Land Records, Deeds, Homesteads, Etc. » How To

Click on the broken link graphic and fill in the form

• Ancestry.com Wiki - Introduction to Red Book: Land Records

• Ancestry.com Wiki - The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy

  The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy is a reference book published by Ancestry Publishing. The first edition was published in 1984 and was edited by Arlene H. Eakle and Johni Cerny. A revised edition, edited by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, was published in 1997. The current edition, the third, was published in 2006 and was also edited by Szucs and Luebking. In 2010, Ancestry.com digitized the content of The Source and made it available in wiki format as one of the foundational sources for the Ancestry.com Wiki. Each chapter has been broken into one or more series of articles. This wiki is a free service of Ancestry.com.

  • Ancestry.com Wiki - Overview of Land Records

    This article originally appeared in "Land Records" by Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, FUGA in The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy This wiki is a free service of Ancestry.com.

  • Public-Domain States

  • State-Land States

• BCG Skillbuilding: Analyzing Deeds for Useful Clues

  From the Board for Certification of Genealogists - Skill Building - January 1995.

• Bedfordshire Archives - How to Interpret Deeds - A Glossary

• How to Search Deeds

  From DoHistory.

  • Form for Deed Research Notes

• Information found in deeds

  This extensive tutorial with examples shows the types of information that can be found in deeds and how to use that information in research. From GSC Associates.

• Introduction to Using Land Records for Family History

  By Crista Cowan for Ancestry.com.

• Land and Property Ownership for Genealogist (YouTube)

  By James Tanner, from the BYU FHL webinar series. Explains the roots of Land Law in the civilized world, and showing how that applies to US.

• Learn Genealogy - 10 Important Clues to Follow Up in Land Deeds

  By Kimberly Powell

• Legacy Family Tree Webinars - Basics of Land Platting - Part 1

  By J. Mark Lowe, CG, FUGA

• Legacy Family Tree Webinars - Basics of Land Platting - Part 2

  By J. Mark Lowe, CG, FUGA

• Legacy Family Tree Webinars - Can a Dead Man Sign a Deed? $

  By Kelvin L. Meyers. Legacy Family Tree Webinars are available with a monthly or annual webinar membership subscription.

• Legacy Family Tree Webinars - Finding Kentucky Land: Grants, Deeds and the Missing Pieces

  By J. Mark Lowe, CG, FUGA

• Legacy Family Tree Webinars - Neighborhood Reconstruction: Effective Use of Land Records

  By Mary Hill, AG

• Legacy Family Tree Webinars - Power Platting...Pictures from Property Descriptions $

  By Chris Staats. Legacy Family Tree Webinars are available with a monthly or annual webinar membership subscription.

• Legacy Family Tree Webinars - U.S. Land Records - State Land States

  By Mary Hill, AG

• Research in the Land Entry Files of the General Land Office

  Reference Information Paper 114 from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

• Taking the mystery out of land records : using land records in genealogical research (WorldCat)

  By Linda Haas Davenport. Description of the History of Land Records and how to use Land Records in family history research.

• Those Elusive Early Americans: Public Lands and Claims in the American State Papers, 1789

  Article by Chris Naylor for Prologue, the quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration.

• U.S. Land Records (YouTube)

  By John Hendrix, from the BYU FHL webinar series.