Sharecropping Contracts, Chattel Mortgages and Trust Deeds

Land Plats of an ancestor’s land will likely include his surrounding neighbors. With a closer examination, we might gain an understanding of their lives and place them with their community and local events.

Land records are often the key to resolving difficult families, where there is movement and migration. Make sure you are listening to the records by reviewing the basic clues in every land transaction.

The border between Kentucky and Tennessee created some unusual situations. Learn more about the Walker’s Line controversy, and where to find the land grants & deeds that may lead to your ancestors.

Learn how to locate the property you have learned to plat. This working session will help you identify a neighborhood and locate the plat on a topographic map. Learn to use property maps and other finding aids.

Don't understand Metes and Bounds? This working session will help you learn how to plat a deed using the metes and bounds system. Discover new clues by understanding more about your ancestor's land.

Discover the step-by-step process of grants, entrys, surveys, processions and deeds for Virginia and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Learn how and where to find these items to further your research, and how to find those missing pieces.

Legalese. Boilerplate. Obsolete laws. Ancestral idiosyncrasies. The documents our ancestors created are full of such traps. This session uses two typical documents from different regions to illustrate, line by line, how to sort chaff from wheat, interpret deceptive language, and develop clues.

This session provides a brief overview of metes and bounds land descriptions seen in deeds, mortgages, patents, grants, and other land documents. The land descriptions are an essential part of land research. This presentation discusses metes and bounds land descriptions and how the metes and bounds can solve genealogical problems.

This case study traces a piece of property for two hundred years, from the Native Americans to the Dutch, to the English, and through fourteen members of the Hicks family over five generations. Transfer of title occurs through various instruments, including patents, unrecorded deeds, inheritance, escheatment, private laws, entails, deeds of lease and release, life estates, and coverture. Tracing the lineage of the property elucidates family relationships that were otherwise forgotten. This class is presented live at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City as part of the Joy Reisinger Memorial Lecture Series and is being broadcasted by Legacy Family Tree Webinars.