Digitizing parcels from historic property deeds

[DanBreen]

I am trying to create polygons of property boundaries recorded on historic deeds dating back to the 1800s.  These deeds do not list GPS coordinates but rather reference a landmark or another deed and then give directions in degrees from that starting point to describe the remaining property boundaries.  In the absence of a map or aerial photograph with these reference points, I have run into difficulty digitizing and georeferencing these parcels.  Is there anyone who has more experience with this sort of thing who could shed some more light on translating parcels from historic deeds into polygons?  I have some aerial photographs available back to the 1940s, but I am concerned about the accuracy of making judgments from these photos.  I have contacted the county government where I acquired these deeds, but they were not too helpful.

[JustinMcCulloch]

Depending on the County/State you live in it shouldn't be too hard to obtain some more recent aerial imagery to help you along with the digitization process. Try asking your local county government for a copy of their aerials; they should usually be able to copy them over to a DVD (possibly for a price). If you have already tried asking your local county office for their ortho-imagery, check to see if there is a state website dedicated to disseminating geographic information of this kind. In Ohio, there is statewide imagery available at the OGRIP website: http://ogrip.oit.ohio.gov/

Good Luck!

Justin McCulloch

[Zeke]

With historic data with no readily apparent ties, you just do the best you can. Sometimes you can work your way out from an existing known good point, but you can end up having to adjust a lot of boundaries. Even then they may not match because of the quality and accuracy of the historic data. Another issue is whether you know if any changes were made since the old date - ROWs, easements, replats, etc. It can be hard to find this data, can also take a while.

The parcel fabric in the ESRI Local Government Model has an editing option to push boundaries to a historic layer when modifying or creating new ones, but that wouldn't help if you don't already have them in.