| Understanding Land Patent Information | ||||||||||||||||
| When I started this project in 1999 I decided early that a good resource to post on the site would be graphic representations of original Land Patent holders. I spent months drawing my own map showing the Congressional Townships and laid out maps for each county ... in my naiveté I had no idea how much time would be required to make these entries, or how little time I would be able to devote to this effort. I have only just begun to scratch the surface and at present am not sure when I'll be able to return to this effort. If you are interested is seeing my "vision" for this portion of the project you can visit the Marion County "Land Patent" presentation. | ||||||||||||||||
| Due to the scope of this portion of this project, it will be under construction for a very long time! What this means is that you may not find Patentee information entered for the particular Township and/or Section you are looking for ... how will you know? First, if the 3 maps are marked as being interactive, Land Patent information entry has been started ... if the 3 maps are marked as standard, there are no Land Patent entries for the particular county. Second, after you have determined that data for the county is being entered, you may find that clicking on the township of your choice, either using the interactive map or the menu bar selections, automatically directs you to a different township ... this is because data for the township you requested has not yet been entered and the site is taking you to the township where it IS being entered. I regret the potential inconvenience, however, please check back often under the individual county "What's New" menu selection to check on progress. | ||||||||||||||||
| Overview of Sectional Divisions | ||||||||||||||||
| When the Federal Government decided to sell its newly acquired territories, the determination was made to divide the land into groups consisting of 36 Sections ... these groups were identified by a Range and Congressional Township designation. Each of theses Sections (ideally) contains 640 acres. To further facilitate the sale of these lands, each Section was divided into 4 quadrants, and each of these quadrants into 4 additional quadrants with the end result being 16 tracts of land each containing 40 acres identified by their relationship to North, South, East and West. Although this made for an extremely tidy way to identify the area being sold, the territorial governments, and then the individual state governments, paid little attention to this system when dividing the area into counties. The end result is that the Congressional townships (made up from the Range and Township identifiers for groups of 36 Sections) have absolutely no bearing to the Civil Townships we are familiar with today. | ||||||||||||||||
| Beginnings of This Site | ||||||||||||||||
| The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has a wonderful Internet site that provides detailed information about these original purchases to include the ability to print off a copy of the original Land Patent document, however, when I began my personal genealogy research using the BLM data with the Range, Township, NW, NE, etc., as I am not a surveyor I found these indicators very confusing! To understand this information I had to draw lots of maps and squares in an attempt to figure out where these lands where physically located! Eventually the thought occurred others might be having the same problems that I was ... thus, my decision to try and present the information in a graphic representation. The first step was drawing a map for the entire State of Indiana that identified all the Sections and, as I am no more a cartographer than a surveyor, my attempt (which can be viewed as the Township Map in the menu bar for each county) is simply a representation of this and should not be considered the "official" version, however, I believe it is very close. For those of you who need to be as accurate as possible, under the "Links" menu bar selection of each county you will find an online topographic map or you can purchase my source documents yourself using the Amazon.com links at the bottom of this page. | ||||||||||||||||
| How to Navigate the Information | ||||||||||||||||
| First, I hope that you will support the future development of this site
by becoming a Member ... with you membership you will be registered to use
the Search Feature and thus make navigation simple, i.e., search for an
individual name, document number, location, etc. and you'll be given links
directing you to a specific page. If you are not registered, the process
is a little more complicated.
... updated June 26, 2001 ... |
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