While the OnLand web site has the abstract book images, those are not of the original abstract books. And OnLand does not have images of the copy books of the actual Instruments -- just the abstracts which list each transaction on one line. In addition, OnLand is more complicated to navigate to find the books for your township. (NEITHER FamilySearch nor OnLand have name searches. The abstract books are organized by property.) So, FamilySearch is the preferred site to use for Ontario land record searches. This web page gives instructions for how to use FamilySearch for such searches.

The Example Search uses the same case study that my OnLand search instructions web page uses, so that a side-by-side comparison can be seen.

1. Search the FamilySearch catalog for records of your township.

   The first thing you need to know to do is to search the FamilySearch catalog for all records of your township.

   Go to the FamilySearch web site and click on "Search" at top left and choose "Catalog" from the pulldown menu.

   On the FamilySearch Catalog web page, in the "Place" text box, start typing the name of the township you seek. This will automatically start giving you a pulldown list of places in the catalog from which to choose. You do need to choose from their list, so that you go to the correct location. In the case of Ernestown Township, the place name FamilySearch uses pops up as "Canada, Ontario, Lennox and Addington, Ernestown Township". So choose that from the pulldown list, and then click the "Search" button".

   Land records were held at the county level and not the township level. So, you will not see any land records in this search. But up above the list of records, you will see a gray box that has the "Part of" location, which will be the county. Click on the name of the county in the "Part of" box. For Ernestown Township", it reads "Part of Canada, Ontario, Lennox and Addington" with all but the words "Part of" in blue. So click on "Canada, Ontario, Lennox and Addington". (That is not the name of two counties but of the single county whose actual name is "Lennox and Addington".)

   Now you will see "Land and Property" in the list of record types. Click on that.

   The click will expand the list to give the specific holdings. Some of these may be books or other sources not available online. What you want are the ones that have the county as the author. For Lennox and Addington County, the county is the author on these entries:

   • Abstract index books, ca. 1800-1959
   • General register, 1865-1911
   • Land records of Lennox and Addington County, 1799-1955

   Since we know that Robert Harrison owned land in Ernestown Township in the 1820's, the General Register may not be relevant for our search. But the other two books are very relevant.

2. Search the abstract book for the Concession and Lot of interest.

   Click on the title of the Abstract book entry in the list. This will take you to the list of townships. You will need to have set up a free FamilySearch account and be logged into it in order to see the images. Click on the camera icon for your township.

   You now see the microfilm reel images. At the upper left of the image is a vertical control box, with a "+" and a "-" and two more icons. The third icon will either be eight white boxes in a grid or will be a stylized document with its upper right corner turned down.

   I prefer to first have the global view of what is in this collection. So I click on the grid (if it was not the option already being used) in order to see the grid view of the entire collection. I use the "-" in the control box to minimize the size of the individual images and then scroll down through all of them. In the grid view, I first look to see if the collection is all in one group or not. The way to do this is to look for images with more black background showing than in the document images. The black background shows most where separate items in the collection begin or end. If there is more than one item, I need to know which item I need for my search. In the case of the Ontario land records, almost every collection is a single item, so that this is not really needed, but I check just to make sure.

   I then click on a random image of about where I think my record might be. The abstract books are by Concession and Lot. But because of overflow of entries, the later pages are often continuations of earlier pages. The earlier pages have all the lots on consecutive pages, which makes it very easy to search adjacent townships in the same concession to see if there might be a relative nearby.

   So, I click some individual image, and it opens that page, and I see that I am on page 203 which is Concession V, Lot 15. I want Concession VI, Lot 41. So in the image number box at top left and change the image number from this image's 110 to 155 and press the Enter key. That takes me to page 291 which is the right Concession VII lot 16. Since I see that each image has 2 lots, I want to go from VII-16 to VI-41 so that I have to use a slightly lower number, and since I think there are about 43 lots in Concession VI, that is a difference of about 18 lots or 9 images. So I change the 155 to 146 and press Enter. And there is VI-41.

   What I need to do now is find all the transactions for Robert Harrison, noting the Instrument date, which is when it actually happened (as opposed to the date it was later recorded). Here are all of his entries, in the order that they appear in the book (the order by date recorded):

   • E 932 - May 9 1828 - David Fraser to Robert Harrison - 50 acres for 50 pounds, being part of the north end of the lot
   • No. 1483 - Feb 25 1834 - Margaret Brown to Robert Harrison - 10 acres for 40 pounds, being a part of the lot
   • G 1690 - Feb 2 1836 - Robert Harrison to John Livingston - 50 acres for 100 pounds, being a part of the lot
   • G 1758 - June 15 1835 - Robert Harrison to David Fraser - 10 acres to 40 pounds, being a part of the lot

   Note that the last transaction is the third and not the last one, since the transactions were not recorded in the same order that they were made.

   For the case study, we are done: we know that Robert Harrison left 2 Feb 1836. (He may have left sooner and completed the sale from afar.) But we can go further and look up the image of that last transaction to see specifically what the legal description was for that part of the lot being sold -- which had been the family's home since 1828. So now we look for book G, Instrument 1690.

3. Extra: Find the copy book image(s) of the Instrument.

   The details of each transaction were copied into copy books, which are now held at the Archives of Ontario. While the images found in this section are images of the copy book transcriptions and not of the original records, the copy books do contain all of the relevant information in the instrument.

   We have to go back to the list of land and property records for Lennox and Addingtion County and this time click on the name "Land records of Lennox and Addington County, 1799-1955".

   We want book G for a record in 1836. So click on the camera icon for "Addington (Lennox and Addington County) (v. G) 1835-1842".

   Choosing a random image to view, I wind up at image 185, which is for Instrument 1998. I want 1690, which is 308 pages and thus 154 images less. So I change 185 to 31 for the image number. That is Instrument 1701. So, I jump to image 25, and there is the Instrument.

   And it shows that Robert's 50 acres are "butted and bounded" as follows: "Commencing in the front [WJ: the side of the Concession toward the Lake, i.e. the South side] of the said Concession at the South East angle of the Said lot then North twenty four degrees thirty minutes twenty Six Chains thirty four Links, more or less, to the one fourth of the length of the Said Concession, then South Sixty five degrees thirty minutes West, Nineteen Chains, more or less to the limit between lots numbering forty one and forty - then South twenty four degrees thirty minutes East, twenty Six Chains thirty four links more of less to the allowance for road in in front of the Said Concession - then North Sixty five degrees thirty minutes East Nineteen Chains, more or less to the place of Beginning".

   I would have to look up how many feet/meters the chain and link measures equal. But it is clear that the lot was the full southernmost part of the lot along the concession road. The dimensions north and south are the same (twenty Six Chains thirty four Links). And the east and west side measures are the same (Nineteen Chains). So the lot was a rectangular shape. The key text is that the initial northern measurement from the SE corner of the lot is "one fourth of the length of the Said Concession". So this lot could really be identified simply as the South 1/4 of the lot. This means that the remark notation in the abstract record that says (via ditto) "pt. N. End" is not correct.