Land sales from the public domain were recorded by field employees of the U.S. General Land Office, state and local officials, and clerks of the Illinois Central Railroad. These records were transferred to the Illinois State Archives for permanent retention in 1957. Because the records are arranged by legal description, a database was developed to allow the records to be searched by name.
The database contains information about nearly 550,000 land sales from the 54,740 square miles of the public domain sold within Illinois. Each purchase entry includes the purchaser's name, purchase date, number of acres, price per acre, numeric code indicating the county in which the land is located, legal description (township, section, range), volume and page numbers of original entry, and variously, the sale type, and the purchaser's sex and residence.
| Cape Girardeau MO |
Union | |
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Pulaski | |
| Scott MO | Mississippi MO | Ballard KY |
