BACKSIGHT

Sight back to the original record.

Original land-records research for Texas surveyors, landmen, and title professionals. Start from a deed, an address, or an abstract — Backsight assembles the original survey, the GLO archive sketch maps, the land-grant patents, and the county CAD parcel cross-check into one organized, citable package.

Hand-drawn ground plan of the Alamo in 1835-6 showing the mission square, convent yard, and church, with acequias and 33-inch-thick walls noted, scaled in varas.
Ground Plan of the Alamo in 1835-6 — Texas GLO archives, retrieved by Backsight. Object 97393, Texas General Land Office.

How it works

1

Anchor

Resolve any starting point — deed, situs address, abstract number, or a point on the ground — to the original survey: block, section, abstract, original grantee.

2

Retrace

Pull the General Land Office record for that survey: archive sketch files, rolled and working sketches, and the land-grant patent files — with file numbers to disambiguate scrip.

3

Package

Everything lands in a structured folder — manifest, contact sheet, GeoJSON parcel, source citations — ready for the job file or the courthouse.

Original surveys

Survey → abstract → patentee resolution across every Texas county, from the OTLS layer.

Sketch maps

GLO sketch files, rolled sketches, and working sketches — found spatially and by name, fetched at full resolution.

Land grants

Patent files from the Land Grant Database, matched to the deed by file number, flagged when only orderable on paper.

Parcel cross-check

Statewide CAD parcels anchor small platted lots and surface owner / legal-description mismatches against the deed.

Worked example: the Alamo

A real run, address-first with no deed in hand: 300 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, Bexar County.

1

Anchor

300 Alamo Plaza resolves to the San Antonio Town Tract, Abstract 20 — the Spanish-era municipal tract — via OTLS identify.

2

Cross-check

The statewide TxGIO CAD layer returns parcel NCB 115 “ALL OF BLK”, owner STATE OF TEXAS — captured as a GeoJSON artifact in the package.

3

Retrace

Archive sweeps surface seven classified maps, including the 1764 Menchaca presidio map and an 1862 F. Giraud sketch of the Old City Tract boundary.

4

Grants

The Land Grant Database holds no land-grant patent for the tract (its lone Abstract-20 record is a modern, non-patent transaction) — correct, not a miss: the Alamo’s Spanish-era chain of title lives in the GLO Spanish Collection, outside the patent system.

1764 map by Luis Antonio Menchaca of the Presidio de San Antonio de Béxar and its missions, with Mission San Antonio de Valero — the Alamo — drawn along its acequia.
Menchaca’s 1764 map of the presidio and missions — the earliest depiction in the package. Object 94455, Texas General Land Office.
1862 surveyor’s sketch by F. Giraud of the San Antonio Old City Tract boundary and adjoining surveys, Bexar County Sketch File 30.
F. Giraud’s 1862 Old City Tract sketch — Bexar County Sketch File 30. Object 14492, Texas General Land Office.

Every map above is cited to its Texas GLO archive object page.

Early access

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