Josiah Howell Land Patent

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Never heard of a Land Patent? Most people never do unless they deal with a very specific land inheritance or purchase agreement.

Land Patent

“A land patent is an exclusive land grant made by a sovereign entity with respect to a particular tract of land. To make such a grant “patent”, a sovereign (proprietary landowner) must document the land grant, securely sign and seal the document (patent), and openly publish the documents for the public to see. An official land patent is the highest evidence of right, title, and interest to a defined area. It is usually granted by a central, federal, or state government to an individual or to a private company.

Besides patent, other terms for the certificate that grants such rights include first-title deed and final certificate. In the United States, all claims of land ownership can be traced back to a land patent, first-title deed, or similar document regarding land originally owned by France, Spain, United Kingdom, Mexico, Russia, or Native Americans.

A land patent is known in law as “letters patent”, and usually issues to the original grantee and to their heirs and assigns forever. The patent stands as supreme title to the land because it attests that all evidence of title existent before its issue date was reviewed by the sovereign authority under which it was sealed and was so sealed as irrefutable; thus, at law the land patent itself so becomes the title to the land defined within its four corners."

By Wikipedia.

The file to the right is a PDF document. You must have a PDF reader such as Adobe Reader to open these documents. Clicking on the link will open the documents in your browser window. You can also right-click the link and select “Save Link As” to save the document to your computer. The total file size is 6.33MB. You can view the documents directly from the Bureau of Land Management.

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