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Using the U.S. BLM-GLO web site to Find Land Records http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/


GLO - General Land Office

BLM - Bureau of Land Management


INTRODUCTION


The U.S. Government has made many of the records of the BLM-GLO available online. These records are for the initial transfer of land from the government to an individual, not for records where one individual sells land to another. From this web site you can search for land records of ancestors, save an online copy of the land patent, and even order a certified copy of a land patent. The site also sells a CD containing the records if you want to search without an internet connection. Best of all, you can get the record numbers to allow you to order the land file from the National Archives where additional information about the family may be found.


Most of the records for the eastern public-land states for 1820 to 1908 are online. Additional data and data for western states is periodically added. If you don't find what you are looking for when you access the website, check back later to see if the records you want have been added. This article gives some tips and information on using this online database.


The Bureau of Land Management does not maintain records for the thirteen original colonies (Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia) and their territories (what is now Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky), or Hawaii and Texas. The responsibility for these documents remains with each state. Contact the appropriate State Archives for land information for the states listed in this paragraph.


The states listed above are referred to as "state-land" states and the land is generally measured using the metes and bounds system. The metes and bound system describes the boundaries of a plot in terms of where a line starts, the direction the line follows and the length of the line. Natural features such as streams and rivers may mark boundaries. For example, "beginning at the North East corner of the survey on which John Doe now resides at a stake from which a Post Oak 18 inches diameter bears S 44 W 7 2/10 varas distant Black Jack 4 inches diameter bears N 84 W 8 varas distant" and so on to describe the entire plot.


The other U.S. states are "public-land"; states and their records may be found in the BLM-GLO database online. These states use the rectangular survey system or township-range system of measuring land. The township-range system consist of rectangles of land measured from a central meridian and baseline. These plots are usually described as "the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter of section 16 of township 2 south, range 2 east in Conecuh County, Alabama"; which might be abbreviated as "SW ¼, SE ¼, SW ¼, Sec. 16, T2S, R2E, Conecuh Co., Ala.";


Although there is also some explanation of land records at the BLM site, prior to visiting the BLM site you might wish to review another explanation of how land records work in the Public Land states by viewing


http://www.lhaasdav.com/learningcenter/index.html


This is an explanation written by Linda Haas Davenport who is the Marion County, AR County Coordinator for the USGenWeb Project, a volunteer organization working to place genealogical information online for free access.

Another good reference is Land and Property Research in the United States by E. Wade Hone (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1997).

Finding General Information at the BLM-GLO Web Site


The URL to access the U.S. BLM-GLO web site is http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/


The next instructions will guide you through viewing some of the information available to help you make the best use of the data available on the web site. Periodically some sites change their navigation bars and aids. These instructions worked at the time this article was written, January 2003. If the site has changed when you visit it may be necessary to browse through the links on the pages looking for the information. The text in bold-face print tells you what to do.


Use your web browser to access the URL shown above.


Read the first page which tells you about the information contained on this site.


NOTE: See image below which shows navigation bars and help links.


Click on Visitor's Center in the top navigation bar then click on Data Quantity to see a map that shows what kind of land records each state has and which states are currently included in this database.

Use the browser BACK button to return to the Visitor's Center then click on Public Lands History and you will find a timeline of events pertinent to land records searches.

Use the browser BACK button to return to the Visitor's Center then click on Terms and Definitions to find definitions for the terms used in land records and for this database.


Use the browser BACK button to return to the Visitor's Center then click on other items for additional information such as an explanation of the Rectangular Survey System, Land Patent descriptions, and a History of the GLO Record Keeping, among other topics.

Click on FAQ in the top navigation bar.
You will find the Frequently Asked Questions List with lots of useful information. This is very long but should be checked whenever you have any questions about this site.

Click on Search Land Patents in the top navigation bar.
This takes you to the search screen.

Click on Quick Help for helpful search information for this site. This creates a pop-up window you can then minimize but leave open for future access as you need help.


Click on Help for more detailed help information for this site. One of the entries under the detailed Help explains the wildcards available for use during a search:


What are wildcards and how can they help me search?

A. In some card games, certain cards in the deck are wild cards. These special cards can assume any value you need. Similarly, in our land patent search engine, you can use the percent sign "%" and the underscore "_" as wild cards for characters when you search the land patent database.

Using the "%" Wild Card

The percent sign will match any sequence of zero, one, or more characters in the search field. For instance, if you enter "EDWARD%" in the patentee last name field, the search engine will find any patentee last name that begins the letters E D W A R D and has any characters (or none) after it, such as EDWARD, EDWARDS, and EDWARDSLY.

Using the "_" Wild Card

The underscore works a lot like the percent sign, but it matches any one single character in the search field. For instance, if you enter _ _ R O N in the patentee last name field, the search engine will find all five-character patentee last names that end in RON, such as AARON and ELRON, but not MIYRON.

General Uses For Wild Cards

You would typically use wildcards when you are unsure of the exact spelling of a name. If you know the characters at the beginning or the end of the name you are looking for, use the percent sign to fill in for the characters you don't know.

Another use would be to work around the limits we impose on the number of patents our search engine will return in the search results list. Suppose you are searching for a common last name like SMITH. You will probably receive a message about an "administrative limit" on the number of hits because there are so many Smiths. If you put SMITH in the last name field and A% in the first name field you will get hits for the last name SMITH and any first name beginning with A. By trying B, and C, and so on, you will eventually be able to retrieve all the SMITH land patents.

NOTE: The wildcards shown above are for THIS website. Other websites may use different symbols.



Doing a Land Records Search by Name

If you aren't already there Click on "Search Land Patents" in the top navigation bar. This takes you to the search screen.


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Notice on the tabs there are three main ways to search:

  1. BASIC - Select a state and fill in at least one other field such as the surname. You don't have to fill in all the fields.
  2. STANDARD - Allows searching all states or an individual state and it has additional fields other than surname and given name that can be used as search criteria.
  3. ACCESSION/SERIAL# - If you already know the document number from a previous land records research use this search tab.

Not all search fields allow wildcards but the wildcards can be especially useful in the name fields as we will see below. Some of the search fields require you to type text into the field, such as surname, and some of them are drop-down boxes, such as meridian and county.


In our example we want to look for land records for Samuel Christopher Johnson in Conecuh County, Alabama. He often used Samuel and Samuel C. in legal documents and may even have used just Sam. In the following search we will use the % wildcard to allow us to find records with any of those permutations. By entering "sam%"; the search will find records for Sam, Samuel, Samuel C, and Samuel Christopher, among many other possible names starting with Sam.


Click on the Basic tab if you have clicked on any other tabs after accessing this page.


Enter the following search:
State: Alabama
Last Name: johnson
First Name: sam%
Meridian name: St Stephens


Then click on the Search button. When the search is complete, which may take several minutes, a results list is displayed. If the results list is more than one page in length the top and bottom of the page will have click-able links to the additional pages.


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Scroll through the list to find the entry of interest.


Click on the name of the patentee in the Patentee name column. This displays the Patent Description record.


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You may order land entry case files of patented entries from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) using NATF Form 84. Include the following information found on the BLM-GLO website:

  • name of patentee,
  • state,
  • land office name,
  • title authority or land entry type (cash, Homestead Act, etc.),
  • and document number.



Click on Legal Land Description to find the township/range/section information:


x


Click on Document Image to see a scanned image of the land patent. You can then print or save the image using the browsers "Save As"; function. Notice you can also order a certified copy using the Certified Copy button.

In the upper right hand corner you will see buttons for PREVIOUS, and NEXT. These will take you to the previous or next record from the results list. If you are looking at the Legal Land Description when you click NEXT you will see the next Legal Land Description.

The navigation bar at the top takes you back to that list or earlier pages. This bar looks like:

Home > Land Patent Search > Results List > Land Patent Details

The right-most entry is always the page you are currently viewing. Clicking on any of the entries takes you back to that page of the website.


Play around with these buttons to learn how to navigate through the search results.


Finding The Neighbors Using a Land Records Search for the Area


Once you have found your ancestor or person of interest you can also find the neighbors by searching for all patentee’s in the same or adjacent township/range area.


Click on Search Land Patents in the top navigation bar. Then click on Standard Search.
 


Enter the following information which was in the land record just viewed:

Select Alabama as the state, select Conecuh County
Enter 6 in the Township field and select North as the direction
Enter 11 in the Range field and select East as the direction
Select St Stephens as the Meridian

Click on the Search button

A list of all land patentees for T6N / R11E in Conecuh County, Alabama will be displayed.

You can then use Save Page or copy/paste to save this information. The information probably will consist of several pages all of which need to be saved. It can then be used to map the entire section (or county) where your ancestors lived. This can be useful to help determine which land patent is for your ancestor when there are multiple persons of the same name. If you have the ancestor's neighbor's names from the census use those names to locate the patentee who lives in that neighborhood on your map.



The copied information could also be edited then imported into a spreadsheet to allow it to be sorted on any field such as name (to find others of the same surname), section (to find neighbors), and date purchased (relatives may have purchased land in a different section but near the ancestor and on the same day if they traveled to a new area together).

USGS maps have the townships, ranges, and meridians marked so you can locate the exact plot of land your ancestor owned and possibly walk across that land. Some counties also have plat map books available that show the township/range marks. Many of these are published by County Plat Book Service . The maps can help you locate waterways, roads and terrain that may have had an effect on the routes used by your ancestors and the locations they used for services and purchases.


Citing the Records Found

The following is an example of how you might cite this source for the Johnson and neighbors information found in the BLM online database:

Database of records for Eastern Public Land States, issued between 1820 and 1908 (does not contain all records for all states listed), United States General Land Office, Bureau of Land Management, online <http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/>, Alabama, St. Stephens Meridian, all records of Township 6 North, Range 11 East and Samuel C. Johnson record downloaded 22 September 2001.




Additional Resources


Gregory A. Boyd, Family Maps of [County, State] (Norman, Oklahoma: Arphax Publishing Co.) http://www.arphax.com/ .


Kenneth Hawkins, compiler, Research in the Land Entry Files of the General Land Office, General Information Leaflet # 67 (Washington: National Archives, 2001). Available online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mnbecker/land_entry.htm .


George W. Knepper, The Official Ohio Lands Book (Columbus, Ohio: Auditor of the State, 2002). Available online at http://www.auditor.state.oh.us/Publications/General/OhioLandsBook.pdf .


Publications of the United States Geological Survey (USGS):





http://etxquest.com/
Copyright © 2003-2008, Debbie Parker Wayne,
All Rights Reserved.