It takes a lot of energy – and sometimes a lot of beer – to locate long-lost ancestral lands.  First there’s the hunt for original records in city halls’ dusty volumes, then there’s the interpretation of land descriptions that sometimes use only trees and rocks as landmarks, then there’s the bribery of brothers (with beer) to go along for the search through streambeds and vacant fields.  But the discovery is so worth it.  Here are the big four… click on the lat/long coordinates to see maps.

1. Benjamin Maddox I’s tobacco plantation Hornfair, Charles County, Maryland, at 38.445989, -77.214779 – just south-west of Nanjemoy and east of the Potomac River.

2. Benjamin Maddox II’s farmland in Abbeville County, South Carolina, at 34.43823, -82.272513 – just northwest of Maddox Bridge and Maddox Shoals on the Saluda River.

3. Joseph Maddox’s farm “along the meanders of the Tradewater River,” Christian County, Kentucky, at 37.036721, -87.519756.

4. John Napoleon Maddox’s Sunny Side Stock Farm, Crawford County, Illinois, at 38.914757, -87.604777 – just west of the Wabash River.