4

Management (BLM) or the National Archives of the

United States.

Locating Patents and Land Entry Case Files

for all thirty Public Land

States is detailed in "Federal Land Records", in

GENEALOGY BULLETIN No. 12, (Oct-Nov-Dec

1991), pp 1-7; and for an update on the thirteen

states covered by the Eastern States Branch of

the BLM, see "Bureau of Land Management

Automated Records Project", in GENEALOGY

BULLETIN No. 19, (Jul-Aug-Sep 1993), pp 8-9.

(Back issues of the Bulletin are available from

AGLL, Inc., PO Box 329, Bountiful, UT 84011).

Since the patent was not a document issued at

the

county

level, it may not

be obvious from

local

records

that a man had

an

original

entry of land.

The patent did

not have to be

recorded at the

county unless the property was sold. But in many

counties, genealogists may find a record book

called "Original Entries of Land" which gives the

names and property description for those persons

who obtained original patents for land in a

particular county.

There may also be Voter's Lists, Tax Lists, or

County Assessor's records which confirm that a

person was a patent holder based on a county

tax liability against his property. You may also

find a county-wide "Plat Book" which shows the

same information. A Plat Book is a map showing

the physical location of property ownership within

a particular county or region of a county. If any

of these types of records survive today, they are

usually located today at the county courthouse

for the county wherein the land was located.

Another source for confirming if a man had an

original entry of land is land ownership maps that

have been published privately by several book

publishers, generally for the 1800s. Based on

county-wide

plat

maps

and

other

public

documents, private companies have produced

land ownership maps for about half of the

counties of the U.S., some as large sheets,

others as bound books. The Library of Congress

in Washington, DC has the best collection of

these old land ownership maps. There are two

excellent guides to locate a map for a county and

to determine if your ancestor's name appears on

one of these maps. The first is for the manuscript

maps (sheets) located in the Library of Congress:

1)

Richard

W.

Stepenson,

compiler,

Land

Ownership Maps: A Checklist of Nineteenth

Century United States County Maps in the Library

of Congress, (Washington, DC: Geography and

Map Division, Reference Department, Library of

Congress), 1967; and 2) Land Ownership Atlases

in the Library of Congress, which is a county-by-

county index to the various land ownership

atlases that have been produced. To obtain

copies of these maps, write to the Library of

Congress

and

specify the name

of the county, the

town,

township,

or area of the

county in which

you

have

an

interest, and the

time

period.

Mention the two

sources for land ownership maps. Write to Library

of

Congress,

Photoduplication

Services,

Washington, DC 20540. The staff will determine if

such a map or atlas exists, and will quote you a

price for making a copy of the maps for you.

Subsequent Exchanges of Land

After a patent had been issued to a landowner,

he had the right to sell the land to someone else

in the form of a deed, but the recording of such

land sales became a local responsibility. Unlike

the warrant, surveys, or patents, which were

recorded at the state or federal level, exchanges

of land subsequent to the land grant process are

recorded at the county level. This is true for all

states except three New England States, where

the deeds are recorded at the town level

(Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont), and

Alaska, the only state with no counties and where

land exchanges are recorded at the Judicial

District level. In Louisiana, deeds are recorded at

the parish level, which is the same

as a county in other states.

Some definitions related to land

exchanges at the county or town

level are as follows:

 Deed...

the

private