Strange discoveries in the county archives: "Register of Stallions" and "Register of Log Marks"

We are big proponents of “in person” genealogy: pulling records at the town clerk’s office, seeing the actual places where ancestors once lived, checking out local cemeteries, and conducting face-to-face interviews. It’s not just the prospect of additional context and details. Oftentimes, you’re making memories that will be far more vivid than siting in front of a computer screen.

And sometimes, there are wonderful serendipitous discoveries, like at the St. Lawrence County Courthouse in Canton, New York.

Ian was there to look for naturalization documents for a great-great grandfather. Tucked amongst thousands of land deeds and old court filings are historical odds and ends, such as bound copies of the state census and various federal records relating to naturalization in the 1800s and early 1900s. While some naturalization records have been digitized, they are not yet searchable on FamilySearch, which is one reason to view them in person at the county courthouse.

There was a possible match for an ancestor, a single-line entry in a bound book titled “Alien Reports, A & 1-4.”

But some bound volumes on the lower shelves looked intriguing. A “Register of Stallions” and “Register of Log Marks”?

Horse people have always been serious about tracking pedigree. From the 1880s until 1920, laws governed “proof of pedigree” for horse breeders in New York. Some of the entries describing the stallions go into great detail, such as this entry for the “Young Duke of Edinburgh”:

In addition to the name of the owner, place of residence, age and weight of the horse, and the amount of insurance, there was this description:

"He was sired by the old Duke of Edinburgh, imported from Shipton, England, September 1876 by Irwin Brothers of Ontario … Dam by King of the Mist imported by John Clark of Ottawa Ontario. Grand Dam by Hector Bell. GG Dam by Old Grey Eagle."

There are more details about the migration and lineage of this line of horses than for most people!

In New York, loggers or lumber mills were once required to declare and mark their harvest. At the time, the mountainous area that is now the Adirondack Park was a major source of lumber. This entry in the record of log marks describes a lot of spruce and hemlock logs that were to be run down the Grasse River to the town of Canton in the spring of 1881 by W.R. Remington, and identified with certain letters and symbols:

The trip to the courthouse only yielded a single record for an ancestor, but the discovery of these two unusual registers made the trip all the more memorable.