Genealogy: Stake out homestead records for information

By DONNA MURRAY ALLEN
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 4, 2002

Many of our ancestors had a chance to get free land through a variety of grant programs designed to encourage people to move into unsettled areas. Two programs -- homestead and bounty land -- were particularly popular. Anyone interested in acquiring land under these programs had to complete an application. Now in the custody of the national archives, these applications can be a bonanza to genealogists.

The Homestead Act of 1862 was instrumental in settling the West. The first claims were filed in January 1863. By the time the land giveaway ended, nearly 800,000 people became patented landowners. Any citizen -- or anyone who had filed papers to become a citizen -- over 21 could claim 160 acres of unoccupied available federal land for a $10 fee. Widows were eligible, too. Homesteaders agreed to live on the land for five years while cultivating it and building a home.

Case files vary, but most contain data such as the applicant's name and the names of family members, birth dates, addresses, descriptions of the land, house and crops and testimony of witnesses. Files for naturalized citizens include immigration data such as date and port of arrival and date of naturalization.

Title to public domain land was transferred to new owners through deeds or patents. These were recorded in tract books in land offices, which were often quite a distance from the homestead land. The land offices responsible for given regions at specific times are listed in the National Archives and Records Administration four-volume index. Records ultimately ended up with NARA and the Bureau of Land Management. (See www.nara.gov/ for details and try BLM's searchable data base at www.blm.gov/nhp/index.htm.)

Getting a copy of the homestead application is complicated because applications are organized by legal description. No compiled index exists, and records have not been microfilmed. Therefore, you must know the legal description of the property, which land office handled the transaction and the land entry number to request a copy of the file.

If the land was still owned by the applicant at the time of his or her death, probate records might contain the legal description. Township plat maps are another possibility. If the pertinent county courthouse has a deed index, look for a patent deed from the U.S. government to your ancestor. You'll use the legal description to get the land entry number from the BLM and that number to request a copy of the application from NARA. (Files cost $17.25 each. E-mail inquire@nara.gov for details.)

Congress abolished homesteading in 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, retaining public lands in federal ownership.

Bounty land warrants were used as an incentive for encouraging men to enlist in the military and to extend their tour of duty. Until 1842, federal bounty land warrants could only be used in designated districts located on public domain land. States also awarded bounty land. Some of the 13 colonies issued warrants for grants on their own unsettled lands and western lands that they claimed. That's how North Carolina granted land in what is now Tennessee and Virginia made grants of land in Kentucky. Records are kept in each state's archives. (See www.nagara.org/websites.html for details.) The BLM also has some records.

Bounty land warrant applications were consolidated with military pensions records. NARA has both. (The cost is $17.25 and $37, respectively.)

Donna Murray Allen will teach a three-part series on Beginning Genealogy starting April 13th at Hillsborough Community College's Dale Mabry Campus. The class meets from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on three consecutive Saturdays. The cost is $20.Call 813-253-7802 for details.

- Donna Murray Allen welcomes your questions about genealogy and will respond to those of general interest in future columns. Sorry, she can't take phone calls, but you can write to her c/o Floridian, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail her at rootscolumn@aol.com.

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