Thursday, September 9, 2010

Treasure Chest Thursday -- Grandpa's Brand Record

While I was in Bear Lake this last May I went through newspaper clippings and whatnots that my aunt had stashed in envelopes.  Actually I went through them on the car ride back to Pocatello because we didn't find them until the last minute.

I set aside all the things that I wanted copies of and good ole cousin Daniell scanned them for me. Among the scanned goodies was grandpa's official Brand Record.




I also have uncle Ollie's original brand certificate that was among grandma Hazel's things. He lived with great-grandma and grandpa Piggott.



I wasn't aware that you could read a brand. I found a couple of sites about livestock brands and how to read them that might come in handy if you have ranchers, farmers, or cowboys in your ancestry.


  1. Livestock brands
  2. History of Cattle Brands

I am still trying to figure out how to read these two brands.



Update: Thanks to a cousin on Facebook who saw my post I now know what uncle Ollie's brand says! She said, and I quote "..it's 2 Lazy 2 P.....he always got a big kick out of telling people what his brand was. :)"

But I didn't get it till later when I said it out loud to myself....uncle Ollie had a sense of humor, didn't he?!

Before I posted this yesterday I swear I looked everywhere for record of another ancestor's brand that I knew I had, but couldn't find it anywhere.  Well, I just found it! It has been living in my computer since 2007 and unfortunately I don't know what book it came from. (How embarrassing!)  However I do want to post this page of "Recorded Marks and Brands" because someone else who has ancestors in Utah may benefit.







2 comments:

  1. I found this very fascinating. I knew livestock and brands were registered, but I've never seen an actual livestock or cattle brand certificate. The index recording of the registration is common. I can see how this can be tied into genealogical finds. Wonder how much it cost to register the brand, and at what point did the owners find it economical or have a need to brand their cattles. Was it mostly for cattle drives, or livestock thefts, or for some payment to or from butchers? Yep, the questions keep coming.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very interesting - I've never heard of brands before. What a cool find!

    ReplyDelete

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