Old legal and record term medieval-1800s
What does fee tail mean in an old deed?
Fee tail, or entail, restricted inherited land to the bodily heirs of a line, so no holder could sell it away or will it elsewhere. Entails kept land marching down one line for generations, which is why the same farm and surname pair off in deed books for a century. You will meet it in deeds and wills, mostly medieval-1800s.
Where it appears: deeds, wills.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
Where will I see fee tail in the records?+
Mostly in deeds and wills, medieval-1800s. Clerks abbreviated freely and spelling wandered, so expect variant wordings around it.
Do these old terms still matter for family history?+
Yes, a single word can settle a relationship. Relict names a widow, et ux hides an unnamed wife, natural son points at a parent. The words are dry, but what they encode about a family is not.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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