Do you have ancestors who homesteaded land as they made their way west across the country? You can track down those documents on the Bureau of Land Management website. You need to input the name of your ancestor and the location of the land (the state is fine). Your search will reveal the land patent details, patent document, and related documents. Check it out here:
Here’s an example from my research. My second great grandfather was a man named Henry Burdge, from Somerset, England. He immigrated to the United States and homesteaded land in Kansas. I never knew the exact location of the original property until I searched for the record on the Bureau of Land Management’s website. Here are the documents that appeared for Henry Burdge:
These pages show me exactly how much land he obtained and the exact location. The last document shows other nearby or adjoining property owners. This information confirms oral family history that said Henry Burdge was the first non-Native American settler in the area. It would be eight years before he could convince a woman to follow him there to live in a very special mud hut. Before larger towns developed, Henry called this area Burdgeville, of which he was named the postmaster. It is a few miles northwest of Colfax township. The post office was moved to Colfax in 1888 and what was left of Henry’s little town disappeared, but now I know where it all started.
No Bull Genealogy 