Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Finding Henry Carringer's Land in Louisa County, Iowa

In Amanuensis Monday - Post 185: Probate Records of Henry Carringer (1800-1879) - Part 1, I found out that Henry Carringer's (1800-1879) land description was:

"...Real estate situated in the County of Louisa and State of Iowa viz. The North West quarter ¼ in the North East quarter ¼ of Section Number twenty nine 29 Township number 75 seventy five Range number five 5 west be it containing forty acres more or less ..."

I fired up the www.Earthpoint.us website, entered the Township, Range and Section information into the search fields, and downloaded the KML file (see Finding Henry Carringer's Land Patents, and Location, in Cheyenne County, Kansas for this process).  I clicked on the KML file and watched Google Earth fly to the Section (outlined in purple) in the Township (outlined in orange):



The Section is about four miles west of Columbus City, Louisa County, Iowa, and about 1 mile south of the town of Cotter.

Zooming in, I can see some land details for the Section:


You can see the approximate outlines of the quarter-sections and the quarter parts of the quarter sections.

Zooming in still further to see the Northwest Quarter of the Northeast Quarter, I outlined the approximate boundaries of Henry Carringer's 40 acres in red:



It appears that there was a small creek running through this 40 acre parcel.  It looks pretty flat and is still growing crops.  There appears to be no house on these 40 acres at present (there looks like a small building near the bottom red line).

I wondered how I could find it br driving there.  I pulled up Google Maps, found the area, and outlined (approximately) the plot on the map:


The road across the top of the plot is 150th Street, and the road along the west edge of the plot is West 66.

One thing leads to another.  The cemetery record led to the probate record.  The probate record led to this land location.  My next task is to find the deeds for this land - when did Henry Carringer buy it, and then finding the deed selling it during the probate of his estate.  This is another to-do item for my next visit to the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City next February (unless FamilySearch adds Iowa County Land Records to their online record collections soon!)..

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/08/finding-henry-carringers-land-in-louisa.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

5 comments:

Geolover said...

When determined to track down land ownership history when in a Land Grant State and the land was sold pursuant to Court order, it can be useful to establish prior and subsequent owners.

This is partly because there may be further Court proceedings than you found in the estate record proper, where the administrator came into the Probate Court or a different Court and produced evidence that (for instance) he had placed advertisements in accordance with law of time/place, notifying the public of sale, and that on such-and-such a date he sold the property to XXX (who might have been the only or the best-price bidder). There may be a Court ordering the Sheriff, the administrator, or an appointed commissioner to make out a deed of sale, perhaps with conditions as to payment and distribution of proceeds.

Two possible date-bracketing points are 1) original grantee of the land and date; 2) identity of owner of the land as soon as possible after the land left the relative's estate's possession.

The BLM/GLO site search form has a way to search for properties by legal description as to Township, Range Meridian and Section:
http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx?searchTabIndex=0&searchByTypeIndex=0

In this case, the Meridian was not necessary to find that the original grantee was one Draper Tabor in 1848. One possible "plus" is that one just might find that an unsuspected relative was original owner, a tipoff to possible further estate matters of interest. So it's always wise to check out such "first" titles.

For the second bracketing date, I found there was a land-ownership map for Louisa County, IA published in 1900. The Townships mostly still have their original legal descriptions, so finding Sec. 29 would be an easy matter.

When a parcel is sold pursuant to Court order, the grantor might not be the Administrator, and the deceased owner or heirs might not be listed in the grantor-grantee indices to deeds/mortgages. So if one can find a subsequent owner, their purchase deed just might give official history -- from whom exactly they bought it, and might even given a land-record book volume and page number.

Similarly, your party of interest might have bought the land pursuant to yet another Court proceeding. Sometimes in these instances no sale deed was recorded, transfer of title was considered valid pursuant to whatever order of whatever Court. This could have occurred through partition of yet another estate (partition records might occur in unexpected places, not necessarily in books specifically dedicated to such records). But at least knowing the name of the original grantee gives one a place to start, in the knowledge that one might have to delve through estate records of unexpected persons, such as of Mr. Tabor.

It can be very useful to try to get familiar with what Courts existed for the time/place of interest, what their jurisdictions were, and something about estate and land-conveyance procedures.

Land records are fun!

Cormac said...

Isn't this really fantastic? I did the same thing for my great great grandfather and one of his sons that bought 160 acres a piece in northern lower Michigan.

wendy said...

I must put earthpoint in my favorites list - not sure if I forgot about tnat as a way to see land parcels or not. Great tips - thanks!

Silphium said...

From the top left hand corner of the section outlined in the top photo of this blog entry, trace your finger left along the road to the first set of buildings on the north side of the road. (Less than 1/4 mile.) That is the Owens Century Farm, purchased by my Great-Greatgrandfather Evan John Owens in 1874. It is still in my family and is an active farm.

What were my odds of finding your post? Wow.

Should you need local knowledge, let me know. I'll be reading your archives.

Deb

Silphium said...

Second photo, Randy, Sorry. The purple section square.