Tennessee Land and Property: Difference between revisions

''[[United States|United States ]] [[Image:Gotoarrow.png]]  [[Tennessee|Tennessee ]] [[Image:Gotoarrow.png]]  [[Tennessee_Land_and_Property|Land and Property]]''  

The availability of land attracted many immigrants to America and encouraged westward expansion. Land ownership was generally recorded in an area as soon as settlers began to arrive. You can locate ancestral deeds using the [http://www.assessment.state.tn.us/ Tennessee Property Records Online.] An online index is also available for ancestral and modern [http://register.shelby.tn.us/index.php deeds specific to Shelby County]. You can use land records primarily to learn where an individual lived and when. They often reveal family information, such as the name of a spouse, heir, other relatives, or neighbors. You may learn where a person lived previously, his occupation, if he had served in the military, if he was a naturalized citizen, and other clues. Sale of the land may show when he left, and may mention where he was moving.  

The ultimate resource guide for Tennessee land up to 1891 is Henry Whitney's ''Land Laws of Tennessee''.&nbsp; It's about 20MB, but it's downloadable from Google Books for <u>[http://books.google.com/books?id=I7kZAAAAYAAJ free here]</u>.&nbsp; Download this<u>!</u>  

=== Land Grants  ===

:<blockquote>Tennessee is considered a "metes and bounds" state. However, a large portion of it was also set apart in townships and ranges as in public-land states. Tennessee litigated its boundaries with neighboring states until the mid-19th Century. North Carolina and Virginia both claimed portions of Tennessee prior to its statehood. Its eastern lands made up the largest part of the short-lived State of Franklin. Tennessee had to honor North Carolina's unresolved land grants for many years following statehood, and Tennessee was unable to grant its own lands for the first ten years of its existence. </blockquote><br><blockquote>Tennessee land (primarily grants)&nbsp;was the basis of the worst land fraud scheme in the history of the United States.</blockquote><br><blockquote>[McNamara, Billie R. (1996). [http://tngenealogy.net/books/ Available from the author].]</blockquote>

*North Carolina land entries in what is now the State of Tennessee (beginning 1777) are held at the North Carolina State Archives. North Carolina continued issuing land entries in Tennessee even after it became a independent state, well into the 1820s. The following table presents MARS IDs for that facility, which will enable users to view free online abstracts of these records, using the instructions provided below the table:

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| 12.14.1 Carter Co.