The "good deal" as genealogical evidence

Question

So many times I have been looking at a deed between a person and a potential relative and wondering, hmmm, is that price reasonable?  Did he give a really good deal?

It would seem to me that "good deals" are an essential piece of genealogical evidence, but it is impossible to know what is a good deal without context. Are there any compiled lists of average price/acre indexed by place and time period? I am especially interested in Colonial America.

If not, it may be faster than many would think to compile such data. Certainly cataloging every deed would be arduous and time-consuming. But a random sample of a couple hundred deeds would provide a reasonable representation of a collection of many thousands of deeds.

Comments

I've thought about this too. I think the data would be interesting.  What it tells you about a specific sale may be up for debate, but its still useful information.  Maybe the buyer was a great negotiator, or the seller was desperate, or originally settled on a poor piece of property. Even if its not an indication of a familial relationship its still a clue that tells you something that persons life.

Maybe Chase is right and the data is too variable to give meaningful insights, but you wouldn't really know until you actually looked at the data.

Answer 1

People arriving in USA in early days.would receive free

land grants.I suppose if they later sold there land.It would be

based on there value as too farming,trees .water.

Answer 2

The legal transfer of property by deed would be a high quality  "primary source". The amount of the transaction is not relevant to the quality of the source."

Comments

My question was not about whether deeds are quality sources. It was about trying to recognize when someone gave an exceptional good price on land, since that is a marker of possible kinship between the parties involved.

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Trying to prove a relationship based on the value of a land transaction would be a very unsound research technique. To assume a relationship connection, based on that information alone, would not be an acceptable standard of proof nor should it be considered anything more than an interesting fact. It is not a marker of anything other than the sale/purchase price.

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I think if the sale was for a token amount, it might indicate a relationship. By token amount, a dollar, schilling, etc. could give a strong hint of a relationship but it would then need to be verified with other documentation.

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George: I never said you would use such a deed as the only source of evidence to prove a connection. Of course that would be terrible. But we are all looking for as many sources of evidence as possible, as there is no "proof" in genealogy, only theories with supporting evidence.

I strongly disagree with your latter statement. Sales for 0 money (i.e., gifts) are strong markers of kinship, and are often accompanied by language indicating so. Sales for token amounts often are as well. So the question is, "what is a token amount"? If you sold a piece of land in colonial New England for 1 pound, that sounds like a token amount. But in some cases it wouldn't be. You need context, hence my desire for some data that could be used for comparison.

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Barry: I am not trying to be difficult but just honest with you. Your question suggested it was genealogical evidence. There is a standard of proof that is used by all major genealogical associations. To use it as evidence of relationship would be an assumption or at best a very low quality evidence, if it could be called evidence at all. I grant you that it may be an indicator of a possible relationship, but not evidence.

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I agree that, except in the case of gifts, it is generally not useful evidence in the absence of data like that which I have asked about. But there is no way for anyone to know if it would be useful in conjunction with said price data since it appears that no one has ever amassed such data. I’ve a mind to go through a list of deeds from one book until I find 200 that aren’t gifts and I’d bet a coffee and a donut that I could find a kinship relation between the individuals in the five cheapest deeds ordered by price/acre. If so, I would extrapolate to say being in the bottom end of such data would be useful evidence more generally.

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I think we are in sync now. I agree that most transfers of property with a nominal exchange of currency would be inter-family transactions. To use this information as family tree evidence would require further genealogical research in each individual case. Keep in mind that there could be other reasons for the nominal fee. I have seen many examples over the years such as gifts of land for public use and settlements of debt.

Answer 3

I don't think such a list, even if it existed, would be that useful, since (1) the value of property varies so much even in a particular town in a particular time period and (2) there could be lots of reasons other than familial ties for the stated consideration to be less than fair value.

The real "good deals" are the deeds that were commonly made to family members "for the love and natural affection I have for my son . . . " - ie free.

Comments

I agree that there will much variability, but I would hazard a guess that in a given place and time, the variability occurs to a much greater extent with expensive properties than cheap ones, since the presence of resources will affect the price. So it would be hard to identify a deed as “overpayment by a father to son-in-law” to help him out a bit when he sells a property. But more often I think these deals occur at the low end, buying land from a family member for a token, and I am not convinced the variability would be enough of a confounder among the cheap sales to render this idea useless.

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Barry, even if you could compile (or if someone else already has) a set of lists for various times and places, how can you be specific enough to make it useful?  Maybe a value per acre will tell you something, but how will you account for such things as whether a house was on the land, and if so, how large the house was, or whether the well had gone bad, or if there was an orchard or whether the fields were ready for planting or needed to be cleared, or any number of other factors?

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I would guess that the chepeast, say, 2% of sales would much more often be the result of kinship then a perfect storm of horrible factors like bad wells, proximity to a stinky tannery, etc. that would drive down property values. Many of these properties won't have a house at all, so the size of the structures won't matter much. I could be wrong, but nobody can know without trying.

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Well, if you try, I hope you will let us all know the results!

Answer 4

Another interesting problem with deeds is that change of ownership might not be recorded for many generations. That might be a regional thing but I've seen New Brunswick deeds that didn't get any changes recorded for nearly 200 years (when the property finally left the family).