John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 773

I mentioned the books (two) of Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants published by Gertrude Gray.  Here is a typical abstract from them.

G­40.  John Welkeyd of Orange Co.; 116 A. in Orange Co.  Surv. Mr. James Genn.  By Col. Beverley's Meander Run Mt. Tract, Tobias Weelkeyd, by the German Road, Francis Kirtley.  13 Feb 1747.

The "G" tells us the grant is filed in book G, on page 40, where the complete information is given.  We must use our imagination in reading the names.  If we did not do so, we might miss that this was John Willheit.  (The land fell into Madison County several decades later, but, at the time, it was in Orange Co.  Very soon after this, the new county of Culpeper was formed.)  In general, the abstract gives the pertinent data about the size and date.  Any information in the original grant that would help to locate the tract of land is repeated in the abstract.  This includes neighbors, streams, and roads.  Occasionally a grant will contain none of these items in it, which makes its placement difficult.

Armed with the knowledge that the grant is book G, on page 40, I could go immediately to the Virginia State Library files (via computer) and get a copy of it.

The Library files have an online card index to these grants, but it is slow to use.  It takes a lot of thumbing to scan all of the possible spellings.  This is why Gray's book is so valuable.  One can peruse and study the abstracts to find the grants that are of interest.  As soon as one receives one grant, say the one above for John Willheit, then one starts wondering about Col. Beverley's tract, etc.  It's an ever expanding circle.  But, typically, one encounters grants (or patents) which do not have any more new references in them.  Also, one finds references to grants and patents which are not to be found.

The grants are recorded one per page, unlike the patents where more than one may appear on a page.  (Many times, with a patent, one retrieves a page only to find that it continues on the next page which requires another retrieval.)  For both patents and grants, I have been amazed at the quality which one receives back on the net.  In some cases (John Huffman's large final patent is one), the document is simply not readable, especially in the essential parts, like the course bearings and the distances.  Overall, the quality of the survey and the writing for the grants is better than for the patents.

There is an index of surnames in Gray's books.  This permits fast scanning and looking for names, especially the variations.  The neighbors are indexed also so one could use the index for other grants which refer to John Willheit as a neighbor.  But I like to read the abstracts, one by one, and put check marks by the interesting ones.