US Land Records

[Æmeric]

From the Bureau of Land Management, an online collection of land records & grants of Congressional land to individuals & corporations. If your ancestor(s) received land directly from the US Government after 1820 the records are probalby here. There was no Congressional land in the original 13 colonies, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennesee, West Virginia (part of Virginia until 1863), Hawaii & Texas. If you want to use this resource you may want to familiarize yourself with the Public Land Survey System used by the US Government.

An example of the numbering system of townships & sections within townships. A section is 1 mile square on each side or 640 acres. The original townships surveyed in southeast Ohio had a numbering sequence for sections slightly different from the rest of the lands surveyed under this system.

An example of the kind of records the BLM has online. A record of transfer of public land to one of my 3xgreatgrandfathers a few years after he arrived from Germany.

Edit: I forgot to mention that public lands in the US were surveyed using the Washington Meridian. The Washington Meridian is 77°2'11.56" west of Greenwich Meridian.

[Osweo]

Hehe, I found one of My Lot who got a chunk of California in 1862 - 163 acres! Cheers!

Two in Idaho; 80 acres in 1891, and 320 in 1920.

160 of Wisconsin, ditto of Washington and Montana, 275 in South Dakota, 80 of Nevada. We own pretty much most of the USA it seems...


Might prove of some interest to distant American cousins. Will pass info on, thanks AEmeric.