Focus on - Abstract of Title

Having searched Ancestor Homes you may have found an ancestor who is listed in an Abstract or perhaps you’ve been using our database as part of a One Place Study. But what is an Abstract? Here we tell you just how useful they are. 

Abstracts of Title are often overlooked by genealogists and house historians as they are not as instantly impressive as some of the older deeds that are on velum parchments, however that would be massively underestimating their importance to house historians and family researchers alike. An Abstract of Title is a summary of the deeds and documents that make up title to a property. Rather than providing a list of documents, an Abstract of Title will provide a summary of the key points within each document that makes up the title, including details of marriages, deaths, current tenants of properties and their occupations.

Follow this link to open an annotated version of an Abstract of Title dated 1933 relating to a property in Crossley Road, St Helens. (NB. The Abstracts that are available are not annotated, this is an example to help you understand our document types).

The Abstract of Title that we have used for an example is only 6 pages (including the cover) but it contains all of this information: