I think I can remember back to being a "baby genealogist" and being daunted by the length of the deeds and the language. Understanding the terms and what they were saying is not intuitive. Catching some of the nuances such as compensation of a $1 or a peppercorn were significant. What helped me the best was transcribing the deeds in their entirety, one after another after another. Then I got smarter on what was "boilerplate" and made abstracts. (See _Professional Genealogy_ chapter 16). Then I was able to boil it down to spreadsheets to compare deeds together and manipulate them by the columns of information. This really helped to see holes. Land records are important and deserve our attention. However they are still the most time consuming records to use, IMHO, aside from beefy pension files. -- Elissa Elissa Scalise Powell, CG, CGL www.PowellGenealogy.com www.GRIPitt.org CG, Certified Genealogist, CGL, and Certified Genealogical Lecturer are Service Marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used under license by board certificants after periodic evaluations by the Board and the board name is a trademark registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office. > -----Original Message----- > From: On Behalf Of Michael Hait > Sent: Monday, December 03, 2012 7:35 PM > > What do you find most daunting about land records? > > I have been thinking of putting together a few new presentations dealing with various > aspects of using land records for genealogy research, and this discussion would be helpful > to me in developing the lectures.