Atlas of Earliest Landowners of Fayette County, PA (pdf download)

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This Fayette County atlas contains has been completely revised in 2020  All information shown on the Township Warrantee Maps which were produced by the Pennsylvania Land Office in the 1920s. Each chapter begins with the Township Warrantee Map, painstakingly platted by draftsmen from the original warrants, surveys, and patents. The maps show precise outlines in metes and bounds of each original tract and all surrounding tracts in the township (see small sample below). A second map follows, cropped to eliminate marginal information, with atlas coordinates superimposed upon it. 

Following these maps are charts (see sample from our Dauphin County volume below) which include each fact included on every tract in the Township Warrantee Maps: names of the warrantee and patentee; size of the tract; name of the tract, if given; dates of the warrant, survey, and patent; Survey Book and page number where the survey was recorded; Patent Register and page number where the patent was recorded; and, finally, the coordinates where the tract in question is located. The draftsmen, however, did not include the survey book and page number, so we recently added this information by looking up each tract in county Warrant Registers (all 67 county Warrant Registers are available together on a single flash drive or CD from Ancestor Tracks). We also added extensive footnotes giving further information, including neighbors shown on surveys at the time the survey was conducted. Some of these neighbors do not appear anywhere else in land records, and their appearance as a neighbor may be the only reference to their existence.  Copies of the original surveys are posted online.

The warrantee maps show the location of the earliest landowners of the county—in other words, those who bought their land directly from the colony or state or had it surveyed. After a tract was transferred to a private individual, subsequent transactions were recorded in the county courthouse.  Examining the maps for other families in the township makes it possible to locate allied families, baptismal sponsors, neighbors, fellow church members, and migration companions. If your ancestor was actually a first landowner in the county, purchasing his or her property directly from the colony or state of Pennsylvania, you should find him or her in this atlas. Likewise, if your ancestor was a neighbor to one of these tracts, you may find his or her name in the numerous footnotes included in this volume.

Before your buy our Atlas of Fayette County, see if the name(s) you are looking for appear in the index of the 503-page Atlas. To see if they appear in individual township chapters (downloadable as separate pdf files), click on "Index to Individual Fayette Township Chapters by SURNAME," or to see the index by neighborhood, click on "Fayette County Index by TOWNSHIP." 


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Atlas of Fayette County tracts of original landowners, 1 chapter for each of the townships, 503 pages total plus everyname index

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Atlas of Earliest Landowners of Fayette County, PA (pdf download)

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I want this!