Land Records: The Paper Trail of Property
Deeds, patents and surveys survive when other records burned. Learn the difference between state-land and federal-land states and how to use them.
Land & Property Records
Deeds, grants, patents and tax rolls: the records that place a family on the map.
Wills and Probate: Proving Who Belonged to Whom
Probate files name heirs, wives and children, sometimes in a single page. Learn how probate worked, what's in the file, and how to find it at the courthouse.
Tax Lists: The Annual Census Most Researchers Skip
Tax lists were made every year, survive where other records burned, and can reveal ages, deaths and migrations. Here's how to read them.
When the Courthouse Burned: Researching in Burned Counties
Fires, floods and wars destroyed records in hundreds of counties. These are the substitutes and alternate copies that still survive.
Deed Platting: Mapping Your Ancestor's Land from the Deed
How to turn a metes-and-bounds deed description into a map, fit neighbors' tracts together, and use the result to separate men of the same name and find the land today.
Planning an Archive or Courthouse Research Trip
Most records still aren't online. How to find out what an archive or courthouse holds, prepare before you go, follow reading-room rules, and come home with everything you need.
Full-Text Search: Finding Ancestors in Handwritten Deeds, Wills and Court Records
Computer handwriting recognition has made millions of unindexed pages searchable for the first time. How FamilySearch's full-text search works, how to search it well, and its limits.
Find the records
Websites and archives for this topic are in our Resource Directory under Maps & Boundaries.
Other topics
Getting Started 21Census Records 16Birth, Marriage & Death Records 15Church Records 12Cemeteries & Burials 2Newspapers & Obituaries 3Land & Property Records 7Wills, Probate & Court Records 13Tax Records 3Military Records 5Immigration & Naturalization 12DNA & Genetic Genealogy 9Libraries & Archives 8Research in the Old Country 10African American Research 2Research Methods & Evidence 31Brick Walls 11Organizing Your Research 7Online Sites & Family Trees 11