How to Get Rid of an Entail on Land

geneadmin — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:57:30 +0000

Previously we discussed the use of “entailing land”. A brief summary of that would be land that was removed from being in Fee Simple (similar to how we own land today) to Fee Tail, in which the land could not be sold mortgaged or passed down in a will. As we discussed previously you may find, as a family history researcher, wills that pass land down with the phrase “heirs of his body” or “unless he dies without issue.” This usually means the land has been entailed. So subsequently you will not see mention of the land in future wills of the descendants because in essence the land has already been designated as to how it is passed down.

So what happens is that the land gets “lost” in the will records because it is possibly not mentioned again. Only the original will that entailed that land mentions it, and in subsequent wills it is implied. This makes it almost impossible to tell how common entailing land was. Entail was a device used mostly by the wealthy, so generally you will not find it with common people.

Was there a method to abolish entails?

Eventually an heir usually came about who wished to sell, or pass down, his land the way he wanted and so wished to get rid of the entail. This was called “docking” the entail, or eliminating it. Was there a way to turn land back from Fee Tail to Fee Simple so the heir could do what he pleased with it? Most authorities seem to agree that, in Virginia, docking was very hard, even harder than in England itself. There was a difficult method of doing it. It required and act of the legislature, which usually means you needed connections. All the potential heirs had to agree on it as well. Sometimes the entailed land had to be substituted with another parcel of entailed land of similar value. I personally feel that it is possible many parcels of entailed land simply got lost in the records once enough generations passed and so the entail was eventually ignored.

In 1734 Virginia passed a law that allowed docking of entailed land that was valued under 200£, if you got approval in the form of a writ from the secretary of the court. This of course only involved very small pieces of land since 200£ was not that much. It was a measure that was to help those descendants who mistakenly had their land in Entail from the way an ancestor mistakenly wrote his or her will. Deeds that came about from this may have been filed with the General court rather than the county court.

In 1776, entail was abolished by Virginia. Between then and 1785, primogeniture (the standard unwritten practice of passing assets down in lineal fashion to the oldest child) was the rule. Inheritance law was then enacted in 1785, which distributed land equally among the children. All the southern states abolished entail and or primogeniture around the time of the Revolutionary War.

For family history researchers this all makes our hobby that much more exciting.

Where to Begin in Land Deed Research

geneadmin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:01:20 +0000

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An important part of a families life before 1850 was owning land. 9 out of 10 adult males owned land. From 1600s on land records have always been very well maintained in America. Many times land deed records will list people not appearing on census data. Every county in the USA has a Grantor/Grantee Index or Index to Real-Estate Conveyances. Most other types index systems are not this comprehensive. So these are important! Even after courthouses burned down, as most seemed to, the first records reconstructed were usually land records. Owning land was very important to people.

It is important to understand, in land record research, the difference between a deed and a grant or patent. A grant is the transfer of a piece of property from some governmental organization to an individual. It is the first action that occurs and the first evidence found in researching land records. A land deed is the transfer of land from one person, or entity to another. It occurs after the original grant.

When doing your family history research what might you find in old land deeds?

At first you may look at a land record and only see names, but no important information like birth dates, death dates, marriage dates or children. This may discourage you from using land records in family history research. But evidence of where your ancestors lived, moved and whom they knew can be gleamed from deeds. It is said there is a 90% chance you can find an ancestral land record. Land records are solid proof of where your ancestor lived at a certain time, provided you have an idea of what county they may have lived in. Many times a wife’s name is mentioned on the land records due to her legal dower rights, which automatically gave her 1/3 of the land after her husband’s death. Her name had to be documented on the record for legal reasons. Land records go farther back in history than any other type of record, and so are more comprehensive. Deeds, deed indexes, hand written records and property tax records all are part of land record research. They are all related to the deed research. After 1900, a deed will even give you the exact address of a property!

The deed books containing records of property transfers by county can usually be found at the Registrar of Deeds office at the county courthouse. In several New England states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, they may be located at the town clerks office. In Louisiana, the Parish keeps records of deeds. In Alaska, they are at the district level. There are a variety of records that may be found in deed books. They are Deed of Sale, Deed of Gift, Strawman Sale, Lease & Release, Mortgage Sale and Estate Settlement. Take a little time to learn what these records are and your research will be vastly improved.

Here is an excellent book on Tennessee Land Records.

Earliest Tennessee Land Records and Earliest Tennessee Land History

The publishers describe it as such:

Once in a generation, someone compiles a genealogy reference work that instantly becomes a standard in its field because it aggregates a vital collection of records in one place, explains how those records originally came to be, and, in the process, promises to save its users hours of toil. Earliest Tennessee Land Records and Earliest Tennessee Land History, by Irene Griffey, is such a book.

The State of Tennessee was established, essentially, from land ceded to the federal government by North Carolina. Clouding the various land cession laws that transferred the title of land from North Carolina to the United States south of the River Ohio (a territory) and then to Tennessee was the requirement, however vaguely defined, that North Carolina Revolutionary soldiers’ promise of land for military service be honored. Among other things, this requirement resulted in the inclusion of hundreds of footnotes to the Tennessee land laws that spelled out the land transfer process. In the first portion of this book, Mrs. Griffey has done an extraordinary job of sifting through and organizing the legal history of the early Tennessee land laws so that genealogists may be able to grasp their substance. Among other things, researchers can now understand when and why the various county land offices were established, the six-step process for obtaining a land grant, the differences between military and other types of land grants, and, of course, how to use early Tennessee land records.

The bulk of this remarkable volume, however, consists of abstracts of some 16,000 of the earliest Tennessee land records in existence, arranged in a tabular format. For each record we are given the name of the claimant, the file number, the name of the assignee (if any), the county, number of acres, grant number, date, entry number, entry date, land book and page number, and a description of the stream nearest to the grant. A separate listing of assignees, with the corresponding claimant and file numbers follows in a separate table. The volume concludes with a lengthy appendix consisting of maps and a detailed chronology of Tennessee’s land statutes. All of which makes Mrs. Griffey’s new book the most important contribution to Tennessee genealogy in recent memory.

The Genealogy Research Blog » Genealogy Land Records

How to Get Rid of an Entail on Land

Where to Begin in Land Deed Research