South Dakota Genealogy

USA (1,403,636) > South Dakota (12,784)

By Record Type

South Dakota Genealogy Research Guide

If you're not sure which records would be helpful, you can try our Ancestor Source Finder tool.

By County

By City

South Dakota Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

South Dakota was carved out of Dakota Territory, a vast federal territory organized in 1861 that also covered present-day North Dakota and, for a time, much of Montana and Wyoming. Because the land passed from the United States government directly to settlers, the homestead file is often the single richest document a family leaves behind — and because the territorial period ran a full generation before statehood, many of the counties, courts, and record series a researcher needs were created long before 1889.

• Capital: Pierre. The territorial capital sat at Yankton from 1861 until 1883, when it was moved to Bismarck; after statehood a long contest over a permanent seat of government ended in 1904, when Pierre defeated Mitchell.
• Statehood: November 2, 1889, admitted the same day as North Dakota when Dakota Territory was divided in two. President Harrison shuffled the two admission bills before signing so that neither state could claim precedence, and by convention South Dakota is counted the fortieth state.
• Land type: South Dakota is a federal (public-domain) state, not a state-land state. Original title passed from the United States through General Land Office district offices by homestead, cash entry, timber-culture, and other claims, so the federal land-entry case file is the foundational land record; only later transfers between private owners are recorded as deeds at the county level.
• Counties: 66. The first were created by the territorial legislature beginning in 1862, and dozens more were created, renamed, or abolished during the territorial years. Washabaugh County was absorbed into Jackson County in 1983, and Shannon County was renamed Oglala Lakota County in 2015.
• Nickname and motto: the Mount Rushmore State (earlier the Coyote State); the state motto is Under God the People Rule.
• Where records live: the Register of Deeds in each county holds deeds and vital records, and the Clerk of Courts holds probate, court, divorce, and naturalization records; statewide vital records from July 1, 1905 are held by the state Department of Health. Two counties have no courthouse of their own: Todd County is administered from Tripp County (at Winner) and Oglala Lakota County from Fall River County (at Hot Springs), so records for those two counties are sought in their administering counties.

Libraries and Archives

The state's government records are concentrated in Pierre, the federal records that matter most to South Dakota research — Indian agency, federal court, and naturalization files — are held by the National Archives at Kansas City, and manuscript and church collections are strongest at the university archives in Sioux Falls and Vermillion. The principal South Dakota repositories include:

• South Dakota State Archives, a program of the South Dakota State Historical Society (Pierre) — the central repository for state, county, and town government records: the original state census cards, naturalization records, county court and probate transfers, tax and assessment rolls, newspapers on microfilm, WPA-era survey material, and manuscript collections. Its collection indexes are the starting point for most South Dakota research.
• South Dakota State Archives finding aids — free online descriptions of the archives' government record groups and manuscript collections, arranged by agency and county.
• South Dakota State Library — published local and county histories, biographical compilations, newspapers, and reference collections.
• South Dakota Genealogical Society — the statewide society; it publishes a quarterly and issues the research membership card that counties require before they will open their marriage and death indexes for genealogical searching.
• Center for Western Studies, Augustana University (Sioux Falls) — the leading manuscript repository for the region, holding the archives of the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota and of the state Congregational (United Church of Christ) conference, along with deep Norwegian, Scandinavian, Germans-from-Russia, and Northern Plains collections.
• University of South Dakota Libraries (Vermillion) — Archives and Special Collections, the Richardson Collection, and the South Dakota Oral History Center, whose American Indian Research Project holds one of the largest collections of recorded Native American oral history anywhere.
• National Archives at Kansas City — the branch holding federal records for South Dakota: Bureau of Indian Affairs agency and school records, United States District Court case files, and federal naturalizations.
• Siouxland Heritage Museums (Sioux Falls) and the Dakota Territorial Museum (Yankton) — local collections for the state's oldest settled counties; Deadwood History (the Adams Museum and the Homestake Adams Research and Cultural Center) holds the manuscript and photographic record of the Black Hills gold rush.
• Heritage Hall Museum & Archives (Freeman) — Mennonite, Hutterite, and Germans-from-Russia records for the Hutchinson and Turner county settlements.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch centers hold extensive South Dakota microfilm and digital collections, and county Registers of Deeds, Clerks of Courts, and local historical societies hold records for their own areas.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized South Dakota records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($).

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and the digitized state censuses, church records, naturalizations, and county records.
• Ancestry ($) — the state censuses, vital indexes, naturalization, probate, homestead, and tax collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — South Dakota births, marriages, deaths and burials, and the state censuses.
• Findmypast ($) — South Dakota marriages and the state census series.
• Fold3 ($) — digitized federal military records.
• South Dakota Birth Records Search — free; the state Department of Health's searchable index to births more than one hundred years old.
• South Dakota State Archives collection indexes — free; searchable indexes to naturalizations, the 1885 Civil War veterans census, the 1905 state census, cemetery and veterans' burial records, the biographical files, and newspapers.
• South Dakota Digital Archives — free; digitized photographs, government records, and the General Land Office survey field notes.
• South Dakota Digital Newspapers — free; the State Archives' newspaper digitization program, whose titles are searchable through Chronicling America at the Library of Congress.
• Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records — free; federal land patents, tract books, and survey plats for the whole state.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized territorial and state law books, county and local histories, and published record abstracts.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.

Law and Government

Because Dakota Territory governed the region for nearly thirty years, the territorial codes and session laws explain who was required to record what, and when — the reason, for example, that marriages appear in county records decades before births and deaths do. The foundational texts are digitized and free to read.

• Laws of Dakota Territory (session laws, 1862–1889) — free; the acts of each territorial legislative assembly, which created the counties, courts, and recording offices of both future states.
• The Revised Codes of the Territory of Dakota, 1877 — free on the Internet Archive; the first general codification, setting out probate, land recording, and civil procedure for the territory.
• The Annotated Revised Codes of the Territory of Dakota, 1883 — free on the Internet Archive.
• The Compiled Laws of the Territory of Dakota, 1887 — free on HathiTrust; the law in force on the eve of division and statehood.
• History of Dakota Territory (George W. Kingsbury) and A History of South Dakota (Doane Robinson) — free on the Internet Archive; the standard narrative histories, both containing extensive biographical material on early settlers.
• The South Dakota Historical Collections, published by the state Department of History from 1902 onward, print treaties, territorial documents, pioneer reminiscences, and record transcriptions, and are digitized on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust.
• The South Dakota Codified Laws give the current statutes, including the rules governing access to vital records and county recording.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Statewide civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths began on July 1, 1905, but compliance came slowly and was not general until about 1932 — so an event in the first quarter of the twentieth century may simply never have been registered. Some counties recorded births and deaths before 1905, and those earlier records stayed with the county Register of Deeds rather than passing to the state. Marriages are the exception to the late start: counties licensed and recorded marriages from soon after they were organized, often within ten years of creation, so a marriage record may exist decades earlier than a birth or death record for the same family.

Where to look. Post-1905 records are held both by the state Department of Health and by the county Register of Deeds, and any Register of Deeds can retrieve a post-1905 record for an event anywhere in the state. Fees and eligibility rules apply: informational copies are available for genealogical use, while certified copies are restricted to close relatives and legal representatives. Counties may open their marriage and death indexes for genealogical searching to holders of a research membership card from the South Dakota Genealogical Society.

• Births: the free South Dakota Birth Records Search covers births more than one hundred years old and reaches back well before statewide registration. Also indexed in South Dakota, Birth Index, 1856–1924 ($), on MyHeritage ($), and in the free South Dakota Department of Health Index to Births, 1843–1914 on FamilySearch.
• Marriages: South Dakota, Marriages, 1905–2024 ($) indexes the statewide series, and South Dakota, Marriages ($) is on MyHeritage; the same FamilySearch index carries marriages from 1950 onward. For the pre-1905 years — the most valuable ones — go directly to the county, where the Register of Deeds or Clerk of Courts holds the license and return.
• Deaths: South Dakota, Death Index, 1879–1955 ($) is the standard statewide finding aid and begins well before registration; South Dakota, Deaths and Burials ($) is on MyHeritage. The State Archives' free cemetery and veterans' burial indexes often supply a death date when no certificate exists.

Divorce records since 1905 are held with the vital records; earlier divorces are in the case files of the court that granted them.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped South Dakota's jurisdictions and records:

• 1743 — The Verendrye brothers bury a lead plate above the Missouri near present-day Fort Pierre, claiming the region for France.
• 1803 — The Louisiana Purchase brings the region into the United States; Lewis and Clark ascend the Missouri the following year.
• 1817 — A trading post is founded at the site of Fort Pierre, the first continuously occupied non-Native settlement.
• 1851 and 1868 — The Fort Laramie treaties; the 1868 treaty creates the Great Sioux Reservation, covering all of present South Dakota west of the Missouri River.
• 1858 — The Yankton Treaty cedes the land east of the Missouri and opens it to settlement.
• 1859 — The first permanent settlements are made at Yankton, Vermillion, and Bon Homme.
• March 2, 1861 — Dakota Territory is organized, with its capital at Yankton.
• 1862 — The Homestead Act opens the public domain; the territorial legislature creates the first counties; the Dakota War in Minnesota spills west and empties parts of the frontier.
• 1874–1876 — Custer's expedition confirms gold in the Black Hills; Deadwood is founded in 1876 and miners flood a region still guaranteed to the Sioux by treaty.
• 1878–1887 — The Great Dakota Boom: railroads push west and Norwegian, German, Germans-from-Russia, Czech, Danish, and Swedish settlers take up homesteads across the eastern half of the territory.
• 1879 — The Lawrence County courthouse at Deadwood burns in the town's great fire, destroying its records.
• 1883 — The territorial capital is moved from Yankton to Bismarck, hardening southern Dakota's demand for division.
• 1889 — The Sioux Act breaks the Great Sioux Reservation into the separate Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Lower Brule, and Crow Creek reservations and opens the remainder to settlers.
• November 2, 1889 — Dakota Territory is divided and South Dakota is admitted to the Union.
• December 29, 1890 — The Wounded Knee massacre on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
• 1892, 1895, 1901, and 1910 — Courthouse fires destroy records in Hyde, Grant, Hanson, and Tripp counties.
• 1904 — Pierre is confirmed as the permanent capital; the Rosebud lands in Gregory County are opened by lottery.
• July 1, 1905 — Statewide civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths begins.
• 1908–1911 — Further reservation land openings by lottery in Tripp, Mellette, and Bennett counties and on the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock reservations.
• 1930s — Drought, dust, and depression drive one of the heaviest out-migrations in the state's history; many families leave for the West Coast.
• 1944 — The Pick–Sloan plan authorizes the Missouri River dams — Fort Randall, Gavins Point, Oahe, and Big Bend, completed through the 1950s and 1960s — whose reservoirs flood the river bottoms and displace whole communities, including large areas of tribal land.
• 1983 and 2015 — Washabaugh County is absorbed into Jackson County; Shannon County is renamed Oglala Lakota County.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses. The area appears from 1860, when the handful of Missouri River settlements were enumerated before Dakota Territory existed, and as Dakota Territory in 1870 and 1880 — though those two reach only the settled districts, chiefly the southeast and the river counties, and leave most of the west unenumerated. The 1890 federal census was almost entirely destroyed, making 1900 the first surviving decennial census that covers the whole state, followed by 1910 through 1950. They are free on FamilySearch and searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($). The 1890 Veterans Schedules ($) — the special enumeration of Union veterans and their widows — does survive for South Dakota and is the best substitute for the lost 1890 population schedule.

State and territorial censuses are South Dakota's great advantage: taken every ten years from 1885 to 1945, they fall midway between the federal years and can place a family roughly every five years. From 1905 the enumerators wrote on individual cards, one per person, and the State Archives holds the originals with alphabetical card indexes. What each census records varies by year:

• 1885 (territorial): a household enumeration naming every member, but surviving only for a group of counties rather than the whole territory. It was taken with a special census of Civil War veterans living in Dakota Territory, which the State Archives indexes free and which is the earliest systematic list of the region's veterans.
• 1895: largely lost. Ledger-indexed returns survive only for Beadle, Brule, Campbell, Charles Mix, Pratt (now Jones), and Presho (now Lyman) counties.
• 1905: the most useful of the series. It names every person and gives a legal land description — section, township, and range — along with how long the person had lived in South Dakota and, for the foreign-born, how long in the United States. The land description leads straight to the federal homestead file. Free on FamilySearch, with images on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($); the State Archives also offers a free index.
• 1915: names every person and adds birthplace of father and mother, extent of education, and military service by war, state, regiment, and company — unusually full detail for a state census. Free on FamilySearch, with images on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).
• 1925: adds ancestry to the earlier questions, which for immigrant families often names the specific ethnic origin the household claimed. Free on FamilySearch, with images on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).
• 1935: the richest card of all, recording ancestry, nationality, the wife's maiden name and the year of marriage, and — distinctively — each person's church affiliation, which points directly to the congregation whose registers should be searched next. Free on FamilySearch, with images on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).
• 1945: the last state census, repeating the 1935 range of questions. Free on FamilySearch, with images on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($).

Indian censuses and other substitutes. Reservation populations were largely omitted from the federal census before 1940 and only sporadically counted in the state censuses, so the Indian Census Rolls, 1885–1940 ($) — annual agency rolls, also free on FamilySearch and at the National Archives — are the essential enumeration for Native families, supplemented by the agencies' annuity rolls. Elsewhere, mortality schedules for 1860, 1870, 1880, and 1885 are indexed on Ancestry ($), and city directories and county tax and assessment rolls are the best substitutes for placing a family in a year with no census.

Church Records

With civil registration starting only in 1905, church registers are the main substitute for vital records across the whole settlement era. The largest denominations before 1900 were the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal, and Congregational churches, and the Lutheran presence is unusually complex because Norwegian, German, Danish, and Swedish immigrants each brought their own synods, whose congregations often kept registers in their own language. Two bodies matter disproportionately for Native American research: the Episcopal church, which established missions among the Dakota and Lakota from the 1870s, and the Roman Catholic church, whose Jesuit missions followed.

• South Dakota, Church Records, 1875–1993 — free on FamilySearch; baptisms, marriages, confirmations, and burials from congregations across the state, and the first place to search.
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Church Records, 1781–1969 ($) — the most efficient route to the records of predecessor Lutheran synods; the Center for Western Studies holds Lutheran and Congregational material for the state, and the archives of the wider Lutheran church hold the registers of closed congregations.
• Presbyterian Church Records, 1701–1970 ($) — includes the Dakota Presbytery mission churches, whose registers are an important source for Sioux families.
• Episcopal. The Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota was organized as a missionary district in the 1870s; its archives are held at the Center for Western Studies, and Marquette University holds the sacramental registers of the Pine Ridge missions from 1879.
• Roman Catholic. Sacramental registers are held by the parish or the diocese: the Diocese of Sioux Falls covers the eastern counties and the Diocese of Rapid City the west, including the reservation missions. Marquette University's Native America collections hold the records of the Catholic Indian missions, among them Holy Rosary at Pine Ridge and St. Francis at Rosebud.
• Methodist. The Dakotas Conference archives of the United Methodist Church hold congregational registers and conference records.
• Germans from Russia, Mennonites, and Hutterites. The Germans from Russia parish register collection transcribes births, marriages, deaths, and membership lists from the German-Russian colonies, and Heritage Hall Museum & Archives at Freeman documents the Mennonite and Hutterite communities of the Hutchinson and Turner county settlements.

Court Records

South Dakota's courts were reorganized once, thoroughly, and that reorganization is the key to finding older files. Under Dakota Territory the district courts handled major civil and criminal matters and naturalization, while a probate court in each county handled estates. At statehood in 1889 the territorial district courts became circuit courts and the probate courts became county courts. A constitutional amendment adopted in 1972 created a Unified Judicial System that took effect in 1975, abolishing the county courts outright and folding all their business — probate, guardianship, and minor civil and criminal matters — into the circuit courts.

• Circuit courts — the general trial courts, sitting in each county within one of the judicial circuits; they hear felonies, divorce, equity, and, since 1975, probate. The Clerk of Courts in each county is their clerk and holds the files.
• County courts (1889–1975) and the territorial probate courts (before 1889) — the source of nearly all older estate, guardianship, and adoption records.
• Justice of the peace and municipal courts — minor civil and criminal matters, with records that survive unevenly.
• United States District Court for the District of South Dakota — federal civil and criminal cases and post-1906 naturalizations; the older case files are at the National Archives at Kansas City.
• Tribal courts and the earlier Courts of Indian Offenses handled matters arising on the reservations; their records are held with the tribes and in Bureau of Indian Affairs agency records.

When the county courts were abolished, many counties simply left the old files with the Clerk of Courts, but a number transferred them to the South Dakota State Archives, which also holds early criminal and police dockets for several counties. If a file is not at the courthouse, the State Archives is the next place to look. Current case information is available through the South Dakota Unified Judicial System.

Ethnic/Minority Records

South Dakota was settled by immigrants in a single rush, and its communities clustered tightly — knowing which group settled a county usually tells you which church, society, or agency created the records that will document a family.

• Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota (Sioux). Nine federally recognized tribes hold reservations in the state: Oglala (Pine Ridge), Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock (straddling the North Dakota line), Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Yankton, Flandreau Santee, and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation. The core records are the Bureau of Indian Affairs agency files — censuses, annuity and ration rolls, allotment and heirship records, school files, and agency vital registers — held by the National Archives at Kansas City and described in Record Group 75; the Indian Census Rolls, 1885–1940 ($) are the annual enumerations. Note that the Dawes Rolls apply to the Five Tribes of Oklahoma and not to the Sioux; South Dakota allotment and enrollment records are entirely separate agency records. Episcopal and Catholic mission registers frequently record baptisms and marriages that the agencies never noted, and the South Dakota Oral History Center at the University of South Dakota holds extensive recorded family and community history. Enrollment questions are handled by the tribes themselves, and the BIA Great Plains Region administers the agencies.
• Norwegians. The largest immigrant group across much of eastern South Dakota, concentrated in the counties along the Minnesota line and in the Sioux Falls region. Their Lutheran congregations kept registers in Norwegian well into the twentieth century; the Center for Western Studies holds the strongest collections.
• Germans and Germans from Russia. Germans settled widely, and the Germans from Russia — Black Sea and Volga families who had lived a century in the Russian empire before emigrating — took up land in the central counties, especially around Eureka, Menno, and Freeman. The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection holds the village histories, passenger lists, and parish registers that connect a South Dakota family back to the specific colony it left.
• Hutterites and Mennonites. The first Hutterite colony in North America was founded at Bon Homme in 1874, and the colonies have kept their own genealogical registers ever since; Mennonite families settled the same corner of the state. Heritage Hall Museum & Archives at Freeman is the principal repository.
• Czechs, Danes, Swedes, and Finns. Bohemian families settled Bon Homme and Yankton counties around Tabor and Tyndall; Danish and Swedish communities formed in the southeast, notably the Dalesburg settlement in Clay and Turner counties.
• Dutch. A distinct Dutch Reformed colony took shape around Platte, Harrison, and New Holland in Douglas and Charles Mix counties, and its church records follow the Reformed and Christian Reformed pattern.
• African Americans. A small but continuous presence, including the Black homesteaders of the Sully County colony, families in Yankton and Sioux Falls, and the Black regular soldiers stationed at Fort Meade. Homestead files, the state censuses, and post and church records are the main sources.
• Chinese. A substantial Chinese community lived in Deadwood during and after the gold rush; Deadwood History holds its records, photographs, and business papers.
• Jewish. Small communities formed in Deadwood and Sioux Falls, and Jewish agricultural colonies were planted in Davison County in the early 1880s. JewishGen is the leading research resource.

Immigration and Naturalization

South Dakota had no port of entry. Immigrants landed at New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, or Quebec and came the rest of the way by rail, often after a stop of a few years in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa — so the arrival record will nearly always be found under another state. Border crossings from Canada are documented from 1895 in the federal manifest series. The state's own contribution is its naturalization record, and it is a good one.

Naturalization. Before 1906 any court of record could naturalize, which in South Dakota meant the territorial district courts and, after 1889, the circuit and county courts; the papers stayed with the county. After 1906 the process was federalized, though the state courts continued to naturalize for decades. A declaration of intention is often the more valuable of the two papers, because homestead law required a claimant to be a citizen or to have declared intent — which means an immigrant's declaration is frequently filed with, or referenced in, his homestead case file.

• The South Dakota Naturalization Records Index — First Papers and Second Papers at the State Archives are free, statewide, and the fastest way to find which county holds a naturalization.
• South Dakota County Naturalization Records, 1865–1972 — free on FamilySearch; the county circuit and district court records, with images.
• North Dakota and South Dakota Naturalization Records, 1851–1883 — free on FamilySearch; the territorial district courts.
• South Dakota, Federal Naturalization Records, 1904–1928 ($) covers the federal court series, and the National Archives at Kansas City holds the original federal naturalizations and their indexes.

Land Records

As a federal (public-domain) state, South Dakota granted no land of its own; title came from the United States. The first district land office opened at Vermillion in 1861, and as settlement moved west offices followed at Yankton, Springfield, Mitchell, Watertown, Huron, Aberdeen, Chamberlain, Pierre, Rapid City, Gregory, Lemmon, Timber Lake, and Belle Fourche. A settler filed at the district office; when he proved up, the case file went to Washington and a patent — the first title deed — was issued. Only afterwards do deeds between private owners begin, recorded by the Register of Deeds in each county.

Understand the survey first. Land is described by township, range, and section under the rectangular survey, and South Dakota is unusual in being governed by three principal meridians: the Fifth Principal Meridian for the land east of the Missouri River together with Gregory, Tripp, and Lyman counties; the Black Hills Meridian, whose base line was run in 1878, for most of the land west of the river; and the Sixth Principal Meridian for a portion of the south. A description without its meridian is ambiguous, because the same township and range numbers repeat under each. The state's own history of land surveys explains the boundaries between the three.

The federal records.

• Patents, tract books, and survey plats are free at the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office Records site. The tract book is the key finding aid: it records every entry made on a given piece of ground, including the ones that failed. Ancestry carries the same patent index as U.S. General Land Office Records, 1776–2015 ($), and FamilySearch offers the Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1820–1908 free.
• The land-entry case file is the document worth pursuing. Held by the National Archives, it contains far more than the patent: the claimant's affidavits, the testimony of neighbors who swore to his residence and improvements, a description of his house and crops, and frequently his naturalization papers. U.S. Homestead Records, 1863–1908 ($) makes many of these files searchable. Claims that were cancelled or relinquished never produced a patent and so never appear on the BLM site, but the paperwork survives — see FamilySearch's free Cancelled, Relinquished, or Rejected Land Entry Case Files, 1861–1932.
• Claims beyond the homestead. The Homestead Act of 1862 was only one route. The Timber Culture Act of 1873, which asked a claimant to plant trees, and the Desert Land Act of 1877 were both heavily used on the dry western plains, and cash entries and preemption claims run throughout. Each produced its own case file.

The reservation land openings. A great deal of South Dakota was not homesteaded from the open public domain at all, but distributed by lottery after reservation land was declared surplus — and the registration and drawing records are a distinct body of evidence naming tens of thousands of hopeful applicants, most of whom never got land.

• The Rosebud opening of 1904 (Gregory County). Unallotted Rosebud land in Gregory County was sold to the government and opened by presidential proclamation. Applicants registered at Yankton, Bonesteel, Chamberlain, and Fairfax, and the drawing was held at Chamberlain; entries were then made at Bonesteel. Registrations ran far beyond the number of claims available.
• The Tripp County opening of 1908. Under an act of 1907, Rosebud land south of the White River was opened by a second proclamation: registration at Dallas and Gregory in October 1908, with the drawing at Dallas. Sections 16 and 36 in each township were reserved to the state.
• The Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Mellette, and Bennett County openings, 1909–1911, extended the same lottery pattern across the north and the Rosebud interior.
• Indian allotments. Under the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887, reservation land was divided into individual allotments held in trust, and the allotment schedules, trust patents, and heirship files — which name heirs across generations — are among the most genealogically valuable records in the state. They are held in the Bureau of Indian Affairs agency records at the National Archives at Kansas City.

State and county land. Sections 16 and 36 of each township were granted to South Dakota at statehood for the support of schools, and those school lands were leased and sold by what is now the Office of School and Public Lands. Railroads — the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, the Chicago & North Western, and the Great Northern — received grants and sold land to settlers directly, so a family may appear in a railroad land-department record rather than a federal one. For everything after the patent, go to the county Register of Deeds; and FamilySearch Full-Text Search now makes many unindexed deeds and land papers searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, witnesses, and neighbors.

Military Records

South Dakota's military record is dominated by the frontier army and the Indian wars, and by the fact that most of its Civil War veterans arrived after the war, as homesteaders. That makes the veteran censuses and burial indexes especially useful: they identify men whose service records are filed under an eastern state.

• Civil War and the Dakota conflicts. Dakota Territory raised its own companies of Dakota Cavalry for frontier defense from 1862. Far more numerous are the Union veterans who settled afterward: the free 1885 Civil War Veterans Census at the State Archives lists Union and Confederate veterans then living in the territory, and the free South Dakota Grand Army of the Republic Membership Records, 1861–1941 on FamilySearch identify their posts, regiments, and often their deaths.
• Indian Wars. The campaigns of 1876 and the events at Wounded Knee in 1890 brought regular army units to the state, and the frontier posts — Fort Randall, Fort Sully, Fort Sisseton, Fort Meade, and Fort Pierre — generated post returns, enlistment papers, and burial records held at the National Archives. Native scouts served with the army and appear in the same series.
• Spanish-American War. The First South Dakota Volunteer Infantry was raised in 1898 and served in the Philippines; the State Archives holds its muster and service records.
• World War I and World War II. The State Archives holds service-record cards, National Guard papers, the World War I Gold Star volume of South Dakotans who died in the war, and veterans' bonus files, and the South Dakota Veteran Graves Registration Records are free on FamilySearch. Discharge papers were commonly filed with the county Register of Deeds, which is often the quickest route to a twentieth-century veteran's record.
• Federal service, pension, and draft records for every conflict are on Fold3 ($) and FamilySearch, and the State Archives' free indexes include veterans' cemetery and burial listings.

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, and guardianships of minors — names heirs and their relationships, and is among the richest sources in the state. The key dividing line is 1975.

• Before 1889: the territorial probate court in each county proved wills and granted administrations. Many of these territorial files have been transferred to the South Dakota State Archives.
• 1889 to 1975: the county court in each county held probate jurisdiction, together with guardianship and adoption.
• Since 1975: the Unified Judicial System abolished the county courts and moved probate to the circuit courts, whose records are kept by the Clerk of Courts in each county — which is also where the older county-court files usually remain.

A South Dakota probate file typically contains the petition, the will or letters of administration, the bond, an inventory and appraisal, orders and reports of sale, and the final decree of distribution, which is the document that names the heirs and their shares. Online, North Dakota and South Dakota Wills and Probate Records, 1878–1928 ($) is name-searchable but incomplete, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate files searchable by every name they contain. For Native families, probate of allotted trust land was handled by the federal government rather than the county, and those heirship files are in the Bureau of Indian Affairs records at the National Archives at Kansas City.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family on a specific piece of ground in a specific year, and in a state whose vital registration began in 1905 and whose censuses fall a decade apart, several consecutive years of assessment rolls can reveal when a young man came of age, when a family arrived or left, and when a farm passed to a widow or a son.

• County assessment and tax rolls are the main series, listing real and personal property by owner, and are held by the county auditor and treasurer. The South Dakota State Archives holds early county tax records on microfilm, including rolls for jurisdictions that no longer exist — the records of "old Stanley County," for instance, cover ground now in Stanley, Jackson, and Haakon counties.
• Dakota Territory tax lists survive unevenly, and where a courthouse burned they are often the best surviving evidence of who was living where: in several of the fires the treasurer's and auditor's vaults held, while the court and school records did not.
• U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862–1918 ($) — the Civil War–era and later federal income, license, and excise taxes, which reach Dakota Territory in its earliest years and can document a merchant, saloon keeper, or stockman before any other record does; the 1862–1874 lists are also free on FamilySearch.
• Because South Dakota land began as federal land, a tax record is often best read alongside the General Land Office patent and the county deed — together they trace a parcel from the government to the family and out again.