Greetings, all, Doris asked why she only got one piece of paper, a bill of sale, when she ordered land records from the National Archives. Previously for another landowner she had received 22 pages of documents. Well, Doris, without even looking, I can guess that your relative bought the land and the other fellow homesteaded or at least he started that way but may have ended up buying. A couple of years ago I was at the National Archives and decided to look for the land files for my great-great-grandfather. I already knew he homesteaded (as the word in used under the homestead act, not just being the first white guy to have a farm there) from the Eastern Land Office records. They had been at another conference I attended with their CD's so I knew the details. One of his sons was also a homesteader. To get the records you have to talk to an archivist (which involves a very interesting trip through the stacks to their offices -- there are two, a military archivist office and a non-military archivist office). I explained the records I wanted to see and the archivist pulled up some other information on her database for the neighbors, as I wanted to see them, too, if possible. In the end I ordered 20 files. They were to be brought down to the reading room in two hours so I went to read film for a couple of hours. When I got to the Reading room, with nothing but a pencil and my researcher card, they pulled out my cart -- I almost fell over. There were boxes on both sides of the cart! It turns out that they don't pull the file, only the file box. Then the researcher removes the desired file, reviews it, makes copies if permitted (I was permitted every time), and finally refiles it in the proper spot in the box. The records for the homesteaders had many pages, those that bought their land usually had just one page but sometimes a little more if there had been some difficulty with the sale or if they had started out as homesteaders and then got impatient and bought the land. By the way, these are the original papers that you are handling! Many of them were folded up a hundred years ago and you are unfolding them for the first time since. My g-g-grandfather's original naturalization paper was in the file. I was intrigued when I saw some that someone else had opened a file and then put it back. Was that a fellow family researcher? One of the files proved I was doing research in the time before scotch tape. The homesteader was given a document that he had to turn back in 5 years later to claim the land. This one fellow apparently carried his with him everywhere -- the creases were so worn that they had ripped and they had fixed the problem by gluing a letter on the back. The creases in the letter paper eventually wore through, too, so the split seams of the document were sewn up with needle and thread! Of the 20 files I ordered, one was missing. I mentioned it to one of the women at the desk because I didn't want to get in trouble. She assured me that if it wasn't there it wasn't there. They were supposed to have all those records but they didn't always make it to the archives. By reading the neighbors homestead applications, I learned my g-g-grandfather had been a witness for another fellow and that the other fellow had lived with my g-g-grandfather while he was building his house. I made sure everything was back in order on my cart, took my pencil and my copies, and the guard cleared me to leave. The area I was researching is in Marathon County, Wisconsin, but I imagine the same type of thing happened everywhere. Joyce Wans Mukilteo WA USA