Land & Property Records
Grants, plats, deeds, and boundary language that place families on the ground.
Land records are often the most continuous NC family evidence: colonial and state land grants, plats, later deeds in county Register of Deeds offices, mortgages, and plats attached to estates.
Tips
- Abstract every name in a deed—grantor, grantee, witnesses, adjoining owners.
- Follow metes-and-bounds neighbors across decades.
- Watch for county name changes in the legal description when parents split.
- Women’s dower releases can prove marriages and survival.
- Western mountain grants and Cherokee boundary history can change search strategy—use the State Archives grant indexes.