Search Alabama Land Patents by Township and Range
There are a few steps to searching and accessing these original records, but this is a wonderful resource for Alabama land records.
The patent records here are available in PDF format, so make sure you have the free Acrobat Reader installed before you start.
For this search, you need to know the number of the Township – if you also know the Range and Section your search will be quicker.
The number of the Township must also include whether it is north or south of the baseline (eg. 1S or 1N). If you do not include north or south you will not get any results.
Entering a Range number without the Township number gives one page of unrelated results.
While it is possible to enter just the section number, I do not recommend it as this results in many false hits and a lot of pages to sort through.
The results are given 6 to a page with no indication of how many results or pages of results your search returned. You must click through one page at a time.
The results are presented in tabular form with the headings, Select, Township, Range, Section, County, Meridian.
In the “Select” column is a small blue asterisk – click that when you have located the land patent you wish to see.
The next step is the disclaimer page – these images are for personal use and cannot be used as evidence in a court of law.
If you accept and check the box, you can select “view image” but there is still another page between you and the land patent.
This page tells you how many pages your record is, how large the document is and, if the document is larger than 45Kb, a note that the estimated download time is 15 seconds or longer on a dial-up connection. If you click continue, your record will pop up in a new window.