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

Greg H, Your message tells me how you are managing ... debt. Wisely, yes. To your advantage, yes. It's still ... debt. D-E-B-T - a four-letter word! Cut it whatever way you like, it's still debt. Which can be become a *serious* problem when it's misused. That you are obligated to pay - even if you get a temporary lay-off, or with certain specific skills no longer in demand, a pretty well permanent one, or suffer permanent disability, or have a kid who subsequently develops a need for $50,000. worth of uninsured medical care - or even die. There's only one way you can avoid it - go bankrupt. Which steals from other folks who gave you services in good faith, from which you walked away. Some do that several times - walk away ... smiling. The message was, as I said earlier, not directed to the likes of you or people anywhere near as smart as you when it comes to managing money. Like, maybe, your friend's kid who, though s/he was in college, wasn't too smart when it came to money management. A local Canadian financial consultant complains that they don't teach much about it in school. If the corporations, including the financial ones, get their feet more heavily into the schools, there'll probably be even less. In his book, he offers advice on how to make a rate of return of 40% or better on your money - guaranteed. Proviso - you can only make that (before-tax) rate on store-issued credit cards whose balance you pay off. Maybe, had your friend's offspring not been willing to pay attention to his/her parent, as being out of the dark ages when it came to instructions as to wise ways to live, s/he'd have listened to you had you offered some advice. The reason for making the point about it actually being a debt that was being incurred when you use the card was to try to get some people who know much less than you about money management to begin to think about it somehat differently. The point of the message was to show them how they might reduce their cost somewhat if they followed a different pattern than some may have started through following the easy path of signing up for a store-issued card. I approached it with some trepidation, for I was advising ... taking out an additional card. Which could (too?) easily have a major debt run up on it, as well - leaving the holder in a deeper hole than previously. Should I become aware of that result springing from advice which I had given, it would trouble me greatly. Much more concerned than I was about complaints such as yours - which I hear about half of the time that I make this point. By the way - you didn't say that I was wrong - you just said that everybody does it, right? By the way, elsewhere in the message, when I was not dealing with the specific issue of the debt aspect of the card, I referred to them without using the quotation marks. Your country - government and people - is drowning in debt. And digging the hole deeper, daily. The "value" of your dollar is dropping - had you noticed? Good wishes to you for wise management of your money - and assets, Greg. ole joyful

abbysmom, I agree with your suspicion that the HOA is just messin' wit' you. What I would suggest is to find a contractor that will do the fence that you want which complies with the govt. code, arrange for installation, and have an atty draft a letter to the HOA (AND copy the state govt dept which oversees this) stating that "In compliance with state code blah blah blah, my client will be erecting a 5' tall (or whatever) pool fence." I also agree with the other poster who said to include in there that the HOA would be liable for legal fees and damages in the event you are found to be in the right. A $150-200 attorney-generated strongly-worded letter will hopefully make them back down without the need for litigation. What a bunch of morons. Perfect example of "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Your situation is exactly why we refuse to ever live in a subdivision. Best of luck to you, and keep us posted.

Sounds high to me - esp. some of the upgrades. An automatic pool cover should be about half of what you're paying. The upgrade costs from standard plaster are also super-high. Unless prices have doubled from what I paid 2 years ago, the costs for similar upgrades and options for my 45 x 14 foot pool were about 40 percent of what you are being charged (and I'm in So. Cal., where construction costs are high). Also, if you're putting in a volleyball thing, it would seem that a sport pool (with the deep part in the middle and shallow on both ends) would be more conducive to playing volleyball.