| Unjumbling
Land Deeds
Beverly
(Smith) Vorpahl tells how to translate the odd words and numbers
of legal land deeds into something meaningful.
 |
A
map of Badus township indicates the land owned by Corliss
Wing (in green), by his friend and neighbor Ebenezer
Olmstead (in blue) and by his future father-in-law,
Rodney Royce (in red). |
It’s
one thing to find the legal description of your ancestor’s
property in land records. But it’s a whole other thing
to make sense of the North Half of the Northwest Quarter of
Section 16, Township 82, Range 28 of Boone County Iowa.
That’s exactly where my great-great-grandmother, Anna
Maria Fuller Smith, once lived. Now, because I’ve learned
the secrets of plat maps I can take those numbers and pinpoint
exactly where her property was, given a bit of luck and tenacity.
For years, I’ve transcribed hand-written documents describing
land my ancestors bought and sold. I’ve smiled at the
quaintness of those old, odd, colorful legal descriptions,
like when a mulberry stump was used as a landmark to indicate
one corner of 159 acres and 12 poles that John and Jane McDowell
bought in 1829 in Bourbon, Fayette, Kentucky. Much of the
legal description includes how many poles it is from a certain
boulder to an elm, thence north 39 and ¼th degrees...
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A
complete description of the land
sold by Corliss Wing and his wife
Hattie in 1900. |
The mental picture of surveyors laying down poles to measure
land is comical. How long were those poles? The length of
a broom handle? A stick they picked up off the ground? What
exactly was a pole anyway?
It all makes logical sense once you understand the terminology
and realize that “poles” have a specific length.
And it becomes crystal clear when you transfer the legal description
to the plat map. There it is, the exact land your ancestor
homesteaded or bought which he cleared trees, bushes and brush
from to plant a field of wheat.
By buying a plat map that reflects ownership from your ancestors’
years or by looking up who owned the neighboring land, you
can see what neighbors were within “yoo-hooing”
distance, and where family and friends lived. You can tell
how far Great Grandpa had to walk or ride his horse to court
that cute young girl who was to become his bride — and
your great grandmother. Plat maps also locate schools, churches
and graveyards, giving you an idea of where the social and
religious centers of your ancestors’ lives were located.
On a genealogy trip this spring that included Madison, SD,
I spent a few hours in the Recorder’s Office in the
Lake County Courthouse. Three of the room’s four walls
are lined floor to ceiling with bookcases holding thick, heavy,
canvas-backed tomes that track the land dating back to Dakota
Territory’s first European settlers. All told, the books
contain the history of every lot of land within the county
boundaries.
| LAND
DOCUMENT DEFINITIONS
Acre: 10 square chains; 160 square
rods, 43,560 square feet, 4,840 square yards
Chain: 4 rods; 66 feet; 100 links
Character of Receipt: Type of deed
issued
Deed: A document sealed as an instrument
of bond contract or conveyance, especially relating
to property
Degree: A unit of latitude or longitude,
equal to 1/360th of a great circle
Dower: The part or interest of a deceased
man’s real estate allotted by law to his widow
for her lifetime (also called a dowry)
Et ux.: (et uxer) Wife
Farmstead: A farm, including land and
buildings
Fee Simple: (1.) An estate in land
of which the inheritor had unqualified ownership and
the power of disposition. (2.) Private ownership of
real estate in which the owner has the right to control
use and transfer the property at will
Furlong: 220 yards
Grantor: Seller
Grantee: Buyer
Instrument: A legal document
Link: .66 feet; 7-7/8 inches
Meridian: An imaginary circle of the
earth’s surface passing through the north and
south geographic poles. All points on the same meridian
have the same longitude
Mile: 80 chains; 320 rods; 5,280 feet
P.M.: Principal Meridian (See “Meridian”)
Parcel: A plot of land, usually a division
of a larger area
Patent: A grant made by the government
that confers on an individual fee-simple title to public
lands
Partition: A division of property,
especially real estate
Plat: (1.) A piece of land; a plot.
(2.) A map showing features, such as streets and building
lots
Pole: 16.5 feet
Pre-emption: The right to purchase
public land granted to one who has settled on that land
Quit Claim: Transfer a title, right
or claim to another
Range: A north-south strip of townships,
each six miles square, numbered east and west from a
specified meridian in a US public land survey
Rod: 5.5 yards; 16.5 feet; 25 links
Square Mile: Regular section; 640 acres
Square Rod: 30.25 square yards; 272.25
square feet
Township: (1.) A subdivision of a county
in most northeast and Midwest states, having the status
of a unit of local government with varying governmental
powers. (2.) A public land surveying unit of 36 sections
or 36 square miles. The rectangular system for land
surveys was begun by Congress in 1785. It divides the
land into square tracts and square measure in terms
of acres. Generally, a township is a square tract of
land with six-mile sides containing 36 sections of land
Warranty Deed: To guarantee clear title
to property
(Many
of these definitions were taken from The American
Heritage Dictionary of The English Language, Third Edition.) |
In 1880, David Wing, my great-grandfather, led a group of
family and friends from their homes in Sutton, Brome, Quebec,
to the US and the Dakota Territories. They became some of
the district’s earliest settlers — apart from
the Native Americans of course.
It was my goal to find the exact Madison-area farmland where
my mother had been born in 1895. Not only did we accomplish
that, but also a whole lot more. That’s a great thing
about genealogy, you learn so many things. Like how to read
a plat map (or maybe even what a plat map is.)
To find Mom’s birthplace it was necessary to understand
how our portion of North America is divided up, within the
boundaries of the 48 contiguous states. This is my simplified
version: Within each state, land is defined into counties;
within the counties are townships; within the townships are
towns and cities. The townships, which are assigned numbers,
are divided into sections, each one square mile in size. The
sections are broken down into quarters, which can be divided
again into lots. Also to be factored into the precise location
of land are ranges, meridians and degrees.
An index book in the Lake County Recorder’s office had
preserved a 1900 transaction made by my grandfather, Corliss
S. Wing, David’s son.
It recorded that for $193.98, Corliss bought 155-and-18/l00th
acres at $1.25 an acre for Lots 1 and 2 and the S½
of NE¼ of Section 4 in Township No. 108 N of Range
53W 5 P.M.
Translation: Grandpa Wing bought a little more than 155 acres
of land within two lots in the south half of the northeast
quarter of Section 4 in the township of Badus, which is in
Range 53, five degrees west of the principal meridian.
His land adjoined the homestead of Ebenezer Olmstead, a family
friend from Quebec, where Corliss lived for a few years after
his mother died. Corliss’ land also abutted on the south
with property owned by Rodney Smith Royce whose daughter,
Hattie Louise, became Corliss’ bride.
I bought a plat map of Badus (pronounced Ba-duce) township
and the neighboring Nunda township, where more Wings, Olmsteads
and others from their group of emigrants had lived. I yellowed-in
all the quarters and half-quarters of the sections where my
family and their friends once lived, land they cleared in
order to farm the ever-so-slightly rolling hills.
Once we zeroed in on the half-quarter section Corliss and
Hattie Wing bought and where Mother was undoubtedly born,
we set out to find it all by ourselves (meaning my husband,
sisters, brother-in-law and me).
 |
A
modern view of the Ebenezer Olmstead homestead, where
Corliss Wing lived for a time after his mother died.
Corliss Wing’s property abutted the Olmstead land
to the west and the Royce property to the south. |
The county line on the north bordered the section that held
their property, which served as a great landmark. Following
the plat map, we drove State Highway 81 to the county line,
turned west four miles (four sections) and turned south on
County Road 41 for half a mile (a quarter section) —
and there we were. Mom’s birthplace.
There’s nothing left to indicate that she and her parents
lived there except for an island of trees in the distance
where their home was probably built. Now, it’s simply
rich black dirt waiting to be seeded into a field of corn.
A barbed-wire fence delineates the property once owned by
Corliss Wing and Rodney Royce.
An incredible emotion tingled through my body that day. My
throat tightens even now when I recall being there. What had
been confusing words and a jumble of numbers on an official
document had, at last, brought us to the place where my mother
lived the first 10 years of her life.
This
article originally appeared in the January/February 2000 issue
of Family Chronicle.
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