Another Bounty Land Warrant/ Or How I came To Understand The Tract Books

Transfer of the bounty land of John Vincent in 1862 showing township, range, and section numbers.

 

     Yesterday's blog dealt with my search for the land given my fourth-great-grandfather Thomas Garner Jr. for his service in the War of 1812.  In it I included links to several sources but neglected to mention the Bureau of Land Management .  That is the site where I found more details about the land acquired by Thomas after the war.  They have information pertaining to land patents, surveys and tract books, but only tract books for Arizona and Iowa are currently online there.  A while back I attempted to use the tract books available at Family Search to find information about land owned in California by my Irish ancestors who followed the lure of gold to that state.  It's not hyperbole to say that it was a total disaster.  I couldn't locate the right piece of land, the handwriting was atrocious, and did I mention they are not indexed?  I soon gave up.  Yesterday I finally cracked the code so to speak.

     The tract books record federal government land transactions and the status of public land.  They are arranged by state, township, range, and section number and can be browsed here.  There is also a "coverage table" here to direct you to the correct volume to browse, provided you are able to use the other sources to determine the township, range, and section numbers.  At first there seemed to be no order at all to the volumes but after playing with them for a bit last evening one became apparent.

     The reason I was having problems was that the township numbers seemed not to go in the right order.   I was looking for township 106, but the volume the table said I needed started at 107 and went to 108 and then to 109, etc... this puzzled me and patience not being my strong suit, I stopped looking.  However, the books are also arranged by range.  Looking again I found that once township 110 and it's first range was completed, the next page reverted to township 106 and it's first range.  Then on to townships 108, 109, and 110, second range.  The next page being township 106 and it's second range and so on.  Once I found the right township AND the correct range number it was easy to browse to the section number I needed.  There was an order to this after all.

     After figuring out how to use the books it seemed wasteful not to do so and I was able to locate the entry for my Irish gold miners near Mt. Diablo in California and one in Minnesota for another fourth-great-grandfather and veteran of 1812, John Vincent.  John died in 1814 of disease at Plattsburgh, New York while in the service but his widow Mary Howland was granted his warrant; which she assigned to a John Larson in 1862 a couple years before her death.  I found nothing to tell me when Mary was given the warrant but a brief, (very brief), mention of bounty land can be found in her widow's pension application dated 3 July 1854 so it must have been before that time even though the patent mentions an act of Congress in 1855.  That must reference the latest act at the time of transfer to John Larson and not the one under which Mary received the warrant.

     I can't say I discovered a great deal in the books and there are some abbreviations I need to research, but they were interesting to read and you may have better luck.