This site is for searching land patents in the USA. Land patents are records of
land sales in the early days of the country. Most of the sales are between the
dates of 1810 and 1890. Patentees are the land property purchasers, and Warrentees
are land property sellers. In most cases the US government was the Warrentee, and
in those cases no Warrentee is listed. Other data about this site is listed in the
General Information file.
The procedure to use when searching at the website:
http://www.mflan.com/cgi-bin/lps.cgi
is listed below.
Enter a name in the top "Identifying Name" box and hit
the "Do this First" button. The minimum allowed entry is 3 letters or
numbers, only 2 of the 3 can be the same.
Select the state in the 2nd box pulldown and hit the "Do this Second" button.
You can select "All of USA" to search every state.
If you selected a state above, select the county in the 3nd box pulldown or select
"All Counties" to search all counties in that state.
If you selected "All of USA" above, then enter part of the county name in the
3nd box, or leave it blank to search all counties in the USA.
Enter part of the persons name in the 4th box, or leave it empty to list all
land patent records in the county. This is an OR search, so you can enter
multiple name parts separated by a space. If you enter "smy smi" you will
get 'Smith' and 'Smyth' land patent records, along with any other names like
'smiley' that match either of the name parts entered. All searches are
case insenstive, so you don't need to capitalize anything.
Enter part of any names you want excluded from the search in the 4th box.
This is an AND search, so if you entered "smy smi" in the 4th box, and you
enter "smiley john" in the 5th box, you will exclude all names that contain
'smiley' or 'john', no matter what the last name search is in the 4th box.
Then hit the "Submit Query" button.
All the boxes below box 3 can be left empty. All the boxes below box 5 should be
left empty unless you know about lat/long and township range location.
Boxes 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 allow for further restricting the search based on
location even further than the county level search in box 3.
The lat/long box accepts lat/long in a number of formats, including
Degrees - Minutes - Seconds (DMS) with no decimal points. i.e. 294505N0862519W
Decimal Degrees (DDD). i.e. 354505N1134528W
Degree - Minute - Decimal Minute Format
UTM Format with E first, N 2nd, and zone last.
Another DMS Format i.e. Lat: 39° 06' 25"N, Lon: 94° 23' 27"W
Garmin Waypoint or Track Log Format. i.e. WP,DMS,52,30.333899,95.141800,12/31/89,0:00:00,Route Pt 52
Mapsource Format. i.e. N29 34 56.7 W92 12 6.1
Q-GIS Coordinate Capture Plugin: -95.61928,34.50113
Topozone Map Link Format
TerraServer Map Link Format
Google Maps Link Format: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=39.46573%2c+-92.69408+%28Coordinates%29&iwloc=A&hl=en
Nuvi Garmin Waypoint Format
Nuvi Export Format. i.e. N30 24.689 W91 10.568
Formats like ' 29° 34' 56.7" N 92° 12' 6.1" W' are supposed to work, but because of the difference in
formatting of degree symbols and the like, that may not work for you. Removing the symbols may work fine.
When putting in DMS, don't put decimal seconds like this: 294505.23N0862519.51W, just put 294505N0862519W.
Note that there is no need to put in a negative number for longitude. This program is
for the USA only, so all longitudes are assumed to be in the USA whether they are
negative numbers or not.
Conversions between Decimal Degrees (DDD) and DMS can be found all over the internet.
This is one example: Convert DD to DMS
If you need help getting started with the lat/long location feature, one way to do this
is to go to Google Maps, go to the area you are interested in, and click on the map in that area.
In the white box in the upper left you should see numbers like '29.24678, -92.43891'.
You can copy those numbers and paste them into the lat/long box on the website.
The output format is as follows:
Access # : Pat # : Document class : Lat/Long : Fractional Sec : Section # : Township : Range : County : State : Acres : Signature Date : Remarks : Military Rank : Militia
Patentee: John Smith
Patentee: Sarah Smith
Warrantee: Taylor Young
Link to the Map of Property
Link to the Land Patent Document
There is a 1,000 record limit on print output details. The names associated with the
land patents will be printed for up to 5,000 record matches, but detailed
land patent data will only be printed for up to 1,000 record matches.
Feel free to contact me at the e-mail below if you have special search needs.
Send comments to
temp3@mflan.com