Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Finding Plat Maps for the James Vaux Land Holdings

I posted Putting the Land Records Together for James Vaux (1787-1839) yesterday, and in the afternoon I abstracted the four deeds that I have for him in the 1832-1837 time period.  

Here are the four abstracts:

*  On 16 June 1832, James Vaux of Erie County, New York bought land from Wilhem Willink and others (owners of the Holland Land company) for $421.50.  The land was in Erie County, Township 9 (Aurora), Range 6, parts of Lots 27 and 28.  The part of Lot 27 was bounded on the East by a line parallel to the East bound of Lot 27, 15 chains, 4 links; South by land of Lyman Letson (14 chains, 92 links); West by land parallel to the first line and partially by land of Oerin Treat, 37 chains, 33 links; North by Lot 28, 14 chains, 92 links; containing 55 acres and a half.  The part of Lot 28 was bounded on the West by a line parallel to the west line of Lot 28 at the distance of 30 chains, East therefrom 38 chains, 35 links; North by a line parallel to South bounds of Lot 28, 10 chains, 43 links; East by a line parallel to the first mentioned boundary, 38 chains, 35 links; South by Lot 27, 10 chains, 43 links; containing 40 acres. The deed was recorded 3 August 1832 Genesee County and 3 October 1832 in Erie County (Erie County Deeds, Liber 13, page 318).

*  On 15 November 1832, James Vaux of Erie County, New York bought land from Oren Treat and others for $336.50.  The land was in Erie County, Township 9 (Aurora), Range 6, Lot 27, Northeast part, containing 55 and a half acres, more or less.  The land was bounded on the East by the line laid out to Oren Treat, 43 chains, 79 links; South by the line laid out to Oren Treat, 5 chains, 70 links; West by a line parallel to the first line, 43 chains, 89 links); North by lot 28, 5 chains, 70 links; containing 25 acres   The deed was recorded 31 March 1842 in Erie County (Erie County Deeds, Liber 67, pages 19-20).

*  On 15 November 1833, James Vaux of Erie County, New York bought land from Wilhem Willink and others for $291.39.  The land was in Erie County, Township 9 (Aurora), Range 6, Lot 27, Northeast part, containing 55 and a half acres, more or less.  The land was bounded on the North by Lot 28 (15 chains, 4 links); East by Lot 19 (36 chains, 77 links); South by land of Lyman Letson (15 chains, 4 links); West by land deeded previously to James Vaux (37 chains, 5 links).  The deed was recorded 17 February 1834 in Genesee County and 20 February 1837 in Erie County (Erie county Deeds, Liber 35, Page 427).

*  On 7 January 1837, James Vaux and James Vaux, Jr., both of Erie County, New York, bought land from Eliphalet Jones and his wife Polly for $850.  The land was in Aurora town, Erie County, a part of Lot 31 in Township 9, Range 6, containing 4 acres and 47 rods.  The land was bounded commencing from a stake in the southeast corner of land owned by Holmes Hollister and Curtiss; on the north by J.S. Bartlett's land; thence running South 89-1/4 degrees East 23 rods and 15 links to the center of the highway; thence North 2-1/2 degrees East  along the center of the highway 79 rods and 3 links; thence West parallel to the first mentioned line 23 rods and 15 links; thence South 2-1/2 degrees West 29 rods and 3 links to the place of beginning.  The deed was recorded 7 January 1837 in Erie County (Erie County Deeds, Liber 40, Page 520.).

There are three deeds for land bought in Lots 27 and 28, and one for the land bought in Lot 31.  Fortunately, two of the deeds can be easily seen on the deed I showed yesterday.  The land in lot 28 is adjacent to one of the lots in Lot 27.

Now I want to find these lots on a map of Aurora township, Erie County, New York.  There is an 1866 map for this township and county in Ancestry's collection of "Historic Land Ownership and Reference Atlases, 1507-2000."  Unfortunately, I couldn't save that image to my computer files.

Recently, Ancestry added the U.S., County and Regional Histories and Atlases, 1804-1984" collection.  I found the "New Topographical Atlas of Erie County, New York" in this collection, and then found the 1866 map of Aurora township in Erie County:


There is an index for Towns and Villages:


Aurora Township was on Page 15, which turned out to be Image 11 of 52:


The map of Aurora Township showed the Lot numbers, and the location and names of the owners in 1866.  Since my Vaux family had moved to Wisconsin in about 1853, I didn't expect to see that surname listed.

I zoomed in on Lots 27 and 28 and saw:


From the small map on the 1833 deed (posted yesterday), I can tell that the land in three of the deeds was in the northeast quarter of Lot 27, and another was across the road in Lot 28.

There are some familiar names from the Vaux deeds in Section 27 - namely Orin Treat (in the west part of Lot 27) and Luther Letson (in the south part of Lot 27):




There are no houses or owners names in the northeast corner of Lot 27 for some reason.  So I think that I've found where they lived.  Now to find it on a 2013 map.

Here is a Google Map view of the area south of East Aurora:


I put a red box around the location of the James Vaux land holdings in Lot 27.  You can see the town boundary of East Aurora on the upper part of the image above.  Comparing this map with the plat map, I think that Center Street (yellow road in the right-center of the map above) is the road between Lots 27 and 19, and that Blakeley Road (County road 55) in the lower part of the image above is the road between Lots 27 and 28.  The main east-west and north-south roads appear to be about one mile apart. Therefore, the intersection of Blakeley Road and Center Street is about 3 miles south of the East Aurora town limit, and about 3 miles east of the Village of Griffins Mills.

Switching to the Satellite view, and zooming in on the northeast corner of Lot 27 (intersection of Blakeley Road and Center Street) shows me:


There are at least five modern homes on the land once owned by James Vaux.  I wonder if any of the homes were built around and included some of the home built by James Vaux, and his son, on this land.

My next research task is to find the location of the land of my third great-grandparents, Samuel and Mary Ann (Underhill) Vaux, and Mary Ann's parents, Amos and Mary (Metcalf) Underhill.

My purpose in publishing this information - the deed abstracts, the plat maps, and the modern maps, is to demonstrate how much information is available online to genealogical researchers, at least in certain states at this time.  Knowing what resources are available on Ancestry.com, on FamilySearch.org, and other websites is important.  It is difficult to "keep up with all the new material" for many people, and I hope that by providing examples to my readers, and web searchers, it will help them find resources to solve their own research problems.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/02/finding-plat-maps-for-james-vaux-land.html

Copyright (c) 2013, randall J. Seaver

5 comments:

Taversoe said...

One way to download an image when Ancestry's interface doesn't provide for that is to click on Print instead. Ancestry will give you another simplified webpage, with just the image and a title on it. Instead of printing, use your browser to save that webpage to your computer (use the "complete" option). In the folder it saves the page in, there should be a jpg of the image.

Anonymous said...

Real estate sites such as zillow and redfin often have info about real estate including when a building was built, which in some cases might help you find an ancestors house (if it still exists). Of course, the date those sites give could be wrong, I suppose.

As an example, check out: for instance see: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1455-Center-St-East-Aurora-NY-14052/30271774_zpid/

Anonymous said...

Or this one (from 1845?) - http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1335-Blakeley-Rd-East-Aurora-NY-14052/30271762_zpid/

Unknown said...

Following on from your last email on this topic you said that you tried it but got an html. Using chrome I use the same method. I use ancestry.com's print option, wait for the print sidebar to come up then cancel the print. This leaves the tab with the image which I right-click and choose save. It saves as a jpg file. A census image I saved was around 13 mp so not too bad for manipulating.

Fax said...

I've recently discovered that Evernote does an amazing job of capturing all or any part of an entire website. It's a one-click operation, and I love it!

Doris