Crown Land Grant Records

Crown Land Grants are an invaluable historical resource, especially considering how little is made freely available in terms of property records, a system which seems to exist in some kind of quasi-privatized state: https://novascotia.ca/natr/land/grantmap.aspThe map itself is a 1940s era base-map and so you’ll see the original configuration of many once rural now suburban roads.

Beyond the Land Grant Map Index, individual grants also have records of their own, and sometimes maps to go along with them.

Included here is a map from Seth Coleman in 1790 – who was Clerk of the Dartmouth Meeting of Friends (The Quaker Fellowship). He owned the land that today stretches from Ochterloney Street to Church Street along the Dartmouth shore. This area was once littered with shipyards and later served as the terminus for one of our early ferries.