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Advanced Research Tools: Land Records
Your Ancestor’s Farm Is Hiding in Plain Sight
“Beginning at a white oak on the east bank of Mill Creek, thence north 45 degrees east 120 poles to a stake by a hickory, thence south 30 degrees east 80 poles to John Hart’s corner…”
Descriptions like this fill deed books across the eastern United States. At first glance, they read like riddles. But to a researcher who knows how to read them, they’re a map: the shape of the farm, where it sat on the creek, and who lived on the other side of the fence line. John Hart, the neighbor at that corner, might be a witness, an in-law, or the key to the next generation back.
Land records are some of the richest genealogical sources, packed with relationships, neighbors, and context. For much of American history, owning land was the promise that drew families across oceans and across the continent, and nearly every step of that journey left a paper trail.
Advanced Research Tools: Land Records teaches you to follow it.
Two systems, one week
The week starts with how land was divided in the first place. The original colonies used metes and bounds, the tree-and-stake descriptions above. After the Revolution, the federal government surveyed its lands into neat townships and sections. Each system produces different records and calls for different research methods, and the course covers both, along with states like Ohio and Texas whose histories don’t fit either mold.
Draw it yourself
This isn’t a lecture-only course. On Wednesday, students plat metes-and-bounds descriptions by hand with paper and compass, then again using free platting software. Seeing a farm take shape on the page, and then fitting it against the neighbors’ tracts, is where land research comes alive.
Other workshops walk through deeds, the Bureau of Land Management’s land patent website, land ownership maps, and government documents, with optional daily homework to practice.
Beyond the patent index
Many researchers stop at an online land patent search. This course goes much further, into the land entry papers behind each patent and the tract books that record every parcel. Tract books even name people who applied for land but never finished the process, people you won’t find in an online index.
You’ll also learn about military bounty land granted to veterans, private land claims from the Spanish, French, and Mexican eras, and land matters that went all the way to Congress.
The law, and the people it overlooked
Land ownership was shaped by law: who could buy, sell, mortgage, and inherit, and how that changed over time. One session looks at the Homestead Act through the experiences of applicants who weren’t the “typical” settler, people who used the law’s broad eligibility to claim land of their own.
The week closes with a case study following one family across generations of migration and settlement, bringing every record type together.
Join us
Advanced Research Tools: Land Records runs January 25–29, 2027, as part of the virtual Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. Come find the farm.