https://familysearch.org/search/image/index
Above is the website URL that we use to start a search for Land Records on Family Search, the Latter Day Saints public website.
Mary Rhodes, Wellsville Town Historian, has supplied us with a guideline to use in researching land records for the county which begin in the year of the founding, 1806.
Below is Mary's outline.....If you have difficulties or questions please feel free to email us: Webmaster
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For Allegany County NY Land Records on Family Search:
Searching for deed records is actually very easy on Family Search. It requires a little prior knowledge of the site and a little patience.
Sign in to Familysearch.org This is a free site, but you must sign in.
After you have signed in – there is a box at the bottom of the page in the middle that says “Search” – click on that.
At “Discover Your Family History” – Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “United States”.
At “Historical Records Collection” there is a box on the left, scroll down to “New York” and click on that link.
You are now looking at all the databases for New York on Family Search.
For Deeds, scroll down to “New York Land Records”
There will be a link that says something like “Browse through 8,129,000 images – DON’T WORRY!!
Choose “Allegany”
Go down the list of records until you find either:
The land records are organized in Books or Volumes – but FIRST you need an index to know what book to look in.
Grantor Index 1807-1929 is for selling land
Grantee Index 1807-1929 is for buying land
The Grantee indexes are in several books: Grantee Index 1807-1929 A-C, D-G, H-L, M-P, Q-S and T-Z. Each book is organized alphabetically.
Now you must choose what index to look in – for an example I am using the name Brunshinham
Now it’s a matter of hunting for the BRUSH names in the books – In the Grantee book it starts on page 307 (I hunted for it by typing guesses into the image number above the image on screen) This will require a bit of hunting and pecking. Remember that images comprise TWO pages, so you may have to drag the screen to the left to see the page on the right.
Scroll down the page and you can see the name Brushinham on the second page on the screen – use your mouse to navigate the screen.
In 1864 John Brushinham purchased property from John Greig by Trustee. The deed is in Liber (book) 67 on page 77. Its in Tract 2 of Range 7 in the PE Lot 47. The italicized stuff here is surveyor speak – it has to do with original surveys and original Land Grants. I think you are mostly interested in the ancestor, so the information you need now is just the book number and the page number. If your ancestor has a very common name (Smith, Green, Johnson – then use the Tract and Range to narrow down you search. Tract 2 in the MR or Morris Reserve refers to Wellsville.)
Once you have found all the Brushinghams you need to find on these pages and noted who they purchased land from and what book and number you will find it in – click on the word Allegany in the blue writing after Land Records to take you back to the page with the land deeds on it.
Scroll down to find “Deeds 1864-1865 Vol 67”
Now you have to hunt and peck again to find page 77. At the Image box, type in 77 and see where it takes you. If it takes you too high (the pages in each book are numbered) then type in 57 or another number, sometimes you only need to halve the page numbers (77/2 = page 38 or 39) and it should take you to a land deed. BUT KNOW that several books have sometimes been scanned together. They will still be in numeric order, but you need to be aware of what book you are in – the book or Liber number is at the top of each page normally.
Use the widget to the right to save your image to a file.
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