What Property Records Can Tell You About Your Family's Past
December 1st, 2008

Property records can tell you a lot about your family's past. Real estate leaves a paper trail. Deeds, wills, deeds of trust, property transfer agreements, mortgages, homestead records, land grants, all can go a long ways towards helping you trace the path that your ancestors took to reach the area where you grew up.

Once example of how some people use property records when tracing family roots involves the family of the American pioneer and explorer Daniel Boone. Boone is well known as an explorer, who opened up the Kentucky wilderness to settlers, and the state of Kentucky lays claim to him for sure, but he lived many other places as well. Daniel Boone grew up as a child of Quaker parents. His family originally emigrated from England to Pennsylvania and owned property there. They eventually settled in North Carolina and Daniel learned his love of the outdoors in the North Carolina wilderness where his family owned property. But when Daniel Boone came of age he traveled a great deal, and in addition to exploring, he settled. He purchased land in Virginia and settled there for a time, and later did the same in what would one day be Tennessee. So you can see that the Boone family itself lived in four states - or what would eventually be four states - before migrating to Kentucky, state number five. But Daniel always longed for better land with fewer neighbors and sought elbow room. After many years in Kentucky he moved to the Spanish wilderness near the Mississippi River, near the city of St. Louis in the present state of Missouri. Daniel's son, Nathan Boone, had his father's wanderlust and went down to the southwest corner of Missouri to found the small town of Ash Grove, in the corner of the state that is near the current Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas borders. Property records of the time form a clear paper trail of the travels of the Boone family, Daniel and his children that are used by the many researchers today who claim ancestry of Boone and his kin.

The small town of Ash Grove holds a gathering once a year, the Nathan Boone festival, to honor this early pioneer. With an average of 200 descendants of the Boone clan coming into the town to visit the restored old Nathan Boone homestead. Copies of the land records are available in the adjoining museum for all to see.

The Boone family is just one example of how American families traveled, and how land records can be used to map the moves. The Jameson family is another prime example. Originally from Virginia, they moved east to Tennessee and Kentucky like the Boones, and then on to Missouri, but they didn't stop there. On to Kansas, and then westward, the Jameson's were bound for California because of talk of a gold strike, but didn't get quite that far. When they reached Utah poor health caused them to cut the journey short. Today they own a great deal of land in Salt Lake City, all travels documented by land records. But one member of the family didn't stay put. Land purchase records indicate that the youngest son of the Jameson's actually went back east, to Ohio, where he bought land in the city of Cleveland and became a shopkeeper.

One genealogical researcher, tracing her lineage back to England, was delighted to find such extensive property records in the old country. Her family was poor, but they owned a small farm, and paid taxes on it every year, which gave her access to a great deal of information about her ancestors that she would not have had otherwise. This of course led to records at the local church, and helped her in her quest to find her family roots. In her case, it seems that the family went from Wales to England, and was granted a small piece of land for services performed for a nobleman. Amazing what one can find when researching property records, isn't it?

When you do genealogical research there are many tools you will find of value. Check out property records and add them to your tool kit and you'll be pleasantly surprised at the new wealth of information they present

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