Using New Brunswick County Deed Registry Books

I had seen references that William Hutchi(n)son (1745-1826), one of my fifth great-grandfathers, had sold land in Kings County, New Brunswick in the 1790s and had subsequently moved to Upper Canada (to what is now Norfolk County, Ontario).  He was a Loyalist during the American War of the Revolution and had been granted land in New Brunswick in the 1780s.

I noted today that FamilySearch had added, or updated, the New Brunswick, County Deed Registry Books, 1780-1941 on 12 January 2013.  I wondered if William Hutchi(n)son was listed in them.  He was!

Since this is a "Browse only" database on FamilySearch, there is no index to search for specific surnames.  Consequently, the user has to use the available indexes in the records themselves, if they are present.  The process here is similar to using the microfilm for this collection at the Family History Library - you work it as "digital microfilm" to find the records you seek.  The process for finding the actual deed records is fairly straightforward for this set of county deed books.

1)  From the FamilySearch historical record list page, I clicked on the New Brunswick, County Deed Registry Books, 1780-1941 link and then on the "Browse through 792,235 images" link, and saw:

The screen above shows the list of Counties available, and I chose Kings County (knowing that other resources said they had settled there).

After clicking on Kings County, the page with the available record sets appeared:

There are only two available record sets - the Index book, Grantor-Grantee set, and the Deed Book set.  In order to find the actual deeds, I had to use the Deed Index book.

2)  I picked the "1785-1880, A-L" index book from the list, and eventually found, by estimation and page-by-page browsing, the index page with William Hutchinson on it:

There were Hutchinsons on the previous page also, and I saved both pages.  I noted that the first two deeds listed for William Hutchinson was for land in Sussex in Kings County, and were in Deed Book D-1 on pages 75 and 77.

3)  Back to the Kings County page, and I selected the "Deed Books" set this time.  The link led me to the list of available Deed Books:

I see Deed Book D-1, 1793-1795 on the list, and clicked on that one, and easily found William Hutchinson's deed on page 75 of the book (image 78 of 373):

I used the "Save" icon button (in the menu on the right side of the image above) to save this image, and the three following images, to my computer hard drive.  Since they downloaded with file names of "record-image(n)," I renamed the images to reflect the person's name, year, county/province, Deed book number/page number.

How do I know that this is the correct William Hutchinson?  His wife, Catherine (Lewis) Hutchinson, also signs the deeds.  I think that this is the my William Hutchinson.

FamilySearch provides a general source citation for this particular record collection as:

"New Brunswick, County Deed Registry Books, 1780-1930." Images. FamilySearch. https://familysearch.org : accessed 2013. Citing Registrar of Deeds. New Brunswick, county deed registry books, 1780-1941. Service New Brunswick, Woodstock, New Brunswick.

I will use that to craft an Evidence! Explained quality source citation for the specific deeds I downloaded later.  

I will also transcribe the deeds for an Amanuensis Monday post sometime in the future.  I also need to download and examine all of the other Hutchinson deeds listed in the index, and see if I can find Lewis deeds also.

I had some genealogy fun this afternoon?  

Do you have early New Brunswick settlers who might be in this Deed Registry Book database?  If so, go see if you can find them in this FREE online "digital microfilm" database!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/01/using-new-brunswick-county-deed.html

Coyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver