This week we’ll look at a one of my favorite sources – property records!
If you’re doing genealogy in the U.S., you likely know that a census record is one of the best ways to get ballpark dates for your ancestors birth, marriage, and death dates as well as locations where they were born and lives and family members.
But what if you’re looking before 1850? Or your ancestor wasn’t enumerated? Or you’re trying to fill in the gap between 1880 and 1900? Property records are a great source for this.
Property records will only work, of course, for ancestors that owned property. These records are most prolific for white ancestors who were either well off or were farmers who purchased land during westward expansion, although also a potentially good resource for free African-Americans before or shortly after Emancipation. In my opinion, these records are always worth checking, particularly for ancestors living outside urban areas, with the caution that not all searches will produce results.
My favorite easy online resource for property records is FamilySearch’s catalog. First, navigate to FamilySearch.org and click on the Search dropdown menu:
Then click catalog:
In this example, I’ll use Michigan property records. To search for that, I’ll just type in “michigan”, select the suggestion “United States, Michigan”, then click search.
This brings up all the collections on FamilySearch related to Michigan. I’m using the catalog instead of the search function for a couple reasons. First, not all property records are indexed for searching. Second, I’ve found that often a name has been omitted from the index, or is transcribed in a way that prevents me from finding it in a search. Starting with a search is always good, but if that fails (or doesn’t produce what you’re expecting), it’s good to check the catalog and search manually.
I scroll down to Land and property, which gives me books and databases but not the records I expect.
Instead of the whole state, I’ll check at the county level:
There they are! I choose Deed records, 1830-1931; index, 1824-1902. From there I can click the camera icon and start searching for my ancestors:
Having trouble finding land records? We can help! Email info@weavingthetapestrygenealogy.com .
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