I am offering a two part dictionary to assist you in understanding what you are seeing. There are certainly terms I have not listed, but I’ve tried to define the major ones.
Abut(ment): Land boundaries where the shorter sides are adjacent plots and the longer sides lie between them, such as in town lots.
Borough: A town granted Corporation status through a royal charter.
Conveyances: The transfer to another of the right, interest or title to a particular piece of property.
Demise: The transfer of an estate by lease or on the death of the owner.
Dower: The life interest of a wife in one-third of the lands which her husband possessed.
Exchange: A deed of exchange is a reciprocal conveyance of property by two parties.
Fee Simple: A freehold or estate of inheritance.
Freehold: A form of tenure in which land is held in fee simple, fee tail or for a term of life.
Grantee: A buyer in a transaction.
Grantor: A seller in a transaction.
Hereditaments: Property that can be inherited.
Indenture: A deed to which there are two or more parties.
Lease: Leases were for fixed period of time or for a period of the lives of persons alive at the time.
Lease and Release: It can refer to deeds of sales, conveyances, rent charges, actual leases, mortgages, and even marriage settlements.
Lives: Leases were often given for the term of three lives, until the last of three people named died.
Tomorrow I will continue this list of legal terms in a Part 2 dictionary.
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