L is for LAND

1895 Atlas of New York, Julius Bien & Co - Map of land patents.

An abstractor is a person who does an abstract of title for a piece of property.  If you have ever bought or sold a house or taken out a mortgage, either your realtor or attorney has contacted an abstract company and requested a title search to make sure it is free of any debts or encumbrances to clear title. The bank requires this to protect their interest so someone can't come along later and claim a right to it.

I have researched land title for abstract companies, attorneys, private parties wishing to put their home on the National Register of Historic Places, and for my own pleasure. I have done title work in every county in Western New York as well as Clinton, Franklin, and St. Lawrence counties in the northern part of the state. I have even helped, remotely from my computer, with a title search for land in Alaska (where the index to records are online), and also in Vermont. Combining my skills as an abstractor and my historian's obsession to document facts, I found my niche in researching Indian land title from an abstractor's point of view―hence the subject of my book coming out later this year with The History Press titled Indian Land Title in New York. I'm hoping it will give new perspective to land claim cases.

Stay tuned for more history tidbits throughout the month of April!

The list to the other A-Z bloggers is here.

***

If your user name in comments doesn't lead to your A-Z blog, leave the URL so I can find you!

Here's how to do a clickable link to your blog in the comments section:

< a href="http://historysleuth.blogspot.com/">History Sleuth's Writings - Blogging A-Z</a >

Just replace my stuff with yours and take the space out between the < a and a > above.

(Had to put a space in or you would see a link instead of code. :)

Keep it in a note on your desktop so you can copy & keep hitting paste at every blog instead of retyping.