fingerlakeshousehistories.com

In land research, looking for surveys, land transactions and maps of any sort, one is always at a disadvantage in central NY versus other parts of the state, particularly west of the Military Tract.

One possible reason for this is the State owned and rewarded Revolutionary War soldiers from the State who were eligible and granted them lots of various sizes based on their service and maps made by surveyor who worked for the state. In other large tracts, they were privately held, sometimes by foreigners, who used the land as purely a speculative venture. As such, they hired surveyors and retained for the most part their work, assigned certain individuals territories just like salesman today, issued powers of attorney letters, opened land office to conduct their business from. They also had a higher rate of recording deeds and sales, since these were proof of their work. In short their desire to run their land holdings more like a business resulted in the generation of more paper work. The Military Tract in CNY was not as well run or planned out. Land grants were often sold sight unseen for cash, and sold more than once. This lead to the creation of a commission to settle disputes.

The bottom line is that you need patience, persistence and perseverance in doing research for the historical nature of any given parcel.

Foreign land owners such as Col. Williamson, the holders of the Puleteny Estates, the Hardy Brothers often appointed lawyers as their Agents to sell, collect payments on, issue deeds and mortgages, lease and to engage for the owners they worked for in those civil actions required to settle debts, start foreclosure proceedings and to evict squatters.

Among those so appointed or appointed by them are:

Robert Troup

Joseph Fellows

James Wadsworth

William the Younger

flhhinquiry@fingerlakeshousehistories.com for questions/comments

A recent trip to the clerk’s office in Norwich, NY uncovered a section of deeds that people trying to find early evidence of their ancestors in the area should look for.

Two English gentlemen named John and William Hornby from Middlesex, in England sold a large portion of land to many individuals starting in 1806. There are ten and half pages of their land transactions in the 1798-1874 grantor book that indexes the deeds for the letter “H”. It is possible since the grantee books were transcribed that errors were entered into these records. The grantor book remains hand written and probably unchanged.

Anyone with ancestors that covers the period from 1806 on to 1874 would do well to check for Hornby deeds.

In other counties it would be advisable to identify if possible the active land agents for a given area and time frame, and look for their names as Grantors.

NYS Archives has loanable micorfilm rolls on tax rolls for the counites of record for the years 1799-1803.  The series is B 0950  Web address is http://www.nyarchives.org/a/research/fa/B0950.shtml. You will need to know the current town name and county bondaries to select the right reel.