Notes: Free
If you have an early land owner in your family, they may have purchased or been awarded that land from the government. The Bureau of Land Management has an online system that allows you to search for original land patents.
The database includes 38 states - not the original 13 colonies or their territories or Hawaii.
After giving your zipcode, you will be asked to choose a state and provide at least a last name. After hitting the search button, a list of names and locations of the patents comes up. Clicking on a name of interest provides a description of the land patent, the land location, and an image of the document.
For an example, I have entered the name Thomas Lincoln and searched in Illinois:
After hitting the search button only one entry for Thomas Lincoln comes up.
This listing shows a patent was issued for land in Coles county in 1838.When you click his name, watch for the four tabs that you can cycle through to get more information, including a description of the patent and land, as well as an image of the actual document:
In following posts we will talk about how to locate the land and what bonus information you can sometimes find in these records.
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