The Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website hosts over 5 million title records for US public-land sales. Through the 1862 Homestead Act, the federal government distributed 270 million acres of land across 30 states. About half of the recipient “homesteaders” successfully proved their claims, meaning they qualified to keep parcels of 160 acres each. Was your family part of this history? What records tell their stories?
Read on to learn how to search the BLM GLO website—newly updated in 2026—for land patents and other records, all for free.
Note: This site from the federal government is strongest for land transactions between the US government and individuals, most of them in “public-land states.” Land in the other 20 states—the original 13 colonies, plus four states that were later carved out from them and Texas, Vermont and Hawai’i—was distributed using different methods. Consult this download for a list of public-land versus state-land states.
1. Find Your Place
The centerpiece of the GLO’s website is an interactive map of the United States. If you know the address you want to research, you can enter it in the box at upper-right. Otherwise, zoom and click-and-drag to find your area of interest. Use the small icons in the bottom-right corner to print the map, review the map’s legend, toggle different layers and change the base map’s appearance.
I zoomed in on a small section of central Ohio, near Columbus. As you’ll see, the site provides an overlay that reflects how public land was surveyed.
When you’ve zoomed in far enough (or are confident the address search took you to the right place), click the I icon at right, then your area of interest. A popup gives the name of that land parcel, with links to various records. Click Patent to see a list of land records from that area. Each includes the patentee’s name, the date, land description and more. By default, these are listed with the oldest first.
2. Consider Advanced Search
If you know your ancestor’s name but not the location of his property, you can take advantage of the Advanced Search link underneath the search bar. Three tabs allow you to search on different fields: General for name, state/county and date; Land Description for the plot’s coordinates in the Public Land Survey System (i.e., a township, range and section in relation to a meridian); or Document Identifier such as survey number or document number.
I searched Jacob Roop with Franklin County, Ohio, as the location. To do so, I selected Ohio from the state drop-down, then Franklin from County. (Make sure you hit Update on each field to apply your selections.) That search generated several results. To narrow my results, I can click the blue tags at the top to change what kind of document I’m searching for. For example, I could remove everything except “Document Category: Patent” if looking for that type of record.
3. Review Details
The blue View Details button takes you to that an entry, including the patent itself if available under Image (either in your browser or as a downloadable image), data such as acreage and land office under Details, and any relevant files under Related Documents.
4. View and Download the Original Patent
Below is a patent for Jacob, John and Luke Roop. The icons at top offer tools for examining the record: zooming in and out (+ and -), rotating the image (square with an arrow), or annotating the document and highlighting text (the squiggly line). You can also print or download the image or order a copy from the Bureau of Land Management.
Tip: Click Help Center to access expert-written articles about the General Land Office’s history, its website and land-distribution in general.
Understanding Land Patents: The Rectangular Survey System, and What You Can Do With Them
Written by Nancy Hendrickson
Public lands were surveyed using a rectangular system. Unlike the original 13 states, where property lines were often described in “metes and bounds” terms, such as “10 paces from the black oak tree,” the rectangular system divided each township into 36 sections of one square mile each.
Sections were then divided into quarters or halves and named by their location within the section (a plot’s exact location is denoted by its “aliquot parts”). For example: the east half of the southwest quarter (“E ½ SW ¼”) of section 35.
How townships were numbered
Division of a section into quarters
Exploring the neighborhood
Once you’ve found your ancestor’s land patent, the search is over, right? Wrong. Now the real fun begins.
Remember how you’re always told in census research to write down the names of your ancestors’ neighbors? Those folks next door will likely show up later as in-laws, witnesses on wills or spouses.
The same principle holds true in land research. If you know who owned land around your ancestor, you’ll have more clues about your family. And you can use the search form to discover just who those owners were and where their land was.
Tip: Do a reverse search. Once you have the land’s aliquot parts, return to the search form and search by section, township, range and meridian. The results will include all people who purchased land in that section—your ancestor’s neighbors.
Becoming a map maker
It gets even better. Get a blank piece of paper and draw a square, then divide the square into quarters. Label the top right “NE,” the top left “NW,” the bottom right “SE” and the bottom left “SW.” Click on the land description for each person who owned land in that particular section, then divide each of the quarters you drew accordingly. You now have an accurate section map.
When you fill in your section map, be sure to write down the names of all the landowners. It’s like those census records — you never know what name is going to turn up in the family tree.
A version of this article appeared in the November/December 2026 issue of Family Tree Magazine. A similar article by Sunny Jane Morton appeared in the March/April 2023 issue, and the section by Nancy Hendrickson appeared in the October 2000 issue.
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