How to Research Property History
Genealogical research, architectural renovations or simple curiosity are some of the reasons to investigate a given property's history. The first step in researching is to interview prior property owners, neighbors and relatives (if it is a family property). Beyond that, it takes some knowledge of tracing deed records back through time, as well as recognition of other types of records that can be searched. Land records are important and typically well organized.
Instructions
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Deed Research
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Learn the official address, subdivision lot, and legal description of the property. The latter is very important if you are researching a rural property. The legal description is a notation of the portion of a section, section number, township and range of a given property. It can be found on many real estate records you may have, such as abstracts, deed records and real estate transactions.
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Visit your local county courthouse. Most counties in the United States have a Register of Deeds (or similar office) that has an index of all extant deed transactions. They may be on a computer, microfilmed, or in bound volumes.
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Go the deed records office armed with location information and any names or dates that you have acquired in reference to your property. This will be information you gleaned from personal records or interviews with prior owners, neighbors and relatives.
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Ask the deed office staff for assistance and to teach you how to search the records. Every office has a slightly different system.
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Start with the most recent deed transactions and work back through time. Be sure to keep comprehensive notes on names, dates, types of transactions and where in the records you found transactions.
Search Other Records
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Include other types of records for more detailed and supplementary information. This is where all the names and dates you acquired in the deed research will be valuable.
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Inquire at the deed records office for the location of other documents such as local census data, plat maps, marriage listings and death records. Many of these records can be found online or in other locations such as local archives and libraries. Commercial sites such as Ancestry.com are helpful to locate and search online databases.
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Search the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office (GLO) patent records. These are available online (www.glorecords.blm.gov/), and GLO records will usually be the earliest information about a given property. They will show when a given parcel of land shifted from the federal government to private ownership, and who acquired the land.
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Look up Sanborn Insurance maps. Many communities, beginning in the late 1860s, had insurance maps produced. These supply detailed notations of structures on a given property and will provide important information about how a property changed over time. Often these maps are available online or in local libraries and archives.
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Visit local genealogical research facilities. They may have already compiled many of the records you're searching for such as deed transactions, marriage and death records, plat maps, insurance maps, and other relevant data.
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Tips & Warnings
Every county or jurisdiction is slightly different, so search techniques will vary from location to location. However, each records office should have knowledgeable staff to assist you.
Expect to find holes in the records, especially if you are searching records from the 19th century and earlier. Many courthouses have lost documents due to fires, floods and other disasters.
County plat maps, produced intermittently from the mid-1800s through the 1900s, are valuable sources of information.
References
Resources
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