One of the strongest motivators for particularly American immigration was land.
It's no surprise then that land records - including deeds, grants, mortgages,
wills and more - comprise some of the most common, reliable documents available
to genealogists and family historians. They can make a difference between
running into a brick wall and finding your way around it.
In 'Locating Your Roots', the author shows you where to find land records and
how to use them to prove ancestry and family relationship, find new avenues of
research, and discover how your ancestors lives. You'll learn how to:
- Locate documents of ownership in a courthouse or online
- Maximise your research with microforms and published abstracts
- Accurately interpret and record what you find
- Figure out how land was transferred from one to another
- Use maps, atlases, and gazetteers to focus your efforts in the right area
- Work for home with online land records and the Family History Library
Catalog
Hatcher also provides invaluable guidelines for using state references and other
general resources, plus a helpful glossary of related terms. It's all the
information you need to make land records your number one family history
resource. Note: Most of the examples and addresses included in this book are US
related.
Contents:
1. Why Use Land Records?
2. Where Are the Records?
3. Finding the Deed Without Using Vacation Time
4. Finding a Deed in a Courthouse
5. First Transfer - Getting Land Into the Hands of Individuals
6. Public Lands
7. What's in a Deed?
8. How to Record What You Find
9. Records of Residence
10. Maps, Atlases and Gazetteers
11. Metes-and-Bounds Land Platting
12. Public-Land Survey System
Appendix A. Locality Reference
Appendix B. General Resources
Appendix C. Glossary
Index
