Mapping old land warrant plats

Hubbard · Feb 11, 2020

I am researching, getting permissions, and hunting on early 1800s ancestor lands.

My research includes land warrant surveys with plats and descriptions.

My goal is to redraw the surveys, in a small geographical area, and overlay onto a current map of the area.

So as to not recreate the wheel, I thought I would check to see if any others have gone through a similar project.

Anyone have experience and advice with this?

Hubbard

teleprospector · Feb 11, 2020

Yes, similar procedure, we use a Xerox and clear sheets to copy/scale the old maps to fit roughly over the current aerial photo. Some county GIS sites you can overlay current property lines over the aerials, get the landowners name and whatnot. This gets us pretty close to seeing how the current land looks enabling us to decide if we should proceed. We do drive by and take a look as well. A lot of those old maps contain names of people associated with those treasure stories but you have to really search those maps and depending on the year of the treasure story there may not by an old map. If you do find a match then transpose the land area over a current aerial, then proceed to the next level. Census records also can help pin down where someone lived if an old map is not available.
Jon