half of the 1800s.

The same thing happened when some grandchildren moved just over the state line to Westchester County, New York.

Full-text search is one of the best technological advances in genealogy research to come about in the 21st century!

Thank you, Randy, for a full challenge.