North Dakota Genealogy

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North Dakota Genealogy Research Guide

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North Dakota Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

North Dakota is a young state built on federal land. Almost everyone who farmed here arrived after the railroads did, took their land from the United States government rather than from a colonial proprietor, and left a paper trail that runs through federal land offices as much as through county courthouses. That single fact — that this is public-domain country — shapes nearly every part of the research, and it means the homestead file is often the richest document a family left behind.

• Capital: Bismarck. The capital of Dakota Territory was Yankton from 1861 until it was moved to Bismarck in 1883, and Bismarck remained the capital at statehood.
• Statehood: November 2, 1889. North and South Dakota were admitted the same day under the Enabling Act of February 22, 1889, and President Harrison had the two proclamations shuffled and covered before he signed so that no one could say which was signed first. North Dakota is conventionally counted the thirty-ninth state because it comes first alphabetically.
• Counties: 53. Pembina County, organized in 1867, is the oldest; Grant County, created in 1916, is the last. Dozens of territorial counties were created, renamed, merged, or abolished between 1861 and statehood, so a county name in an early record may not mean what it means today.
• Land type: North Dakota is a federal (public-domain) state, not a state-land state. Land was surveyed on the rectangular system of township, range, and section — most of the state from the Fifth Principal Meridian — and passed from the United States to individuals through federal land offices under the homestead, preemption, timber culture, and desert land laws, or was sold by the railroads that had received it as a federal grant. Original title is therefore documented in federal records, not state ones, and only later transfers appear in the county deed books.
• Nickname and motto: the Peace Garden State, also called the Flickertail State and the Roughrider State; the motto is "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable."
• Where records live: deeds are recorded by the county Register of Deeds; civil cases, divorces, naturalizations, and (since 1995) probate are with the Clerk of District Court. The State Archives in Bismarck holds originals or microfilm of a great many county records. No city keeps its vital records separately from the rest of the state.

Libraries and Archives

The State Archives in Bismarck is the hub of North Dakota research and holds far more county material than the courthouses themselves; the two universities hold the manuscript and ethnic collections that make the difference for immigrant families. The principal repositories include:

• State Archives, State Historical Society of North Dakota (Bismarck) — the central repository: county naturalization records, pre-1925 marriage records, probate and court records on microfilm, state census schedules, military service and bonus records, newspapers, and manuscript collections.
• North Dakota State Library — state documents, county and local histories, and genealogy reference material.
• NDSU Archives and the Institute for Regional Studies, North Dakota State University (Fargo) — regional manuscripts and a set of free searchable databases indexing North Dakota naturalizations, the 1885 territorial census, and Cass County marriages.
• Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, NDSU Libraries — the leading archive for the Black Sea and Volga German families who settled the south-central counties: village histories, church books, family papers, obituaries, and oral histories.
• Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota (Grand Forks) — manuscripts, county records, the Grand Forks County marriage and coroner indexes, and the Arne G. Brekke Bygdebok Collection of Norwegian farm and district books.
• Germans from Russia Heritage Society (Bismarck) — a membership society with village research files, translations, and a genealogy library.
• North Dakota State Genealogical Society and the Red River Valley Genealogical Society — statewide and regional societies with indexes, publications, and local expertise.
• National Archives at Kansas City — the federal records for North Dakota, including federal court and naturalization records and the Indian agency records for the state's reservations.
• Region 3 Archives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at Luther Seminary — the congregational records of closed North Dakota Lutheran churches, the single largest body of church records for the state.
• Norwegian-American Historical Association — the leading archive for Norwegian immigrant families, whose papers and church material reach deep into North Dakota.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive North Dakota microfilm and digital collections, and county Registers of Deeds, Clerks of District Court, tribal offices, and county historical societies hold records for their own areas.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized North Dakota records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($).

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of North Dakota census, marriage, naturalization, and cemetery records.
• Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records — free; the searchable index and patent images for every piece of federal land granted in North Dakota. In a public-domain state this is the first place to look, not the last.
• Ancestry ($) — North Dakota census, vital, naturalization, probate, and border-crossing collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — North Dakota death, marriage, and divorce indexes and censuses.
• Findmypast ($) and Fold3 ($) — census and record collections, and digitized federal military files.
• Digital Horizons — free; photographs, documents, oral histories, and local records contributed by North Dakota libraries, archives, and museums.
• State Archives online databases — free; searchable indexes to North Dakota naturalizations, pre-1925 marriages, and other state record series.
• NDSU searchable databases — free; the statewide naturalization index, the 1885 Dakota Territory census index, and the Cass County marriage index.
• Chronicling America — free; the Library of Congress newspaper archive, with a large run of North Dakota papers.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized county histories, territorial law books, and published rosters.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.

Law and Government

North Dakota's law begins with the statutes of Dakota Territory, and because the territory legislated for both future states, the same volumes serve researchers on either side of the line. The Legislative Assembly has digitized the historical codes, which makes this one of the easier states in which to read the law that produced the records.

• The historical codes and constitutions portal of the North Dakota Legislative Branch links page images of the territorial and early state codes, including the Revised Codes of the Territory of Dakota (1877) and the Annotated Revised Codes of the Territory of Dakota (1883), the Revised Codes of North Dakota of 1895, 1899, and 1905, and the Compiled Laws of 1913.
• The territorial codes are also free on HathiTrust, including the 1877 Revised Codes, and the session laws of the territorial and early state legislatures are digitized on HathiTrust and the Internet Archive.
• Laws worth knowing because they created records: the requirement of a marriage license from 1890; the health statistics act of 1907, which established statewide registration of births and deaths; the 1925 law bringing marriage registration under the state; the federal homestead, preemption, and timber culture acts that governed land entry; and the 1991 legislation that abolished the county courts.
• George W. Kingsbury's History of Dakota Territory is free on the Internet Archive and is the standard narrative of the territorial government, its officers, and its counties.
• The North Dakota Century Code is the current compilation, and the reported decisions of the North Dakota Supreme Court, which dates from statehood in 1889, are available through the North Dakota Courts.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Civil registration came late to North Dakota and it came unevenly. Statewide registration of births and deaths began in 1907 and was not generally complied with until about 1924; a scattering of counties kept birth and death records from 1893, but the years between 1894 and 1920 are patchy everywhere, and for a family that arrived, homesteaded, and buried its dead before the First World War there may be no civil record at all. Church registers, cemetery records, obituaries, and the state censuses have to carry the work instead.

Marriages and divorces. Marriage records were kept at the county level from territorial days, and a license was required from 1890; the county judge, and later the county court, issued and recorded them. Statewide marriage registration began on July 1, 1925, which is the dividing line: earlier marriages are found in the county and in the State Archives, later ones with the state. Divorce was and is a district court matter, and the state began collecting divorce records in 1949.

Access. Certified copies are restricted to the person named on the record and to close family or authorized representatives, and a fee applies; order from North Dakota Vital Records or from the county. North Dakota is unusually generous with deaths, however: the state runs a free public death index covering deaths from 1892 onward, which is the fastest way to fix a date and county before ordering anything.

• Deaths: the free North Dakota Public Death Index (1892 onward), and the certificates themselves in North Dakota State Death Certificates, 1908–2007 ($).
• Marriages: North Dakota County Marriages — free on FamilySearch, with images of the county registers; the State Archives' free pre-1925 marriage index, which covers most counties; and North Dakota Select County Marriage Records, 1872–2017 ($).
• Births: there is no comprehensive public birth index. Births from 1907 are ordered from the state or the county; for births before registration, look to church baptismal registers, the 1915 and 1925 state censuses, and delayed birth certificates filed later in life.
• County indexes: the free NDSU Cass County marriage index and the University of North Dakota's Grand Forks County marriage and coroner indexes are models of what individual counties have put online.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped North Dakota's jurisdictions and records:

• 1797 — Fur traders build the first posts near Pembina; the Pembina settlements become the oldest European community in what is now the state.
• 1803 — The Louisiana Purchase brings the Missouri River country into the United States. The Red River valley in the northeast drains north to Hudson Bay and remains British.
• 1804–1805 — Lewis and Clark winter at Fort Mandan among the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the Missouri.
• 1818 — A convention with Britain fixes the boundary at the forty-ninth parallel, bringing the Pembina country into the United States.
• 1861 — Dakota Territory is created on March 2, with its capital at Yankton.
• 1862–1864 — The Dakota War spills west, and the Sibley and Sully expeditions campaign across the plains.
• 1867 — Pembina County, the first county in what is now North Dakota, is organized.
• 1873 — The Northern Pacific Railway reaches the Missouri at Bismarck. The territorial legislature creates dozens of paper counties the same year.
• 1876 — The Seventh Cavalry rides out of Fort Abraham Lincoln for the Little Bighorn.
• 1878–1886 — The Great Dakota Boom: the first great wave of homesteaders fills the eastern half of the territory, and the bonanza farms rise in the Red River valley.
• 1883 — The territorial capital is moved from Yankton to Bismarck.
• November 2, 1889 — North Dakota is admitted to the Union, along with South Dakota, on the same day.
• 1898–1915 — The second homestead boom fills the western counties, carried by Norwegians and by Germans from Russia.
• 1907 — Statewide registration of births and deaths begins.
• 1915–1919 — The Nonpartisan League takes control of state government and founds the Bank of North Dakota and the State Mill and Elevator.
• 1930s — Drought and depression drive tens of thousands of people out of the state; a family that vanishes from the record in these years has usually moved, not died.
• 1947–1953 — The Garrison Dam is built on the Missouri. Some 152,000 acres of the Fort Berthold bottomlands are taken and flooded under Lake Sakakawea, and around 325 families of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara are removed from the river valley that had been their home for centuries.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses. Coverage of what is now North Dakota is thin until the territory was organized. A few Pembina-area settlements appear in the 1850 Minnesota Territory census; in 1860 the forts and settlements were enumerated partly under Nebraska Territory and partly as unorganized Dakota; and the 1870 and 1880 censuses cover the northern counties of Dakota Territory. The 1890 federal census was destroyed, and its loss falls exactly on the peak of the first homestead boom — which is why the state censuses matter so much here. From 1900 through 1950 the state is covered normally. The censuses are free on FamilySearch and on the National Archives 1950 census site, and are searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

Territorial and state censuses. The territorial legislature ordered a census every five years from 1880, but the early schedules did not survive; the 1905 schedules are believed to have burned. Three enumerations are the ones that count, and each does a different job:

• 1885 (Dakota Territory): the earliest surviving enumeration for most of the state, taken four years before statehood. It gives name, age, birthplace, and occupation, and it catches the homesteaders of the Great Dakota Boom in the gap between the 1880 and the destroyed 1890 federal censuses. NDSU hosts a free index to the northern half of Dakota Territory, and the schedules are on Ancestry ($).
• 1915: the first true state census and the earliest to survive complete. It names every resident of the state as of April 1, 1915, records birthplace and years of residence in the United States and in the state, and so is the fastest route from a North Dakota farm back to an immigrant's country of origin. It is free on FamilySearch.
• 1925: the last state census, taken as of April 1, 1925. It names every resident, gives exact ages rather than age brackets, and — the detail that makes it invaluable for immigrant families — states whether each person was a citizen, which points directly to a naturalization file. It is free on FamilySearch.

Substitutes. The Indian census rolls, taken annually on the reservations from 1885 to 1940, enumerate people the state and federal censuses often handled poorly, and for Native families they are the census. Beyond them, the best substitutes are the federal land records — a homestead entry places a family on a named quarter-section in a named year as precisely as any census — together with city directories, county plat books and atlases, and county assessment rolls.

Church Records

With no civil registration worth the name before 1907, the church register is the vital record for most of North Dakota's settlement era. The state was overwhelmingly Lutheran and Catholic, and the denomination usually follows the nationality: Norwegians and German Lutherans on one side, Germans from Russia divided between Catholic and Protestant parishes, and Ukrainians and other eastern Europeans in the Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches of the west.

• Lutheran — by far the largest body, split in the settlement era among Norwegian and German synods. Records of congregations that have closed are held by the ELCA Region 3 Archives at Luther Seminary, which holds the church books of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota congregations reaching back to the 1840s; records of congregations still active normally remain with the congregation. Many are also indexed in Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Church Records, 1781–1969 ($).
• Roman Catholic — the state is divided between the Diocese of Fargo in the east and the Diocese of Bismarck in the west. Baptismal, marriage, and burial registers are generally kept at the parish; the diocesan chancery can say which parish served a given township and what became of a closed one.
• German-Russian parishes — the Catholic and Evangelical congregations of Emmons, McIntosh, Logan, and the surrounding counties are the key to those families. Their registers, and the church books of the Black Sea colonies they came from, are collected and translated by the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection and are searchable free through the Odessa German-Russian genealogical library.
• Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist congregations were fewer but served the towns and the railroad settlements; Mennonite and Hutterite communities kept their own careful records; and Russian Orthodox and Ukrainian Greek Catholic parishes served the Ukrainian settlements of the west.

Congregational registers, parish histories, and anniversary books are cataloged county by county in the FamilySearch Catalog, and many are digitized on Digital Horizons and held in manuscript at the State Archives.

Court Records

North Dakota's courts are simpler than those of the older states, but one change in the 1990s matters a great deal, because it moved an entire class of records from one courthouse office to another.

• Territorial courts (1861–1889) — the district courts of Dakota Territory handled civil and criminal cases and naturalizations, and probate courts handled estates. Their surviving records are largely at the State Archives.
• District Court, since statehood — the trial court of general jurisdiction, sitting in each county. The Clerk of District Court holds civil and criminal case files, divorces, and pre-1906 naturalizations.
• County Court, from statehood until 1995 — the court of probate, guardianship, and small claims, and the office that issued marriage licenses. The legislature abolished the county courts effective January 1, 1995 and folded their business into the District Court.
• Supreme Court, from 1889 — the appellate court; its reported decisions often set out family relationships in land and estate disputes.

In practice this means that an estate settled before 1995 was a county court matter and one settled afterward is a district court matter, but both are now sought from the Clerk of District Court, with older volumes and case files frequently at the State Archives. Information on the modern courts is available from the North Dakota Courts.

Ethnic/Minority Records

North Dakota was settled in living memory by people who mostly arrived speaking something other than English, and the state's population is unusually easy to sort by origin. Knowing which group a family belonged to, and which county it landed in, points straight at the records that will document it.

• Norwegians and other Scandinavians. Norwegians were the largest immigrant group in the state, concentrated in the Red River valley and the eastern counties, with Swedes, Danes, and Icelanders alongside them. The record trail runs through Norwegian Lutheran congregational books, the Norwegian-American Historical Association, and — the step most researchers miss — the bygdebøker, the Norwegian farm and district books that trace the families of a home parish back for generations. The University of North Dakota holds one of the largest bygdebok collections in the country. A distinct Icelandic settlement grew up around Mountain, in Pembina County.
• Germans from Russia. The second great immigrant population, and the one that gives south-central North Dakota its character: Black Sea and Volga German families who had farmed in the Russian Empire for a century before coming here, settling Emmons, McIntosh, Logan, Stutsman, and the counties around them. They are exceptionally well served: the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection at NDSU and the Germans from Russia Heritage Society hold village files, church books, and family histories; the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia and the free Odessa digital library carry the search back from the North Dakota township to the colony on the Black Sea.
• Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. The Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, whose earthlodge villages on the Missouri were the oldest settled communities in the state and whose bottomlands were flooded by the Garrison Dam. Agency records are at the National Archives at Kansas City.
• Dakota and Lakota. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the south and the Spirit Lake Nation at Devils Lake, with Sisseton and Wahpeton communities in the east. Agency, allotment, and school records are federal.
• Turtle Mountain Chippewa and the Métis. The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in the north-central counties is closely bound to the Métis families of the Pembina and Turtle Mountain country — the buffalo-hunting, Red River cart families of mixed Ojibwe, Cree, and French-Canadian descent whose kin and records run back and forth across the Canadian border. The McCumber Agreement of 1892, the so-called Ten Cent Treaty, and the enrollment work that followed it produced rolls that are the core record for these families, and the Canadian side of the family is documented in the Métis scrip records at Library and Archives Canada.
• Indian census rolls. For all of the state's tribes, the annual reservation censuses taken from 1885 to 1940 are the single most useful record set, listing each person by name, age, and relationship year after year: free on FamilySearch and on Ancestry ($).
• Smaller communities. The state's variety is greater than its reputation. Ukrainians settled around Belfield and Wilton; Czechs in the Walsh and Pembina county area; Jewish homesteaders took land in several counties; and a community of Syrian and Lebanese homesteaders around Ross, in Mountrail County, built one of the earliest mosques in the United States. Each of these left records in the ordinary county and land series, and each has a literature of its own in the collections at NDSU and the State Archives.

Immigration and Naturalization

North Dakota has no seaport and never had one. Immigrants landed at the great eastern seaports, or at Quebec and Montreal, and came the rest of the way by rail, often years later and after a stop in Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Manitoba; a great many crossed overland from Canada. The consequence is that the arrival record, if there is one, will belong to some other state — and that the two record sets that really do document immigration into North Dakota are the border crossings and the naturalizations.

• Canadian border crossings. From 1895 the United States recorded aliens crossing the northern border, and the North Dakota crossing points — Pembina, Portal, Neche, Walhalla, Dunseith, St. John, Northgate, Sherwood, Antler, Noonan, Ambrose, and others — appear throughout. These records are indexed as Border Crossings from Canada to the United States, 1895–1960 ($) and are also free on FamilySearch. They catch not only Canadians but Europeans who landed at Quebec and came south.
• Naturalization. Before 1906 any court of record could naturalize, so declarations and petitions are scattered through the territorial and state district courts and the county courts; after 1906 the process was federalized. The State Archives has gathered the county naturalization records for the whole state, and NDSU hosts the free, statewide North Dakota Naturalization Records Index, which is the place to start. The papers themselves are on Ancestry as North Dakota Naturalizations, 1873–1952 ($), and the federal court records are free on FamilySearch. The federal files are held by the National Archives at Kansas City.

The homestead connection. This is the research tip that unlocks North Dakota. To claim a homestead, an alien had to have declared his intention to become a citizen — so the land entry case file frequently contains the naturalization paperwork, or names the court and date, even when the courthouse copy has been lost. If a naturalization cannot be found, order the land file.

Land Records

North Dakota is a public-domain state, and land research here works nothing like it does in the old colonial states. The land belonged to the United States, was surveyed into townships, ranges, and sections, and was handed to settlers by federal land offices; there are no colonial patents and no state grants of the original title. What there is instead is a federal paper trail of remarkable genealogical richness — if you know to ask for the whole of it.

How the land was acquired.

• Homestead Act (1862) — the dominant method. A settler filed on a quarter-section, lived on it and improved it for five years, and then "proved up" before witnesses. Later laws enlarged the acreage for the dry western counties: the Enlarged Homestead Act (1909) and the Stock-Raising Homestead Act (1916).
• Preemption and cash entry — buying the land outright at the government price, common in the earlier years.
• Timber Culture Act (1873) — unusually important on the treeless plains: a settler could claim a further quarter-section by planting and keeping trees on part of it. Timber culture entries are a distinct file series and are often overlooked.
• Desert Land Act (1877) — reclamation by irrigation, used in the far west of the state.
• Railroad grants — the Northern Pacific Railway received an enormous federal land grant in alternating sections across the width of the state, and a great deal of North Dakota was bought from the railroad rather than homesteaded. That land does not appear as a federal patent to the settler, and the sale is documented in the railway's land department records rather than in the General Land Office — a fact that explains many an ancestor who plainly farmed here but cannot be found at the land office.
• School lands — sections sixteen and thirty-six of every township were granted to the state at statehood and were leased or sold by the state, not the federal government; those records are with the North Dakota Department of Trust Lands.
• Reservation and ceded lands — allotments to tribal members, and the "surplus" lands opened to non-Native settlers, are documented in federal Indian agency records.

The bonanza farms. In the Red River valley in the 1870s and 1880s, Northern Pacific bondholders converted depreciated railroad securities into vast tracts and worked them as industrial wheat farms of many thousands of acres, run by managers and worked by seasonal crews. A laboring ancestor in Cass, Traill, or Grand Forks county in those decades may well appear in a bonanza farm's payroll and business papers rather than in any land record of his own, and those papers are in the manuscript collections at NDSU and the State Archives.

Where the records are.

• Patents: the BLM General Land Office Records site is free and searchable by name, and gives the image of the patent — the final deed from the United States — with the legal description and the date.
• The land entry case file: this is the essential point. The patent is only the last page of the story. The case file behind it, held by the National Archives, contains the original application, the proof of residence and cultivation, the names and testimony of the neighbors who served as witnesses, the naturalization evidence for an immigrant, and sometimes the widow's or heirs' claim where the settler died before proving up. It is ordered from the National Archives by the legal description and case number taken from the patent, and it is routinely the single richest document a homesteading family produced.
• Later transfers: once the land was patented, subsequent deeds and mortgages were recorded by the county Register of Deeds.
• Maps and finding aids: the State Archives holds tract books, township plats, and the county plat books and atlases that show who owned which quarter-section in a given year, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed deeds searchable by every name they contain. National homestead paperwork is also indexed in U.S. Homestead Records, 1863–1908 ($).

Military Records

North Dakota's military record has two halves: the federal army that garrisoned the frontier posts before settlement, and the state's own soldiers after it. They are found in quite different places.

• Frontier posts and the Indian Wars. Fort Abercrombie, Fort Rice, Fort Buford, Fort Totten, Fort Stevenson, Fort Pembina, and Fort Abraham Lincoln were federal posts, and the soldiers who served at them are documented in federal army records, not state ones — a distinction that saves a great deal of wasted effort. The Seventh Cavalry marched from Fort Abraham Lincoln to the Little Bighorn in 1876.
• Civil War. Dakota Territory raised its own units, and the service records of Union soldiers from the territory are free on FamilySearch and available on Fold3 ($).
• Spanish-American War. The First North Dakota Volunteer Infantry served in the Philippines and is the state's first regiment as a state; its roster was published and is digitized.
• World War I. The State Archives holds the Adjutant General's service records, and the published multi-volume roster of North Dakota men and women who served in 1917–1918 is the standard reference. The federal draft registration cards, which give each man's birth date and nearest relative, are indexed on FamilySearch and Ancestry.
• World War II and after. The State Archives holds the state's veterans' bonus records for the world wars and Korea — an underused source, since a bonus application names the veteran, his unit, his dates of service, and his family.

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, and guardianships of minors — is as valuable in North Dakota as anywhere, but there is less of it than in the old states, simply because the settlers were young, arrived with little, and died in the twentieth century rather than the eighteenth. The estate file of a homesteader is nonetheless often the document that names all the children, including the ones who had already moved to Montana or Saskatchewan.

• Territorial period (1861–1889): the probate courts of Dakota Territory proved wills and granted administrations; the surviving records are largely at the State Archives.
• Statehood to 1995: the County Court held probate jurisdiction. This is where the great majority of North Dakota estates were settled.
• Since 1995: the county courts having been abolished, probate belongs to the District Court. Whatever the date of death, the Clerk of District Court in the county is the office to ask.

The estate file — petition, inventory, bonds, notices to heirs, and the final decree of distribution — usually names the widow and every child and gives their places of residence, which makes it one of the best tools for tracking a family that scattered west. Online, North Dakota and South Dakota Wills and Probate Records ($) is name-searchable, the State Archives holds microfilm for many counties, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate papers searchable by every name they contain.

Tax Records

Tax records carry less weight in North Dakota than in the older states, because the settlement period is short and the land records already place a family on a precise quarter-section. They remain worth using for exactly that reason, though: an assessment roll ties a name to a legal description in a given year, and a run of consecutive rolls will show when a homesteader proved up, when he sold out, and when his widow or son took over the land.

• County assessment and tax rolls are the main series, compiled by the county assessor and held by the county auditor or treasurer; older rolls for many counties have been transferred to the State Archives, which also holds territorial-era tax material.
• Plat books and atlases function as a graphic tax list, showing the owner of every quarter-section in a township in the year of publication; the State Archives holds a long run of them for the counties, and many are digitized on Digital Horizons.
• Tax deeds and foreclosure records at the county are worth checking for the drought and depression years, when a great many North Dakota farms were lost for unpaid taxes and the family left the state.