The following announcement was written by Sharon Cook MacInnes, Ph.D, CG with the following explanation:
“Over the years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours at the Library of Congress taking photos of landowner maps for most of the counties of Pennsylvania and I posted them on my old website for researchers to use. I’ve recently created a new website and added many more free tools–links to published county histories, tutorials, etc. The tools on my website can be correlated with census, court, military, tax, and vital records to provide a much fuller picture of the men and women who came before us. “
Our new website is a one-stop portal for pinpointing Pennsylvania residents in the 1700s and 1800s. Would you like free images of 19th-century landowner maps and atlases to correlate with censuses? Check. How about links to published county histories that correlate with the maps? Check. And what about “how to” tutorials that put it all together and bring you:
Free images of Warrant Indexes granting land to the first individuals applying for land from the colony or state
Free images of Survey Books containing surveys for each tract transferred from the colony or state to an individual
Free images of Patent Indexes conveying final title to each buyer of a tract transferred from the colony or state to an individual
Free images of land transactions transferring tracts to applicants buying their land as a result of Indian treaties
Free images of military donation and depreciation land ledgers
An understanding of boundary disputes and the records for countless people whose land was caught up in them
Links and timeline for African American research
Check, check, and check. Use our images, links to books, and tutorials in conjunction with census and tax records to give context to your ancestors.
New editions of “Early Landowners of Pennsylvania” atlases! Just prior to launching the website, we finished editing new editions of our eight “Early Landowners of Pennsylvania” county atlases. These atlases, containing maps of the metes-and-bounds tracts of the first landowners, are now available at http://ancestortracks.com as downloadable pdf files. We’re also offering, for the first time, each individual township chapter as downloadable (pdf files; $1.99-$4.99). Consult the free indexes for each county atlas, indexed by surname or by township, and don’t forget to look for allied families.