Land Office Tract Books Revisited

I just completed a series of blogs about “The Stolen Boy”, an autobiographical story written by my great-great-great grandfather Ambrose Bowen Epperson.   In the first post, I discussed a tract of land in Jackson County, Indiana that was patented by Ambrose’s father, John Epperson. The date on the patent (shown below) was 17 Dec 1821 – a year later than Ambrose claimed that his family moved to Indiana ­– and I mentioned that I would have to check the tract books to learn the actual date of purchase.  These were books that each land office used to record transactions involving government land.  After a purchase or claim was made, paperwork was sent to the General Land Office in Washington, D. C., where a patent was issued if all requirements were met.

http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx?accession=IN0200__.329&docClass=STA&sid=qrlpcswu.aij#patentDetailsTabIndex=0
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According to the patent, John Epperson purchased his land from the land office in Jeffersonville, Indiana.  At the time I wrote my post, I didn’t think that records from this office were available online. However, as I was browsing through the online databases at FamilySearch recently, I discovered that the tract books for many land offices, including Jeffersonville, are available in the collection “United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955”.  The contents have not been indexed, but the books can be browsed.  A Wiki page provides helpful tips for using the collection.  Update: As of September 2022, many of the tract books have been indexed and are searchable.

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To locate a tract book entry, you need to know the state, the land office and the legal description of the property.  The entries are usually grouped by Range, then Township and then Section, but even one range may be scattered across multiple, non-consecutive volumes.   Thankfully, FamilySearch provides a Coverage Table that lists the contents of each volume, making it easier to browse for the desired entry.
 
To find the tract book entry for John Epperson’s land, I began by browsing the images in the collection.  This brought up a list of 27 states with digitized tract books, from which I chose Indiana. The available volumes were listed in numerical order, with the name of the land office in parentheses.  There was a volume promisingly labeled Index A-Z (Jeffersonville), but it did not seem to include all entries and I decided to move on to the actual tract books. Most of the Indiana land offices had more than 20 volumes, so the search would have been very frustrating without the Coverage Table.  

John Epperson’s patent (from the Bureau of Land Management General Land Office Records site) gave me the legal description of his property – the west half of the northwest quarter of section 27 in Township 7N, Range 6E.  I used the Coverage Table to narrow down which volumes to check.  This table is arranged by state, then by land office and then volume, with a description of the contents for each volume.  Most Jeffersonville tract books contained several townships within a single range, so the easiest way to identify my volumes of interest was to scroll down the list looking for range 6E.  I then checked the townships in that volume to see if 7N was included.  Using this method, I found three volumes that might contain John Epperson’s entry. Browsing through the potential volumes was still a little confusing.  For example, part way through the images for the first book (volume 6), there was a second volume 6 book cover and the entries suddenly changed to range 5E.  Volume 7 seemed to pick up where the first volume 6 left off, but when I finally got to township 7N, only one section was listed before the entries moved on to range 7E! Luckily, at the top of that page, in tiny script, was a note saying that the rest of the sections from township 7N, range 6E were in Volume CC, beginning at folio 707 (volume CC was on my list, but I had not checked it yet).  The note was very helpful in finding the correct township within volume CC, since the folio number was essentially the page number, printed in the upper right corner of each two-page spread. 

After locating the correct township, I paged through the sections (which were in numerical order) until I found section 27.  There is often more than one entry per page, sometimes for different sections, so be sure to check all entries when you get close to the section you are looking for.  I located John Epperson’s entry (see below) at the top of image 185 in Book CC (Jeffersonville). The entry confirmed that John purchased 80 acres at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre, making the total cost of the land $100. Most importantly, it gave an entry date of 12 Oct 1820.  This substantiates Ambrose’s claim that the Epperson family moved to Jackson County, Indiana in 1820.  From browsing through the entries, it seems that a delay of a year or more between the entry date and the patent date was common at the time.

"United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955." Jeffersonville, Indiana Land Office, Volume CC, image 185 FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 14 June 2016. Bureau of Land Improvement. Records Improvement, Bureau of Land Management, Washington D.C.

I had previously found another patent issued to John Epperson for land in section 21 of township 7N, range 6E.  The date on this patent was 4 Oct 1824, more than a year after John died.  Since the township and range were the same as John's first land entry, this entry (shown below) was located only a few pages away. I learned that the land was actually purchased 9 Apr 1822, about a year BEFORE John’s death.  This brings up an important point – land patent dates should not be used as evidence that the patentee was alive at the time! 

 "United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955." Jeffersonville, Indiana Land Office, Volume CC, image 174 FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 14 June 2016. Bureau of Land Improvement. Records Improvement, Bureau of Land Management, Washington D.C.

If I want to learn even more about these land purchases, I could request the case files from the National Archives.  The price is a little steep at $50 per case file, but some files reportedly contain genealogical information.  I would be particularly interested to find out if the case file for John’s 1822 land entry contains any information about his death.
 
If you have ancestors who purchased or claimed government land, you might want to check out this collection. You could learn the actual dates of their land transactions and how much they paid for the property.  Having the actual entry date will also be helpful if you ever want to request the case file for that land entry. If you make any interesting discoveries in this collection, let me know by commenting below.