Sorry....can't look at that....the ads for cereal are more than I can bear! A sport is an accident....something that spontaneously happens...not to do with crosses nor genetics...but just one of those things. You know....sometimes you see a few leaves of a hosta in with a clump that look different?...Well that's a sport! Linda C

The link below has land patents and is accessible by the public. A land patent is the first recorded ownership of a parcel of land. It will include surveyor's description of the parcel, when purchased or homesteaded, the land office where the patent was first recorded, the date of purchase, and by what instrument it was purchased. The purchcase method are mostly cash and warrants. Soldiers in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and the Mexican War were issued warrants good for land patents. The majority of the receipitents of these warrants used those to aquire land for themselves. However, these warrants could be sold to others, sometimes as low as 10 cents to the dollar. In this case, I'm not sure how it got recorded when a someone used a purchased warrant to aquire land. A land patent is valuable for documenting exactly where an ancestor's land holdings were located. BLM GLO (Bureau of Land Management - Government Land Office) Several states also have public genealogy web sites. The Illinois site also has duplicate of land patents in Illinois. For example, brouse the Illinois site below to see what sort of information is available. http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/ A third source of information is the Government Military listings. Use Google to uncover these URLs with search words such as "Civil War", "Military pension", "World War 1", etc. Here is a link that might be useful: BLM GLO Records - Home

My house is big and old. It would burn like a lit tinder box so honestly, if we get out it will only be because the sprinkler system saves us. I probably wouldn't try to save anything that wasn't alive. But if we get to have a fantasy fire that allows us time....I'd grab my jewelry because it's sentimental (gifts with memories) and probably the ugly little clay bowl that sits in the parlor next to a really nice bronze. The bronze is actual art...the ugly little bowl my son made for me this year in school (he's 5) and I love it far more than the fat nude LOL DH says he'd save the wine LOL Priorities! We actually just had a test of this by the way...we were at the blueberry hotel (if anyone remembers that) and at 3 am the fire alarms went off. DH and I nearly killed each other for setting the alarm that early and we pulled the clock out of the wall before we realized it was the hotel fire alarm. We dressed (idiots) and grabbed jewelry, car keys, the little guy and a six pack of formula. People were outside for over an hour, most in their jammies, most forgot any keys. We had left out ID and cell phones, so had the place burned we'd have been screwed til we found friends in town. I suppose I could have hawked a ring LOL We were glad we grabbed the car keys though. And at least we didn't forget the baby! It was kind of an eye opener though as to what you really would do because in the moment...your brain is NOT Engaged!

I have a World Deluxe membership to Ancestry.com. I can access anything and everything they have. Additionally, I am a contributor to the site (keying in records that will eventually be online), and I'm also an arbitrator for the Ancestry.com web site. Before new records are released online, they are keyed in by two different people. The two sets of keyed records are then given to an arbitrator, who can see the original digital imgage, and who then compares the data. If the two folks who keyed the stuff enter different information, it's the arbitrator who decides which is correct (or can enter completely new info if both keyers got it wrong). Also, once information is available online, if a member sees something that's wrong (or might be) they can suggest a correction. For example, let's say you're looking at a Census image that lists your ancestors. The enumerators (the folks who went door to door collecting the information) were notorious for misspelling names -- they weren't necessarily familiar with a lot of the foreign names and/or didn't understand the foreign accents, etc. Let's say you have an acestor named Celia, but on the Census page it's written (and transcribed) as Sialia. So, you click on the link to make a correction. Or, you see the name Amelia but it's been transcribed as Amella. When you look at the digital image you can tell that the dot over the "i" is sort of connected to the bottom part of the "i" so it's a simple transcription error. You click on the link to make a correction. The information that you enter is reviewed by an arbitrator, who decides whether or not the info you enter will be viewable by everyone who has access to the records.