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Land records

Janet discovered that the Herkes left Germany to avoid the wars of the Kaiser and to become landowners. So they traveled to the Washington Territory in 1870. She also had Fleckfamily postcards from a great aunt who homesteaded in Lake County in 1913. But where did the Herkes and Flecks live exactly?

Janet used the General Land Office Records database from the Bureau of Land Management to figure this out. There are over two million eastern records, issued between 1820 and 1908, and western patents issued after June 30, 1908. More will be added over the next three years. If one of your ancestors was a homesteader, you might find them in this database.

Janet found a record for her Aunt Gertrude Fleck Moore's homestead. This database has a "printer friendly version" icon that prints the full record quickly. The record gave both her maiden and married name. Janet did a similar search for the Herkes of Yakima County Washington and was surprised to get records for all her uncles, an aunt, and a cousin -- but no records for her Great-great Grandfather Anton Herke. She did the search a second time but did not specify the county name and then found his information. When Anton Herke homesteaded in 1870 Washington was a territory and Yakima County had not been formed. The legal description of the land -- its township, range and section(s) -- are part of the BLM record.

To convert the legal description of a property into a location, Janet used the library catalog to find some maps and atlases. She found some USGS topographic maps, which show the range and township boundaries. Metsker's atlases for Oregon show range, township, and section lines.

Related resources

Books

Multnomah County Library has some print resources on land records. Use the library catalog with the keywords "land genealogy" to find titles like:

Indiana Land Entries by Margaret R. Waters.
Character Certificates in the General Land Office of Texas: from the files of the General Land Office, Austin, Texas edited by Gifford White
Genealogical Material in Oregon: donation land claims (5 volumes)
Genealogical Material in Oregon: provisional land claims, abstracted, volumes I-VIII, 1845-1849, compiled by Lottie LeGett Gurley

Add geographic locations like "oregon" or "wasco" to make your search more specific.

Related Web sites

Legal Land Descriptions in the USA: http://www.outfitters.com/genealogy/land/land.html

Discusses the types of grants, the laws governing them, links to a graphical description of townships, ranges, and sections.
Federal Land Patent Records: http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/

Searches by name of person or by legal description; includes digital copies of many U.S. land patents.
U.S. Land and Property Research: http://users.arn.net/~billco/uslpr.htm

Authored by the International Internet Genealogical Society University, this is self-paced set of lessons on the basics of land and property research in the United States.