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Researching Southeast North Carolina History

This guide explains how to research local history at UNC Wilmington's Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History. The guide includes both collections and digitized content available onsite at the Center as well as materials accessible freely

Deed Research

The best way to research the ownership history of a property is using historical deeds, which can be accessed via the county Register of Deeds office. All Registers of Deeds provide access to an online database where deeds can be searched and accessed remotely, but many of these databases only include records from the past several decades. Establishing a chain of ownership for an historic property usually requires a visit to the Register of Deeds office to consult the deed books in person.

Below are links to the Register of Deeds websites for the counties in our region:

Tips for Searching Online Deed Databases

When searching an online deed database, you will need to know the name of at least one person or corporation who has owned the property. If you don't have this information, you can look up the property tax record for the current owner of the property, which is public information and usually available online. Most counties have a property tax database that will allow you to search for an address or click on a parcel on a map to see the current property owner's name. You can usually find this information by Googling the name of the county and "property tax search" (for example, "Pender County property tax search").

Once you know the property owner's name, you can search for the name in the Register of Deeds database to locate the original deed for the sale of the property. Generally, names will appear in deeds as one of two parties: the grantor (the person selling or transferring the property) and the grantee (the person buying or receiving the property). To establish a chain of ownership, you will usually need to search the database multiple times as you uncover the names of the preceding parties to earlier deeds for a single property.

Some Register of Deeds databases will allow you to search by parcel number to see a full list of all the names associated with that property, but this is not always the case. You can usually find the property's parcel ID on the property tax record or the deed record using either process described above.

Most deeds will describe prior transfers of a certain property by referencing the deed book number and page number of the book in which the earlier deed was recorded. Many Registers of Deeds have backscanned their old deed books and provide a way to look up historical deeds by book and page number, even if those deeds haven't been entered into their database. But often this research will require a visit to the Register of Deeds Office to look at the physical deed books themselves.

City Directories

City directories include an alphabetical list of residents and their addresses, advertisements for local businesses, and an index of local services available for a particular city. While they are primarily business-focused, they include both residential and business addresses. Early directories may also include additional information about the residents listed, including their occupation and whether they owned or rented their home, and pre-integration directories tend to identify and delineate between white and Black residents and businesses. 

City directories from across the state of North Carolina are accessible online via the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center.

Many of Wilmington's turn-of-the-century city directories have been indexed by the New Hanover County Public Library and placed into a spreadsheet to allow users to more easily manipulate their data. This index can be found at the bottom of the library's guide to researching historic homes.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

From 1867 to 1977, the Sanborn Map Company of Pelham, New York, produced large-scale (usually 50 feet to the inch) color maps of commercial and industrial districts of some 12,000 towns and cities in North America to assist fire insurance companies in setting rates and terms. Each set of maps represented each built structure in those districts, its use, dimensions, height, building material, and other relevant features (fire alarms, water mains and hydrants, for example).

Sanborn maps were produced for a number of cities and municipalities in southeast North Carolina and were generally revised and updated over the course of multiple years and/or decades. These maps can be extremely useful in establishing the history of an individual property, city block, street, or neighborhood. Some entries on the maps include valuable information unrelated to the physical construction of the building, such as a property owner's name or a race descriptor (for racially segregated properties).

Sanborn maps for the state of North Carolina exist in numerous library databases that vary in coverage in terms of date, location, and access requirements. Several of these databases are linked below.

Other Resources

Property-focused collections at the Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History:

Historic Homes: Your Story (New Hanover County Public Library): This guide explains how to research historic properties using New Hanover County Public Library resources as well as information available on the Internet.