Donna, I am posting this answer to the list because I think a lot of people could benefit from the discussion. I am far from an expert on this, but if your ancestor was successful enough in meeting the requirements to be awarded his claim, his patent would have been recorded at the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM's website offers information on historic land patents from all 30 public land states. You can go to their web site at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ and click on "Search Land Patents." Then plug in the information on your ancestor and do a search. My understanding is that the BLM is adding more records all the time, so keep checking back if you don't find him/her the first time and you're sure the patent was awarded. If you think that your ancestor might have been one of the 60% of homesteaders who gave up on their claim after filing, you won't find them in the land patent records. Their claim information is likely filed at the National Archives for the midwestern region in Kansas City. To get a clearer idea of their holdings and the services they can provide you, you can go to their web site at http://www.nara.gov/regional/kansas.html There is also an email address on that page for contacting the NARA personnel. Also, Russell Lang, a speaker at the Land Records Symposium, has written a book on Nebraska Land Records that is hopefully coming out in the fall. I'm on the list to be notified of it's publication and will let you all know when it comes out. If Russell's writing style is at all like his speaking style, you're gonna LOVE this book--he's quite a story teller! Good luck in your search. Best regards, Jeanne Nelson ABSOLUTELY FAMILY! http://absolutelyfamily.homestead.com Donna Madrid wrote: > Where would you send to see if your ancestors actually homesteaded in NE? I have a > Civil War ancestor, among others, who settled in NE before 1870 so I thought perhaps > he may have received a land grant of some sort due to the War. I've never researched > in that area before. > > Thanks for your help. Donna Madrid

Well, I don't have any Nebraska ancestors in the database, but I do have Mississippi and Alabama ancestors in there. So my question is how we can take the information in there and figure out what the actual location of that land is. There's a page to click for "Land Patent Details." The township isn't named but has a number 5-N. How do I figure out what township that would have been. This could be really, really useful if I could determine what the actual township is because it could help me figure out where to find my Mississippi ancestor in the 1900 census, for example. Sharon, whose Nebraska ancestors are actually fairly recent, relatively speaking Sharon Kazmierski [email protected] Listowner, Latinteach and Latin Discussion Lists Latinteach Website: http://www.latinteach.com NEW WEBQUEST LINKS! http://www.latinteach.com/webquests