Did They Have Land?
Maybe your ancestor proved up a HOMESTEAD claim? Received a BOUNTY LAND script for military service? Purchased land from the US government for CASH? Your big clue — discovering your ancestor is paying local taxes on property, but there is no corresponding entry for the purchase in county grantee/grantor records. Why? Because the sales transaction…
Maybe your ancestor proved up a HOMESTEAD claim? Received a BOUNTY LAND script for military service? Purchased land from the US government for CASH?
Your big clue — discovering your ancestor is paying local taxes on property, but there is no corresponding entry for the purchase in county grantee/grantor records. Why? Because the sales transaction was between the *federal* government and the ancestor.
Check out the federal website. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), General Land Office (GLO) Records Automation web site.
- land patents
- surveys & field notes
- tract books
- land catalog
“We provide live access to Federal land conveyance records for the Public Land States, including image access to more than five million Federal land title records issued between 1788 and the present. We also have images of survey plats and field notes, land status records, and control document index records.”
This is the earliest land patent for my ancestor Henry Goering dated 1/1/1852, Accession #MW-1091-347, the 5th entry on this index for Goering in Iowa. Other entries are his later acquisitions.
By clicking the hot-linked accession number, I discovered this was 160 acres, granted under the authority of the February 11, 1847: ScripWarrant Act of 1847 (9 Stat. 123), providing for additional Mexican War soldiers. My ancestor purchased the paper script for land from the late soldier William C Thomasson’s estate and surrendered it to the GLO in Marion County, Iowa in exchange for the 160 acres.
What I’ve found on the website is enough information to request the LAND ENTRY file with surviving paperwork for this transaction. These are filed at Archives I in Washington, DC, first by type of sale then by accession number.
