The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission has a website where you can look up Land Warrants, and then follow them to the correct Survey Book, to see an outline of the land purchased. Land Warrants were for land purchased from the Land Office (according to the PHMC's website, it was originally maintained by the William Penn family, then was handed over to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania).
Here's how to get to this information:
Go to http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/phmc_home/1426
Click on "History" on the left side of the screen.
Click on "Pennsylvania State Archives" on the left side of the screen.
Click on the yellow "Land Records" button near the top of the screen (it's in line with the other buttons with the yellow background, which are "PA State Archives", "Hours, Directions, & Fees", "Research Topics", "Finding Aids for Collections", then "LAND RECORDS")
(You can also just click on this link http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=3184&&SortOrder=100&level=4&parentCommID=3162&menuLevel=Level_4&mode=2)
Click on "Warrant Registers".
When you pull up the page for Warrant Registers, you then scoll down to the county that you're looking for. Now, if you have a certain timeframe in mind, you need to make sure that you're looking at the correct county. If you're looking for a warrant before 1771 but after 1750, you'd need to look in Cumberland County (created in 1750 from Lancaster Co.), which is the county that Bedford was formed from (if you're looking specifically for land located in Dutch Corner). (Following back, it would be Bedford formed in 1771, Cumberland in 1750, Lancaster in 1728, Chester in 1682...Chester is one of the three original counties in Pennsylvania, along with Bucks and Philadelphia Counties.)
So, say you're looking for land for Michael Dibert. If you're looking in Bedford County, you need to click on "Bedford County" in the list of counties, and it will take you to "Bedford County Document Images". As you scroll down on the page, you will see that the surnames are indexed by the first letter of the surname (please note, that they are not in alphabetical order beyond the first letter). If we're looking for Michael Dibert, we would click on the first page under the "Surnames beginning with "D"" area, which is page 52. If you look at line 24, it is for Diver, Michael, for 145.80 acres in Bedford township. If you follow that line to the end, it says that the Survey is Copied in Book C39 pg 254.
Now, go back to the Land Records page (http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=3184&&SortOrder=100&level=4&parentCommID=3162&menuLevel=Level_4&mode=2)
Click on "Copied Survey Books"
If you scroll down, you'll see that there are volumes listed. For the record for Michael Dibert (listed as Michael Diver here), you need book C-39, so find that volume and click on it.
Following our example, we need page 254, so find that page and click on it. You will see where it lists the page number and also the reverse of that page, which is very helpful if the warrant was purchased by one person, but patented to another. For this example, just click on the main page..."page C-39-254".
As you can see, this pulls up the outline of the survey area, as well as a description of the lands location. Also, you will see surrounding this survey, the names of the owners of the land bordering this survey are listed. Bordering this land is one for "Michael Diver in Trust & ca." and lists C44-127. So, you'll want to go to book C-44, then find page 127. This page is the layout of the land that was surveyed for Michael, for himself and his siblings John, Frederick and Margaret (married to John Miller), from the Warrant application dated 12/12/1768. If you now go back and click on the "reverse" of this page, you can see that this specific plot ended up going to John Dibert on 9/30/1788. The interesting note on this, is that this would have been first registered in Cumberland county, since it was actually applied for before the official creation of Bedford.
Not all of the surveys list the Volume and page number of the neighboring properties on it (but, boy it's great when they are!).
Happy Warrant Hunting!
