There has been a discussion on the list of what the Jacob "Manspoil" patent said. With five minutes of work, one can have a copy of the patent in hand by going to the Library of Virginia on the net and retrieving a copy. It comes back as an image in a "tif" format. The library offers a program for viewing the images, but I use the capability of my WordPerfect program. ( One may also use the shareware version of Paint Shop Pro to view these .TIF files and edit them. George W. Durman, Webmaster. )
For locating it, one needs the patent book and page number. The easiest way of finding this is to have the books in the "Cavaliers and Pioneers" series. These show that the Manspoil patent is in Patent Book 15, starting on page 351. If one does not have these books, the library provides a card index but using it adds quite a bit of time to the process. Armed with the information that it is book 15, page 351, that one wants, a download of the page image will give a copy of the microfilm of the original page. The quality of the final image is better printed than on the screen and a magnifying glass is often useful. Some of the copies are extremely legible, while others simply cannot be read at all.
The eight headright names in "Cavaliers and Pioneers" are correct. They are Jacob Bryell, Rose Paulitz, Susanna Hance, Peter Hance, Margaret Hance, Jacob Manspoil, Catherine Hance, and Adam Hance. Reading the names involves the problems typical of colonial handwriting. One starts by swearing that he/she has never seen letters like that before. One of the problems centered on the "H", which the writer makes in his own distinctive way. But, by searching around, in the metes and bounds, there is the known word, "Hundred." The initial letter is identical to the start of Hance. The "a" is clear but the writer makes the letters "n" and "u" in an identical way. The "c" compares to the one in Jacob and the "e" compares to the ending of Rose and Catherine. It seems mostly likely that the name is Hance and not Hauce.
Headrights never expire. They are still good twenty years after the act which created them. Rose Paulitz came with her family in 1717 (I believe). So the appearance of a headright says almost nothing about when a person came. Legally, a headright was to be used only once; however, I know of one man whose headright was used twice. As Dieterich Weber, it was used by Col. Spotswood, but it was used again by Peter Weaver, as Peter Weaver, in 1736. Other headrights used by Peter Weaver in 1736 are Michael Wilhite, John Wilhite, Tobias Wilhite, Mathias Kerckler, and Conrad Amberger. Several of these people came much earlier, at least one in 1717.
Grants in the Northern Neck are also available online from the Library of Virginia. It never fails to impress me that one can be looking at a copy of the original document within five minutes. For me, this is faster than finding one in my filing(?) system. It sure beats going to Richmond or having someone else make a copy for you.
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.