LAND RECORDS

LAND RECORDS

Welcome to Land Records. This will be an attempt to plot the land records of our ancestors for purposes of Genealogy. Since many of them migrated into MS, and primarily into Newton County, this will be a graphical aid in helping us understand the migration patterns, who their neighbors were, and, with the indexing, where they went from here. If enough interest is shown in this project, we could easily expand this site to include other counties as well.

My quest to learn about land sectioning has lead me to many different sources, most of which are websites. There are many of them on the internet. With one exception, my requests for permission to use graphics and to acknowledge them here with links have been ignored, so I'll withhold at this time. I have produced all graphics on this site by hand. I have received permission, however, to acknowledge William Beauregard's well-established website of similar design for Choctaw County (temporarily removed - will link when he replaces it). His permission to use his coding allowed me to complete the graphics you'll find here.

SOURCING - I plan to use the land records found in the BLM website, as well as any that are contributed by researchers. If your ancestor had land in Newton County, and you'd like it recorded here, send me the information via email link at the bottom of this page.

In a general overview of land surveying, there are two methods used. Depending on what part of the country you are interested in, you will find one or the other of:

Metes and Bounds....as one website I visited put it, "The system of Meandering Streams and White Oak Trees". This system was used in the original 13 territories, as well as some states in the west.

U.S. Public Domain - Based on the Township, Range, and Sections - used in MS and many other states, where the land is sectioned into portions of symmetrical size, with referrence to established coordinating lines.
For instance, in the designation T8N-R10E-S10, the T8N is Township #8 north of an established Baseline, R10E is the 10th Range East of an established Meridian, and S10 is one section of that Range. Each Range has 36 of these Sections, which are typically 1 square mile, 640 acres in size. Please refer to this site for a more detailed description of land division.
This graphic will show you the numbering of sections within a range. Take note of the yellow portion, and how the numbers begin at the top right, and run right to left, then left to right and so on. The numbered blocks of different colors around the edge of the Yellow portion are neighboring ranges, all numbered in the same fashion.

Now, on to the records. Click on the County name. (Just one for now).
Newton

This page was last updated Sunday, 08-Jul-2001 13:42:17 MDT

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