Dallas (Texas) County Clerk Website – Official Public Record Search, 1964-Present
by Suzan Younger
The Hon. John F. Warren is the County Clerk for Dallas County, Texas. His office handles a wide range of services as the custodian of specific records created within Dallas County, Texas. Private citizens, businesses, and county courts create documents required by law or regulations which the County Clerk records and maintains for public and private use. Laws and regulations change by time and place, with fewer recording requirements early in the county’s history. The County Clerk’s website houses a substantial amount of records which may interest genealogists. It warrants a thorough exploration. This blog article offers a starting point for research in the property records in the official Public Record Search database.
The Dallas County Clerk’s duties in 2024 include the following:
- County level courts; county criminal (misdemeanor) courts, county courts at law (civil), probate/mental illness, and truancy courts.
- Local registrar for vital records for thirty-one cities in Dallas County. Vital records include births, deaths, and marriages. The County Clerk records do not include vital records for the City of Dallas. The City of Dallas serves as its own local registrar and is on the first floor of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library.
- Issuance of marriage license and recording of them.
- Recorder of official public records, i.e. property records, military discharges (DD2-14).
- Trust account administrator for minors and incapacitated individuals.
- Ex officio member of the commissioner’s court.
- Collector of court costs and fines assessed in the misdemeanor court.
You can read about John Warren on the County Clerk’s website.
It is his goal to implement technology to create efficiencies to save taxpayer dollars and improve customer service. This results in a robust website, available 24 hours a day in a virtual environment and is a great asset for genealogists. To begin your exploration of this website, you can access the home page for the Dallas County clerk here.
Genealogists researching Dallas County, Texas, can access property records online and purchase copies at a very reasonable price. The records begin with the creation of Dallas County in 1846 and continue to the present. The “Official Public Record Search” website is the place to begin your search.
- You can do a simple or advanced search. This page gives you expanded search options.
- Choose to search for property records, assumed names, marriages, or marks and brands. For the purposes of this article, we will search for property records.
- Choose to search the index only or search the index and full text (OCR).
- NOTE: the records on this search page are from January 1, 1964, to the present.
- You can filter with a date range.
- You can view your recent search history from this search page.
- You can export all results as a PDF document for the price of fifty cents per page.
- There are two different views for the results items.
- There is a Help link on the blue ribbon in the upper right corner of the Official Records Search page. It offers a knowledge base resource, a live chat options for questions and a short product tour of the Official Records Search page.
Multiple filters are available once your search returns results. At the top of the results page, you can arrange the list of results by relevance, grantor, grantee, doc type, recorded date, doc number, book/volume/page, town, or legal description. You can also set the results page to show 25, 50, 100, or 250 items per screen. There is an option to edit your search criteria.
The next set of filters is more advanced and appears on the left side of the results page. They include the following options; the document types may differ by year.
Document type:
- Bond: payment bond
- Child Support Liens: child support lien, release child support lien
- Federal Tax Lien: federal tax lien, federal tax lien notice, release federal tax lien
- Financing Statements: financing statement, financing statement non STD, UCC (uniform commercial code), Ucc3 Non STD
- Hospital Liens: hospital lien, release of hospital lien’
- Plats
- State Tax Liens: not indexed (state lien), partial release of state tax lien, release of state tax lien, State tax lien
- Real Property:
| Examples (not a complete list) | ||
| Abandonment of easement | Abstract of assessment | Abstract of judgment |
| Addendum | Affidavit | Affidavit of Heirship |
| Agreement | Amendment | Appointment of sub trust |
| Acceptance | Assessment | Acceptance |
| Assignment | Assignment of Judgment | Assignment of Lien |
| Bylaws | Certified copy of probate | Contract |
| Contract of/and sale | Correction affidavit | Correction deed of trust |
| Certified copy of divorce | Dedication of street | Deed |
| Deed of trust | Extension | Extension of lien |
| FD | Homestead designation | Labor lien |
| Lien affidavit/claim/notice | Lien notice | Lis pendens |
| Mechanic’s lien contract/affidavit | Mechanic’s lien | Mechanic’s lien affidavit |
| Modification | Modification of agreement | Mortgage |
| Notice | Oil and gas lease | Order |
| Partial release of judgment | Power of attorney | Quit claim deed |
| Reinstatement | Release | Release of assignment |
| Release of judgment | Release of laborer’s lien | Release of lien |
| Release of lien claimed | Release of lis pendens | Release of state or franchise |
| Removal of trustee & appnt sub | Restrictions | Revocation of power of attorney |
| Sheriff’s deed | Subordination agreement | Transfer of lien/partial transfer of lien |
| Transfer of tax lien | Trustee deed | WA |
| Waiver | Warranty deed | |
Recorded Years:
- 2020-Present
- 2010-2019
- 2000-2009
- 1990-1999
- 1980-1989
The property indices and property documents for 1846 through December 31, 1963, are on the Kofile website.
- The Dallas County Historical Index Books
- The link for this website is on the “Official Public Record Search” page, on the top of the page in the yellow ribbon, just above the blue ribbon.
- We will discuss this set of records in detail in a future blog post.
Contact information:
Dallas County Clerk – Recording Division
500 Elm Street, Suite 2100
Dallas TX 75202
Phone: (214) 653-7099
Hours: 8:00 am – 4:30 pm, Monday – Friday except for court approved holidays
