The Bureau of Land Management has an interesting web site with old land records at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ Eventually it will include all states east of the Mississippi. For now it includes a dozen or so. I found my Samuel Downing's purchases in Ohio there. You can view or download a .tiff of the actual land record which [at least in those I saw] contain the ancestor's signature. The files are photo negatives so you'll probably want a program that allows you to reverse this to print out -- then you'll have a nice copy of the actual record. Cheryl Rothwell clrothwell@mindspring.com Logan County, ILGenWeb, coordinator http://www.rootsweb.com/~illogan/loindex.htm Logan County mailing list> LOGAN-L@rootsweb.com Downing mailing list> DOWNING-L@rootsweb.com