Alabama Land Records
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Most land records will be found with the county recorder’s office, the registrar’s office, or in the county court at the county seat.
Despite their titles, deeds found in a county recorder’s office may include other legal documents of transfer, such as deeds in fee simple granting absolute ownership; mortgages transferring property rights as security for debts; dower releases waiving wives’ rights; quit-claim deeds releasing whatever title or right is held whether valid or not; deeds of gift transferring land without reciprocal consideration; powers of attorney appointing legal agents; marriage property settlements; bills of sale transferring property that is usually not land; and various forms of contracts, such as leases, partnerships, indenture papers, and other performance bonds.
Deed books from before the Civil War and especially in colonial years were more miscellaneous in their contents, even including animal brands, occasional wills, slave manumissions, apprentice papers, petitions, depositions, tax lists, and whatever else the clerk decided to preserve on a convenient page. Through such records a researcher may trace the ownership of land, in some cases for two centuries or more.
Public-domain state with two principal meridians (established 1805 and 1807) and ifteen GLO land districts. The first opened at St. Stephens in 1806, and the last closed at Montgomery in 1927. NARA’s Southeast Region in Atlanta, Georgia, holds local ofice registers, tract books, and correspondence, 1805–54, for Cahaba, Huntsville, Mobile, and St. Stephens district land ofices. Similar records for the other local ofices are at the National Archives in Washington DC. The BLM-ESO has the original patents, tract books, cadastral survey ield notes, and township plats. Alabama’s federal patents are indexed and scanned in the GLO-ARS; a CD-ROM version of the index may be ordered online. NA-DC has the land-entry case files as described in Inventory No. 22, and a card index to Alabama federal patentees to 30 June 1908 (excluding private land claims). Case files for private land claims are at NA-DC. Some are indexed in Fern Ainsworth, private Land Claims: Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida (Natchitoches, La.: the author, 1978).
State and some county copies of ledgers, tract books, plats, and correspondence are at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, 624 Washington Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama 36130-0100; <www.archives.state.al.us>.
In addition to old Cahaba Land ofice Records & Military Warrants, 1817–1853 (Greenville, S.C.: Southern University Press, 1986), she has published, in eight volumes, the land ofice records and military warrants for Demopolis; Huntsville; Mardisville, Lebanon, and Centre; Montgomery; Sparta and Elba; Tuskaloosa; and St. Stephens. Many private land claims were processed through the St. Stephens ofice, and this volume contains entries from the American State papers.
Pre-1813 records for Alabama south of thirty-one degrees should be in Tallahassee in the West Florida archive. Also see James F. Doster, “Land Titles and Public Land Sales in Early Alabama,” Alabama Review 16 (1963): 108–24; and David Lightner, “Private Land Claims in Alabama,” ibid., 20 (1967): 187–204.
- Search Land Patents at Gov-Records.com
- Search Property Records at Gov-Records.com
- Alabama Land Books at Amazon.com
- U.S. General Land Office Records, 1796-1907
- Alabama Land Records: The patentee was the first owner of property after the initial survey. Once the patent was issued, the land became private property and was then sold with a deed. The townships, the six-mile-square land blocks which were the original divisions of land from the federal land grants, were then divided into 36 one-mile squares. The township numbering was the north-south numbering, starting from the center line. The range numbering was the east-west numbering, starting from the center line. The section is the one-mile-square portion (approximately 640 acres) of a township. That was also generally divided into 36 equal squares (each of which might be divided another 36 times).
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