Land Records in the National Archives
By: Jeannette Austin

To search for land records at the National Archives, here is some of what they have.

There are partial indexes at the National Archives, as well as in the Bureau of Land Management, as follows:

Warrants under the Act of 1788 (incomplete)

Virginia Military Warrants

Private Land Claims

Coal and Mineral Entries

Name indexes of land entries arranged by District Land Offices in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Florida,

Louisiana, Nevada, Utah and Alaska.

Among the records of the Veteran's Administration in the National Archives, there is an alphabetical index to applications for military bounty land warrants issued under the Acts of 1847, 1850, 1852, and 1853. (Applications for warrants before 1880 were lost by fire; the National Archives has only cards for such entries).

If you want to locate any other land entry file in the National Archives, you need to have the legal description of the land or the date, or approximate date of entry, and the name of the land office through which the entry was made.

Revolutionary War veterans were granted land according to rank (Acts of 1788, 1789, 1803 and 1806). A Major?General was tranted 1100 acres; a Captain 300; Lieutenant 200; Ensign 150; Private, 100.

After 1855, there were no bounty land grants. Union veterans of the Civil War could take Homestead Land, or

Donation Land in Oregon and Washington. Confederate soldiers were not allowed to file for land.

Jeannette Holland Austin