Alphabetical Listing of
Orange County
Land Patent Holders

Land Patent - the initial transfer of land titles from the
Federal government to individuals

Bureau of Land Management - Eastern States, General Land Office has made the land patents available online. They are accessible both by section and patentee name. As with all documents in the early 1800s, there are many names that are misspelled. This is due to a number of factors, the patentee's inability to read or write, the government's official misspelling of the patentee's name, and other factors like the transcriber's misunderstanding of the script. These factors aside, the BLM's database provides us with many important pieces of data:

1. When our family members actually purchased their land from the government, 
2. Where in the county they lived
3.  Who their neighbors were.

This index of patent holders allows the researcher to select the appropriate map containing their ancestors land without knowing where their land was located in the county. Many of our ancestors owned land in multiple sections and in this index that is shown by the addition of the annotations of (1), (2), and so on.

The BLM site also has for sale certified copies of the patents issued for each patentee, and the documents are availab e online for viewing. This is a valuable free online database available to researchers everywhere.

Index of Land Patent Holders: A - L

Index of Land Patent Holders: M - Z