DICTIONARIES: GENEALOGICAL TERMS
- Census - official enumeration, listing or counting of
citizens.
- Certified Copy - a copy made and attested to by officers having charge of the original and authorized to give copies.
- Chattel - personal property which can include animate as well as inanimate properties.
- Christen - to receive or initiate into the visible church by baptism; to name at baptism; to give a name to.
- Circa - about, near, or approximate - usually referring to a date.
- Codicil - addition to a will.
- Collateral Ancestor - belonging to the same ancestral stock but not in direct line of descent; opposed to lineal such as aunts, uncles & cousins.
- Common Ancestor - ancestor shared by any two people.
- Consanguinity - blood relationship.
- Consort - usually, a wife whose husband is living.
- Conveyance - see deed.
- Deceased - dead.
- Decedent - a deceased person.
- Declaration of Intention - first paper, sworn to and filed in court, by an alien stating that he wants to become a citizen.
- Deed - a document by which title in real property is transferred from one party to another.
- Deposition - a testifying or testimony taken down in writing under oath of affirmation in reply to interrogatories, before a competent officer to replace the oral testimony of a witness.
- Devise - gift of real property by will.
- Devisee - one to whom real property (land) is given in a will.
- Devisor - one who gives real property in a will.
- District Land Office Plat Book - books or rather maps which show the location of the land patentee.
- District Land Office Tract Book - books which list individual entries by range and township.
- Dower - legal right or share which a wife acquired by marriage in the real estate of her husband, allotted to her after his death for her lifetime.
Source: Provided by Dan Burrows.
