A Dictionary of Land Terms

• Abstract Books - List individual entries chronologically by district land office (Old Federal books are at Bureau of Land Management)
• Abstract of Title - Shortened versions of the documents affecting the title to land
• Acquired Lands - Federal lands obtained by purchase, condemnation or gift under laws other than public land laws
• Appurtenances - Things belonging to another thing such a yards and gardens to a building
• Appurtenant - An accessory incidental to land in which a person owns an estate. Such as an agreement or right f way across the land of another.
• Assigns - To transfer property, particularly personal or moveable property voluntarily or for consideration
• Benefice - A kind of land tenure adopted in the Frankish kingdom in the eighth century whereby a seigneur leased land to a freeman in beneficium (for his benefit) usually for the tenant's life but sometimes hereditary; later an ecclesiastical office to which church attached perpetual right of receiving income.
• Bounty Land Warrant - A right to obtain land, a specific number of acres of unallocated public land granted for military service. BLW or BLWT
• Caveat emptor - Let the buyer beware.
• Cestui que trust - A beneficiary of property held by a trustee in trust.
• Cestui que use - A person whose property was transferred for the benefit of another person.
• Cestui que vie - A life estate transferred to a person
• Chattels real - Rights derived out of real estate, devolved on personal representatives, not heir
• Close - Field or piece of land separate from others or from common land by a bank or hedge, legally unjustified entry into such is trespass (quare clausum fregit)
• Conveyance Deed - Transfer of property from one person to another.
• Copyhold - A tenure of land in England (feudal) abolished in 1925, when it all became freehold
• Corporeal Hereditament - Right to inheritance of tangible property, e.g. an estate in land
• Corporeal Rights - Tangible rights in property, such as an estate in land as opposed to "incorporeal" rights.
• Croft - A small parcel of land.
• Curtesy - The life estate of a widower n the lands of his deceased spouse, if he sired issue by her which were or was borm alive
• Customary freehold - privileged copyholds
• Deed - A document in writing, if signed and acknowledged by which an estate or interest in land is transferred from a grantor to a grantee, or donor to a donee if a gift deed.
• Deed Poll - A deed executed or signed by one person only, even though other grantors were involved, and in some instances the names of the grantees were added later.
• Demise - A lease, transferring from a lessor to a lessee a leasehold estate for a term of years, for life, or "at the will" of the landlord.
• Devisee - One to whom real property is given in a will. (Devisor - one who gives the property)
• Direct Deed - Pertaining to grantor deeds
• Disposal - A transaction which leads to the transfer of the title of public lands to non-Federal ownership
• Disseisin - The ouster or removal of a person from possession of real property.
• District Land Office Plat Book - A book of maps which show the location of the land of the patentee (In Cartographic Branch of the National Archives)
• Tract Book - A book which lists individual entries by range and township (in Bureau of Land Management)
• Donation Application - Application for frontier land in Florida, New Mexico, Oregon or Washington.
• Dower - After the death of a husband, a widow's one-third interest in his land for the rest of her life
• Easement - A right of way, right of use but not possession over or in the lands of another person.
• Eminent Domain - The right and power of government to condemn private property for public use if just compensation is paid the property owner.

Originally published in WCGS Newsletter (September 1997).