An attendee asked me during a seminar on Illinois land records about recorded copies of leases and rental agreements. For those of us with land-renting relatives, there just are not as many records available. It may be possible that a lease or rental agreement gets recorded in a miscellaneous volume of records in the Recorder’s Office, but when leases and rental agreements do not impact title, they don’t need to be recorded. Mortgages, obviously, are different.
If your relative was a tenant, check for court records. There could have been a disagreement about something in the agreement that ended up in court.
Jade says:
In areas where there are substantial quantities of coal, oil and natural gas, there are prodigious records of “Oil and Gas Leases,” particularly beginning in the late 19th century. Some localities have scores or hundreds of record books (Release Books) recording heirs’ to the lands releasing their interests.
These are of course of a different nature than agreements by land-owners with tenant farrners or sharecroppers.
mjnrootdig says:
That’s a good point, Jade. Those documents can help locate missing relatives, but as you mentioned, they are slightly different than tenant farmer leases.