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

Starting in 1907, the Pennsylvania Land Office began  platting the exact metes-and-bounds tracts of the original landowners, township-by-township but the Land Office only completed about 1/3 of the state before the project ended. The land office only completed mapping the first landowners of one township in Monroe County, Coolbaugh Township (see links below). 

If your ancestor was actually a first landowner, purchasing his or her property from the colony or state of Pennsylvania, further information about these tracts may be gleaned from the Warrant and Patent Registers.

The only way to find the date, book and page of the original warrant, survey, and patent for your ancestor is to do what the state draftsmen did to create their warrantee maps of other counties.  They searched through the relevant county Warrant Register, and that of its parent counties, now posted on the Pennsylvania State Archives website where each page of each county’s ledger is a separate pdf file, or download and save to your computer the entire 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).   

Once you have found the information, including the Survey Book and page number, you can access the free online surveys.  You can also order copies of the original documents from the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg using their order form. 

If you cannot find an original landowner’s name in the Warrant Registers, the next place to look is in 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, you have to look through the entire alphabetical section (which may be as little as one page to as many as 50) to be sure you don’t miss anyone. See our explanation of how land was transferred from the government to individual owners from the earliest days of settlement.

Keep in mind that Monroe County was created from Pike and Northampton Counties in 1836.  In turn, Pike was created from Wayne County in 1814 (Wayne was part of Northampton County until 1798), and Northampton was formed from Bucks County in 1751.  These dates are important, as the earliest land warrants were filed under the county as it existed at the time the warrant was issued.  Thus, you will have to search all relevant counties for land records, wills, court records, and church records depending on when your ancestor settled here.