Neighbor John Gleason

By Jen

I'm currently working on a presentation detailing ways that you can find an ancestor's homestead or farm location with records and current maps.

I was looking at a plat map for 1906 for Goose Lake Township, Charles Mix County, South Dakota while looking up the farm location of my great grandfather, John H. Jensen. Right there next to his 160 acres is the name John Gleason. Their houses were right next to each other. The name sounded familiar, so I searched through the thousands of photos that I've scanned, labeled and filed away on my computer. Sure enough, I had two labeled photos of his neighbor John Gleason.

I was curious about John so tried to find out more information about him. Not much exists out there. He was born in 1858 in Pennsylvania and never married. The last record that I see for him is in 1910 at age 52. After that, he seems to disappear.

I'm glad that these photos of him were labeled so that he is remembered.