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Heir and Devisee Commissions of Upper
Canada
When the early
settlers arrived in Upper Canada, they were given Tickets
of Location, which
were actually permission to settle on a particular lot of
land, to build a home there, and begin the work of clearing
the land. Deeds were supposed to follow within a year for
settlers who performed these settlement duties. However,
government being what it is, it was closer to ten years before
the matter of issuing the deeds was seriously looked at.
The original idea had been to issue the deeds in the names
of those original locatees, but in ten years, many changes
had taken place. Some of the first settlers had passed away.
Some had moved on. Others had transferred their land. Therefore,
the Heir and Devisee Commission was set up to hear the cases
of various settlers requesting deeds, particularly if they
were not the original locatee. In many cases, the ticket
of location lists the various transactions on that piece
of land, and therefore constitutes a record of the settlers
before the patent, or first deed, was issued, and before
the first entry in the abstract deed books.
,
Linda has compiled these records into multi-volume
sets. By
using
various sources,
such as
the
original registers,
the location registers, the judge's minutes and the lists
of clashes that occurred, she has extracted the pertinent
information for each claim, and arranged it all alphabetically
by the surname of the person requesting the deed. The
judge's minutes from some of the Midland District claims
in 1803 & Johnstown District claims in 1802 are included
in the publications, and they
sometimes
contain family information that is not obtainable in any
other source.
All
surnames
found in the supporting documents have also been indexed.
The first volumes
of each set contain the claims; each last volume contains
the appendices. These are a listing of all items in the original
register,
in
the order in which they appear on the film. In the case of
submitted
proofs, which were originally filed by the name of the
original locatee, there is also a cross-reference showing
which claim
these were submitted to support.
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