Worldwide Genealogy: Working with Land Patents and Plat Maps

I am reprising my post about working with land patents and plat maps at Worldwide Genealogy -- A Genealogical Collaboration today. I hope you'll click over and read it if you haven't already and are struggling to learn where your homesteading ancestors lived.

My great grand aunt, Jane (Muir) Beck, was the youngest child of James and Margaret (Semple) Muir. My grandmother always called her Aunt Janie. Janie's grandfather, father, and most of her brothers were coal miners but Janie married a farmer, Herbert Bartist Beck on 20 June 1912 at Lebanon, Illinois. Herbert had been living and working on his brother, John's, farm. They had two children in Illinois, Thelma Christena and John Wesley Beck.

Herbert's brother had been out west with his uncle. He and his wife decided to move to Montana and homestead land in 1918. Herbert and Janie followed them a few years later. They took a train from Illinois and arrived in Roy, Montana, on 7 April 1923.

Roy, Montana, circa 1916; photograph courtesy of the Bureau of Land
Management

In two separate transactions with the General Land Office, Herbert Beck acquired nearly 425 acres of land in two counties.

• 17 October 1928: 
• Southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of section 27 in Township 20 north, Range 24 east
• 26 September 1928: 
• South half of the northeast quarter of section 34 in Township 20 north, Range 24 east
• Southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of section 31 in Township 20 north, Range 25 east
• West half of the southeast quarter of section 32 in Township 20 north, Range 25 east
• East half of the southwest quarter of section 32 in Township 20 north, Range 25 east
• Southwest quarter of the southwest quarter of section 32 in Township 20 north, Range 25 east
• Lot 4 of section 5 in Township 19 north, Range 25 east
• Lot 1 of section 6 in Township 19 north, Range 25 east

Learn how I used this information to locate where the land is and what it looks like today.

_______________
A first-hand account of what life was like on a homestead in Montana may be found here. It was written my Herbert and Jane (Muir) Beck's daughter.

This post was originally published on Tangled Roots and Trees as a 52 Ancestors post.