US LAND & PROPERTY RESEARCH

Lesson V
What Now?

You have completed this course on the basics of land and property research in the United States. The preceding four lessons were designed to give you only the " Land & Property Research 101" type background into this subject. At some point in the future, if there appears to be the need and the demand, an advanced course on this subject may be offered. There is much more to this complex subject and many genealogists who have spent years working in this subject area still learn new things as they move forward in their research.

So - you now know the basics. What now? Obviously, the next step is to get involved with the course subject in your daily genealogical research activities. Many novice genealogists - and even some who have been researching for some time - fail to appreciate the rich vein of information which may be found in land and property records, if you know how to go about finding it. You should now be far more aware of the need to abstract deeds and other records fully and carefully. You should always abstract all data concerning the metes and bounds or township and range data from deeds. You should obtain or prepare township and range grid maps of those counties in federal land states in which you are researching. By "charting" the locations of your ancestors on these maps, as well as those of neighbors, you are giving yourself an additional group of leads on who the male members of a family may have married, i.e., the young men very often courted the young daughters of neighbors. It is worth your while to know all you can about who the neighbors were. Some of this can be found in census records, of course, but knowing who owned land immediately adjoining your ancestors' property is a valuable adjunct in your research in several areas.

As you go forward in your research, you will come to know that, for example, a quitclaim deed may actually be more valuable to you than a will may be, in that the heirs of a deceased individual, especially if the deceased died intestate, would all be listed on such a deed as the heirs of the real property of the deceased, while, if a will was present, it may, or may not, list all of the immediate heirs of the deceased. In the federal land states, the original grants will show the section, township and range of the property, and often these grant books have been compiled into published form, such as Willard Rouse Jensen's work, The Kentucky Land Grants.The survey and/or plat record books may still be available at the county level in many states, as well as in the state archives. Although the research can be tedious, finding and plotting the land locations of your ancestors and their neighbors can be both fascinating and instructive. I encourage you to do it.

Remember, also, that the sole purpose of land records is to convey a clear title to a piece of property from one holder to another. Since this was accomplished through an unbiased third party(whoever recorded the deed, e.g., the county clerk), these records can be assumed to be accurate. I use the word assumed because no one is infallible, and county clerks and their deputies did miscopy records occasionally. Therefore, land records should always be an adjunct to your research, and should be used only in combination with other types of documentation. Those of you wishing to get into the "nitty-gritty" of what constitutes good genealogical evidence may wish to read Noel C.Stevenson's work entitled, Genealogical Evidence - A Guide to the Standard of Proof Relating to Pedigrees, Ancestry, Heirship and Family History. We have not discussed the citing of land records in this course, as that is a separate topic not in the domain of our immediate subject matter. However, Richard S. Lackey, in his Cite Your Sources gives excellent criteria and methodology for citations of land and property records.

For those of you with an interest in a more advanced study of the metes and bounds system of surveying, I recommend the following web site:http://www.ultranet.com/~deeds/metes.htm This site, from Direct Line Software, gets more deeply into the methodology of that system of land surveys. There are also several software programs available that will plot parcels of land from the metes and bounds description. Deed Mapper is one of these, available from Direct Line Software, and there are others.

With the advent of more and more data becoming available on-line, land and property research will become easier and more convenient to pursue. But there still is no substitute for research done in the original records at the repositories where such records are held. Whenever you can do so, you should visit those repositories and do your research there.

US land and property research should be an integral part of your genealogical endeavors. It is your instructor's hope that this course, even as basic as it is, will help you perform your research with more confidence and enjoyment.

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(c)Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 by Bill Utterback, CGRS

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