{"id":4191,"date":"2021-02-21T18:14:20","date_gmt":"2021-02-21T18:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/?page_id=4191"},"modified":"2026-01-16T15:22:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:22:50","slug":"bedford-county","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/home\/free-resources\/bedford-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Bedford County"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Bedford County Landowner Resources\n<\/h3>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Our<\/span> goal at Ancestor Tracks is to publish maps and land ownership information allowing genealogy researchers to place more precisely the locations where our ancestors lived. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>

Original Land Owners<\/u>: The state of Pennsylvania began platting the exact metes-and-bounds tracts of the earliest landowners, township-by-township, starting in 1907, but the Land Office only completed about 1\/3 of the state before the project ended. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania did not plat the tracts of the earliest landowners of Bedford County. However, Certified Genealogist Gerald “Jerry” Smith has created connected warrantee tract maps with indexes that he donated to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (the Pennsylvania State Archives) for Snake Spring Township (#3928), Everett West Quad (map #3935), Clearville Quad and Rainsburg Quad (#3937).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>

If your ancestor was actually a\u00a0first<\/i> landowner in the county, purchasing his or her property from the colony or state of Pennsylvania, further information about these tracts may be gleaned from the count Warrant Registers and Patent Registers on file at the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg.\u00a0The earliest land warrants were filed under the county as it existed at the time the warrant was issued. <\/strong><\/p>

The only way to find the date, book and page of the original warrant, survey, and patent for your ancestor is to search through those county Warrant Registers on the Pennsylvania State Archives<\/a>\u00a0website 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\u00a0First Landowners of PA: Colonial and State Warrant Registers in the PA Archives, Harrisburg, 1682-ca 1940\u00a0<\/a>($35).\u00a0 \u00a0Once you have found the information, you can access the free\u00a0online surveys<\/a>, and you can order copies of the original documents from the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg using their\u00a0order form<\/a>.\u00a0 Please note that these land transfers predate the deed books located in each county because they deal with the first transfer of land to private individuals at the state level.<\/strong><\/p>

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<\/a> ($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.<\/strong><\/p>

See our explanation of how land was transferred from the government to individual owners<\/a> from the earliest days of settlement.<\/strong><\/p>

19-Century Residents<\/u>:\u00a0\u00a0The Atlas of Bedford County, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/a>, published by F. W. Beers in 1877, has been scanned and images are posted by the Pennsylvania State Archives. Also, check out the circa 1860 map of Bedford County<\/a> posted by Boston Public Library. Click on it and it will open in a new window where you can use your cursor to zoom in and see every detail.<\/strong><\/p>

In lieu of being able to bring you Township Warrantee Maps of the earliest settlers, we are posting the first atlas of Bedford County that we are aware of,\u00a0 Map of Bedford County, PA Surveyed, Drawn & Published by E. L. Walker<\/i> in 1861. If our images aren’t clear enough when enlarged, another version is posted at the Pennsylvania State Archives website<\/a>.\u00a0 We hope that it will be a useful tool for locating your Bedford County families when coupled with the 1860 census and published county histories such as Rupp’s 1846 History and Topography of Dauphin, Cumberland, Franklin, Bedford, Adams, and Perry Counties <\/a>, the 1884 History of Bedford, Somerset and Fulton Counties, Pennsylvania<\/a>\u00a0 and the 3-volume History of Bedford and Somerset Counties published in 1906 (Volume I<\/a>; Volume II<\/a>; Volume III<\/a>).<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Click on the township of your choice below. Once the images are loaded, they can be enlarged by clicking on them. If an image doesn’t enlarge, right-click on it and choose “Open Image in New Tab.” \u00a0When it is opened in a new tab, you will be able to zoom in. You can also save the images. <\/strong><\/p>

While the map in the Library of Congress, is in the public domain the images we have taken belong to us and are not to be used for commercial use. For those wishing to use them for personal use (including illustrating a family history you are working on), we give permission to use them, but we would appreciate attribution to Ancestor Tracks. It takes much time and effort to locate, process,<\/em><\/strong> edit, and post these and the many other county images we have posted, so<\/em><\/strong> we appreciate this courtesy.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Township Maps<\/strong><\/h4>

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Bedford Township<\/a>
Broad Top Township<\/a>
Colerain Township<\/a>
Cumberland Valley Township<\/a>
East Providence Township<\/a>
Harrison Township<\/a>
Hopewell Township<\/a>
Juniata Township<\/a>
Liberty Township<\/a>
Londonderry Township<\/a>
Middle Woodberry Township<\/a>
Monroe Township<\/a>
Napier Township<\/a>
Snake Spring Township<\/a>
Southampton Township<\/a>
South Woodberry Township<\/a>
St. Clair Township<\/a>
Union Township<\/a>
West Providence Township<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Boroughs, Towns, and Villages<\/h4>

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Bedford Borough<\/a>
<\/a>Bloody Run<\/a>
<\/a>Hopewell Borough<\/a>
<\/a>Rainsburg<\/a>
<\/a>Schellsburg<\/a>
<\/a>St. Clairsville<\/a>
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The\u00a0Pioneer Historical Society of Bedford County<\/a>\u00a0has a wealth of early documents that are not online, but no connected survey maps. They have, however, indexed neighbors shown on individual surveys. They also have tax lists which have not been microfilmed by LDS, starting with an incomplete list for 1767, and complete lists for 1779. Also, the\u00a0Orphan Court Index<\/a> is online. Contact them for more information.<\/strong><\/h6>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bedford County Landowner Resources Our goal at Ancestor Tracks is to publish maps and land ownership information allowing genealogy researchers to place more precisely the locations where our ancestors lived. Original Land Owners: The state of Pennsylvania began platting the exact metes-and-bounds tracts of the earliest landowners, township-by-township, starting in 1907, but the Land Office …<\/p>\n

Bedford County<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":6829,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4191"}],"version-history":[{"count":111,"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13313,"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4191\/revisions\/13313"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancestortracks.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}