“According to Baldwin County’s own history, they fabricated a murder story to lure Sheriff George Bryant and his deputy away from Daphne.”

One of the fascinating things about an Alabama title search, or title research anywhere in the country, is how often a search through property records leads straight into American history.

Baldwin County, Alabama, provides one of the better examples.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Daphne was the Baldwin County seat. But Bay Minette, a town in Alabama, wanted the county government moved north, in part because its location was better connected to the expanding railroad system. The Alabama Legislature approved the move to Bay Minette in 1901. Daphne, however, was not particularly interested in cooperating. Local officials refused to surrender the county and court records.

So a group of Bay Minette supporters came up with a solution that was considerably less bureaucratic.

According to Baldwin County’s own history, they fabricated a murder story to lure Sheriff George Bryant and his deputy away from Daphne. While the officers were pursuing a killer who did not exist, a group of men traveled roughly 30 miles to Daphne under cover of night, entered the courthouse, took the county records and transported them back to Bay Minette.

Historical accounts even describe the group arriving with an ox-team caravan and tools for gaining entry to the courthouse. The records were delivered to the new courthouse in Bay Minette, which had been dedicated on October 1, 1901.

They never went back.

Bay Minette remains the Baldwin County seat today.

It is a colorful story, but there is also something remarkably appropriate about the fact that the fight over the location of county government ultimately came down to possession of the records themselves.

Land records, deeds, plats and courthouse books can look like ordinary documents when viewed one at a time. Taken together, however, they preserve the history of who owned the land, how it changed hands, how communities developed and, occasionally, how an entire county seat moved from one town to another.

At Real Title Services, that history is part of what we encounter every day while researching property across the country. Established in 2013, we cover all 3,000 U.S. counties and handle title research and document retrieval for title companies, law firms, lenders and other real estate professionals.

Sometimes a title search tells you who owns a piece of property.

Sometimes the records tell you how a group of determined Alabamians stole a county seat.

Angela Sharp

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