The last note gave some of the history of land in the Little Fork on which John Fishback has originally taken a patent in 1730. In 1748, his son, Frederick, took a grant for 800 acres which included the 400 acres in the original patent, plus 400 acres of waste land (all measures are approximate).
Waste land was not land that was no good; waste land was the code for land that had never been claimed. Since the Little Fork area was actively under development and settlement at the time that John Fishback took his first patent, why weren't the 400 acres of waste land that Frederick claimed in 1748 taken up or claimed by someone in the 1730 time frame? Stated in another way, how could 400 acres of unclaimed land escape someone's attention for almost twenty years?
This pattern is repeated over and over in the patents and deeds. A man takes a patent or deed for a stated amount of land, and then, years later, finds that there are hundreds of acres of unclaimed land that adjoins his original patent or grant. Andrew Kerker in the Second Colony had a patent for 800 acres. Years later, his heir, John Carpenter, takes out a grant on the same property and he finds that the original 800 acres has grown to 1200 acres. Sometimes the phrase " upon resurvey, the tract is found to contain _____ " is used. The new amount is nearly always larger than the original amount.
I believe that what happens is that the patentee or grantee has staked out a piece of ground. When he has the surveyor come in to survey the property, he describes a smaller piece of the property. For example, John Fishback had staked out a piece of ground containing about 800 acres which he tells his neighbors is his property. John invites the surveyor in and describes a smaller piece, about 400 acres, which he says is his. The surveyor measures this and, in John's case, a patent follows; but John continues to tell his neighbors, and anyone who comes around looking for property, that the larger tract is his property. So for about 18 years, John only pays taxes or quit rents on the smaller piece. Finally Frederick Fishback decides he has to 'fess up and he obtains a grant for the larger piece. I am not picking on the Fishbacks in telling this; they just happened to be some people I was talking about when it seemed like a natural thing to describe these phenomena.
Plotting of land is difficult because the officially described property is not the de facto property. The only way to tell the de facto land division in 1730 is to use the later descriptions.
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.