Land & Property Records
Patents, grants, plats, deeds, and boundary language that place families on the ground.
Land records are often the most continuous Virginia family evidence: colonial patents and grants, later deeds in county and independent-city clerk offices, mortgages, and plats attached to estates. LVA holds extensive patent and survey material.
Tips
- Abstract every name in a deed—grantor, grantee, witnesses, adjoining owners.
- Follow metes-and-bounds neighbors across decades.
- Watch for county name changes and city annexations in the legal description.
- Women’s dower releases can prove marriages and survival.
- Northern Neck proprietary grants differ from royal/state patents—know the region.