Very early in its history, the Virginia Colony decided it would be better if more people lived there. To encourage people to come, everyone who came into Virginia could have fifty (50) acres of land for "free". This applied to men, women and children, whites and blacks, English and non-English subjects. One had to go to court and swear they were immigrants to Virginia. The clerk of the court then issued a certificate entitling the person to 50 acres of land. Since many people came in a family, say one of four people, the certificate would be for 200 acres of land. These certificates became known as head-rights. The headrights were transferrable from one person to another. Very quickly, the practice became that the headright went to the person who paid the transportation.
When the First Colony was ready to move away from Germanna, they bought land in the Northern Neck from the owner. Now the proprietors in the Northern Neck did not honor headrights. They wanted cash or, at least, a promise to pay cash. So the Germans had no need for the headrights; however, they did apply for them a few years later though they were essentially of zero value in the Northern Neck. In some cases they sold the headrights to people who wanted to buy land from the Crown and could use the headrights.
The Second Colony members did not apply for headrights since Spotswood paid their transportation costs. But most of the land he was "buying" or patenting from the Crown was free. So he had little need for the headrights. Eventually he did need them and did use them. For this we are grateful since it gives us the names of 48 people for whom he paid the transportation. We believe that all 48 of these people were Second Colony members and several genealogical questions have been answered by these names.
These headrights appear in two sources. One is in the court records when application was made for the headright. But not all headrights appear here. The other appearance of the headright is in the patents for land where it notes how the land is being paid for. If by headrights, the names of the people who took out the headright appear in the patents. The 48 names mentioned above, appear in this way; they occur in a patent of land taken out by Spotswood. Generally, the court records are more complete and tell a lot more than a name in the patent which is just that and nothing more. Still names can be very valuable.
The system was liable to corruption. When Spotswood came to Virginia, he observed that procedures were very lax. He complained that the captains of the ships bringing people would claim headrights. Then the wholesaler who bought the people from the captain to sell at retail as servants would claim them. The person who bought the servant would claim them also. Finally the person who came into Virginia and had already been claimed as a headright three times would claim himself also. So Spotswood set up a registry of names to try and prevent the multiple use of names. Spotswoood also thought it was unfair that citizens living in the Northern Neck could have headrights which they could sell for use outside the Northern Neck but there was little he could do about his practice.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.