Mailbag Mania: Three Genealogy Records That Break Brick Walls

#genealogy #familysearch #census #bountyland

Episode Overview

Hittin’ the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping researchers uncover overlooked records and stronger research strategies. In this episode, host Kathleen Brandt answers listener questions focused on three high-impact genealogy sources that can quickly break through stubborn brick walls: Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) records, Virginia Revolutionary War bounty land grants, and Ireland’s newly free 1926 census.

Kathleen explains where to search, what clues researchers often miss, and how to connect these records to broader family stories involving migration, military service, inheritance, and identity.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

•  Why CCC records are valuable for Depression-era genealogy research 
•  How Revolutionary War bounty land files extend far beyond the first certificate 
•  What makes the 1926 Irish Census important for Irish family history 
•  How supporting records reveal widows, heirs, migration patterns, and community ties 
•  Why original files often contain clues omitted from abstracts and indexes 

Topics Covered

•  Civilian Conservation Corps records and Depression-era family research 
•  CCC applications and clues about parents, schooling, work history, and migration 
•  Researching CCC records through newspapers, local societies, state archives, and National Park Service collections 
•  Virginia Revolutionary War bounty land digitization 
•  Common mistakes in bounty land research 
•  Warrants, surveys, plat maps, patents, tax lists, deeds, probate, and wills 
•  Why abstract books are not enough for complete genealogy research 
•  Ireland’s free 1926 Census and Irish genealogy research 
•  Linking Irish census records to passenger lists, naturalization records, and church documents 

Episode Discussion & Key Moments

Kathleen walks listeners through three record groups that frequently contain overlooked genealogical evidence. The episode begins with CCC records, explaining how applications and related files reveal personal details about family structure, education, employment, and migration during the Great Depression.

The conversation then shifts to Virginia Revolutionary War bounty land grants, where Kathleen explains why researchers should never stop at the initial certificate. Supporting documents—including surveys, deeds, probate files, and tax lists—often identify widows, heirs, neighbors, and land relationships that deepen family reconstruction.

Finally, Kathleen explores the release of Ireland’s 1926 Census, discussing how researchers can connect census findings with U.S. immigration records, naturalization paperwork, and church records to build more complete Irish family histories.

Key questions examined include:

•  What records are researchers most likely to overlook? 
•  Why do original files matter more than abstracts? 
•  How can one record group lead to multiple generations of evidence? 

Resources & Research Tools Mentioned

• National Archives of Ireland 1926 Census
•  Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) applications and records 
•  Newspapers and local historical societies 
•  State archives and National Park Service collections 
•  Virginia Revolutionary War bounty land records 
•  Plat maps, tax lists, deeds, probate, and wills 
•  Ireland’s 1926 Census 
•  Passenger lists, naturalization records, and church registers 

Why This Episode Matters

Many genealogy breakthroughs come from looking beyond indexes and pulling the full record set surrounding an ancestor. This episode demonstrates how layered research across military, land, labor, and immigration records creates stronger and more accurate family histories.

About the Podcast

Hittin’ the Bricks with Kathleen is the genealogy podcast that features your questions and her answers, helping listeners navigate historical records, research challenges, and overlooked sources to uncover deeper family stories.

Transcript

Welcome And The Digital Mailbag

John 0:01

Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of Flyover Country in the Heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the Mighty Moe, welcome to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen, the Do It Yourself Genealogy podcast with your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and today we'll be diving into the Hittin the Bricks digital mailbag. There's a lot to get to, so let's start hitting the bricks. So I'm here today with my guest.

Kathleen 0:29

I'm your guest today.

John 0:31

You'll be my guest today. I have questions because I have questions on this mailbag thing.

Kathleen 0:37

The mailbag thing, Johnny? The mailbag thing. Exactly the set. What's the mailbag thing?

John 0:42

The mailbag thing. You have answers, I have questions.

Kathleen 0:46

Okay.

John 0:47

Okay. We'll do it in this order. I'll do a question and you do an answer. Or we can do it the opposite way. If you want, you give us an answer and then I'll say what the question was, like the old Johnny Carson show.

Kathleen 0:58

No. You're dating yourself, though.

John 1:02

Mm-hmm. Dude, my face dates myself. I don't

CCC Basics And Why It Matters

John 1:05

have to worry about that. Um, okay, so the question is, first off, why are CCC records suddenly becoming such an important genealogical resource? And and and but wait, but my question is, what is CCC?

Kathleen 1:19

I knew you were gonna ask that. There we go. What is CCC? So the CCC is the Civilian Conservation Corps. Okay. And it was a very fun time. Fun. Between World War I and World War II for genealogists, it was a fun time because it kind of bridges that time frame for a genealogist. It's a great way of finding, especially your male ancestors, but really a little bit about your whole family.

John 1:50

Hmm. Why is that?

Kathleen 1:51

Because the CCC was that depression error recovery for all these young men who were hired by the CCC. They were working, but they were hired by the CCC. It was such a great program to boost America. It produced a lot of records. There are applications which named their parents or next of kin, where they worked, their age that we didn't have necessarily before, what school they attended. And there were all kinds of really fun camps that we didn't know about. It's like the forestry brigade. So it really wasn't a brigade at all, but these guys were they were going out to the forest, they were clearing the land or whatever was needed. There might have been 20 or 25 of them in an in a camp. And their whole job was to work in the forestry. And they also sent with them a nurse or a trained person for medical.

John 2:51

Was that was that something that people would relocate in order to participate in?

Kathleen 2:56

Or well, it's interesting because when they were doing it with their camp, the idea was to send money back to your family. So you make about $30. $22 of that was supposed to go back to your family. Okay. And then you only kept the rest of it because your food and home and is all paid for. But a lot of people fell in love while out there. So that explains why they got married while they were and where why they settled where they were versus going back to the home place. They had dances, and a lot of this is in newspapers.

John 3:33

So the CCC community uh might have started out as an external community coming in to a nearby community, and then they kind of melded with the existing community there.

Kathleen 3:45

No, they started with your community. So let's say I was in, let's say Michigan, just because I'm on a Michigan kick right now. Okay. I'm in Michigan, a bunch of guys join the CCC there. They go out, there's a camp created. Some of them were integrated, and they would go and do whatever job they had to do.

John 4:08

Right.

Kathleen 4:09

And they might have been from four different counties in that Michigan area. Okay, so it's like a little small military. Think of a small state a small state type military as

Where To Find CCC Evidence

Kathleen 4:20

far as recruitment is concerned.

John 4:22

Sort of like sort of like a militia for doing conservation work, though. Exactly. So where where should you, if you think your ancestor might have been in the CCC, where do you start your research?

Kathleen 4:34

Locally. I would start it with just the local records because it's in like I said, the newspapers were reporting back. Some of these kids were as long young as 16. They were supposed to be 18 or 19, but some of them were very young. And the parents were watching the newspapers very closely.

John 4:52

This was an FDR program, yes?

Kathleen 4:54

Yes.

John 4:55

Okay. That's just making sure I got my timeline right.

Kathleen 4:57

The the Great Depression was like 29.

John 5:00

Yeah, start. Yeah, the crash was 29, and then obviously 33 would be in the midst of it. And so newspapers, local resources would be your starting place.

Kathleen 5:11

And a lot of those small historical societies kept a lot of records. Not records, they kept clippings or they kept information or letters everywhere. We also see it in state archives. State archives is a great place to research. But I have to tell you that my favorite is the National Park Service. Okay. Because the National Park Service has an archival collections group. And within that, it tells you where to go in that region. They might have collected the data. When I was in Rutherford, North Carolina, I was looking just for this. And this is several years back. And I went to a little small community college, again, because they had an archival group. And it was called the Isothermal Community College. It was in like Spindale, North Carolina. Close to that is Cock County. There's a National Archives there. The Smoky Mountains National Archives. But the Smoky Mountain Archives had a lot of information for me. And I was able, between the community college archives and the Smoky Mountain, pinpoint my person.

John 6:24

Hmm. Because they were involved in this uh in a conservation camp or they were involved with the CCC. Yes.

Kathleen 6:33

Every state doesn't have a National Park Service archive.

John 6:37

Okay.

Kathleen 6:38

Kansas being one, by the way.

John 6:40

Kansas has one?

Kathleen 6:41

It does not. They have uh the National Park Service manages other places like Nicodemus and different historical sites, but they don't have a real National Park Service archive.

John 6:54

So when I'm doing my research, my my local research, and I'm looking in these places, do you have any tips for what I should do, what I should search for?

Kathleen 7:03

So one of the things you were look searched for is of course the the the camp itself, right? The if you knew what camp they went to based on newspaper articles. You're looking for conservation camps, you're looking for keywords like uh soil confront conservation camp. You're not always looking for CCC. It's often by the action versus the organization. Oh, interesting. Uh and some of them had camp, all of them had camp numbers. You can also search by the camp

Virginia Revolutionary War Land Grants

Kathleen 7:38

number.

John 7:38

Okay, so another area that seems to be a big deal is the Virginia Revolutionary War land record digitization projects.

Kathleen 7:47

That makes me smile.

John 7:49

Why smile on my face? Oh my gosh, I know. I'm just why we do we care so much?

Kathleen 7:57

Well, first of all, during the Revolutionary War, Virginia had the largest reserved land acreage. And so they were the largest granting state, and we want easy access to those records.

John 8:12

So this is like Bountyland.

Kathleen 8:14

It is Bounty Land. Okay. It is like Bounty Land, but it connects us from the military service. The Bounty Land may have come way later. It may have not even been claimed by the soldier, but by his widow or by the heirs. And John, I talk about this in our upcoming book. And the name of the book is uh Behind the Uniform. The name of the book is Behind the Uniform Air Force Sojo.

John 8:42

You might want to read up on that. It is your book.

Kathleen 8:46

But we talk a lot about these land records in that book and how to research it because this is an overlooked record set. People find a bounty land, they find it through the BLM GLO, which is the Bureau of Land Management. Um, they find it there, they're all happy, and they stop.

John 9:09

There's so much more to it. And so that's that that would follow because I was gonna ask you what what sort of mistakes do I need to watch out for when I'm researching those land records. So that kind of

What To Pull Beyond The Certificate

John 9:21

falls into that is one, don't stop at uh when you find the bounty land certificates, right?

Kathleen 9:26

That tells you a fact, it tells you right that moment, when they applied, what they applied for. It even can tell you who was who were their neighbors, because you can play with that database. But there are so many more records that go with the land records. So after you find your ancestor in, let's say these Virginia records that are just now released, it makes me smile. Yes. Um, you there are treasury uh warrants, there's surveys, there's plat maps. I love those because it gives you a little more sense of why your ancestor moved. An example is when a river runs across their property, one state being North Carolina, the other state being Tennessee, and you find them on the other side of the French River. But that is an example. But in Virginia, you see how they were doing it. So you're looking at these land plats, and it kind of explains even how they changed states. That's my point, because Virginia also became Kentucky and part of Ohio.

John 10:33

So as they carved it up, you might start out. I would assume that you might start out with Bounty Land in Virginia and then have ended up with Bounty Land in Tennessee.

Kathleen 10:43

Or you're living in Tennessee, actually. Yeah, that's what it is.

John 10:45

That's what I mean. Is that you you're you get a plot of land that's considered Virginia, but then at a certain point you're actually living in because the border changes.

Kathleen 10:54

Now that's one scenario. Another scenario is that they actually gave the land in different states. So it's possible that you fought with Virginia, but you got land in North Carolina.

John 11:06

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I my idea was that you got bounty land in Virginia, the borders changed. Now you're in another state. Or that you got bounty land in the state of Franklin, and then there's no no longer a state of the world.

Kathleen 11:19

I don't think Franklin had any bounty like that.

John 11:22

They didn't have any bounty land.

Kathleen 11:23

I don't think they did. However, that land did end up being part of the Western uh expansion. So, yes, I mean uh let's see.

John 11:35

What other records should I be looking for other than plats and treasury warrants?

Kathleen 11:40

You have the patents, of course, but you also have a tax list. Tax lists are great because they're generational, they're almost every year. And you can see what a boy turns a certain age because now he's accounted for in the tax list. And he might be living right and might be uh enumerated right under his father's name, and that helps you place a family together. So there's so many things that we use all of the records to reveal a full family unit, especially the John Smiths of the world. Yeah. And deed records cannot be overlooked, and probate and wills also, because they all hold the description of the land. When I was working with a Thompson family, that's how I could tell one Thompson from another in Kentucky, is by following the land description because there were way too many Thompsons, and they all had some land out of Virginia. And so I can trace them by that land description, who bought it, who sold it, and using the Bounty Land Records was the original set in Virginia.

John 12:53

Interesting. Yes, indeed. So a good reason to be excited about these new documents, the newly digitized documents.

Kathleen 13:01

Yes.

John 13:01

Not the new documents, and newly digitized documents.

Kathleen 13:04

They're not new at all at all.

John 13:09

Okay, so uh something that is a little bit more recent then, because again, people are excited, or at least

Ireland’s Free 1926 Census Release

John 13:16

I hear they are.

Kathleen 13:17

They are.

John 13:18

They are they are a lot of there are a lot of parties going on that I'm not aware of, and one of them has to do with the release of the 1926 Irish Census. And why are people so excited? Why are they having parties?

Kathleen 13:32

This is the first 100% free state census in Ireland. Up to this point, they were in civil wars, they were not free. It's very exciting. It is already digitized, it was released in April of this year.

John 13:48

Oh, okay.

Kathleen 13:50

Americans can access it by going right onto the National Archives of Ireland, and I'll put up the link, and you can search for your family members. Now I played with it because I have County of Roscomman uh ancestors, and I wanted to see if they were in there, and they were born around that time frame, and I was able to find my own family enumerated in the 1926 census, just playing with it the other day. So that's why I was excited about by it.

John 14:22

I would go, but I don't think I have any Irish in me.

Kathleen 14:26

I don't like that you do. No, I really don't think I don't think you had any.

John 14:32

I have uh I have some friends that might, so I guess the Moriarty should check into that.

Kathleen 14:38

They should check it on to that, especially if they are Catholic and they were from one of these free states. Most of them, 92%, were Catholics. And uh, but it is again something the researchers should pay attention to. Just because your family wasn't Catholic, they might be part of that other 8%.

John 14:59

Since we're on that, that that would be fun to find out. But what else and how can American-based descendants and genealogists use that census? And is there any overlap with the 1926 Irish census in the 1920 or 1930s US?

Kathleen 15:20

No, if you would call it an overlap. But what I the way I use it is as I'm looking at this census, if you have family who came to America, how do you know if some of them did not stay in Ireland? So now I would look at passenger lists. I would look at naturalization records to make sure I'm working with the same family if I can. Sometimes those intent decorations and that passenger list tells me where they were born. Um, church records. The church records are excellent. I would look at that. And what you can do now is tie your American Irish back to the county they were from in Ireland and find the rest of the family.

Connecting Irish Entries To US Records

John 16:06

The release of the Irish states, um, that's has to do with the privacy?

Kathleen 16:10

That is correct. They do work on a hundred-year privacy law before releasing. In the United States, we have a 72-year rule. And so although we have a census release every 10 years, it's way back when. That's why we haven't had the 1960 release yet.

John 16:31

Right. But I think the last one was a 1950, wasn't it?

Kathleen 16:34

That is correct.

John 16:35

Yeah. Okay, so that's that's interesting that that is uh that this is the first opportunity, and golly, you get it fully digitized and released online for free. And it covers quite a few households. 700,000 uh household returns? Yes, it's a regular census. Well then, okay, so they released it with the digitized census um because it was their time to do that and they could. What was the deal with uh Virginia with the uh bounty warrants being released or recently

Why Digitization Surges Right Now

John 17:06

digitized? Is that just, hey, we got these things digitized now, so dive in.

Kathleen 17:10

Okay, John, in Virginia, that digitizing project that they just completed, and now we have access to, that was to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence. Everybody did different projects, and that is one of theirs. Missouri Humanities has done projects, everyone has done something to celebrate, it seems like.

John 17:35

Okay, and then finally, the CCC, you've used that before. That's not a new one, is it?

Kathleen 17:39

Oh gosh, no. I have used the CCC since I started uh genealogy. One of my first projects was a large project, and the CCC Records is what made me actually excited about brick walls because it gave me this story. It almost outlined what the client was looking for, and now I all I had to do is go in and dig on each one of the topics, like the employment topic, the community, the land. All of this was in the CCC project, as well as not only his parents that I found, but I also found his uncle and aunt who he was being raised by.

John 18:21

That's really neat. Yeah, all because of the the record keeping at the CCC.

Kathleen 18:26

And yeah, because now I knew to go to the Guardianship Wreckers, or why would were this guy not raised by his own parents? And so it just brings up all of those questions, that curiosity that I always talk about.

John 18:40

Very cool.

Kathleen 18:40

Yeah.

John 18:41

Well, that was a lot of fun. Those are good questions. I thought they were good ones.

Kathleen 18:45

So, John, these questions were submitted by our listeners. I had talked about the CCC in our last podcast, and I think I put something also on the blog on it, and I'll write more on that. And so they had questions for me. And then the second one on the Virginia Bounty Land, they were like, Well, there's we have abstract books. What about the abstract books? Why do I need to look at this? Well, we always want the original. We want to know who actually claimed it. They're not a good idea.

John 19:14

As opposed to, okay, you're saying the abstract book. What is that?

Kathleen 19:17

So we can go to a library and somebody has gone through these files already years back, and they've made an index and they put names in it.

John 19:26

Oh, so the abstract is uh just a summary.

Kathleen 19:29

It's just a summary. You want to look at the originals.

John 19:32

Yeah, that makes sense.

Kathleen 19:33

Because the original might also tell you it was in his name, but it was his widow who claimed it because he was already dead, or it was in his name, but his heirs claimed it, and now I learned that there's a brother and a sister, and I get their names.

John 19:50

So again, don't do the Cliff Note version, which would be the abstract. Right. Do the real reading.

Kathleen 19:56

You got it. You sound like a genealogist, Sean.

John 19:59

Hmm. Nah, just a teacher. Real cool stuff. Great questions. Your answers?

Kathleen 20:07

You're horrible.

Final Thanks And How To Reach Us

John 20:08

Well, congratulations, you made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks for taking the time to send in your questions. And thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. Thanks to you, listeners, for tuning in, downloading, and subscribing. The theme song for Hittin't the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fitznuckle and the Kidney Stones. Watch for the next appearance at an emergency room near you. Do you have a genealogical question for Kathleen? Drop us a line at hitting the bricks at gmail.com and let us know.