The land patents (in the Northern Neck, they were called "grants") form an interesting study. When a patent was issued, one copy went to the new land owner and another copy was filed in the record books. The patents have been collected into a series of Patent Books and are available on microfilm. In a momumental effort, Nell Marion Nugent abstracted those which went up to 1732 into three volumes of printed matter . Since then, additional volumes have been added to extend the series up to 1749 (at least). The volumes are called " Cavaliers and Pioneers ".
First though, lets look at what a patent does say in the original. A large part of it is "boilerplate" or standard language which emphasized that the grantor, say (King) George, has the rights to dispose of the land and that the grantee has paid for the land. The interesting part is in the information about the grantee and the tract of land being patented including a description of an outline of the tract (the metes and bounds). Very often, neighbors are named plus geographical features.
Here is the way one particular patent was abstracted:
Robert Tanner. 216 acs. (N.L.) Spotsylv. Co., in St. George's Parish, in the great fork of the Rappa. Riv; on N. side of the Robinsone Riv., adj. Jacob Crigoler; Jacob Broyle, Seriacus & Peter Gleshman; cor. on Smith's Island; 28 Sept. 1728, p. 96 (of Patent Book 14).
Except for the metes and bounds, this is about all of the essential information in the patent.
Going through this, one notes that an open imagination is required in the spelling of the names. Though Pioneers and Cavaliers does have a good index, it pays to read and check interesting patents that look as if they might pertain. In this case Crigoler for Crigler is not hard; finding Gleshman without an exhaustive search would not be easy. The name Tanner is the English equivalent of the German Gerber but we are generally accustomed to this sort of substitution.
We know that this was new land (N.L.) never before patented. We know Robert Tanner and the land are in St. George's Parish of Spotsylvania Co. in the Great Fork of the Rappahannock River. The Great Fork is the area between the northern branch (Hedgman) and the southern branch (Rapidan). Today this is equal to three counties but the patent does locate the tract of land more closely by telling us it is on the north side of the Robinson River by which it usually means it is beside the river. The land is adjacent to land belonging to Jacob Crigler, Jacob Broyle, Cyriacus Fleshman and Peter Fleshman.
The patent was issued on 28 September 1728 though Robert Tanner had probably been living in the area and perhaps on the tract even before this. No payment, in either the form of headrights or treasury warrants is mentioned, as this is some of the "free land" which has been mentioned here recently.
One problem in using the information of this type is that geographic names have changed. Also, one geographic name might be used to describe more than one feature. Reading the name "Beaverdam Run" only causes a groan because there were several of these. But the biggest complaint is that the patent does not mention any neighbors or geographic features. Thus one may be left with only the county to locate the tract. Remember that many of the patents say Spotsylvania County at a time when Spotsylvania County included today's Spotsylvania, Orange, Culpeper, Madison and Rappahannock.
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.