Federal Archives Property Ownership
The Situation
A law firm was trying to track down details related to a land conflict between a New Mexico tribe and land grant settlers covering the time period from 1876 through 1908.
Our client did have the specific contracts but needed to find the correspondence and instructions between the Surveyor General and the various land surveyors for the contracts of interest.
Your research findings helped to move our case forward. We appreciate the onsite work conducted on our behalf.
Our Unique Approach
We conducted an exhaustive archival search at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Broomfield, CO. Our search strategy was a two pronged approach. First we reviewed the Finding Aid prepared by the Bureau of Land Management for official correspondence. The Finding Aid includes references to official correspondence.
Once we identified references, we actually had to physically review boxes of materials to see if there was any applicable correspondence related to the contracts. It was a tedious process. When we found letters or notes we photocopied, and in some cases, took actual photographs of the documents because they were very fragile.
In addition, if the archived copy was on carbon paper and did not photograph well, we transcribed correspondence. In the course of our research we discovered other documents containing special instructions that annotated the original contracts which was very helpful to the client.