I've noticed that researching deeds is a lot like genealogy. A "parent" tract begets "child tracts". Does anybody use software, or a paper-based system, to do deed research as if it were a family tree?
If this is too broad a question, let me ask a narrow question: since a parent tract will have to be referred to many times in research, have any board members worked out a good way to assign nicknames to tracts so they can be referred to briefly but unambiguously?
This would be for Vermont, which is obviously a colonial state.
When referring to a parent tract, I call all of the info out initially, then when calling for it in the description use the acreage only. Now if there are two different tracts with the same acreage, I use the Does 240 acres. If there are two Doe 240 acres, I call it Doe's 240 acres in xxx/xxx. I don't have the latter happen often.
And no I don't make a tree unless it's really bad and the grantors and grantees get to "horse trading" the tract back and forth and making it difficult to understand who had what and when.
Kris Morgan, post: 439789, member: 29 wrote: When referring to a parent tract, I call all of the info out initially, then when calling for it in the description use the acreage only. Now if there are two different tracts with the same acreage, I use the Does 240 acres. If there are two Doe 240 acres, I call it Doe's 240 acres in xxx/xxx. I don't have the latter happen often.
And no I don't make a tree unless it's really bad and the grantors and grantees get to "horse trading" the tract back and forth and making it difficult to understand who had what and when.
Thanks. If I recall correctly, some of the deeds I'm interested in don't have acres, so I'd have to think of some substitute. And messy maneuvering is prevalent. I've run across what seem to be grants to a straw purchaser (and back again on the next page) apparently to change the vesting. Then there's the hunting camp where owners are constantly dropping in and out.
When I found myself being very confused on one project over who transferred what to whom and when, I set up a spreadsheet thinking along the same lines as you in the family tree aspect. Since then I use it all the time so that we have a record that can be revisited. I now have two different setups, one for US Surveys and one for Rectangular surveys.