Musselman Deed

 Once in awhile things turn up where you least expect it. Last spring we saw there was going to be an estate auction almost two miles from our place. It was a small house and didn't look like much but it was crammed with antiques and old stuff. The auction was canceled because of the virus and finally held yesterday. 

We stopped in the day before the sale to look at the things I was most interested in, a Sauer Bible, a collection of more than twenty old deeds, and two patents from the Penn family. I didn't think I had much chance of getting anything but I wanted to see the deeds in  case there was any connection to our families. They did not but there were two Musselman deeds that interested me because I knew where the Musselman homestead was in the New Holland area.

We were having a family picnic Saturday evening and I had food to make. I didn't have time to sit at a sale all morning but Leroy went. He called me when they were selling the deeds and managed to snag one of the Musselman deeds for a reasonable price.

The patents from the Penns sold for $300 or more and the 1761 Sauer Bible for $3,100. That was beyond my reach. It did not have any family records in it and was purely antique value. 

I was delighted with the one deed he bought. It is for 86 acres Christian and Mary Musselman sold to their son John N. Musselman. John was a grandson of Christian and Magdalena (Shelly) Musselman who was a son of Christian and Mary Musselman, son of immigrant Hans Musselman. The Musselman homestead has been passed down through the generations and is still owned by one of the descendants of Hans Musselman.

The 86 acres on this deed was not part of the Hans Musselman homestead but it was just across the road from the southern end of the homestead. It was originally part of the Martin Huber homestead. The thing that makes it more valuable is that it was never recorded in the Lancaster County courthouse. This is the original handwritten deed from 1842 and the only one in existence. Unrecorded deeds are a valuable source for genealogists and often contain information that was missing.

I was surprised and delighted that we could salvage this unrecorded deed. It will be of interest to the descendants of this branch of the Musselman family.