New DGS Website Resources
We are pleased to announce a new collection that is available on our website: Dallas & Texas Resources for Researchers. This is a series of pages that provide information on a range of topics with a focus on the greater Dallas Region.
- Texas Land Ownership: This seven-part collection explains how land ownership developed and is documented in North Texas, with particular emphasis on Dallas County. It guides genealogists and local historians through original land grants, historic surveys and maps, abstract numbers, deeds, probate records, and modern title research – showing how these sources can reconstruct a property’s chain of ownership and reveal the people connected to it. The collection also examines the special laws and land-use protections associated with historic cemeteries.
- Early Dallas Records: This collection brings together transcriptions, abstracts and searchable databases documenting Dallas County’s people and communities from its founding in 1846 into the early twentieth century. Burial, marriage, deed, court, probate, tax, census and mortality records – along with guidance on historical street-address changes – help genealogists identify early residents, relationships, property ownership and significant life events. The collection includes more than 67,000 searchable records, including information on over 41,000 burials.
- African American Genealogy in Dallas – This page combines local history with practical research guidance for tracing Black families from slavery and emancipation through the twentieth century. It explores Dallas’s freedmen’s communities, churches, schools, migration patterns and changing neighborhoods, while directing researchers to valuable sources such as Freedmen’s Bureau and bank records, censuses, city directories, deeds, probate files, cemetery records, newspapers and archival collections.
We plan to develop similar collections on a range of relevant topics. If you would like to be a part of this project, please contact Tony Hanson at pastpresident@dallasgenealogy.org.
