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Federal tract books show the type of land entry, its legal description (numbered section, township and range), acreage, price, entryman's name, application date, and (if applicable) patenting date and numbers.<ref name="Haw5">Hawkins, 5.</ref> Remarks added near an entry sometimes provide clues to find additional records. | Federal tract books show the type of land entry, its legal description (numbered section, township and range), acreage, price, entryman's name, application date, and (if applicable) patenting date and numbers.<ref name="Haw5">Hawkins, 5.</ref> Remarks added near an entry sometimes provide clues to find additional records. | ||
Tract book entries were almost always recorded close to the time of land transactions. They are part of the formal record and are accurate and reliable. | |||
Two types of records are closely associated with tract books: patents and case files. Patents are very reliable and represent the formal transfer of land from federal to private ownership. Case files can include a variety of records such as applications, reports, affidavits, genealogical pages from family Bibles, letters from attorneys, or surveys which must be evaluated individually to assess their reliability. | |||
These tract books document nearly 100 percent of the land transactions in 28 of 30 federal land states between 1820 and 1908. Every ancestor who applied to the federal government in to obtain federal land (except in Alaska or Missouri) should be entered in one of these tract books whether the application was approved (patented), or not. Because of homesteading, a higher percentage of the land owning population in the Great Plains states are likely to be in tract books than in other western states. On the other hand, it is likely mining and mineral rights claims would be more common in the Mountain West states. There are over ten million land entry case files (applications) in the National Archives most of which would have a corresponding entry in a tract book. About eight million land patents have been indexed in the BLM [[Land Patent Search]] for successfully completed federal land applications. | |||
=== Preparing to use federal tract books === | === Preparing to use federal tract books === | ||