Land records: the titles office

One of my lingering undead ancestors is my great-great-grandfather James Bennett (1831-??). The next step in my research plan for him was to follow up on his land records.

I obtained the records relating to his initial purchase of the land from the Public Record Office of Victoria last year. They were interesting in their own right, but didn’t answer the question “When did he die?”.

The records I obtained didn’t cover his disposal of the land. For that, I would have to move away from archive research and into land title records. This sounded, well, scary. From my preliminary reading and general poking around online, it seemed like I would have to go to Melbourne and visit the titles office in person for such old records.

Easier than I thought

It turns out, this is not the case. Looking into title records again, I found that not only does the Victorian Department of Transport, Planning and Local Infrastructure provide an online database of recent title information for sale on their Landata site, they have also scanned in the older folios. For $10, a colour image of the old title information could be mine!

Obtaining the file was fairly simple. Search for the details of the property you want – various search options were available. Select the type of information you want. In my case, the historical title. Pay money. Get title.

In practice there was a little more complexity.

I couldn’t see any obvious way to determine which of the several folios listed against my very specific search was the correct one. I decided to take the plunge and just go ahead and purchase one. I didn’t find the correct folio on the first try, but I did find it before I needed a new mortgage on my own home.

I learned that in 1893 the small plot I was interested in was no longer owned by James Bennett. It had been combined with several others into a larger property under one new title by a new owner. I’m sure there’s some legal word for the process. I could also see a series of later transfers of that title through sale and probate processes.

The file gave several references to earlier folios – one for each of the Bennett family plots but again, there was no obvious way to tell which folio related to which plot. At least this time they were all owned by family members and so of some interest to me. Out came my credit card again.

$20 later, I had the folio I wanted.

It appears that the Bennett family members sold up their land in Bung Bong at the same time. I found that James Bennett, my research target, was still alive in 1892. Before that he was last been seen being discharged (alive and recovered) from Amherst hospital in 1883. While it would have been useful to discover a death date for him, at least I extended his known life span by nine years.

Now that I know how easy the title records from Victoria are to get, I will definitely keep them in mind for other family members I am researching. 

Look out credit card!

Land records: Don’t annoy the surveyor

When I ordered my first batch of land records, the one I was particularly interested to see was for my great-great-grandfather James Bennett (1831-?).

James has not been easy to pin down. Last year I confirmed that his parents were Michael Bennett and Elizabeth Ann Barnes.  I still haven’t confirmed the date and place or fact of his marriage and have found no record of his death. I don’t know when or how he arrived in Australia. So, anything I learn could be very useful in addition to being interested in the land transactions for their own sake.

Having seen very little of him in my records, I now have copies of pages and pages of handwritten letters from him. There are about 20 letters in his hand on the file. I can see that he signed his name as “James Uxbridge Bennett”. I hadn’t seen a middle name before.

What was in the file

I started working my way through his land file from the back, so that I could read it in chronological order. It didn’t start well.

First, an application form dated 29 September 1871 for a licence to occupy land. Then, a short note from the surveyor, Mr O’Leary, dated almost a year later on 27 August 1872 saying that the delay in surveying the land was caused by James declining to live on the land.

Whether this is true or a misunderstanding is unclear. At any rate, James Bennett must have annoyed Mr O’Leary:

“According to instructions the garden must be included, and if the Northern boundary be moved further to the South a portion of the garden would be cut off and doubtless on the representations of Bennett who is very fond of complaining, I should be ordered there again.”

While O’Leary delayed, new regulations came into force and James was no longer eligible for the 60 acres he had hoped for but had to be satisfied with 20. James also hoped that a water hole might be included on his land, although O’Leary recommended against the inclusion of the water hole on grounds of public convenience.

James was not pleased with the reports O’Leary gave of him:

“In answer to yours of the 7th saying that I declined to proceed with my application I beg to state that the Contract Surveyor  utters a most deliberate falsehood as I have been into Maryborough several times to get him to survey it and have also written to him.”

James persisted with enquiring after the land when nothing seemed to be happening. He succeeded in having the President of the Shire, Chairman of the Mining Board and two other mining board members write a letter on his behalf:

“As it was no fault or omission on the part of the said James Bennett that his application was not dealt with prior to the issue of such regulations we consider it would only be an act of justice to grant his application.”

A poor laboring man

Adding insult to injury, two large adjoining plots were granted to “strangers” to the area while James waited for the survey of his plot to be finalised.

“Mrs Mills and Fishburn applied for 200 acres each, including the land that I applied for and had it granted my application for 60 acres is refused and I am alloted 20 acres. So that it appears that the law is attend at Mr OLeary pleasure though I have been applying for the land for four years another party can get it because they are rich people and that I am only a poor laboring man”

I found his remark about being a poor laboring man interesting. He had come from a wealthy family and later in 1884 would inherit several hundred pounds from his father. I still don’t know how he came to Australia but had assumed he had some financial means behind him, perhaps not as much as I thought.

There was a lot more to-ing and fro-ing in the file over the detail of if he was really living on the land (yes, he was) and if he had fenced the land as he was supposed to (no, because OLeary didn’t finalise the survey to tell him what the boundaries were). The frustration of all the parties – James, O’Leary and the department - is quite apparent.

The officials from the department note on the file:

“It is much to be regretted that Mr OLeary’s transactions with the department are productive of so much trouble and waste of time. A recurrence of a similar unnecessary delay will be visited by a recommendation to have Mr OLeary suspended from working selector’s surveys.”

All up, the land file is 103 pages long with documents from 1871 through to when James Bennett was finally able to purchase the 20 acres of land he had been leasing in 1881.

 

This post is based upon information contained in a land file for James Bennett in the parish of Bung Bong (5188/49.4), held at the Public Records Office of Victoria.

Land records: A lot to take in

I received my DVD of digitised land records yesterday. Between the eight correspondence files I asked for there were over 250 document images. Needless to say, that’s a lot to take in.

I have confirmed that the Bennett records most definitely relate to my family and from skimming the files I have already had some insight into their life.

I wasn’t in the mood tonight for trying to absorb all that material, most of it handwritten. I will come back to that on a less busy day. Instead, I had a long overdue play with Google Earth and marked out the plots owned by my ancestor James Bennett and four of his six children. I must make more use of Google Earth!

Location of Bennett family land near Bung Bong, Victoria

Land Records: Finding the Bennetts in Bung Bong

In order to order land records for my ancestors, I first need to find out if they actually had any land, and exactly where it was located. In many cases probate and administration papers provide the details. When if came to my Bennett family I didn’t have that information, but I have been able to identify their land with enough confidence that I have ordered copies of the records.

There are gaps in my information about my great-great grandfather James Bennett. I only confirmed his parents to my satisfaction last year, but I still haven’t found a marriage record for him and my great-great grandmother, Catherine Lucy Darcy, nor any record relating to his death. As he was born in 1831, I’m pretty sure he’d be dead by now!

Until recently, the only clue I had that my Bennett family lived at Bung Bong – that this was a place likely to be of interest to me - was a place abbreviation of “BUNG” on the birth index entry for one of James Bennett’s grandchildren. Other places have appeared to be far more closely connected to the family.

The Amherst hospital records I viewed last year confirmed that James Bennett’s parents were who I thought they might be and also showed his family living at Bung Bong through the 1880s.

View Larger Map

The next clue to the land records was found in the Genealogical Society of Victoria’s Genealogical Names Index (GIN). If you are researching people in Victoria I highly recommend signing up to take advantage of the members only index, which in some cases even includes digitised records!

The GIN showed that there were several listings in the Victoria Government Gazette regarding the land holdings in Bung Bong of people named Bennett. The trouble was that although knew that my Bennetts had lived there, I could also see Bennetts who were not part of my family with land at Bung Bong.

It was only when I finally looked at the parish plan that I felt confident I had the right family and could pick out the relevant file references. The Bennetts I thought might be “mine” had plots adjoining one another, the other Bennetts were located elsewhere on the map.

I’m very curious about the contents of these land records and would wait by my letterbox on Monday for the records to arrive (or at least keep an ear out for the postman), if only I didn’t have to go to work!

Land records: Preparing for my first look

I’ve taken another first step. I’ve arranged to have some land records held at the Public Record Office of Victoria (PROV) digitised and sent to me. This is the first time I’ve looked at land records so I can’t wait until they arrive.

Archive envy!

Have I ever mentioned that I have a terrible case of archive envy? Whenever I see posts exhorting genealogists to look beyond the internet I think “I know!!! but I can’t get there!”

The archive most relevant to me, the Public Record Office of Victoria, is 600+km away and with small children the idea of making a research trip is a distant dream. I have used research agents occasionally to collect things for me but it can be hard to know exactly what to ask for when you’ve never explored archival records yourself. I guess I don’t feel entirely comfortable with something unless I’ve had some hands-on experience with it, however minor. Fortunately, the Public Record Office of Victoria has quite a few indexes online and some records (eg probate records) have been digitised and put online for free. I’m also slowly finding my way through their catalogue which provides a fantastic amount of very useful contextual information about each series.

Back to the land records

Between the PROV online guides, their brick of a Lands Guide (which weighs in at 1.2kg. Yes, I weighed it), and various other sources I have been able to find the “fractions” written on the plans that relate to the relevant correspondence files. I also now have some idea of the processes by which they acquired the land.

All this relies on knowing where the land is. In most cases I’ve found that information recorded in probate files. For some reason I have never followed up to see exactly where all these Allotment x Section y’s were before. I think I’ve scrutinised the detail of overseas maps more carefully than Australian ones, perhaps because I have a general idea of Australian locations but not such a good knowledge of Scotland, for example. At any rate, I got a huge kick out of it when I saw “J.W. French” written down on the parish plan right where it was meant to be!

In the case of my Bennett family, the process of discovering that they even had any land was a bit more circuitous, but I’m confident that the records I’ve asked for will be the right ones. I think that finding the Bennett land should be a separate post.