The documents

Nine groups, arranged as the creator arranges them: by place and by period. 251 files in all , 246 of them described one by one. Nineteenth-century court, probate, land and citizenship records are public records and are not under copyright. The Library describes each one, shows the creator’s thumbnail where he made one, and links his full-size scan rather than making a second copy of it.

The groups

1. North Carolina, 1824–1851 8 files

   Ashe County, North Carolina. The papers by which the Carson brothers, emigrants from County Antrim, declared their intention to become United States citizens and were naturalized. David Carson’s own citizenship, completed in Missouri in 1844, is the fact on which his 1850 Oregon land claim rested.

2. Platte County, Missouri, 1836–1851 1 file

   The one Platte County record the creator publishes here: David Carson’s Platte City land deed. The Missouri side of the estate is in the Missouri probate group.

3. Soap Creek Valley, 1845–1853 empty

   A folder the creator has opened but not yet filled. It stands empty on his site; the Library records it as he publishes it.

4. Oregon probate, 1852–1857 58 files

   The administration of David Carson’s estate in the Probate Court of Benton County, Oregon Territory, from Greenberry Smith’s appointment as administrator in November 1852 to the confirmation of the land sale in 1857: the bond, the inventory and appraisal, the sale bill, the receipts and billings that passed through the administrator’s hands, and his final accounting.

5. Missouri probate, 1852–1859 21 files

   The parallel administration in Platte County, Missouri, where David Carson still held land: John Robinson’s settlements, and the powers of attorney by which the Carson heirs in North Carolina, Virginia and Missouri collected their shares. The children Letitia bore in Oregon are not among them.

6. Carson v. Smith, 1854–1857 115 files

   The two suits Letitia Carson brought against Greenberry Smith in the District Court of Benton County — the first for the value of her labour, the second for cattle — pleaded for her by A. J. Thayer against John Kelsay. The file runs from the February 1854 complaint through the 1855 and 1856 judgments to the receipts of June 1857.

7. Douglas County, 1853–1922 22 files

   Letitia Carson’s homestead on South Myrtle Creek — the 1863 application and affidavits, the 1868 proof and certificate, the 1869 patent — with her daughter Martha’s 1868 marriage record and the 1884 deed by which Letitia conveyed the land to her son, ending with the 1922 probate of his estate.

8. Myrtle Creek, 2023–2024 5 files · described at folder level

   Present-day Douglas County assessor records for the ground the homestead stood on, gathered by the creator in 2023 and 2024.

9. File endorsements and superseded scans 21 files

   Docket endorsements — the folded outside of a court paper, on which the clerk wrote what was inside — together with a family record and a few scans the creator has replaced elsewhere. Kept because a reader working from the original files will meet them.

The transcriptions

Jan and John Meranda transcribed almost the whole of the probate and lawsuit files, heading each transcription with the filename of the scan it was made from. The Library reproduces them page by page, so that a reader can set the reading beside the image. Each document’s entry links straight to the page that carries it.

• Carson v. Smith transcriptions, 1854–1857 70 pages · 11,835 words · Transcribed by Jan and John Meranda
• Oregon probate transcriptions, 1852–1857 42 pages · 7,807 words · Transcribed by Jan and John Meranda
• Missouri probate transcriptions, 1852–1859 16 pages · 4,013 words · Transcribed by Jan and John Meranda

The creator’s own index

In January 2013 the creator and Janet Meranda made a table of the documents then online, with a line of description against each. Where a file in the registers below carries a line in quotation marks, it comes from that table. Some of the filenames have changed since; where a renamed file could not be matched to his line beyond doubt, the Library prints nothing rather than the wrong description.

• Index to Online Historical Documents Related to the History of Letitia Carson Bob Zybach and Janet Meranda, 4 January 2013 · 123 lines

Where the originals are

The Benton County probate and district court files are held by the Oregon State Archives; the creator’s copies were made there. The homestead application, proof, certificate and patent come from the National Archives. The Missouri probate came through the Platte County courthouse and a researcher’s correspondence. The North Carolina citizenship papers come from Ashe County. A reader who needs the original document rather than a scan of it should go to the holding institution.

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