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Originally Posted by Notorial dissent
All lands in the original thirteen colonies were issued under Letters Patent from either the English Crown, the Commonwealth, or the Dutch Crown. The originals for the most part were recorded in the state archives of the issuing country. The bearer copies were eventually recorded in whatever passed for the Recorder of Deeds, usually the courts in colonial times. Since there was no uniform land registration at the time it was not uncommon for two or more grants to contain chunks of another grant, and there were a great many lawsuits that resulted from grants that overlapped each other. The grants were in many cases issued, revoked, reissued, amended, or remade repeatedly, all of which has served to enrich generations of real estate lawyers. Once recorded, the holders proceeded to break them up into smaller and smaller parcels and sell them off or give them away in one fashion or another as deeded properties. After the Revolution, the thirteen former colonies passed their own property laws to define how property would be recorded, and for the most part they settled on the County Recorder of Deeds to hold and maintain the records. In theory, if you have time and patience enough and want to wade back through 300 years of property transfers, if you are very lucky you might reach the original deed that was issued off of one patent or another if they haven’t been burned, lost, and or destroyed.
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