Searching Land Records- A Tip for Success

When searching land records, there are many different options. Today, while I was at the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City, I was reminded of another one.

Typically, when dealing with land records, you can use the built-in tools, such as the search functions on Ancestry or FamilySearch, to conduct a search of the land records. This was my first option, but to no avail. No matter how I put in the name of the person I was looking for, I could not get him to come up in the collection, even though I knew he should, as he sold land a few years later and had to get it from somewhere (there are, of course, other ways he could have gotten it, but the most likely was it was deeded to him).

Thus, my next step was to go to the FamilySearch Catalog for the location I was looking at and open the grantee index covering the years I needed. Again, I checked (under all of the spelling variations I could think of), but to no avail. He was not in the index.

Now frustrated and confused, knowing he should appear, but not wanting to search over 20 years of land records page by page, a trick I had learned a few years ago came back to me. I checked the land record I did have (from when he sold the land) and noticed the land was described in metes and bounds and included the names of a few of the adjacent lot owners. Next, I went into the FamilySearch catalog and found the collection I wanted to search, and to my delight, it was full-text searchable. This meant that instead of looking for the landowner that I could not find, in the records or in the index, I could instead search for an adjacent landowner that should appear in the land description and would appear in the full-text search results. I chose a name off of the list of landowners and hit search. I had to go through a few hits, but a few minutes later... Bingo! I had found my missing guy! He really was in the book I thought he was in. He just wasn't in the grantee index under any of the spellings I had checked. Now I had my land record.

So when looking for land records and you get stuck, remember if you have a land description and full-text search, use it! It may just have what you need!