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Welcome to Ancestor Tracks!
Our goal is to help you track your early ancestors who moved through Pennsylvania
through their land tracts! Ancestor Tracks is dedicated to publishing maps and land ownership information allowing genealogy researchers to more precisely pinpoint the locations where our ancestors lived. Land ownership maps are one of the most valuable, yet underused, tools available to researchers.
We now offer two product lines which complement each other: (1) state-wide Warrant, Patent, and Tract Name Registers which document the first transfers of land from the Penns or the state to private owners (see below); and (2) county atlases of the Pennsylvania Township Warrantee Maps on file at the Pennsylvania Archives in Harrisburg showing the exact metes-and-bounds tracts of early pioneers who purchased land from colonial or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania authorities. As a service, we are also publishing online land ownership maps from the nineteenth century which can be used in conjunction with census records.
More specific information is available for
newsletter editors, speakers
and educators, professional genealogists,
genealogical librarians , historical societies, and linking to
our website. If you would like additional information, here is a PowerPoint
Presentation (12.7 MB) giving further information about Ancestor Tracks.
STATE-WIDE REFERENCE RESOURCES
We have 4 major resources for locating the earliest private purchasers of land across Pennsylvania are the Warrant Registers, indexes to the Patent Registers, Tract Name Indexes from 1682-1959+, and the New Purchase Applications Register:
The first CD, First
Landowners of Pennsylvania: Colonial
and State Warrant Registers in the Pennsylvania Archives in Harrisburg,
contains all 70 of the Warrant Registers showing the first transfer of land
tracts to private owners. These are the people who applied for
land from either the Propietors or the state. These records start in 1682
and continue through most of the first legally-recognized owners of land
originally owned by the Penns, and later the state, to private individuals.
Every county register, containing thousands of pages, is on this CD. The
dates of land transfers continue throughout the 1700s and 1800s and into
the mid-1900s. NOTE: These
registers document the first owners of land for approximately
70% of Pennsylvania and cover each county. The registers should not
be confused with the deed registers located in the counties which show all
subsequent land transfers.
The second CD in this series, First
Landowners of Pennsylvania: Indexes to the Colonial and State Patent Registers
in the PA Archives, Harrisburg, 1684-ca 1995, contains the indexes
to all people who actually were granted final title from colony or state
authorities. In very many cases, they are not the same individuals who
actually applied for the land (termed warrantees).
The third
CD, First Landowners
of Pennsylvania: Indexes to Tract Names of Patented Land in the PA Archives,
Harrisburg, ca 1684-1811, is
the place to look when only the original name of the tract is known but not who the very first owners were.
Finally, the fourth CD: the New Purchase Applications Register. This ledger contains the names of the warrantees and patentees and the descriptions of tract locations for about 4,000 tracts which settlers purchased after vast territory was opened to settlement by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768.
COUNTY ATLASES
Coming in May/June: DAUPHIN COUNTY ATLAS!
Now Available: Lancaster County Warrantee Atlas - Early Landowners of Pennsylvania: Atlas of Township Patent Maps of Lancaster County, PA (609 pages) and its companion CD of Lancaster Co. Township Warrantee Maps showing the original tracts superimposed over current roads, towns, subdivisions, etc. We have also posted the 1864 Bridgens Atlas of Lancaster County for use with the 1860 and 1870 census records.
Ancestor Tracks is committed to becoming a one-stop resource for researchers of early Pennsylvania landowners. In addition to publishing our own books, we are posting images of 19th century maps and atlases located in the Library of Congress for as many counties as we are able. (If you use any of these images, please attribute them to Ancestor Tracks. You may not use these images for commercial images.) We are also adding links to other sources of Pennsylvania land records, and we eventually hope to provide such links and/or landowner maps for every county in the state.
For free resources, as well as to learn about products we publish, select a county of interest by clicking on the map below. If you hover over a county, you will see what we have to offer (see color key below map for classification of resource):
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