Wexford County Deeds, Part 2

Now I had a neat spreadsheet of land records I extracted from the Wexford County, Michigan index books. What should I do next?  There were so many deeds, and I was not equally interested in them.  Or, at least at the moment I created my list from the index,  some were more important to me than others.  I copied every one I could find for my names, just to be sure I would not have to go back over the books again. With such a long list, it was not possible for me to purchase copies of every deed. So I did what any good project manager would do, and designed a form to collect the information from the records, it looks like this:

You can see the information I was interested in, it pretty much follows the format of a warranty deed. Just to clarify, I recorded:

1. The date I was extracting the information
2. The date of the land transaction, this is usually at the bottom with the signatures and notarizing
3. My initials/name as the person who extracted the information
4. The location of the transaction, I actually recorded the county and state the deed was recorded in.
5. The Grantor, the person or entity selling the land.
6. The Grantee, the person or entity purchasing the land.
7. The names of the witnesses
8. The type of deed, warranty, quick claim, whatever it was
9. The date the registrar received the deed to record
10. The name of the Registrar
11. The location of the land, usually a county and township
12. A description of the land, varies with location but is written out in the deed.
13. Any notes I felt I needed to make
14. The “consideration”: what was paid for the land.

If you would like to use my form, I have posted an Excel version, and a PDF version. Please do not publish the form, just link back here and let any interested party download their own copy.

Tomorrow: How a filled out form looks. What did I learn?

With regard to my spreadsheet, Just a disclaimer, again. They are selected records only, not complete indices. There may be transcription errors. I searched the indices for family names, but many not have recorded every deed for every family. I recorded both the grantor and grantee for each deed, and created a spreadsheet of the results. I may or may not have further information on these transactions, but it will not cost you anything to ask, and I will share anything I have.