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Some terms:
Deed of Sale: Evidence of a purchaser’s acquisition of land.
Land Patent: The transfer of title from a government to the first private owner of a piece of property.
Grantor: Seller of a piece of property. Also called “Direct.”
Grantee: Receiver of a piece of property. Also called “Indirect,” “Inverted” or “Reverse.”
Et ux.: “and wife”
Et al.: “and others”
How to Find Deeds
Deed records are generally found at the county level. Since county boundaries have changed over time, check to see when your county’s boundaries might have changed. Sometimes this information is in the Family History Library Catalog when you put in your county of interest (on the page with all the subjects in blue writing). You can also find this information in The Handybook for Genealogists and other reference books. There are also many helpful websites, such as www.myvirginiagenealogy.com, www.mytennesseegenealogy.com, etc., with this information.
Family History Library (Salt Lake City, Utah): in the Family History Library Catalog, do a place search and type in your county and state of interest, then scroll down to “Land and Property.” Also check “Land and Property - Indexes,” but you will usually find the indexes in the same group of microfilms as the deeds and just under “Land and Property.” Some deeds have been typed up and are in books, but generally the indexes and the deeds themselves are on microfilm.
If you don't have access to the Family History Library, you will have to contact the county courthouse for the records. You can find contact information for each county courthouse at http://genealogy.com/00000229.html. Click on your state on the U.S. map and there is a list of each county courthouse for the state.
The Bureau of Land Management has the patent records for government land sold in the eastern part of the United States.
Searching an Index
Deed indexes are split into two parts: grantor and grantee. They are generally organized by the first letter of the person’s last name and then chronologically, from earliest to latest. So if you want to find all references to John Campbell, for example, you must look through all the C’s. Pay special attention to “et al.” when looking in a grantor index, because this means more than one person sold the land and often these were joint heirs to a property (siblings).
The index will often give you the names of the buyer and seller, the date this occurred, the date it was recorded (which could be years after the transfer actually occurred), the location of the property, the price, and the book and page number of the actual deed.
Searching a Deed
Once you have the year, book and page number from the index, you can look up the actual deed. In the Family History Library Catalog, these are split up by book, so “Deed Records v. A-B 1841–1847” would be for books A and B, which cover the years 1841–1847. Writing down both the book and year in the index will help you make sure you have the right microfilm.
Locating your Ancestor’s Land
In the original thirteen colonies, plus Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Texas, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and parts of Ohio, land is described by “metes and bounds.” To identify the boundaries of a piece of land, landmarks such as a tree or large rock were used. This makes it difficult to locate exactly where the land was, but the plus side is that it generally gave the names of neighbors whose land bordered the piece being sold. These could have been relatives.
The other states used a “Section, Township, and Range” system to identify the location of land.
Section: a square mile containing 640 acres; the basic unit in township and range measuring.
Township: Each township was made up of 36 sections, with six sections in each row (so a township was a square of six sections by six sections, or six miles by six miles).
Township Lines: These lines are counted north or south from the base line in a state, so T2N (Township 2 North) is the second section north of the base line.
Range: These lines are counted east or west from the principal meridian in a state, so R2E (Range 2 East) is the second section east of the principal meridian.
Thus, T2N R2E would be two sections north of the base line and two sections east of the principal meridian.
You can get a map of meridians and base lines from the Bureau of Land Management. Sometimes you can find a map with the sections already numbered in the Family History Library. Go to your place (either Township or County) and look under “Land and Property - Maps” etc.
Additional Information
Deed records are copies of the originals, so there could be mistakes.
Jay Andriot’s Township Atlas of the United States includes very helpful maps of where each Township was in a county.
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Legacy Tree is headquartered near the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, the largest genealogical library in the world. We also order records through agents all over the globe.
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