User:Pipkincm/Sandbox

These are the items that I found on the wiki that either I want to edit/create or that I'll suggest someone else gives attention to. If you've been asked to collaborate, please review the topic of interest and add to the "discussion" tab.

Land and Property
Recorder of Deeds 100 West Beau Street Room 204 Washington, PA 15301 Phone: (724) 228-6806

Due to the lack of vital records for Pennsylvania, land records are an important tool in early Pennsylvania research. Land records will list the seller and purchaser of the property and may hide clues to family connections. Land records for Washington County are available from the recorder's office for 1781 to the present.


 * Images are available on-line from 1967 to the present using the Landex system. There is a fee to view the images.
 * Deed Books, 1781-1886; Deed Index, 1781-1924


 * Ancestor Tracks has published Early Landowners of Pennsylvania: Atlas of Township Warrantee Maps of Washington County which contains all of the Township Warrantee Maps on file at the Pennsylvania Archives in Harrisburg. thus pinpointing the location of the earliest landowners of the county. Each Township Warrantee Map was painstakingly platted by draftsmen from the original warrants, surveys, and patents of the first settlers of the county within its current boundaries.

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Original land records in Wayne County began in 1781. These records are filed with the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, Pennsylvania.

Land and property records can place an ancestor in a particular location, provide economic information, and reveal family relationships. Land records include: deeds, abstracts, indexes, mortgages, leases, grants, sheriff sales, land patents, and maps. Property records include liens as well as livestock brands and estray records.

The following are examples of available resources:

Online Land Records


 * Images are available on-line from 1967 to the present using the Landex system. There is a fee to view the images.

Original Records on Microfilm


 * 1781-1924 Deed Books, 1781-1886; Deed Index, 1781-1924
 * 1781-1925 Mortgages, 1841-1854; Mortgage Index, 1781-1925

Maps


 * MacInnes, Sharon Cook. Early Landowners of Pennsylvania: Atlas of Township Warrantee Maps of Washington County. Apollo, Pennsylvania : Closson Press, 2004.

Additional Resources

Note that the "Maps" section below includes maps related to land ownership.

See Pennsylvania Land and Property for more information about using land records, especially about original land warrants, surveys, and patents filed by the state land office.

Additional resources can sometimes be found using search phrases such as Washington County Pennsylvania Land in online catalogs such as:


 * Historical Society of Pennsylvania
 * WorldCat (For instructions see WorldCat Online Catalog.)
 * (For instructions see FHL Catalog Place-name Search.)



Suggested Text for County Probate Pages
Probate records are court records created after an individual’s death that relate to a court’s decisions regarding the distribution of the estate to the heirs or creditors and the care of any dependents. These documents are important to family history researchers because they usually exist for time periods before civil birth and death records were kept.

The [court] has responsibility for the probate records of [name] County.

The following [name] County probate records have been indexed or abstracted:

Suggested State Census Records "Overview" Text
[The State] often took censuses in the years between the federal censuses, the dates are listed below. State census records may have columns that were different or more unusual than those found on federal censuses, [make this specific for the state, such as the 1892 gives religion or 1925 gives a married woman’s maiden name]. The responses and years of coverage may give additional information on the family.

State Censuses
For a list of state and territorial censuses:


 * Lainhart, Ann S. State Census Records. Baltimore: Genealogical Publ., 1992. (FHL book X2Lai.) State-by-state list of censuses, and selected census substitutes. Describes dates, coverage, content, indexes and availability.

In addition, the staff of the Family History Library has compiled the following register which lists all state census records available at the library:


 * Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Family History Library, US/Canada Reference Staff, State Census Register, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Family History Library, 2005). FHL Ref. book 973 X23us. Available free online through Brigham Young University's Family History Archive: Vol. 1, Alabama - Kansas; Vol. 2, Kentucky - New York; Vol. 3, North Carolina - Wyoming.

Articles

 * Orphan Trains
 * Link "legal ages" page to land, military, court, immigration, and vital records pages.
 * Mining
 * Northern Liberties, Pennsylvania