Researching Chester County Land Ownership

Deeds are legal documents mainly concerning the transfer of land and property. They normally are between 2 parties, the purchasers and the sellers, but occasionally there are 3 or more parties to a deed. There are also Deed Polls, with only one party, the purchasers, when the Courts have ordered a property sale. These sales are organized by the Sheriff. The deeds associated with these sales are sometimes held with other deeds and sometimes in collections solely of Sheriff’s deeds. Researching Sheriff’s deeds is described in doc714.

There have been periods when a minority of the deeds were never recorded, especially in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Unrecorded deeds are often mentioned in later deeds for a property, and often continuous deed histories can be created from this information. The Chester County Historical Society has a collection of some of the unrecorded deeds. Additionally, in the early days, some Chester County deeds were recorded in Philadelphia.

A deed normally references the previous deed and so a chain of deeds going back in time can be obtained. These chains can be connected to 18th century deed histories that have been published for Tredyffrin, Easttown, Charlestown, and Schuylkill townships and are available on the the2nomads.org web site. This process can fail for a number of reasons such as inheritance, Sheriff’s deeds, and incorrect references.

There are 4 major repositories of Chester County deed information; the Chester County Archives, the Chester County Recorder of Deeds office, the State Archives, and the Mormon Family History library.

The original land ‘sales’ by William Penn and his family prior to the Revolution, and by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania after the Revolution, are called patents. The State Archives in Harrisburg holds these patents and online indices and plans are available. Researching patents is not covered by this document.

Deeds can be researched both online and alternatively by visiting the County Archives in West Chester (for deeds up to 1920). The Chester County Archives has an online index of deeds up to 1865. It can be found by going to Chester County Document Center, selecting Archives and Records, then Online Indices/Indexes, and then Land Records. This index is ordered by surname, then given name, and then date. The township where the property is located is also given. For example, here is the entry for a sale of a property in Tredyffrin by Peter and Mary Eager to Samuel Huzzard in 1795. It is in book M-2, page 148.

Researchers should be wary of surnames with multiple spellings. For example, Rickabaugh and Pennypacker are family names that appear in various places in the index with alternate spellings. It is worthwhile at times to search the index using the name of the party with the most consistent spelling.

The Recorder of Deeds records deeds and holds those after 1920. Deeds prior to 1920 are held by the Chester County Archives. The Recorder of Deeds also has two systems providing deed information called IQS Search and Eagle Web. IQS Search contains images of the deed books from the creation of Pennsylvania to June 1985 (deed book X65). After that date the deed books were only given a volume number. The numbering of the pages in IQS Search is not the same as the deed book pages so you need leaf through the book to get to the page you are interested in. No index is available for these books, so the researcher needs to know the deed book and page designation before accessing this system.

The second system supported by the Recorder of Deeds office is Eagle Web. This is a search system for modern deeds (since 1960). It uses the following search form which has been completed to search for Michael Bertram as the Grantee.

Note that names have to be in the form of {surname} or {surname}, {given name}. This search gives the following result:

Around 1950 a copy of the deeds held by the Chester County Archives was made on fiche. A copy of the fiche was purchased by the Mormon Church. In 2017 the Church, through its Family Search service, converted the fiche to images and published the deeds and an index online. A Family Search account is needed to access this service (go to Family Search to create an account). The Chester County deeds are found at: Family History Library

The indices are ordered differently from the Chester County Archives index described above. These deed indices have separate purchase and sale tables. The tables are ordered by the first initial of the surname, the first initial of the given name, and the date.

First select the second grantor index in the list (surnames D, E, F, G) by clicking on the camera icon on the right hand side of the record:

You will then get this list of the index records:

You then need to navigate to the required image. Use the View Single Image icon, shown by the arrow, to see the full image. In this case you need to get to image 177 as shown:

The tables are in the form of images so it is not possible to word search on them. Note that these indices include deeds up to 1920, unlike the Archives index. The township is not given in these tables. Copies of the deeds held by the Mormons only extend up to 1903 (deed book E-12).

Once a deed book and page has been identified the Recorder of Deeds IQS Search is the best place to access the deed. If you want to save an electronic copy of the deed then access the image on the Family History site using this record in our example with Peter Eager:

For the most recent deeds the results of Eagle Web searches have images of the deed attached.

The ideal starting point for deed research is the Chester County Archives deed index. Unfortunately, this index only covers deeds prior to 1866. If you are looking for a deed between 1866 and 1920 then the Family History site deed indices are the appropriate starting places. If a deed is dated after 1920 then the Recorder of Deeds Eagle Web should be used.

Mike Bertram, July 2019, latest edit August 2023.