Sally wrote:
>Can I expose my ignorance and ask for an explanation of how these deeds are
plotted? If a deed says the land is along a river or a road, how do you
know where along the river or road it is? I can see how one can plot the
shape of a tract, but how do you locate the tract?
Sally,
1. Plat (with an "a") your ancestor's land to the same scale as the topo map
that you will have acquired for the area.
2. Use your land documents (grant, deeds, etc.) to identify the *neighbors*
of that piece of land (a plot, with an "o").
3. Search the land records of that time and place for all documents dealing
with those adjacent tracts.
4. Plat each of the adjacent tracts to the same scale. Piece the plats
together to create a "community land map." If you're lucky, this will put
you at a point on the ancestral watercourse at which another waterway
branches off. If so, then skip to Step 6.
5. Repeat the above for all *neighbors of your ancestor's neighbor.*
Envision rings on a bull's eye. If you're not lucky, you may need to go out
multiple rings before you reach the point that your ancestor's stream
intersects with another waterway.
6. Print out this "community land map" on a transparency.
7. Overlay the transparency atop the topo map and slide it along your
ancestor's waterway until your community map "matches" a configuration of
streams on the topo map.
8. Then treat yourself to something special for a job well done.
You'll find an example of this, for a Virginia family, in the following
article:
Earl F. Skelton, "The John Skelton-Catharine Hepler Family: From the
Shenandoah to the Midwest," _National Genealogical Society Quarterly_ 80
(December 1992): 245-64.
Dr. Shelton won the 1992 NGS Family History Writing Contest with this essay.
He started with a 1788 deed that "cites [the ancestral] property in the
vaguest of terms--by shape, size, orientation, and vegetation ... on the
waters of Horse Springs." Seeing how he went from that meager data to
actually standing on the ancestral land is a valuable education. Among other
discoveries, he found that the modern topo map displays three modern roads
and three fence lines that match the bounds of the tract his ancestors
acquired in 1787.
Elizabeth
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Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG
Hendersonville, TN
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