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 that we personally took in the Library of Congress. Our goal is to post landowner maps, or links to other websites with landowner maps, for every county in the state.

Original Land Owners 

 The draftsmen at the Pennsylvania Land Office used the Warrant and Patent Registers to create the Warrantee Maps showing the first individuals to receive their land directly from the colony or state of Pennsylvania (see links to the Warrantee Maps below the 1860 map images). The draftsmen searched each county and parent county, then each alphabetical section chronologically, in the set of 67 county Warrant Registers plus 3 pre-1733 ledgers called First Landowners of PA: Colonial and State Warrant Registers in the PA Archives, Harrisburg, 1682-ca 1940 ($35) which can now be downloaded and saved to your computer. (Free images  are also posted on the Pennsylvania State Archives website where each page of each county’s ledger is a separate pdf file).  The Pennsylvania State Archives has posted the online survey books (both front and back side of each survey have been digitized) and you can order copies of the original documents from the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg using their order form.   

The draftsmen also searched Pennsylvania’s index to Patent Registers ($35). Within an index covering the relevant years, the names are grouped alphabetically by the first letter of the patentee’s surname, then grouped by volume number of Patent Book, and finally arranged chronologically by date of patent. Thus, the entire alphabetical section must be searched (which may be as little as one page to as many as 50) so as not to miss anyone.

Mercer County was created in 1800 from Allegheny County which was itself created in 1785 from Washington and Westmoreland Counties. Thus, for any pre-1800 settlers, check Allegheny County and Westmoreland County for deeds and wills, etc. It was also part of the Last Purchase so check the Last Purchase Warrant Register.

This area was part of the Donation Lands given to Revolutionary War soldiers based on their rank, so locating an ancestor here definitely warrants further research into Revolutionary War records. Any Revolutionary War pension or service record will probably be on file in state archives rather than federal records since the land was given by the state of Pennsylvania. Note that land records may be the only piece of evidence that your ancestor served in the Revolutionary War! 

To learn about the Pennsylvania Land Acquisition process that England set up to distribute colonial land (which basically continues today), as well as the boundary disputes (between Pennsylvania and Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and Pennsylvania and Connecticut) and land opened through treaties with Indians, see our Land Acquisition page.

19^th-Century Residents

We are posting images from Map of Mercer Co, Pennsylvania by G. M. Hopkins which was published in 1860. This map is located in the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. We hope that it will be a useful tool for locating your Mercer County families when coupled with the 1860, 1870 and 1880 census records, as well as four county histories: (1) Samuel Durant’s 1877 History of Mercer County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations Descriptive of Its Scenery; (2) Jacob Richard’s 1888 History of Mercer County, Pennsylvania: Its Past and Present;  (3) McKnight’s 1905 A Pioneer Outline History of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Embracing the Counties of Tioga, Potter, McKean, Warren, Crawford, Venango, Forest, Clarion, Elk, Jefferson, Cameron, Butler, Lawrence, and Mercer; and (4) A Twentieth Century History of Mercer County, Pennsylvania (Volume 1 and Volume 2) .   

Images from the 1873 Combination Atlas of Mercer County and the State of Pennsylvania are online at the Mercer Co. U.S. Genweb Maps Project site. Many thanks are due to the wonderful people who scanned these images and are making them available to researchers! This 1873 atlas should be used when you find your ancestors on the 1850-1880 censuses, as well as published county histories above. Many of the families documented in A Twentieth Century History are shown on the 1873 atlas. 

Teri Brown maintains an excellent “Mercer County Genealogy” page on rootsweb. Pay special attention to how the townships evolved over time. Thank you, Teri, for the incredible wealth of resources you are bringing to researchers of Mercer County families!