Canada Land and Property: Difference between revisions

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Use land records to learn where ancestors lived and when they lived there. Land records may give the:  

The language of land records and property ownership is a language you will need to learn in order to be able to understand the information you are gathering. It is not enough to find documents containing the name and address of your ancestors. You must know under what circumstance they either accumulated or lost their property.  

'''Will:''' A legal document in which a person declares to whom his possessions are to go after his death. A legal will was sometimes filed with the Registry Offices (in Ontario) when it involved the transfer of a parcel of land to an heir. As a result, these wills were never probated and only appear in the Registry Office files.  

As you read through old documents you will come across these terms over and over again. How long is a chain (Gunter’s Chain) or link in relation to feet?  

A lot 20 chains (1320 feet) wide by 100 chains (6600 feet) deep contains 200 acres and a lot 50 chains (3300 feet) wide by 20 chains (1320 feet) deep, contains 100 acres.<ref>Murphy, Sharon L., Brenda Dougall Merriman, and Frances Coe. "Canada Land Terminology (National Institute)," ''National Institute for Genealogical Studies'' (2012), https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Canada_Land_Terminology_%28National_Institute%29.</ref>  

To use most land records you must know something about land description systems. Legal land descriptions in the western Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and parts of British Columbia, are different from those in the eastern provinces.  

The orderly division of land into easily identifiable parcels was paramount in the development of the country. This allowed the settlers to obtain a specific piece of property by grant or sale. A reference system was put in place to be able to identify one piece of land from another. There were four major systems of subdivision in Canada. Surveyors worked in a different manner in various parts of the country. Usually they based their descriptions on the ''metes and bounds'' method of measuring boundary lines, with the technical language of chains and rods, etc, and compass directions. In deeds, we will normally see an ancestor’s property described by metes and bounds or by a coordinates position. Global Positioning (GPS) may be adopted in the future by some provinces.  

The best known example of this system is the seigneurial system of land tenure which developed in New France. It is characterized by long narrow lots running perpendicular to and along major rivers and waterways. Rivers were often the only means of transportation and each settler required access to them in order to transport his produce and to have a link between his farm and the rest of the community.  

This system used the township or parish as its largest component. They were then subdivided into a series of lots, each of uniform size (100-200 acres) and rectangular in shape. Lots would be arranged in rows and numbered consecutively. Each row or concession would also be numbered to form a grid system per township. You will find this system in Ontario, Québec and in the Maritimes.  

The use of natural features, such as rocks, trees, rivers, etc., marked the beginning and end of a boundary. This system was also known as “crazy quilt”. A typical description of a piece of property under this system would refer to the house of one person and an oak tree nearby and a river bed with direction such as easterly, northern, etc. being noted. This produced many odd shaped lots whose boundaries were often not very accurate and of course such features often changed or disappeared. As a rule, these lots are organized within a parish or township and are given numbers to set them apart from the other lots. Reference to a specific lot would read “Lot __, __ Parish, __ County” within a province. This system is found primarily in the Maritimes, especially in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  

[[Image:Patchwork System Property.jpg|center|600px|Patchwork System Property.jpg]]  

This system covers the largest area of Canada. It was based on the American public land system and was initiated in Canada in 1870.  

Diagrams of typical arrangements of farm lots in townships in the various provinces are in Eric Jonasson’s The Canadian Genealogical Handbook (see [[Canada For Further Reading]].)  

The area that exists within the present boundaries of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Maine was known as Acadia. In 1598 the French placed colonists on Sable Island and in 1604 an expedition spent the winter on Dochet Island, Maine.  

Some Loyalist records are in the Locality Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under LAND AND PROPERTY headings. Others are in the Subject section under AMERICAN LOYALISTS and UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS. For more information on Loyalists, See [[Canada Military Records]].  

Landholding in New France was based on the seigneuries. Under this system, land was received as a feudal obligation in return for oaths of fealty and promises to perform certain duties.  

During the Loyalist and immediate post-Loyalist eras, orders-in-council often included the name of the Loyalist father for whose service sons and daughters were claiming free grants. Other than petitions and orders-in-council, most land-grant documents have little or no family information. However, land records involved in court disputes and similar proceedings often contain a wealth of family information. See [[Ontario Land and Property]] for information about the "Township Papers" and "Heir and Devisee Commission" records that can fall into this category.  

Many immigrants came to North America because they saw an opportunity to own land. Beginning in 1870, to encourage settlement in the western areas of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, the Canadian government offered potential settlers 160 acres of land for a $10 fee. To receive the patent, the applicant had to meet certain criteria. Many settlers came from the United States into the Canadian homestead areas to take advantage of the available land. Questions on homestead records ask for the applicant’s country of birth, subdivision of country of birth, last place of residence, and previous occupation.  

*Land records: [http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/microform-digitization/006003-110.02-e.php?&q2=29&interval=50&sk=0&PHPSESS Upper Canada Land Petitions (1763-1865)]

Petitions usually have good indexes or are filed alphabetically. Other land records for eastern Canada are often not indexed by surname but are arranged by land parcels within townships. You may have to trace a piece of property through time in order to use those land records, rather than try to trace the family name through indexes.  

If you know the name of the eastern Canada locality where your ancestor was settled in 1871, Lovell’s Dominion Directory for 1871 shows the names of the townships and counties where the towns and villages were located. There are indexes to portions of Lovell’s directory (see [[Canada Directories]]).  

The Family History Library has: