Happy New Year’s Eve! If you want to ring in 2025 with a few good books, have I got a deal for you.
Land records provide more than purchase and sale details. Land laws help us to understand why a land transaction occurred in a specified manner and even delineate who was allowed to own land. Case law involving land shows us how the law was applied in land disputes, and it gives us a glimpse of those dusty old arguments and the people who were having them.
I used land records and land laws heavily in my last big case study, which turned into a recertification portfolio work sample and a webinar (see the fourth bullet below). I collected land laws as I worked, because I was not able to find a decent set of them in one place. That modest collection has grown and resulted in a new addition to my online law library. Check for additional laws elsewhere, because it would be impossible for one person to find them all. The collection mainly includes federal law, as state land laws would be on state law pages.
Why should you care about land laws and land records? I will share some of the advances that I made in my own research by using both.
Land records and land laws have:
- Identified my 2nd-great-grandmother, Hannah Dwy’s father. She transferred inherited Connecticut land to her brother, and that deed is the only record that calls her Philander Dwy’s heir-at-law. I had a strong case for him as her father but there was no other direct evidence of the relationship.
- Caused a court battle when a woman who owned New York City real estate died intestate. The court case named her heirs, including my 3rd-great-grandmother, Johanna Daley Mahoney, who never owned land. While the court case was not a land record, it referenced several land transactions. That battle over who had rights to real estate helped me to piece together an Irish immigrant family and discover a sibling who stayed in Ireland. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/the-five-story-fall-correlating-indirect-and-direct-evidence-to-extend-the-pedigree/
- Provided a death date for my paternal 4th-great grandmother, Elizabeth Eyster Loy, who passed away before completing her Missouri homestead. Understanding why she was allowed to apply for a homestead and why her son was not allowed to complete her homestead required reading the law. https://advancinggenealogist.com/2021/10/homesteading-in-missouri-and-introducing-historic-missouri-law/
- Helped me to learn what became of my great-grandfather’s disappearing brother, who was last heard from in 1898. He took advantage of multiple land acts post-disappearance, but no single document gave direct evidence of his identity. Understanding his actions required reading relevant laws. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/he-had-a-brother-who-disappeared-finding-john-h-hickey-formerly-of-rockton-winnebago-county-illinois/
- Revealed that my married 3rd-great-grandmother, Margaret Jones McBride, acted as a feme-sole trader in Pennsylvania in the 1830s. I read the law (it was not land law, but allowed her property rights) to understand why she was able to purchase Parade Street real estate in Erie, Pennsylvania, while her husband was alive. https://advancinggenealogist.com/2021/12/margaret-mcbrides-parade-street-home-introducing-historic-pennsylvania-law/
I hope that you have success in seeking land records for your ancestors. Seek land laws to better understand how and why your ancestors obtained land in the way that they did.
Visit my Historic Land Statutes page here.
Visit my Historic Land Case Law page here.
The historic land law collection will be linked under the Law: Special Topics Index which is listed in the Law Library Index.
Note that the Legacy Family Tree Webinars links above require a subscription or payment to view, since they are over a week old.
Enjoy!
This is amazing. Thank you!
You’re welcome! Enjoy digging.