Interesting Place I Visited

Question - What do you call a bus full of lawyers with two empty seats that falls off a cliff?

The answer:

A perfectly good waste of two seats.

Question - How do you stop a lawyer from drowning?

The answer:

You take your foot off his ass.

Not my jokes, just passing them on. My legally blonde cousin is going to law school in Portland, Oregon so we heard lots of lawyer jokes at Christmas from my Uncle and cousins. (I'm sure they are working on blonde lawyer jokes as we speak)

My cousin is really smart, but some in the family give her a hard time.

I got her lawyer joke "Where is the only place in the world where there can't be negligence?"

Answer "A duty free shop"

An element of negligence is a duty to do something. If a teacher had "no duty" to keep their students safe than their could be no negligence if a teacher didn't keep their students safe.

Anyway today I went to a special place. The records room in my town hall. It's in the basement. There are no lights. It's the place where ALL of the land grants in the history of the city are kept. There are also books of deaths, births, marriages, military service etc. It's a researcher and historians paradise, and with land records, also the dream place for lawyers. As we all know lawyers are a large part of the purchasing and selling of land.

The reason I went was to see if I could find any evidence of our family selling land after my great grandfather married an Irish Catholic. My hope was to see estates transferred after the death of a relative. In this sense, I failed. I really didn't find anything, although I also don't think I did the most exhaustive search either. I could stay researching for hours in that office, but I can't spend my life doing that. I needed to workout, so that got me out of their by 1pm.

Anyway it was really fascinating to look through everything. What I found out about my relatives is that the entire family in the late 1890s was involved in a lawsuit about a mortgage (and I believe them not paying). One of my relatives, (don't remember who and didn't think it was important enough to record when and who) was involved with a lawyer by the name of Homer Cummings in a property transaction. Homer Cummings was the 55th Attorney General of the United States, serving under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Cool little fact there.

My Great Great Great Grandmother apparently died and her estate was part of the lawsuit. What I read was a little fuzzy because it was all written in script and also used legal jargon from before 1900. I could use my father's help in understanding it.

Apparently the family held property (don't know if it was a house, business etc.) by Hoyt and Summer Streets downtown. What is fascinating to me from my research is just how land was assigned back in 1900. They did measurements. My family had something like 170 feet by 50 something feet. It was fairly exact in measurements. However, the actual location was quite interesting. It was to the west of Jebediah's property (making up names of people so you get the idea) south of Sebastian Hoyt and to the west of the estate of the late Eliza. It's extremely difficult to know EXACTLY where the property borders were, and it's funny how general the information is. My parents house would be for example to the South of the Parkers, North of Paolo, and West of the DeFilips, Pyschiatrist and Neffs. East of the people in the red house.

It was funny to me that I was in there researching. I was CLEARLY the youngest person in the room. At one point I am fairly sure I was the only non-lawyer in the room. One lawyer was frantically searching for information.

Also don't forget, whatever the property lines are on record at the town clerks office is the property you have. The record there is all that counts. My dad taught me that today.

I hope my dad picks up where I left off in a way, or that we work together, because I really have such a bad idea of what the property claims we found are talking about.

I looked through Grantor and Grantee Books too. They are in series. They basically list all property transactions in the City (I am from one of the largest cities in New England apparently...and the 4th largest in Connecticut). There are series of books that detail names with property transactions as either the grantor (seller) or grantee (buyer) of property.

Once I found my family members names in the Grantor Book I would find another book number and subject such as Mortgage, Tax Lien, Warranty or Miscellaneous with a book number and page number with the actual contract or information on the land and property.

Then I went and found the book with the information and went to the page number and found whatever information I could. It was amazing to me how thorough and well organized the information was kept. Also amazing how someone wrote in script the information in the 1890s about family property claims.

Also found out that some of my family members didn't pay their taxes (I think they are Ron Paul fanatics) as they were cited in a Tax Lien book. I couldn't find the Tax Lien book though that talked about what property there was a lien against.

I didn't find out everything that I was looking for, but I found some interesting information. This information however wasn't as exciting to me because it's so hard to keep track of land from the 1890s of relatives and to figure out what property they had. It would have to be a long research project. Maybe when I am 70 I will visit Stamford again to go over everything.

I also did look through death certificates. This was a little bit harder to do than property because I needed to get a key to get access to these locked books. I did see my great great grandfathers death certificate and he did indeed kill himself like the newspaper said he did. I also confirmed his parents names, and their date of birth and location of birth.

There is some more I could research, but I think it would make more sense to come back to it at a later date. The amount of time required to look through everything will be immense. I'm hoping another relative who is retired or almost retired can pick up where I left off.

The last thing I did today was go to the firehouse downtown for the first time. My great grandpas picture used to be hanging up there, but unfortunately my dad and I couldn't find it. My dad thought it was up as of ten years ago when he last visited the fire house.