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Most land records will be found with the county recorder’s office, the registrar’s office, or in the county court at the county seat. Despite their titles, deeds found in a county recorder’s office may include other legal documents of transfer, such as deeds in fee simple granting absolute ownership; mortgages transferring property rights as security for debts; dower releases waiving wives’ rights; quit-claim deeds releasing whatever title or right is held whether valid or not; deeds of gift transferring land without reciprocal consideration; powers of attorney appointing legal agents; marriage property settlements; bills of sale transferring property that is usually not land; and various forms of contracts, such as leases, partnerships, indenture papers, and other performance bonds. Deed books from before the Civil War and especially in colonial years were more miscellaneous in their contents, even including animal brands, occasional wills, slave manumissions, apprentice papers, petitions, depositions, tax lists, and whatever else the clerk decided to preserve on a convenient page. Through such records a researcher may trace the ownership of land, in some cases for two centuries or more.
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Colonial
settlers acquired title to Alabama lands from the French,
the Spanish, the British, and the Native Americans.
Original copies of these grants from the first three
groups may be found, respectively, in the Archives Nationales
in Paris, the Archivo General de Indias in Seville,
and the Public Record Office in London. When land title
was transferred from Great Britain to the United States
in 1783, following the American Revolution, preemptive
landowners were required to file proof of their land
title with the U.S.
Title to previously ungranted lands was vested in the
federal government, and titles were conveyed to individuals
either by sale or by bounty-land warrant. The Land Act of
1800, as amended in 1803, simplified the claiming of land
titles by authorizing local public land offices to survey
and auction lands within their charge.
Sales were sanctioned through thirteen land offices including
- St. Stephens (established December 1806, transferred to
Mobile 1867)
- Huntsville (established at Nashville in March 1807, transferred
to Huntsville 1811, transferred to Montgomery May 1866)
- Cahaba (established at Milledgeville, Georgia, August
1817, transferred to Cahaba October 1818, transferred
to Grenville 1856);
- Tuscaloosa (established May 1820, transferred to Montgomery
1832)
- Sparta-Conecuh
Courthouse (established May 1820, transferred to Montgomery
1854)
- Montgomery (established July 1832, closed 1927)
- Mardisville-Montevallo
(established July 1832, transferred to Lebanon 1842)
- Demopolis (established March 1833, transferred to Montgomery
March 1866)
- Lebanon (established April 1842, transferred to Centre
1858)
- Elba (established April 1854, transferred to Montgomery
April 1867)
- Greenville (established 1856, transferred to Montgomery
1866)
- Centre (established 1858, transferred to Huntsville 1866)
- Mobile
(established 1867, transferred to Montgomery June 1879).
When the land offices were closed, their original
records were sent to the Washington, D.C., office.
Tract books indicating the original sale of property
from the federal government, or the state of Alabama in case
of a sixteenth section, are housed in the county probate
judge's office. The books, arranged by legal description,
include the name of the purchaser, the amount of acres purchased,
the price, date of purchase, certificate number, and whether
or not the land was obtained under a military act. These
records do not include lands cut away to form new counties
or subsequent sales of original tracts.
All subsequent title transactions following the original title transfer from the federal government are recorded in the probate judge's records of the county in which the property lies. These records include conveyance records, which detail the transfer of property either by sale or donation.
In some counties, mortgages were recorded in the same
volumes as outright conveyance of real property, while in
others liens and deeds of trust are recorded separately
as
"Mortgages.
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Excerpts From the Book "Family History Made Easy"
Prior to the Civil War, more than eighty-five percent of all Americans owned or leased land. Therefore, almost every researcher, whether a seasoned professional or weekend hobbyist, has required land records to document the existence, association, or movement of an individual or ancestral family. While many researchers may feel a sense of historical excitement when finding an ancestor in a land deed, many also fail to understand the importance of such a document and how land can be used to make vital links between generations; they are not aware that it can bridge distant origins and help solve even the most difficult problems. E. Wade Hone,
In Land and Property Research in the United States
U.S. House of Representative Private Claims, Vol. 1, Vol. 2 or Vol. 3
The right to own land has always been one of the great incentives for living in the United States. Yet researchers often overlook the importance of land records as a source of family history information. Written evidence of people’s entitlement goes back in time further than virtually any other type of record family historians might use.
Land records meet the needs of researchers in different ways and contain a variety of genealogical and historical data. They are a major source of information for many family histories and provide primary source material for local history as well. They are closely related to probate and other official court records and should be investigated in connection with them. Land and property are leading issues in the settlement of estates, and the majority of civil cases in the courts deal with real and personal property. Although land records rarely yield vital statistics, in many instances they provide the only proof of family relationships. Often they include the names of heirs of an estate (including daughters’ married names and a widow’s subsequent married name) and refer to related probates and other court cases by number and court name. In some places where other records are scarce, the land records take on extra importance. Occasionally these documents disclose former residences and more often provide the new address of the grantors or heirs at the time of the sale of the property.
Land records provide two types of important evidence for the family historian. First, they often document family relationships. Second, they place individuals in a specific time and place, allowing the researcher to sort people and families into neighborhoods and closely related groups. One of land records’ most important qualities is that they are sometimes the only records that allow us to distinguish one person of a common name from another.
The National Archives has bounty-land warrant files, donation land entry files, homestead application files, and private land claim files relating to the entry of individual settlers on land in the public land states. There are no land records for the original thirteen states or for Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, and Hawaii. Records for these states are maintained by state officials, usually in the state capital. Searching for the record of a particular land grant from the federal government requires contacting both the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Archives (NARA).
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