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 ---------------------------------------------------------- Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG Hendersonville, TN To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html