Creating Ownership Maps by Year

Say you want to use the deeds you have entered to show land ownership at ten year intervals. In other words, you want a deed map for 1810, one for 1820, and so on, all from the same deed file.  There are two ways to do this.

Method 1.  Use the “As of Date” filter

In each of your deeds, specify the sale date of the property by providing an “Owned until” value in the Deed Entry form, or a Til value in the Text View.  For example, you have a parcel that was bought by Joseph Jones in 1802 and sold in 1833. You’d use the Deed Entry form or Text View editor to specify

Dat 1802

Til 1833

To view land ownership in 1820 you type 1820 into the As of Date box in the toolbar and hit the Enter key on your keyboard, or click in the Plot View.  All parcels that have a Dat (i.e. purchase or grant date) prior to January 1, 1820 and a Til that is after that date will be hidden.   Parcels that were purchased or granted prior to 1820 but which have no Til value will also be displayed.  (You can enter a more specific date if you like, e.g.  6 Sep 1820.)

To clear the As of Date, select “show all years” from the dropdown list, or enter a blank value.  All parcels will then be displayed.

The As of Date filter is independent of the Deed Filter.  They can be used together or separately.

Method 2.  Use the Deed Filter.

To use the deed filter you add to each deed a "magic phrase" that shows the map years you want the deed to be shown in. Imagine, for example, you have a parcel that was bought by Joseph Jones in 1802 and sold in 1833. You’d want that parcel in the maps for 1810, 1820, and 1830, but not for any years earlier or later. To do this, add an MBL comment line like the following anywhere in the deed text, or in the Comment field of the Deed Entry form:

! 1810map 1820map 1830map

Note that the word 1820map is something that would never show up in a real deed. Pick your "magic phrase" to be unique. Other suggestions: *1820, #1820, =1820=, etc.

MBL lines beginning with an exclamation point are ignored by DeedMapper and have no effect on the plotting of the parcel. But the text on the line can be used by the Deed Filter to show or hide the parcel.

Once you have added this information to each deed,

  1. Open the View menu and select Filter
  2. Select the Custom filter type and set the text phrase to “1820map”. Press OK.

The Plot View will now show only those deeds containing the magic phrase “1820map”. By changing the Filter text phrase you can select other map years.

Press the Filter button Description: Description: Description: filter on the toolbar to turn off the filter and return to normal viewing.