These land records represent the transfer of public lands to private ownership. In most cases
they represent purchase of the land by individuals from the United States Government. Others
are the result of homesteading, Indian cessions or treaties, or bounty lands given to
military veterans.
This database of more than 225,000 records can be browsed and is based on the original raw
database of the General Land Office, a precursor to the Bureau of Land Management. You can
begin your search HERE.
The BLM is in the process of scanning and putting on-line all of these records for you to see
and print out for your own use.
The database this introduction is appended to may contain errors the BLM has corrected as
they double checked every record while scanning the documents. Once you have found an entry
of interest in this database, be sure to double check it against the BLM web site.
The county designation in this database represents what county the land is in today, not what
county it was at the time the individual took possession of the land, as county boundaries
have changed many times over the years.
You can view current county maps at the
Mississippi
Department of Transportation web site.
These maps show the Township, Range and Section numbers of each parcel of land in the county.
The map requires the free Adobe Reader, which is available HERE
if you have trouble opening
the file.)
Many special thanks to Joy Fischer and Tina Vickery for contributing the records below to give
us the Covington County
portion of the database.
