Searching Your ancestor in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Mid-West USA

This web contains the full description for land location in Saskatchewan, minimal for New Brunswick but enough to get you started, and very brief introduction for the Mid-West USA states.

1)  Saskatchewan:
2)  New Brunswick:
3)  Mid-West USA:

Many people came to Saskatchewan in the search for low priced land and were allocated a Homestead. If you know the land description then it is very easy to find where they lived provided that you have access to a map that is laid out in Townships and Ranges. An example of a land description SE Section 2, Township 38, Range 18, West of Third Meridian. This is often written SE2-T38-R18-W3 or SE2-38-18-W3. To understand this notation, each term needs to be explained:

Each Township is 6 miles in distance, North-South and each Range is also 6 miles, East-West. The layout of the Sections is as shown in the following Grid. each section is divided into NE, NW, SW, and SE, for the four quarters.

The Saskatchewan layout is exactly the opposite to the layout in the Mid-West, USA where section 1 is the top right and section 36 is the lower right

The Townships are numbered 1 starting at the 49 parallel or USA boundary and increase as one goes north-ward. Since the example is TWP 38 then the land is positioned 37 x 6 or 222 miles north of the USA border and (17 x 6) +1 or 103 miles west of the 3rd Meridian which is approx. the center line in the province. The easiest way to find this is to look at the maps(1975 Wheat Pool Map) shown in the following links. If your land description is in Townships 1-25, the lower portion is used, if the land is in Townships  16-62, the top portion is used. If the Township is from 16-25 then either map can be used.

When using the top portion of the map you will see numbers along the sides, these correspond to the TOWNSHIP numbers and the numbers across the top of the map correspond to the RANGE numbers. If you are using the lower portion of the map, the only difference is the RANGE numbers are at the bottom of the map.

Locations of MERIDIANS: The 2nd Meridian is located near the Manitoba border and the 4th Meridian is the Alberta Border, while the 3rd Meridian is approx. the center of the province.

Using the example land description of  SE2-38-13-W3 and going to the Top map, first find 38 on the left side of the map and 18 at the top in the section left of the center of the map. This gives the location W3. At the junction of two imaginary lines from 38 on the left and 18 at the top, gives the 6 x 6 mile block of land that you are looking for. In this case, the closest towns are: Landis, Cavell, or Traynor. A town a little further away to the south east is Biggar.

Township: 1-15 use Lower portion

Range: 16-26 use either Lower or Top portion.

Township: 26-62 use Top portion.

Additional maps of the area West of the 3rd Meridian and West of 2nd Meridian.  These maps were not rotated and the clarity may be better.

Saskatchewan Place names A - KENASTON and KENDAL - ZENON PARK

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New Brunswick Land location:

Searching for the location and where a person purchased land in New Brunswick(NB), is extremely difficult compared to the system in Saskatchewan which is layed out in a grid pattern whereas the NB system, is based on lots of various sizes that follow a transportation route be it land, river, or large body of water. There is a huge book(8.5x11), over 950 pages called "Crown Land Grant Index", NB(CLGINB), this is the main source that one must start with. Then you must have access to the Index Map for the whole Province of NB that shows a series of maps that cover the complete province based on what Parish and County they are located in. Each of these maps are assigned a number. The next thing you need is the actual Parish, County map that includes the location as indicated in the Crown Land Grant Index. The other major factor is that in Saskatchewan all transactions for land location are indexed and stored under the location of the land, whereas in New Brunswick, the indexing is done by the name of the person which is further made more complex by the fact that the person is either the Grantor or Grantee(Seller or Buyer).

Image of a page from the Crown Land Grant Index for Martin Carlow(see top line for Martin Carlow entry. John Carlow entry was on last line of previous page of CLGINB.).  Photograph taken of a portion of the St. Stephen Parish, Charlotte Co., NB map, arrow markers show the two lots shown in the CLGINB, one for John Carlow, lot 161 Mohannas Stream, St. Stephen Parish, Charlotte Co., NB, 0.00 Acres(must be an error as map shows 100.0 Acres), 3 August 1784, full details in Vol A, page 96. The second is for Martin Carlow, lot 202 Mohannas Stream, St. Stephen Parish, Charlotte Co., NB, 100 Acres, 3 August 1784, full details in Volume A, page 96. A photograph of the St. Stephen Parish, Charlotte Co., NB Map with arrows at these locations show what you would see.  Map section
If you ever need to search for who purchased any lot when a person disposes of it to someone else then you have even a more difficult problem. Land records are found at the Land Titles office for the County and from my limited experience, I had to pay to enter the area where the Land Title books were stored. Then you had to start from a known condition. Let's use the example that you have just inherited what you think is a lot of land that one of your relatives has given to you in their Will. You are about to do a Land Titles search to see if that piece of land is yours or maybe you have just inherited (1/n)th of the land if n is 100 people then you own 1%, if n is 1000 then you own 0.1%. However, you think that you own the land 100%. If the property is Heir-ship property that has been passed down through many generations then it is very difficult to find possible heirs. I'll give you a little example that is available in another section of this web but it goes like this. My wife and her siblings thought that they had inherited a wood-lot upon the death of their father as he had purchased it from a person who sold it to him. This transaction was recorded at the Land Titles Office as Deed, #76455, dated 21 May 1965(See Eben Getchell land search for details). My wife's siblings paid the yearly taxes and harvested trees from the wood-lot, then they found out that they did not have clear ownership and were advised to not pay the taxes and when the land went up for sale for back taxes,  they should purchase the land and they would have ownership. Little did they know that this would not give them clear title, as it would only satisfy the Gov't that had received the unpaid taxes. When all of their names were published in the New Brunswick Gazette naming them for unpaid taxes they were very concerned as owners of businesses, this was not a good thing so one of my wife's brothers paid a Lawyer to do a search to see what the status was on this property. It cost him about $4,500 to have a Land Titles search done. I did the same thing at a cost of $75 and learned a lot about the process required in a search. The steps are listed below.:
 

1. There are two sets of record books, one for the person selling the property, called the Grantor, The other set of books are for the person that purchased the property, called the Grantee. The records in the Grantee book also contain the name of the Grantor. This is where you must start is with the Grantee book you search for the name of the person that gave you the property in their Will. Once you find this record and determine the name of the Grantor then you are at the next step;

2. Now use the Grantor book to see if it adds any information to what you already have. Did they show that they purchased the property and from whom. If it was inherited then were they the sole person or were they only part of a group that inherited the property. Once it has been established that a person had clear title, then you work downwards to follow the trail of descendants to establish who has partial ownership. You have to contact each living descendant and either purchase their share or have them sign written release giving their share to you or your representative. Only when you have all living descendants portion of the properety either sold or given to you do you have the necessary information to provide to the courts and/or Land Titles to show that you have clear title. Many properties in NB today may not be owned by the person or their ancestors who has lived ther for many years, paid taxes on the property as they thought they owned it to find when a search was done that they were on Heir-ship property and did not have clear title and could not legally sell the property. A real mess in many instances, the Lawyers just love these cases.

These Land Titles Books of Indexes and Deeds are online at the Family Search website If you click on the link just shown it will only take you to the login page at Family Search then you will need to paste the text between the "" marks into your browser "https://www.familysearch.org/records/images/image-details?page=1&place=552831&endDate=1901&startDate=1901&rmsId=TH-267-11616-127190-75&imageIndex=2&singleView=true". The major problem with this site is that to find the item, requires a very careful search and when found, you need to bookmark it to be able to find it again when you need access. It has been a long time since I found this at the LDS, found it again

Some sample images of pages in Book for the name Jackson: image #1, Image #2, Image#3 Note: Images #1 shows left Column Grantor, Right: Grantee; Image #2 shows left column Grantee, Right : Grantor; Image#3 shows left Column Grantor, Right: Grantee. It takes a while to understand what each means and not to get mixed up but after a little experience it is possible to use these record and determine how and when land changed ownership.

These books have a special type of binding that allows the user to undo a couple clasps which allows the cover and pages to be removed up to the page that you would like to photo-copy. You carefully remove that page, take it to the large copy machine that can copy these pages that are 14x17 inches or there abouts. Then you carefully replace the page and the pages and cover and do-up the clasps. All the time you are doing this it is under the close inspection of Lawyers and other people who are doing to same thing as they are doing a Legal Search, you have only done a personal search. The difference from what I see is that in one case, you are paying someone $300/hr, or more, to do the work, or you are doing it for free.

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Useful Links:

Anyone doing research in Canada will find  ArchiviaNet extremely useful. See the Western Land Grant link for Homestead locations.

Last updated: 13 May 2021