Deeds

One of the best ways to discover information about properties in Transylvania County is by exploring deeds.  The County's Registrar of Deeds office has deeds (and other related documents) dating back to the mid-1800s.  Digging through deeds can be very time-consuming and can also be frustrating. In general, most of them will show the date, the parties, a description of the lot and/or buildings being transferred, and a reference to prior deeds that may have conveyed the property to the current grantor(s).  By reviewing this data, you may be able to trace property ownership backwards in time.  

A grantor is the person, persons or entity that currently owned the property and were transferring it to another party.  The receiving party is the Grantee.  Most of the time, the grantor is called the "party of the first part" and the grantee the "party of the second part".  

When reading a deed, it's particularly difficult when you trace back far enough to a point where the deed's were handwritten.  These can be difficult to understand because the old cursive writing was often (seemingly) written hastily, with extreme slants, and without much spacing. Copies of the documents may be faded in places, and the oldest ones were written in a journal style, where a deed might end in the middle of a page and another one begins immediately beneath it.

I wanted to help other historical researchers to find and trace Transylvania County deeds by offering some detail here to understand how to navigate the online search features.  It will also be helpful to share some tips about the entire process.  Before doing that, we should go over a few things about documents and the terms that are used.

Understanding a Deed

The most difficult part of a deed to decipher is the description of the property.  Let's look at one of the older deeds, from Deed Book 354 page 433.  This describes a second tract of land.  Many deeds describe various sections (or tracts) of property that were being conveyed.  Here, the description reads as follows:

TRACT 2: BEGINNING at the northeast corner of Lot No. 5 and the southeast corner of Lot No. 4, both being of the original plat of the Town of Brevard, in the western margin of South Broad Street, and runs thence with the line between said lots, N 64° W 87 feet to a street; thence S 26° W and parallel with South Broad Street 31.5 feet to a stake in the line between the Grantor and Paul Owenby, Jr., thence with said line and at a right angle to South Broad Street, S 64° E 87 feet to the western margin of South Broad Street, thence with said margin of South Broad Street, N 26° E 31.5 feet to the BEGINNING. 

Dissecting this, we can see that it mentions several things that we must analyze. 

• "Lot No. 5" and "Lot No. 4".  Usually, this is a reference to the original town plat.  BUT, it might be another plat (of a neighborhood, for example).  In general, for downtown buildings, it's most likely the town plat.  In this example, note the above section of the map where two of the properties in the bottom left corner are marked as lot 4 and lot 5.  Today, Lot 4 is the Fraternity Building (SBW12) and Lot 5 is the Rocky's and the Corner Market (SBW13).  

• "North 64 degrees West 87 feet" (abbreviated above as N 64° W 87 feet).  These are surveyor directions.  Look at the arrow pointing north in the above map section and imagine yourself standing in the middle of the street facing north.  If you then turned 64 degrees to the west (about two-thirds of a quarter turn to the left), you'd be facing right down the center of West Main street. Then if you walked in that direction, you'd be walking from EAST to WEST (not really, but it's how we think of the directions downtown; walking from the main intersection down West Main, we always think of walking west).  And if you walked 87 feet, you'd be at the place the surveyor wanted you to be. If you don't understand this, review the previous few sentences until you get it.  For simplicity, let's try to make it easier and summarize what it means:

  • North 64 degrees West = EAST TO WEST

  • North 26 degrees East = SOUTH TO NORTH

  • South 64 degrees East = WEST TO EAST

  • South 26 degrees West = NORTH TO SOUTH

It's easier for us to think of our directions this way because its usually how we think of downtown directions. Now let's rewrite the property description with each of the surveyor's  directions replaced with our own  interpretations:

TRACT 2: BEGINNING at the northeast corner of Lot No. 5 and the southeast corner of Lot No. 4, both being of the original plat of the Town of Brevard, in the western margin of South Broad Street, and runs thence with the line between said lots, go east to west 87 feet to a street; thence go north to south and parallel with South Broad Street 31.5 feet to a stake in the line between the Grantor and Paul Owenby, Jr., thence with said line and at a right angle to South Broad Street, west to east 87 feet to the western margin of South Broad Street, thence with said margin of South Broad Street, south to north 31.5 feet to the BEGINNING. 

We still don't know anything about where Paul Owenby's  property is, but by  following these new directions, we could pretty much draw the property and figure out that it's  SWB13a - the property where Rocky's Grill is today.

Finding a place to start

You can't just jump in and start to search a property's deed history without knowing how to describe your starting point to the County's web sites.  For this, you'll need the current owner's name or other information, like the specific deed book and page number where the present deed is recorded.

Deeds and plats (diagrams and drawings) are recorded on pages that are kept in notebooks.  These "notebooks" are called Deed Books and the pages are, well, pages.  They are often referenced as "DB 123/45" or "Book/page 123/45".

Here are the steps to find the current deed for any property in the county:

1. Go to https://gis.transylvaniacounty.org/portal/apps/sites/#/transylvania-county-hub-site/apps/072e71230d03460898f502e66961d5cf/explore

2. Select Tax & Land Records

3. Click through any screens that pop-up until you just have a big "map screen" (it may be all green-ish) with a small search box in its upper left corner.

4. Enter an address in the search box.  Use "S" for South, "W" for west, etc. when describing streets and go slowly as you type to allow the drop-down menu to make suggestions.  I usually just type in a known downtown address, like "12 E Main".  As I type, it will appear in the little drop-down menu and I'll select it there.

5. The map will zoom in to that address. Hold down your mouse button and drag the window around to move it. There are also options to zoom in, like using a wheel on your mouse.

6. Find the property you want.  The little "house" icons on a property have street addresses under them.

7. Click on the house icon of the property you want to research. a little window pops up with its address and a little arrow to the right.  Click the arrow.

8. On the next screen, you'll see more information. In the blue bar at the top, click the right-arrow.

9. On the next screen, look at the list of data for the Deed Book and Page number.  Write them down.  If you don't get this screen, if there's no second screen or if there's no deed/page number, then see if there are more pages to the right (step 8 above) and keep clicking until you find a page with a deed number on it.  If you can't find it this way, see if there's another little house icon on the property and choose that one.

Searching for Deeds on Transylvania County's website

Getting in to the County's deed search pages is easy.  Follow these directions:

1. Go to https://search.transylvaniadeeds.com/index.php 

2. Select Accept.

3. On the next screen, expand the Book/Page section in the left window pane

4. Fill in the deed Book and Page numbers and then click on Search at the top of the left pane.

5. On the next screen, select a date in the leftmost column. If there are many entries, look for the type to be Deed.  You can even see if the names of grantor(s) and grantee(s) are ones you might expect.

6. The next page shows additional information and a copy of the deed.  You can choose an icon at the top right of the deed screen (in the black border) to either download or print the page.

7. In many cases, "Exhibit A" is the third page description of the land.

If you can't find a deed, then it may be an older one - usually with a deed book number less than 100.  Follow the steps above, but add this step after Step 3:

3a. The Book Type field above the Book field, by default, says "ALL - ALL BOOKS".  Choose the right down-arrow beside it to see a drop-down menu.  Choose D-Deed Book.  

Finding the oldest deeds

When you can't find a deed, you'll have to dig deeper into the REALLY OLD archives!  To do this, you'll want to have a name to look up so you can begin your search.  Suppose that the earliest deed you found said that a property was transferred from M.A. Mull to John Smith, but you can't find any earlier deeds.  The only thing you know is that a person named M.A. Mull probably received it from someone at an earlier date.  All you know is the name of the Grantee - M.A. Mull.

To (hopefully) find a deed to M.A. Mull, you must go back to the county's lookup site at the point where you entered the Book and Page number.  

1. Below the Book/Page section, you'll see a section near the bottom called Old Index Books.  Open that section by clicking on it.

2. Click on the link for "beginning-sept_30_1960"

3. Look at the next page that comes up.  There's a place at the top to enter a page number, a second with the letters for the last names of Grantor's and another like it for Grantees.  Since we're looking for a Grantee (he received the property from someone) named M.A. Mull, choose "M" under the Grantee section.

4. Scroll the screen ALL THE WAY to the right.

5. The list on the right side is a list of images containing pages of the list of grantors.  If you want, zoom the image a bit to make it easier to read.  If you don't see MULL on the list, then keep selecting different files on the right until you find a page with MULL on it.

6. If you don't find MULL, you're at a dead end.  If you do, then zoom in and note the page number beside his name.  Scroll the page all the way to the left and, above the Grantor's list, type in the page number and select Look Up Page.

7. You'll see a new tab appear at the top of the page while the page you wanted is loading.

8. The next document shows a "General Index to Deeds, Grantees".   This is a handwritten list of deeds, alphabetically by last name.  Since you typed in the page number for MULL, you should see a list of deeds where MULL (not necessarily the Mull you wanted!!) received property as the Grantee. 

9. If you scroll the web page all the way to the right, you'll notice that you can scroll the list down a little to read all of it.  If there is more than one Mull, you might see his/her first names or initials on the page in the second and third column. You'll also see Grantor on each line, as well as the Book and Page number where the deed is located.

10. There could be many pages of Mull's.  After reviewing this page and writing down any books/pages you're interested in, scroll over to the left of the web page and you'll see a long list of links (files ending in ".tif - they are images).  If you found that the Mull page was, for example, Page 10 (step 6 above), then scroll down and find the file names that begin with "0010."  The page you were taken to was "0010.001.tif".  To see the next page, select "0010.002.tif" and so on.  Going through these pages will show you all of the pages where a Mull was a Grantee and you can then go (painstakingly) explore the books and pages you want to find. Just use the previous Book/Page option to find your deed pages and be sure to select the Book Type as "D-Deed Book".