Thomas McClurken (1828 - 1861) Records

The Thomas McClurken Probate Records were obtained from the Illinois State Archives. Those for Thomas McClurken, son of James and Sarah, are now available at Thomas McClurken Estate 1861. I need to create a biography for attachment. Additionally, I need to create a biography for the other Thomas McClurken (1805 - 1867) and scan the associated probate records.

Thomas McClurken Probate Documents

Acquiring the Thomas McClurken Probate Documents has been a challenge. Per the Washington County Genealogy Trails website, they are in three different boxes in the Washington County Courthouse. First you request the documents, then they count the pages and quote the copy cost. You send the county a check and they send the copies.

My initial request specified the Thomas that died in 1845; however, I received the papers from box 93. These were for the wrong Thomas and related to the end of a guardianship for Harriet McClurken in 1879.

My second request was for both of the other two boxes: 37 and 141. I did acquire the contents of box 141; however, again the wrong Thomas. These related to the end of the guardianships for Clara McClurken and her brother, Andrew Todd McClurken, on May 5, 1870. I believe these were from the estate of their brother, Thomas, who died in 1861.

For box 37, I was advised that boxes 1 through 50 had been sent to the Illinois Regional Archives Depository facility in Springfield. I called and found out that they were preparing the documents for preservation and are currently working on box 37. They are going to call me back with the copying cost. They did check and let me know that two persons named Thomas McClurken were included; however, both died in the 1860s. I will order then in order to clarify the contents of the first two boxes.

I will scan and post the relevant copies on my website when I have sorted it all out. Unfortunately, none seem to exist for the Thomas McClurken who died in 1845.

James McClurken Probate Documents Update

After two more iterations, I was finally able to get copies of the receipts signed by J. H. McClurken and C. A. Kemps. I rescanned the whole package and these updated documents are on pages 17 and 18 of the file, James_McClurken_Probate_Documents.

My Mother's Family

Recently, I had the pleasure of sharing the details of my mother's family with a cousin. I had collected all the data and stories over a period of years. Unfortunately, because of identity theft concerns, this information is only available to family members. What a shame that their biographies can not be shared in my lifetime.

Photo Pages Added and Restructured Website

I was very happy with the new ancestor tree and decided to add the photo page feature for 25 individuals (66 photos in all). I also created a link to the biographies. This allowed me to restructure my webpages. The old summary page is now the biography index and the homepage is the central page, as it should have been. All the biography pages now have links to the homepage and the ancestor tree.

Ancestor Tree Enhancement

I was never happy with the ancestor tree diagrams that I had placed on my website. They were screen captures of outputs from Family Tree Maker and they were static and fuzzy. Additionally, they caused me to split the tree into two images. I had looked at a couple of other websites and decided to evaluate the software that they had used. I downloaded the free version of GedHTree and played around with it. I created a subset of my GEDCOM file with only 219 individuals that I wanted to display. All living individuals were excluded, although the program allows various privacy options. I concluded that I wanted to present the "all-inclusive tree style" that displays all the children of various parents. This feature is only in the $20 registered version, so I shelled it out. I am fairly happy with this new feature, although, the all-inclusive tree may confuse users until they figure it out. For the time being, I have not added photos and there is no linkage to the biographies. However, this feature is so nice that I will be redesigning my homepage and biographies to better coordinate. Try it out at Ancestry Tree.

Probate Documents

Ordering probate documents comes with mixed results. Patience is also required. With Washington County, first you identify what you want. Then they quote you a price based on the number of pieces. Next, you send them a check, wait for the documents and hope they are for the right individual. I ordered the records for James and Thomas McClurken; but, the ones for Thomas were for the wrong Thomas. The documents come on legal size paper so they are too big to scan. Some sheets I took to the copy store and got them reduced. Others I cut apart since they were a collection of small pieces. Still others came with cutoff pieces. Scanning required extra effort to modify the B/W threshold on some pages that were lighter or darker than the average.

In the end, I am fairly satisfied with the Probate Summary of the James McClurken Estate and the James McClurken Probate Documents. The second one is a fairly large file of 32 pages.

I will try again to get the records for the right Thomas.