All good researchers are VERY careful to note the subtle, yet very important, differences in deeds that bear the name "trust" or "trustee" from other deeds. Though, as the great Justice Holmes once said, "No generalization is worth a damn," the following may help. A "deed" conveys an interest in something - usually land - from one person or persons to another person or persons. A "mortgage deed" is different; it conveys a similar interest with a condition subsequent written into the deed which provides that the buyer or buyers must pay an amount of money to the seller at a later date, usually in installments at regular intervals with interest. When that sum is in fact paid, the "mortgage" is "released" by the mortgagee/seller (in the margin of the recorded deed in early time), after which release the title is entirely vested in the mortgagor/buyer. The "mortgage deed of trust" or simply "trust deed" is still a different animal; here the title to the land is transferred by the seller to a third party - a trustee - which third party holds the title till the buyer pays the agreed payments or sums to the seller, after which the "trust deed" is extinguished and released of record. So, a trust deed (deed in trust) tells us that the grantee in THAT deed was not intended to ever "own" the property ill not the beneficial owner, but rather was simply to "hold" the title till the agreed payments are made. Many states do not use Deeds of Trust, opting legally for the less complex mortgage deed. All that said, remember that trust may exist in many other instances where money, personal property or land is conveyed to some third party to hold until the beneficial interest holder comes "of age" or of some certain age other than majority, or where such as "spendthrift trusts" are needed. BE VERY careful; stating that something is a "trust" or that someone is a "trustee" means almost nothing without gaining complete info from the records about just what that ancestor was trying to accomplish by doinbg that. Paul