Pre-1976 Grantor/Grantee Indexes

One are in which the new MassLandRecords is a huge upgrade over the old version for this registry is that the new version now includes all Grantor and Grantee Indexes from 1629 to 1976 which is when the searchable database index begins.  For the pre-1976 indexes, we have simply scanned the index books that have long existed and made the scanned images of their pages available.  These images have been available within the registry on the Public Access terminals for four or five years, but because of the size and number of images, we had not been able to make them accessible via our website.

Not only does the new site contain these images, in an upgrade that went into effect just days ago, you can now search for the page you need by name.  To try it out, go to "search criteria" on the upper menu bar and select "Pre-1976 Grantor Index".  From the date range drop down menu, select "1901-1915".  In the name field type SMITH JOHN and click search.  A set of names will be returned with a small arrow pointing to the name that is closest to the one you searched for.  The names on this list are the first name on each of the index pages.  Select the one that is closest to your name, click on it, and display that image which contains that name and all of the additional names on that page.  There is no hyperlink feature (yet), so simply write down the book and page number of the document of interest to you and switch to either the Book Search feature (for documents recorded since 1952) or the Unindexed Property feature (for documents recorded prior to 1952)