Land records do not always get recorded promptly and are usually recorded in the record books in the order in which they are brought to the courthouse. Generally most land deeds are recorded relatively promptly. There are always exceptions and the oversight is usually noticed when the property is eventually sold.

As a result a deed from the 1820s could be recorded in the 1850s, perhaps when the purchaser died. Sometimes the buyer forgets to record the deed initially only to find it stuck in a safe place decades later.

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  1. It may be even longer than that–in my family a farm originally deeded in the 1890’s has been passed to the current owner (a family member) through wills. To the best of my knowledge, no deeds have recorded the transfers through four generations and over more than a century. Tax records are a different matter!

    • Tax records are always kept up to date. In that case there have not been deeds executed at all–so there was nothing to record. In this situation the wills serve as the deeds. There is a farm owned by a relative where the has not been a deed since the 1860s–all transactions have been done through wills.

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