A recent article by Robin Kemp of The Current highlights the challenges descendants of Liberty County freedpeople face regarding heirs property. Documenting land ownership can be incredibly difficult when ancestors faced systemic obstacles in filing the proper paperwork.
As Scott Wall, mapping supervisor for the Liberty County Tax Assessor’s Office, noted in the article, without the actual deeds of sale: “You need some bounds and descriptions… going back to the original when… wherever they got the property from — bounded by this person, bounded by a trail.”
If a bill of sale was never recorded at the courthouse, other court documents might provide the necessary descriptions to help establish a chain of title. On They Had Names, we have several categories of records that can assist in this search:
Identifying “Bounds and Descriptions”
- Mortgages: To finance yearly crops, farmers often used their land as collateral. These records not only document ownership but typically describe the land by identifying neighbors. View Post-War Mortgages
- Homestead Exemptions: Beginning in 1868, Georgia allowed heads of families to claim certain property as exempt from seizure due to debt. These petitions often include land descriptions and list adjacent neighbors. We have abstracts available from 1868 to 1900. View Homestead Petitions
- Sheriff’s Sales: When a loan could not be repaid, land was seized and sold at auction. These records provide a formal account of land changing hands under court authority. View Sheriff’s Sales
Each record on the site includes a citation, allowing you to provide the court clerk with the exact location of the original document.
The mortgages and sheriff’s sales are organized in a spreadsheet that also includes tabs for land sales, leases, and plantation sales. This is part of an ongoing project to document these transactions between 1865 and 1900. You can also explore additional records that might name your ancestors at theyhadnames.net/post-war-records.
Sometimes the most important evidence is “hidden.” Your ancestor might be mentioned as a neighbor in someone else’s deed, meaning their name wouldn’t appear in a standard court index. The records mentioned above can be searched to find instances when your ancestor was one of those neighbors.
Going Deeper with Full-Text Search
Because They Had Names is an ongoing project and not all postwar records have been reviewed yet, I highly recommend also using the full-text search feature on FamilySearch.org. For a walkthrough on how to use this specifically for Georgia counties, the Copper Mine Genealogy YouTube channel offers excellent tutorials. You can also search YouTube for “full-text search FamilySearch.”
I have spent a good bit amount of time navigating these online records and am always happy to help you search or interpret what you find (there is never any charge). Please feel free to reach out by replying to this email or write me at stacy@theyhadnames.net.