Did you know that FamilySearch has a collection named United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975? Over the last few years people have been indexing the land records of some New York Counties. You can search for an ancestor’s name and see if the records him or her have been indexed.

The description says they have records for all counties except Franklin, Nassau, and Queens. That is very misleading. Yes, they have land records online but it is almost impossible to figure out what records are contained in the FamilySearch index so far.

The online indexed records are actually indexed records of Grantee (buyer) and Grantor (seller) indexes.

I searched for my gr-gr-grandfather Silas Lason. It showed one record in the Cortland County Grantor Index.  This volume is slightly different than one I have seen for other counties. It shows the deed is in volume T, page 1. Then I click on “Cortland” (in blue). That takes me to the web page with all the deed books.

If you look at what was originally microfilmed and now digitized; they have Grantee and Grantor indexes up to 1962. Then the deeds in the collection only go to 1916. That is typical of the FamilySearch collection in that most New York counties don’t have deeds too far into the 20th century.

I found something amazing in the deed for Silas Lason. It showed his wife as Sarah.  That wasn’t the name I expected as family records say that he was married to Nancy Gibson in 1836. This deed was dated 1831 so he had a wife before he was married to Nancy.

I didn’t find a deed where Silas bought that land. I even spent the time to look through the Grantee Index to see if he had been indexed by another spelling. Nope, his buying the land isn’t in the Cortland County records.

Silas later bought 50 acres in Steuben County but that isn’t in the FamilySearch online index. I think that the Steuben county indexes haven’t been completed. I also can’t find any indexed records for Monroe County.

Family Search has a project to index deeds in the Adirondack region that is currently 8% complete. If you have some time you can help by indexing the records.

For counties not yet indexed there isn’t any timetable for them to be indexed. So you may want to check back again in a few months and see someone new shows up.