[Genealib] Early Landowner Atlas of Lancaster Co., PA; also Free, Downloadable 19th C. Landowner maps

Wed Aug 6 14:11:50 EDT 2008

Ancestor Tracks is pleased to announce the sixth of the Early Landowners of
PA reference series, Early Landowners of Pennsylvania: Atlas of Township
Warrantee Maps of Lancaster Co., PA and its companion CD, Early Land Owners
of PA: Scans of Lancaster County Township Warrantee Maps in the Pennsylvania
Archives.  This volume joins others covering the following PA counties:
Berks, Fayette, Greene, Washington, and Westmoreland.  As a service, we have
also posted many free, high-resolution, downloadable 19th century landowner
maps for numerous Pennsylvania counties for use with the 1850, 1860, and
1870 censuses.  More specifics follow:

Early Landowners of PA: Atlas of Township Warrantee Maps of Lancaster Co.,
PA (8.5" X 11", softbound, 609 pages; $45 + s&h; available from
http://ancestortracks.com <http://ancestortracks.com/> ) 

The Pennsylvania Land Office began a project in 1907 to pull the thousands
of loose 18th- 20th century surveys off their shelves and plat the tracts on
current township maps, and they completed Lancaster in the 1930s.  These 41
Township Warrantee Maps, averaging 3’ X 4’, have been in the Pennsylvania
Archives since then, but this is the first time the information on them has
been transcribed, indexed, and made available to the general public in a
useable format.  The earliest landowners, both warrantees and patentees, are
shown, which means that neighborhoods can be studied as a whole to glean its
history and coax out allied families.

Lancaster County was a major migration-route county for both German and
British settlers. Needless to say, pinpointing an ancestor's location can
often reveal family relationships or clues to possible relationships since
relatives usually congregated near one another, acted as witnesses and
sponsors for each other, attended church together, and appear together in
tax lists. Also, since people usually moved in groups, tracking sets of
families and neighbors as a whole can frequently suggest routes of
migration. Sometimes the only record that exists for certain people is their
name on surveys of their land. 

The Lancaster County atlas is divided into one chapter for each township.
Each chapter begins with an image of the original Township Warrantee Map,
cropped to show the tracts, then reduced to 8 ½ X 11, with atlas coordinates
superimposed over it. Following the township map, the chapter continues with
a chart containing all relevant information about each tract:  names of the
warrantee and patentee; size and name of the tract; dates of the warrant,
survey and patent; and where the documents are recorded (survey and patent
book references).  The Pennsylvania Archives in Harrisburg, much to its
credit, has posted all of their Survey Books online at
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/rg/di/r17-114CopiedSurveyBooks/r17-114Ma
inInterfacePage.htm, so once the Survey Book and page number is known,
researchers can look up relevant surveys using their computer at home. 

Some of the warrantee maps produced by the state did not include the Survey
Book reference, but missing surveys were supplied by consulting the
Lancaster County Warrant Register.  Many warrantees (the very first owner of
the tract) had been omitted by certain draftsmen, so hundreds of surveys
were examined to locate additional names which do not appear on the Township
Warrantee Maps.  Note that these transactions precede the deeds located in
the Lancaster County Courthouse since this atlas documents the transfer of
ownership from the colony or commonwealth to the first landowners.  Once the
property passed into private hands, all transfers of the land were recorded
at the county level.

Companion CD:  Early Land Owners of PA: Scans of Lancaster County Township
Warrantee Maps in the Pennsylvania Archives (the CD contains map images
only, not the text of the book; pdf and jpg images); $20 + s&h.  Combination
of atlas and CD is $60 + s&h.  Available from http://ancestortracks.com
<http://ancestortracks.com/> . 

This CD contains two sets of maps:  (1) the 41 full-sized, uncropped
Township Warrantee Maps printed in reduced, cropped form in the atlas.
These maps are in two formats, pdf and jpg, and compatable with both Macs
and PCs; and (2) the tract maps with current roads which were produced
exclusively for Ancestor Tracks by the Lancaster County Department of
Geographic Information Systems.  Using the second set of maps, it should be
possible to pinpoint the tracts of your ancestors and their allied families
in today's county.  

The following is a list of the free, downloadable images we have posted for
Pennsylvania as a service.  Once the images are loaded, they can be enlarged
by clicking on them, and they may be saved by right-clicking and selecting
"Save Image As..."  We will continue to post free landowner resources as
time allows:

            Adams                          1858
<http://ancestortracks.com/Adams_Co_Map,1858.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Adams_Co_Map,1858.html 

            Armstrong                   1861
<http://ancestortracks.com/Armstrong_Co_Map,1861.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Armstrong_Co_Map,1861.html

            Beaver/Lawrence      1860
<http://ancestortracks.com/Beaver_County_Map1860.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Beaver_County_Map1860.html

            Bedford                        1861
<http://ancestortracks.com/Bedford_Co_Map,1861.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Bedford_Co_Map,1861.html

            Berks                            1860
<http://ancestortracks.com/Berks_Co_blurb.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Berks_Co_blurb.html

            Bucks                           1850 & 1857
<http://ancestortracks.com/Phil_Mont_Bucks_Del_maps.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Phil_Mont_Bucks_Del_maps.html

            Butler                            1858
<http://ancestortracks.com/Butler_Co_Map,1858.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Butler_Co_Map,1858.html

            Chester                         1883
http://ancestortracks.com/Chester_resources.html 

            Clarion                          1877
<http://ancestortracks.com/Clarion_Co_Atlas,Caldwell,1877.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Clarion_Co_Atlas,Caldwell,1877.html  (Caldwell’s
Atlas)

            Clearfield                      Warrantee
http://ancestortracks.com/Clearfield_by_Ed_heary.html 

            Columbia                      Warrantee
http://ancestortracks.com/Columbia_Co_blurb.html 

            Crawford                      ??
<http://ancestortracks.com/Crawford_Co_Atlas.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Crawford_Co_Atlas.html

            Delaware                     1880
<http://ancestortracks.com/Delaware_Co_Warrantee_Atlas.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Delaware_Co_Warrantee_Atlas.html  (Smith)

            Forest                           1881
<http://ancestortracks.com/ForestCo1881.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/ForestCo1881.html

            Lancaster                    1864
http://ancestortracks.com/Lancaster_Co_blurb.html 

            Lawrence/Beaver      1860                 (see Beaver above)

            Montgomery               1857
<http://ancestortracks.com/Phil_Mont_Bucks_Del_maps.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Phil_Mont_Bucks_Del_maps.html

            Northampton             1860
<http://ancestortracks.com/Northampton_Co_Map,1860.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Northampton_Co_Map,1860.html

            Northumberland       1858
<http://ancestortracks.com/Northumberland_Map1858,TWMapsPriceList.htm>
http://ancestortracks.com/Northumberland_Map1858,TWMapsPriceList.htm

            Snyder                        1868
http://ancestortracks.com/Snyder-UnionCountiesAtlas,1868.html 

            Somerset                    1930’s
<http://ancestortracks.com/Somerset_Co_Warrantees.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/Somerset_Co_Warrantees.html  (Somerset County
Atlas of Surveys and Warrants Collected and 

Plotted as a WPA Project

            Union                           1868
http://ancestortracks.com/Union_pricelist.htm       

            Venango                     1857
<http://ancestortracks.com/VenangoCo_resources.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/VenangoCo_resources.html

            Westmoreland           1857
<http://ancestortracks.com/WestmorelandCoMap,1857.html>
http://ancestortracks.com/WestmorelandCoMap,1857.html (scroll down the page)

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