While doing some research for a recent post on Samuel Ackley, I ran across a good resource for land records from Haddam and East Haddam that should be of interest to Ackley researchers. If you're like me, you probably haven't paid much attention to land records, which is to our own detriment. As Lisa Cooke states in her "Genealogy Gems" blog [1]:
"Land records are some of the most underutilized, yet most useful, records available in genealogy. Often, they are the only records which state a direct relationship between family members. They can also be used to prove relationships indirectly by studying the land laws in force at the time. Sometimes they can even be used to locate an ancestor’s farm or original house, so that we can walk today where our family walked long ago."
Fortunately for us, there are some land records for Haddam and East Haddam that are fairly easy to access online if you know how to get to them.
Family Search
Most of you are probably aware of and have used records from familysearch.org. The site is free and has billions of pages of records that have been digitized and put online. While many of the records are indexed and can be found by searching for your ancestors by name, there are many more available that you have to go digging for a little bit. The Haddam and East Haddam land records fall into that category. Here are a few screen shots showing the process of finding the records for East Haddam.
Step 1: Click on "Search" and then "Catalog"
Step 2: Start typing haddam into the box labeled "Place"
Step 3: As you type haddam into the box, a drop down with possible place names will show up. It is important that you select the place name from that list; if you just type in the word haddam and hit return, the search will not find the place you have typed in. Click on the name and it will appear in the box. Click the "Search" button.
Step 4: From the list of record types associated with Haddam that your search produced, click on "Land and Property". This will expand that category and show you all of the different collections that have land and property records for Haddam.
Step 5: In this case, there is only one record collection that has land and property records for Haddam (some locations have more than one). Click on that collection.
Step 6: Clicking on a collection will take you to a page with a description of the records in the collection and a list of all of the "films" available in the collection. I put "films" in quotes because in the "good old days" these were physical microfilms, but by now Family Search has digitized nearly all of their microfilm and it is available online. Here is a portion of the list for the Haddam land records.
Note that for this collection, the first two entries are an index to all of the rest of the volumes of land record books for Haddam. For most land record collections, the index volumes have two lists of the people involved in land transactions; grantors (sellers or givers of land), and grantees (buyers or receivers of land). Before moving on, we need to discuss the last column of this list - the one with the heading "Format". If there is a camera there, you can click on it, and you will get a page that shows all of the images available on that film, and you can click on them to see them. In this case, we have the dreaded camera with a key above it:
This means that the images on this film are not available (locked) to the average user doing genealogy in their jammies at home. This happens sometimes when Family Search has an agreement with the original owner of the records not to make the records available to the whole world online. But all is not lost; if you click on the camera with the key, you will see this:
If you click on either "Family history center" or "FamilySearch affiliate library", a map of the United States will pop up with the locations of all of the places you can go to look at these records on one of their computers. The same map pops up no matter which link you click. You can zoom in to your area and find the closest one; the greenish-bluish circles are Family History Centers and the orangish circles are FamilySearch Affiliate Libraries (i.e., public libraries that are allowed to access the restricted records). Here is the map zoomed in for my area:
I live very near O'Fallon, Illinois (lower right corner on the map); you can see that I am close to both a Family History Center (these are typically located in a Latter-Day Saints church) and an Affiliate Library. If you click on any of the location icons, a box will pop up with the address, phone number, and hours of that location. I have used the Family History Center in O'Fallon many times in the past, but right now they are open by appointment only due to COVID, and I didn't want to make someone open the library just for me. In the end I went to the St. Louis County Public Library, which also happens to be the repository for the National Genealogical Society book collection, so they have a lot of good reference materials available.
What will you find?
Assuming you have found a location that has access to these records, what next? The first step is to look in one of the index volumes to find names of interest that were involved in land transactions in Haddam. The index volumes are usually arranged alphabetically. Here is a page from the first index volume with Ackley grantors (all of the Ackleys who sold land in Haddam during the time period covered by the index):
I realize this is a little hard to read, but the page on the right-hand part of the image is a list of all of the grantors with the last name Ackley (the first column). The next column is the grantee for that transaction. The third column is the book number that transaction can be found in, and the fourth column is page number. The last column is title "Character of Deed". Most of the entries say "War" (I'm assuming that means warranty deed); there are a couple that say "Q.C." (I'm assuming that means quit claim deed), there is one that says "Mor" (I'm assuming that means mortgage deed), and there are two that say "Lease for life". I am not at all familiar with the different types of deeds, but that information might be useful for something. The fifth entry in the list is for Samuell Ackley (grantor), Thomas (grantee), which can be found in book 1, page 88. The grantee pages are arranged in a similar way, but the leftmost column is the list of grantees; the grantee pages would thus be a list of all Ackleys who bought land during the time period covered by the index.
Armed with the book number and page number for the transaction you are interested in, now go back to the list of films and find the one that has the book number you want. Click on that film, and you will get the page of images in the book. You will now have to browse those images to find the page number you want (remember, these films are not indexed), which is a little tedious. The page for Samuell Ackley and Thomas Ackley from above looks like this:
I don't expect you'll be able to read that; their transaction is on the lower right of the image. Here is a small snippet so you can see what the handwriting looks like:
You can see that the handwriting is very difficult to read in spots, and on the edge the copy is not great, but if you slog through it you can get the information about the parties involved and the land being sold. I did a quick and dirty transcription of the the above record, and here is what I came up with (I tried to transcribe it exactly as written, so you will see many words that are not spelled as they are today):
To all whom thes presents may concern greeting Know ye that I Samuell Ackley of the towne of hadam in the county of Hartford and collony of Conectticut good and valuable consideration ? ? unto ? ? ? ? ? ? and just soum of nine pounds of current silver money of New England ? to me by bill b? d? with all ? ? bargained granted sold in ? and doe by this grant bargain sel and ? ? unto my brother Thomas Ackley a certain parsell or tract of land lying and being situat within the township of hadam on the east side of Conectticut River being by estimate about thirty acres be it more or less being in the second ? of land of Lady ? on the east sid the Great River being bounded north on the land of Capn George Gates east on the Comon south on the land of Nathaniel Ackley west on the highway that runs between the d? together with the right of twenty pounds right in the Comons and undivided lands to him my brother Thomas Ackley to him his heirs executors administrators and assigns for ? to have hold p? p? and quickly in joy for ever without any lot hindrances ? ? station from or by me or my heirs executors administrators and assigns or any by or from mine or their p?ment or any other that hereafter shal pretend to any claim or titel to the said land or any part thereof or any of the ? and immunity of the unto belonging or in any ? approximating unto the aforesaid tract of land for ever in ? money ? unto I have set to my hand and seale this twenty third of January 1699:1700.
Witnes John Chapman Samuell Ackley
James Ray Acknowleged before Nathaniel ? ?
You can see from the many question marks that there were a lot of words I could not decipher. Also, there was absolutely no punctuation in this record whatsoever, so it runs on and on a little bit. Some of the language doesn't make complete sense either. Nonetheless, you can get the gist of what transpired in this transaction. Samuel sold a tract of land in Haddam on the east side of the Connecticut River (most of Haddam is on the west side of the river) to his brother Thomas for nine pounds. The land was about 30 acres. Captain George Gates's land is to the north, common land lies to the east, Nathaniel Ackley's land is to the south, and a highway is on the west boundary. It also appears that Samuel has given his rights to some common land to his brother Thomas. The transaction was completed on January 23, 1699/1700. Recall that until 1752, Great Britain and the colonies were using the Julian calendar while much of the rest of the world was using the Gregorian calendar. Under the Julian calendar, the year ran from March to February, while the Gregorian calendar (which is what we use now) ran from January to December. As a result, the month of January was reported with two years - it was still 1699 under the Julian calendar, but 1700 under the Gregorian calendar.
Ackley Grantors and Grantees
To give you a headstart on finding Ackley land records in these collections, I have transcribed all of the Ackley entries in the index books for both Haddam and East Haddam.
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| Haddam Grantors |
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| Haddam Grantees |
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| East Haddam Grantors |
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| East Haddam Grantees |
Sources
1. Cooke, Lisa. "How to Find and Use Land Records for Genealogy", Genealogy Gems Blog. Published Oct. 4, 2019; accessed online Dec. 11, 2021.
Link of the Day
The link of the day is the Family Search website from which all of the screen shots in this post are taken:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/
Note that the Family Search website is completely free to use, but you need to have an account to access records.
Quote of the Day
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work."
-- Thomas Edison
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