Day 332

Today the kids and I went over to the court house to pay property taxes on our house. Not that exciting except that I wanted to go down and check the records to see if we could come up with a name of the people that owned our house first. We went down to the record room and someone showed me how to use the book and I went back page by page writing down the names of the people who had owned our property. Back in the 1880's the property on the block was divided a little differently. But we did find some very interesting information. On August 5, 1886 Jefferson Weston sold most of the property (and likely the house) to James Kidston. One small portion of the property was sold on July 23, 1886 to Daniel Cook. After finding these names we started to research these people. It seems that Jefferson Weston and Daniel Cook were to rather important people in Beatrice history. Jefferson Weston was one of the very first people here. He and some others decided where the town of Beatrice should be. To read about Jefferson Weston go here. http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/county/gage/books/whoswho/

Or check out this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9noUAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=History+of+Gage+county+NE&source=bl&ots=NEfteY5KCM&sig=EYToiJ34mgqw687NvzzScJY3afo&hl=en&ei=IiyiS_m0PILgNfK45OII&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12&ved=0CDwQ6AEwCw#v=onepage&q=History%20of%20Gage%20county%20NE&f=false

with a search of Jefferson Weston, Silas Wheeler, and Daniel Cook. These are some of the people that have owned/lived in our house. We are going to be doing some more detailed research over the next few weeks and will hopefully find out some more information and hopefully some old pictures of the house.