Anyone good at locating land grant property by coordinates?

[Nate Riley]

The info y’all are giving me seems very close, I’ll tell you why. The property is supposedly within walking distance of Etha Baptist Church which my Great Great Grandfather donated and was a Reverend at. This location y’all give me is right there ! My Great Great Grandfather (grantee) along with the other heirs are buried at the nearby Cemetery. The last person to occupy the land was my Great grandmother and her husband in the early 1930’s and she move away until her death. The land was supposedly never sold or willed. I don’t know how taxes or back taxes play into it is why I’m gonna pay for title search in the said county.

My goal would be to put the issue to rest for other family members, either it still belongs to the heirs “forever” as it states in the grant, or it doesn’t.

All of the land in that area that Bill and I have laid out has been broken up and deeded many times. I tried looking at several of the parcels to see if any of them showed your family name (last name), but that seems to have predated them.

Do you know your great grandmother's and her husband's name? Was it Whitworth, by chance?

[Nate Riley]

This is going to be a "stringy reply", but it should be helpful:

1. Open this link: https://isv.kcsgis.com/al.cullman_revenue/
2. Accept the terms
3. Hit "go to map" on the left
4. Under "Search" on the left you will see "Section Township Range"
5. Enter this in the box exactly: 36-08S-02W
6. Hit search

That should take you to the section with all of the properties outlined. Reference Bills Map. It should be all of those properties on the far left side. You can click on the properties and at the bottom get to more details.

[Nate Riley]

This link hopefully will open one of the property cards. It is one of the ones a the top of the section (top corner). Scroll to the bottom and there are "Documents". There is a 1933 deed in there. Of course, only Superman could read it! LOL

https://cullmanproperty.countygovservices.com/Property/Summary?taxyear=2024&ppin=200014

[Nate Riley]

Ig

[Nate Riley]

Ignore the "turquoise" box that is just where my mouse ended up when I did the Capture. The blue box would be the quarter section (2, 1/8th sections to be technical) in question. The red circles are just the areas I was referring too.

Happy Hunting! When I was kid growing up on Florida, which is also a Government Survey state, I would go down to the court house and pull deeds with my mother and then for my mother once I could drive. Now you can do most of that stuff online.

[Bill]

Looking at Nate‘s post and the box showing where the original land grant was, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the property was seized and sold in a sheriff sale in the 1930s for back taxes. Somebody purchased that 160 acres and later subdivided it into the number of parcels that you see. There is one very small parcel on the south side of the road in there which could be an old cemetery? You should be able to find all of this out at the county, recorders office and not have to pay a title company – unless you really want to.

During the depression, lots of people just walked away from family land that was from the government in a land grant, and eventually the county seized it sold it. Somebody bought it, probably for pennies on the dollar of its value at the time.

I think Nate was a little ‘generous’ on the eastern side, the original land grant more closely was my yellow line the corresponds to those parcels.

Fun for me- I love maps and doing this stuff.

[Nate Riley]

Bill - I was just "boxing" in all of the parcels that he could like on that would in those to 1/8ths. I wasn't outlining them.

And I agree. Whether the family lost it or sold it, those tracts all appear to have been deeded several times since. The oldest deed I could see in the defined area was 1933, but its a pretty much illegible microfiche type document.

[Nate Riley]

Since we have gotten all "nerdy" on this subject, or at least I have. Here is an image of the "land grant" just for fun.

[Voodoo]

All of the land in that area that Bill and I have laid out has been broken up and deeded many times. I tried looking at several of the parcels to see if any of them showed your family name (last name), but that seems to have predated them.

Do you know your great grandmother's and her husband's name? Was it Whitworth, by chance?

Nancy Jane (Bryant) her husband Wiley Melvin Bryant, she is daughter of Austin H Williams

My grandmother woulda been Doris Williams (Bryant) last to live on the property in the early thirties

Would love to know which one sold it if not lost to taxes though 🤣😂🤣

[Voodoo]

Since we have gotten all "nerdy" on this subject, or at least I have. Here is an image of the "land grant" just for fun.

It sure is

[Voodoo]

Bill - I was just "boxing" in all of the parcels that he could like on that would in those to 1/8ths. I wasn't outlining them.

And I agree. Whether the family lost it or sold it, those tracts all appear to have been deeded several times since. The oldest deed I could see in the defined area was 1933, but its a pretty much illegible microfiche type document.

Thats about the time it was vacated, maybe illegible by design. The economic force behind those interested is insurmountable but it is what it is.

The story was someone tried to do something called a quick deed which was supposedly illegal in the county ?

[Voodoo]

Man I really appreciate y’all.

Really to quote my old man, “even if the family were able to reclaim all of this there would have to be a clause for those living on it to stay their lifespan”

Its just the way they roll

[Bill]

1891 Rutherford B Hayes was president.

Our 30 acres in Montana was part of a 101,000 land grant to the Northern Pacific Railroad. They got 10 sq miles of land to sell for every mile of track they built. The interesting part is they only issued NPRR odd numbered sections, which is why in Montana and other western states there’s a checkerboard pattern of private and BLM land which was never sold. Some public land is locked in by private land- not legally accessible unless you know the rancher

[Voodoo]

I get it, I’m definitely out based on the info y’all are giving me, I gots better things to do. I was just trying to look into it for elder members of the family.

I’ll take any info y’all obtain on this subject and I tell you what…THIS IS WHERE THE FORUM SHINES !

[Nate Riley]

Man I really appreciate y’all.

Really to quote my old man, “even if the family were able to reclaim all of this there would have to be a clause for those living on it to stay their lifespan”

Its just the way they roll

Interesting stuff. I clearly don't know the story at all, so this may very will be the case based on what you have said. But has the family been fighting this for a century or was there a fight back in the day? It seems to me that, particularly in that part of the world, there would have been a fight by the next generation or two if it had been seized or something.

Does your dad/mom have recollections of conversations with his/her grandmother (the last to live there) about it being taken inequitably or anything like that? I remember my grandparents, who were also Alabamians, talking about the Depression a lot.