Definition
Lands upon which animals graze and feed. In property law, pastures refers not merely to the use of land for grazing but to the land itself. A grant or conveyance of "pastures" therefore passes the underlying freehold interest in the land, not merely a right to use it. This distinguishes pastures from a mere easement or license to graze.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of pasture; fields or areas of land covered with grass or other vegetation used for grazing livestock.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Grounds covered with grass appropriated for the grazing of cattle; grass land used for pasturage; grazing land generally.
The ordinary sense of "pastures" focuses on the use — land as a place where animals graze. The legal distinction is sharper: a grant of pastures in the common law conveyancing tradition conveyed the land itself as a property interest, not merely a right to put animals upon it. A researcher who reads "pastures" in a historical deed as describing only grazing activity may misread what was actually conveyed.
Common Confusion
Pastures must be distinguished from the right of pasture (also called a right of common of pasture), which is an incorporeal hereditament — an easement or profit à prendre allowing one to graze animals on another's land. A grant of pastures passes the corporeal land; a grant of a right of pasture or common of pasture passes only the appurtenant grazing right. The two are frequently conflated in historical documents, and the confusion can be outcome-determinative in title disputes or boundary reconstructions.
Why It Matters in Research
The critical research trap here is the corporeal/incorporeal distinction. Historical deeds, wills, and conveyances that use the word "pastures" must be read carefully to determine whether the drafter intended to convey land or merely a grazing right. The legal rule — that a grant of pastures passes the land itself — was well established in English common law and carried into early American practice, but lay drafters of historical documents sometimes used "pastures" loosely to mean grazing rights only.
When researching land records from the colonial and early national periods, "pastures" appearing in a grant or devise likely signals a fee or leasehold interest in specific parcels, not an easement. This affects how you trace title chains and locate the land on historical plats.
Researchers working in agricultural property history, enclosure history, or early American land tenure should note that English sources will draw on the commons law context extensively — common of pasture, stinted pasture, and rights appurtenant are distinct concepts that cluster around this term in the English materials. American sources largely stripped the commons law overlay but retained the rule that a grant of pastures conveys the land itself.
The Law Mind corpus will surface this term primarily in property and conveyancing materials. Cross-reference to treatises on real property and to historical deed indices when tracing the term forward from Bouvier.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines pastures as "lands upon which beasts feed themselves" and confirms the key conveyancing rule: "By a grant of pastures the land itself passes," citing Thomas's edition of Coke on Littleton. This is the core authority and reflects well-settled common law doctrine. Bouvier's entry is terse but accurate on the essential point.
The brevity of the Bouvier entry signals that this was not a contested or evolving concept by the mid-nineteenth century — the rule had been settled for centuries. What Bouvier does not address is the boundary between pastures as corporeal land and the various incorporeal rights of pasture recognized in English common law (common of pasture, sole pasture, stinted pasture). Researchers needing that detail must look beyond Bouvier to Coke on Littleton directly or to Blackstone's Commentaries Book II.
Jurisdictional Note
The rule that a grant of pastures passes the land itself derives from English common law and applies in states following that tradition. Jurisdictions with civil law heritage (particularly Louisiana) may not apply the same rule. In practice, modern conveyancing has largely displaced this term — contemporary deeds describe land by metes and bounds or lot number rather than by use classification — so the term's legal significance is primarily historical.