Canada Land and Property

Use land records to learn where ancestors lived and when they lived there. Land records may give the:


 * Names of spouse, children, other heirs, relatives, and neighbors.
 * Place where a person lived previously.
 * Occupation.
 * Military service.
 * Naturalization information and other clues for further research.

Many people in Canada owned land, and a very high percentage of the population is named in land records. The availability of land attracted many immigrants to Canada and encouraged westward expansion. Land ownership was generally recorded in an area as soon as settlers began to arrive. These were often the first records available in an area. Although they may not be as easy to use, land records may give pedigree information for earlier times when other records were not kept.

In eastern Canada, most land records begin in the late 1700s. They include land petitions, fiats and warrants, land grants and patents, and deeds. The federal homestead era in the Prairie Provinces lasted almost 60 years (1872 to 1930). Homestead record files cover those years.

Canadian Land Terminology
The language of land records and property ownership is a language you will need to learn in order to be able to understand the information you are gathering. It is not enough to find documents containing the name and address of your ancestors. You must know under what circumstance they either accumulated or lost their property.

Understanding the terminology will enable you to really know what went on and why. It will also allow you to search for particular documentation that you may not have known existed.

There is much more to land records than simply the deed and mortgage. Any document that was created in regard to land can be of great genealogical value. The land records are the earliest forms of establishing the location and time period of your ancestors.

The following definitions are the keys you will need to unlock this language. You will find yourself referring to this list until you become familiar with these terms. Once you have done this you will find the study of land records to be quite a worthwhile and profitable challenge. Clues are everywhere.

Definitions
Abstract Book/Abstract Index to Deeds: All dealings with the land subsequent to the Crown Patent are recorded in an abstract book in the order of their registration. These abstract books contain a brief reference to every registered instrument commencing with the Crown Patent. Each entry is placed on a new line. Each page of the Abstract Index represents an individual lot or property and is a chronological record of the history of that piece of land.

Assignee: One to whom land or mortgage has been transferred.

Assignment of Mortgage (A of M): The mortgagee (the lender of money or creditor) may transfer the mortgage with all its conditions to another party in return for a payment.

Administrator(s): Person or persons assigned by law to settle the estate of an individual who died without a will.

Bar her Dower: When a woman gives up her right to lands which her husband owned she “bars her dower.” This is done whenever his land is sold and is shown in the land record. If this is not done it could be for many reasons such as; divorce, adultery, insanity, nonresident, whereabouts of wife unknown, sale of land for taxes, man single or widowed, and various others.

Bargain and Sale (B &amp; S): The most commonly recorded instrument of title transfer from one party to another, conveying all rights and privileges in return for money or perhaps mineral or timber rights.

Cadastral Map: Map of an area showing land boundaries and land owners.

Clergy Reserves: Property lots set aside by the government to be sold separately with the proceeds benefitting the churches.

Conveyance: See Deed.

Copy Books: The books in which authentic copies of transactions are recorded, in bound volumes.

Crown Patent: The Crown was considered the original owner of all lands (after treaties with native inhabitants); a grant from the Crown indicated the first official title change and should appear as the first chronological entry in the Abstract Index of a piece of property. See also Patent.

Crown Reserves: Property lots set aside by the government to be sold at a later date and the proceeds to be used for the Crown.

Deed: The document under seal which conveys or transfers interest in a piece of land from one party to another, or parties as the case may be.

Devisee: A person who has been given property as a beneficiary of a will, or through a legal assignment or transfer from the current party of interest.

Discharge of Mortgage: This is the document releasing the real estate from a mortgage.

Dower: A woman’s right in lands which her husband owned or had an equitable title to was protected by dower—an interest that lasted until her death. Upon marriage a man’s land immediately became subject to dower, or upon a husband becoming the registered owner of land in which his wife had a dower interest.

Escheat: An incident of feudal law, whereby a fief reverted to the lord when the tenant died seised (left) without heir. i.e.: to revert by escheat to the lord, king, or state.

Escheats: The legal process by which lands granted were forfeited to the Crown for non-fulfilment of conditions specified in the grant.

Fiat: Permission granted. The word ‘fiat’ alone or in a formula, by which a competent authority sanctioned the doing of something; hence, an authorization; e.g. “Nothing can be concluded without the King’s Fiat.”

Feudal system: The system of land holding, in exchange for service, ultimately, to the king.

Folio: Latin word for “page.”

Freehold, Fee simple: Land owned, as opposed to leased or held by feudal/seigneurial tenure.

Grantee: The person receiving a grant or buying property.

Grantor: The person issuing the grant or selling property.

Heir: A person with beneficial and legal entitlement to the property of a deceased.

Indenture: A written agreement, between two or more parties.

Intestate: Having no will. If someone dies intestate, the court appoints an administrator to settle the estate.

Instrument: Legal document.

Leasehold: Land held by lease and for which the tenant paid rent.

Liber: Latin word meaning “book”.

Memorial: In early days, the copied recording of a deed for the Registry Office’s reference, when the original paper document was returned to the owner; usually only the essentials of the deed were abstracted, and then copied again into Copy Books.

Mortgage: A claim against a piece of real property given as security for a debt, i.e. money borrowed; the mortgagor (borrower) transfers title to the mortgagee (lender or creditor) until the terms of the mortgage are completed or discharged.

Patent: More formally, Letters Patent; in land dealings, the document that transfers full title from the Crown to an individual or corporation; settlement conditions were often required before a patent would issue.

Petitions: Letters sent to the government requesting Crown land grants. They may contain a considerable amount of information about the family, parentage, military service, age, wife’s name, the time when he settled on the land applied for, etc.

Preemption: Process adopted in Canada from the United States in 1874 allowing a settler who had entered on a homestead to obtain an “interim entry” on another quarter-section located adjacent to his homestead. After he received his Letters Patent for his homestead he could then purchase the additional “preemption” land at government prices. Preemptions were discontinued in 1890 and reintroduced in 1908 and repealed in 1918.

Quit Claim Deed: A document used to sell or relinquish all or part interest in a parcel of land where a transfer could not be acceptable; also called a release.

Real Estate (Real Property): Used in the sense of land, as distinct from personal goods and possessions.

Registry System: Provides for the registration of deeds and other documents affecting the title of land, but will not guarantee the title to a parcel of land.

Relict: The widow of a deceased man.

School Reserves: Property lots set aside by the government to be sold at a later date with proceeds going to funds for schools.

Section: An area of one square mile into which undeveloped lands are divided.

Seigneurie: In Canada, a landed estate held (until 1854) by feudal tenure.

Seigneur: A feudal lord; a noble taking his designation from the name of the estate. In Canada, the holder of a seigneurie; one of the landed gentry.

Subdivision: The severance of smaller lots from an original Crown grant. Subdivision plans for multiple smaller lots (for a village or town) are registered and initiate their own Abstract entries.

Testate: Having a will.

Title: Legal ownership as evidenced by a deed or other instrument.

Torrens System: Provides a system whereby evidence of ownership of a tract of land was by Certificate of Title guaranteed by the government, eliminating the long procedure required in the registry system of proving title to the land.

Transfer: See Deed.

Trustee/s (also Executor/s): The trustees or executors appointed in a will have the authority to sell, mortgage or release the real property of the deceased.

Warrant: A writing issued by the sovereign, an officer of state, or an administrative body, authorizing those to whom it is addressed to perform some act.

Will: A legal document in which a person declares to whom his possessions are to go after his death. A legal will was sometimes filed with the Registry Offices (in Ontario) when it involved the transfer of a parcel of land to an heir. As a result, these wills were never probated and only appear in the Registry Office files.

Chains and Links and Feet
As you read through old documents you will come across these terms over and over again. How long is a chain (Gunter’s Chain) or link in relation to feet?

According to the Surveyors’ Measure the table is as follows:


 * 7.92 inches = 1 link 25 links = 1 rod, pole or perch (all of equal length) 100 links = 1 chain or 4 rods 80 chains = 1 mile 625 square links = 1 square rod 16 square rods = 1 square chain 10 square chains = 1 acre 43,560 square feet = 1 acre 66 feet = 1 chain
 * Therefore 100 Links = 1.00 Chain and
 * 1.00 Chain = 66.00 feet

Now when you read that the measurement of the area was 10 Chains and 50 links you will know that the length of the measurement was 660 feet plus 33 feet = 693 feet.


 * 66 feet x 10 chains                          =       660 feet + 50/100 links = .5 chain x 66 feet  =     + 33 feet  660 feet + 33 feet                             =      693 feet

A lot 20 chains (1320 feet) wide by 100 chains (6600 feet) deep contains 200 acres and a lot 50 chains (3300 feet) wide by 20 chains (1320 feet) deep, contains 100 acres.

Land Division Systems
To use most land records you must know something about land description systems. Legal land descriptions in the western Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and parts of British Columbia, are different from those in the eastern provinces.

The orderly division of land into easily identifiable parcels was paramount in the development of the country. This allowed the settlers to obtain a specific piece of property by grant or sale. A reference system was put in place to be able to identify one piece of land from another. There were four major systems of subdivision in Canada. Surveyors worked in a different manner in various parts of the country. Usually they based their descriptions on the metes and bounds method of measuring boundary lines, with the technical language of chains and rods, etc, and compass directions. In deeds, we will normally see an ancestor’s property described by metes and bounds or by a coordinates position. Global Positioning (GPS) may be adopted in the future by some provinces.

River Lot System
The best known example of this system is the seigneurial system of land tenure which developed in New France. It is characterized by long narrow lots running perpendicular to and along major rivers and waterways. Rivers were often the only means of transportation and each settler required access to them in order to transport his produce and to have a link between his farm and the rest of the community.

Rectangular Lot System
This system used the township or parish as its largest component. They were then subdivided into a series of lots, each of uniform size (100-200 acres) and rectangular in shape. Lots would be arranged in rows and numbered consecutively. Each row or concession would also be numbered to form a grid system per township. You will find this system in Ontario, Québec and in the Maritimes.

Patchwork System
The use of natural features, such as rocks, trees, rivers, etc., marked the beginning and end of a boundary. This system was also known as “crazy quilt”. A typical description of a piece of property under this system would refer to the house of one person and an oak tree nearby and a river bed with direction such as easterly, northern, etc. being noted. This produced many odd shaped lots whose boundaries were often not very accurate and of course such features often changed or disappeared. As a rule, these lots are organized within a parish or township and are given numbers to set them apart from the other lots. Reference to a specific lot would read “Lot __, __ Parish, __ County” within a province. This system is found primarily in the Maritimes, especially in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.



Dominion Land System
This system covers the largest area of Canada. It was based on the American public land system and was initiated in Canada in 1870.

When the Canadian government negotiated the transfer of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company it successfully brought most of the land in western Canada under the federal government.

The deal between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Dominion gave 1/20 of all subdivided land as part payment for the transfer. Sections 8 and 26 were set aside for the Hudson’s Bay Company. At this time Sections 11 and 29 were also set aside, this time for School lands.

To help finance the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway and other railways there were large concessions made of the remaining Crown lands to the railway companies. These lands were sold through the railway land departments. They usually received the odd-numbered sections in each township within a designated area or railway belt.

The base of this Dominion Land System is the township which contains 36 square miles. It is then divided into 36 “sections”, each containing one square mile (640 acres). This is not to be compared to the townships of eastern Canada which were set up for municipal administrative purposes. Each section is further divided into four 160 acre parcels called “quarter-sections” which are generally the smallest unit of this system. The townships are arranged in a grid system and are numbered consecutively from south to north beginning with Township 1, running along the US-Canada border.

To provide the grid index from east to west, each north-south tier of townships is designated a “range” and numbered consecutively, generally from east to west, from one of six meridians. Each of these meridians were used as the reference line for the surveys originating from it.

The Principle Meridian (longitude 97 degrees 30 W) is located in Manitoba with ranges running east and west from it. The 2nd (102 degrees) and 3rd (106 degrees) meridians fall in Saskatchewan with the 4th (110 degrees W) meridian falling along the Saskatchewan-Alberta border. The 5th (114 degrees W) meridian falls in Alberta and the 6th (118 degrees W) meridian in Alberta and British Columbia.

Reference to all these components is used when identifying specific lots. A sample description would be: “southeast quarter of Section 6, Township___, Range___, West (or East) of the ___Meridian”.

There is more regarding this system under the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and parts of British Columbia.

Portions of eastern Canada, especially southern Ontario and the Eastern Townships (Cantons de l’Est) of Quebec, employed a survey system based on counties, townships, concessions, and farm lots. A county consisted of several named townships of unequal size and shape. Each township was divided into strips called concessions, and each concession was further divided into lots.

Equivalent land units in the remaining eastern provinces usually were not composed of concessions but of irregular farm lots. Early surveys of the Maritime Provinces used a metes-and-bounds system that described physical features of the land, such as "north fifty rods from the creek" or "S 10° W 38 rods to the red oak on hill."

About 1872, early in the homesteading era of the Prairie Provinces, the federal government adopted a survey system unlike that of eastern Canada, but similar to that of the western United States. Land was divided into square townships, each composed of 36 sections of 640 acres. The basic homestead was a quarter-section of 160 acres.

In legal land descriptions, township 1, range 1, west of the first meridian is shortened to 1-1-W1: the first figure represents township, the second figure represents range, and the third figure represents meridian. Thus, 3-25-W4 stands for the location of Cardston, Alberta, in township 3, range 25, west of the fourth meridian.

For more about counties, See Canada Historical Geography. Find maps of county boundaries in eastern Canada and of townships in western Canada in:

Atlas and Gazetteer of Canada. Ottawa: The Queen’s Printer, 1969. (Family History Library book .)

For more information about the land description system of western Canada, see:

McKercher, Robert B., and Bertram Wolfe. Understanding Western Canada’s Dominion Land Survey System. Revised and enlarged. Regina: Division of Extension and Community Relations, Univ. of Saskatchewan, 1986. (Family History Library book .)

Diagrams of typical arrangements of farm lots in townships in the various provinces are in Eric Jonasson’s The Canadian Genealogical Handbook (see Canada For Further Reading.)

Acadia
The area that exists within the present boundaries of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Maine was known as Acadia. In 1598 the French placed colonists on Sable Island and in 1604 an expedition spent the winter on Dochet Island, Maine.

This settlement was then moved to Port Royal in 1605 and for 100 years England and France fought for this territory until it was ceded to Britain in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht. It then became Nova Scotia. France retained Île-Royale (Cape Breton), Île-Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island), and the area north of the Isthmus of Chignecto (New Brunswick) until the cession of New France to Great Britain in 1763.

Meanwhile, after 1713 the British in Nova Scotia considered the French-speaking population of Acadia to be a potential threat. The French-speaking Acadians would not take the oath of allegiance to the Crown. When the Seven Years War broke out they became even more threatening to the British. In 1755 and 1758 the French-speaking Acadians were expelled to Massachusetts, Virginia, France and Louisiana. After the war ended in 1763, many returned to their homes.

Knowing the history of the Maritime Provinces will provide you with a sense of where your ancestors may have disappeared, and help in your search for the records. Knowledge of the history and geography of your province of interest is the foundation you need to begin your genealogical quest. You will find the background for each province fits into the overall development path of Canada and the role your ancestors played in its establishment and growth.

To locate the whereabouts of the records that were created in ‘Acadia’, consult with the appropriate archives or government office of the present day province. Land grants can be found at the Archives des Colonies in Paris, France, as well as on microfilm at Library and Archives Canada.

Loyalists
Special categories of land and property records applied to the American Loyalists, in Canada called United Empire Loyalists. Many Loyalists and their sons and daughters applied for land grants in present eastern Canada as compensation for war losses. Loyalists and their children were entitled to land grants without payment of fees. If a man could not prove service in a Loyalist corps, he or his children would have trouble claiming a Loyalist free land grant. Other loss claims were also presented.

Some Loyalist records are in the Locality Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under LAND AND PROPERTY headings. Others are in the Subject section under AMERICAN LOYALISTS and UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS. For more information on Loyalists, See Canada Military Records.

Grants and Transfers in Eastern Canada
Landholding in New France was based on the seigneuries. Under this system, land was received as a feudal obligation in return for oaths of fealty and promises to perform certain duties.

English-language versions of the French king’s grants to the original seigneurs are in:

Land Grants of Seignories 1674–1760 Quebec. (Appendix to the 11th volume of the Journals of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada.) Quebec: Secretary’s Office, 1853. (Family History Library book .)

Except for a few books that contain transcriptions of some early records, the Family History Library has almost no other land records for Quebec based on the seigneurial system. Notarial records at the library sometimes do include references to this system of land tenure. See Canada Notarial Records, Quebec Notarial Records and Quebec Land and Property.

In most of British North America (early eastern Canada), the land grant process consisted of several steps, which varied from time to time and province to province. Between about 1784 and 1840, this process was typical:

The person wanting land submitted a petition or memorial to the Lieutenant Governor of the province.

The petition was read by a committee of the executive council. If approved, an order-in-council was issued, stating that the person was entitled to land.

Then a warrant to survey an available parcel of land was ordered.

When the survey was completed, and the applicant had met certain conditions, such as living on the land for a certain length of time, a land grant or patent was issued.

Other documents used in the land-granting process could include:

Receipts for fees paid (unless it was a Loyalist free grant).

Fiats and warrants authorizing grants.

Location tickets.

Surveyors’ reports describing the parcels of land awarded.

At the present time, provinces retain records about the initial granting of government lands. Records of subsequent sales or transfers are usually kept by land offices in the district or county where the land is located. Wills and deeds transferring property were sometimes copied into deed books. These are often indexed by grantor and grantee (seller and buyer).

The most family information is usually in land petitions. Some petitions may give little more than the name and address of the applicant, but others may give the petitioner’s:

Age.

Marital status and number of children.

Length of time in the province.

Former residence.

Past service to the Crown.

Applicants sometimes exaggerated their service and sometimes claimed more children living at home than they actually had.

During the Loyalist and immediate post-Loyalist eras, orders-in-council often included the name of the Loyalist father for whose service sons and daughters were claiming free grants. Other than petitions and orders-in-council, most land-grant documents have little or no family information. However, land records involved in court disputes and similar proceedings often contain a wealth of family information. See Ontario Land and Property for information about the "Township Papers" and "Heir and Devisee Commission" records that can fall into this category.

Homestead Records of Western Canada
Many immigrants came to North America because they saw an opportunity to own land. Beginning in 1870, to encourage settlement in the western areas of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, the Canadian government offered potential settlers 160 acres of land for a $10 fee. To receive the patent, the applicant had to meet certain criteria. Many settlers came from the United States into the Canadian homestead areas to take advantage of the available land. Questions on homestead records ask for the applicant’s country of birth, subdivision of country of birth, last place of residence, and previous occupation.

Many immigrants came to North America because they saw an opportunity to own land. Beginning in 1870, to encourage settlement in the western areas of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, the Canadian government offered potential settlers 160 acres of land for a $10 fee, but they were required to build a home and cultivate a certain number of acres within three years. Many settlers came from the United States into the Canadian homestead areas to take advantage of the available land. Questions on homestead records ask for the applicant’s country of birth, subdivision of country of birth, last place of residence, and previous occupation.

Land records often predate censuses, and they can help date an immigrant’s arrival and trace immigrant origins. Some types of land records provide birth places or places of last residence, while others provide the basic clues to continue the search in other records. Land records can also pinpoint places of residence in Canada. With the advent of indexing projects, there are new research strategies available.

The federal government made a homestead record file for each person who applied for a homestead. This includes a description of the land filed for, the date of filing, and correspondence about the property. There may also be copies of naturalization papers or other kinds of immigration information. Names of other family members are sometimes included.

In 1930 the national government returned control of the homesteading process to the individual provinces. The provincial archives of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan each have the homestead application files and indexes for their province. The indexes list the name of the homesteader, location of the homestead, and file number.

Canadian land records vary according to province, but there are five general types:

1. Records showing transfer of land from the government or Crown to the first patentees, usually in national or provincial offices or repositories.

2. Subsequent transactions, usually in local land registry or land title offices.

3. Indexes–both original official indexes and historical and genealogical compilations.

4. Maps showing boundaries of land holdings and names of owners or occupiers.

5. Records of taxes on lands (assessment and collectors’ rolls) that provide the legal description of the property.

Canadian land records are filed in a number of places, including county courthouses, provincial archives and libraries, and national archives. Some Canadian land records are available on microfilm through the FHL.


 * Alberta Homestead Index 1870 - 1930 : http://abgensoc.ca/homestead/


 * Saskatchewan Homestead Records: http://www.rootsweb.com/~cansk/Saskatchewan/homestead.html


 * For a microfilm edition at the Family History Library, see:


 * Western Land Grants (1870-1930) http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/020111_e.html


 * Land records: Upper Canada Land Petitions (1763-1865)

Land Indexes
Petitions usually have good indexes or are filed alphabetically. Other land records for eastern Canada are often not indexed by surname but are arranged by land parcels within townships. You may have to trace a piece of property through time in order to use those land records, rather than try to trace the family name through indexes.

Therefore, you must know the name of the township where your ancestor lived and the number of the lot he lived on. This information is in the agricultural schedules sometimes included with the 1851, 1861, 1871, and 1901 censuses. Illustrated historical atlases published about 1878 for some counties include maps showing names of landowners. See Canada Maps.

If you know the name of the eastern Canada locality where your ancestor was settled in 1871, Lovell’s Dominion Directory for 1871 shows the names of the townships and counties where the towns and villages were located. There are indexes to portions of Lovell’s directory (see Canada Directories).

Locating Land and Property Records
The Family History Library has:

Extensive province and county land records for Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.

A few land records for Quebec and Newfoundland.

A good collection of homestead applications for Saskatchewan.

Few land records for Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, or the territories.

For records not at the Family History Library, see various archives and provincial and local land offices. There is usually a fee to make copies of records at land offices. Sometimes an attorney is required. To find the addresses of smaller land offices, check the local government pages of current telephone directories. To find the addresses and telephone numbers of major land offices in each province and territory, see:

Briggs, Elizabeth. Access to Ancestry: A Genealogical Resource Manual for Canadians Tracing Their Heritage. Winnipeg: Westgarth, 1995. (Family History Library book .)

Microfilm copies of the series of homestead applications and indexes for all three Prairie Provinces are at the National Archives of Canada.

The Family History Library has many land petitions and indexes for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario.

Land records for eastern Canada are listed in the FamilySearch Catalog under all jurisdictional levels, including:

[PROVINCE] - LAND AND PROPERTY

[PROVINCE], [COUNTY] - LAND AND PROPERTY

[PROVINCE], [COUNTY], [TOWNSHIP] - LAND AND PROPERTY

[PROVINCE], [COUNTY], [CITY] - LAND AND PROPERTY

Land records in Saskatchewan and other western provinces are usually cataloged under:

[PROVINCE] - LAND AND PROPERTY

A wiki article describing an online collection is found at:

New Brunswick, County Deed Registry Books (FamilySearch Historical Records)

County Atlas Digital Maps
The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project (free-- McGill University} is a searchable database of the property owners' names which appear on the township maps in the county atlases. Township maps, portraits and properties have been scanned, with links from the property owners' names in the database. Some County Atlases have been recently reprinted on paper and are available from Global Genealogy ($).

For Further Reading

 * Archives of Ontario.Sources of Family History, Archives of Ontario Research Guide No. 299, updated March 2010.
 * Great Britain Colonial Office Order-in-Council and Returns Respecting Sale of Lands in Upper Canada, 15 July 1837, Archives of Ontario, No. 244, Imperial Blue Books, Box 7.
 * Regehr, Theodore D., “Land Ownership in Upper Canada 1783-1796: a Background to the First Table of Fees”, Paper and Records [Ontario Historical Society], March 1963, vol. LV, no. 1, p. 35-48.
 * Tyman, John Langton. By Section, Township and Range: Studies in Prairie Settlement (Brandon, Manitoba: Assiniboine Historical Society, 1972).
 * Library and Archives Canada.Tracing your Ancestors in Canada (Ottawa, Ontario: 1997).
 * Royick, Alexander. Ukrainian Settlements in Alberta (Edmonton: Douglas College Reference Library, 1972).