General Land Office Records
General Land Office Records (often shortened to GLO Records) is an online database operated by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that provides public access to federal land conveyance records for the public land states of the United States. The site offers search access and document images for more than five million federal land title records issued from 1788 to the present. The database is maintained by the BLM Eastern States Office in Springfield, Virginia, the successor to the original United States General Land Office.
The records document the first transfer of title from the federal government to private owners, and are widely used by genealogists, land title researchers, historians, title companies and natural resource agencies. The BLM has described the site as its most popular website and one of the most popular websites in the Department of the Interior.
Background
The records originate in the federal land surveys required by the Land Ordinance of 1785, which authorized the transfer of public land from the federal government to private individuals. As land was sold or granted, the government issued land patents, and General Land Office surveyors produced plats and field notes describing the land. The BLM notes that surveyors often travelled by horse and wagon, were frequently the first non-Native people to enter an area, and recorded events such as births and deaths in their field notes.
The BLM Eastern States Office holds the Secretary of the Interior's copies of the original land records for most of the United States from 1787 onward. It maintains more than nine million historic land documents, including survey plats, field notes, homestead patents, military warrants and railroad grants.
History
Automation project
Since 1989, BLM Eastern States has been protecting and automating historic land patent documents on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior. This work is known as the General Land Office Records Automation Project.
Website
The first version of the GLO Records website launched in 1998. By 2010 it had received more than 500 million hits from 13 million visitors.
A redesigned site was tested in beta through 15 October 2010 and went live on 18 October 2010. New features included:
- map-based searching;
- sortable and bookmarkable results lists;
- an integrated search across patents, survey plats and land status records from a single query;
- land description mapping;
- PDF image downloads for all document types;
- a reference centre; and
- an online shopping cart for ordering certified copies of land patents.
Pat Tyler, chief of the GLO Project at BLM Eastern States, said the map tools were meant to help users answer the question "Where is this land today?"
Military warrants
In 2010 the project finished scanning and indexing more than 500,000 military bounty land warrants, which were made available free of charge. Congress had paid veterans with land instead of money, through acts passed in 1812, 1847, 1850, 1852 and 1855 covering service as far back as the Revolutionary War, including the War of 1812 and the Mexican–American War. Digitization of the warrants began in July 2007.
While indexing the warrants, project staff found one issued to Abraham Lincoln for his service as a captain in the Black Hawk War, and another issued to Second Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant for service as a quartermaster in the Mexican War. At that time, more than five million land patent records were searchable online, and more than 4.2 million had been imaged for the 30 public land states.
Contents
Record type |
Description |
|---|---|
Land patents |
Documents transferring title from the federal government to individuals, including homestead patents, cash sales and railroad grants. |
Survey plats |
Maps produced by cadastral surveys that show township and section boundaries. |
Field notes |
The narrative record of the cadastral survey, written in tabular form. They describe the whole survey process, the instruments and methods used, all physical evidence evaluated, and everyone who took part in the work. |
Land status records |
Records showing the status of federal land title and use. |
Military warrants |
Grants of land issued for military service. Records show the warrantee's militia, rank and acreage, and can be searched by name, legal land description or warrant number. |
Features
Users can search by selecting an area on a map, or use an advanced search based on legal land descriptions. Registered users can save map bookmarks and preferences. The site also includes sections on document types, story maps and help. Images can be viewed and printed, and certified copies can be ordered online.
Limitations
The database covers only the transfer of land out of federal ownership. Later sales and transfers between private parties are not included, and researchers usually need to consult county courthouses and local recorders' offices to trace what happened to a parcel afterwards. Coverage is also limited to the public land states.
Uses
The records can help researchers confirm a transfer of title and place a person at a specific location at a specific time. Common users include:
- genealogists tracing ancestors who homesteaded or bought federal land;
- title companies and land surveyors working on boundary and title questions;
- historians studying westward settlement, military bounty land and railroad grants; and
- natural resource agencies managing public lands.
See also
- United States General Land Office
- Bureau of Land Management
- Public Land Survey System
- Land patent
- Homestead Acts
- Bounty land warrant
- Land Ordinance of 1785