to move title you need to go to the courthouse and record the transaction and pay the stamp duties. That document is filed sequentially with the book and page being entered into an index that describes the transaction, property and names involved. This stuff is digitally available but the original books have been kept back to pre-independence days in the original 13 colonies. In Louisiana title is murkier due to french book keeping and in new mexico some of the original spanish land grants were a tad murky. All of the rest of it was stolen fair and aquare and recorded as such.