A correspondent recently wrote that the land patents in Virginia were hard to understand. Assuming that we all understand the basic concept in the sale of a piece of land, it is not hard to understand that the patents are nothing more than a record of the first ever sale of a piece of land...
Virginia was a Royal Colony in the eighteenth century. That meant that the land was in the ownership of the Crown. Unlike Pennsylvania, where the Crown sold the whole colony of Pennsylvania to William Penn, in Virginia the Crown retained the ownership of the land.. They, the Crown, were interested in selling the land, since they did not wish to farm it themselves. While it remained in their hands, they did not earn any money from it. When a parcel was sold by the Crown to an individual, a patent was issued, which was, in essence, the first deed .
Let us assume you have just arrived in Virginia and want to buy some land. You could get someone, who already has purchased land from the Crown, to sell you some of their land. Instead, you decide you could get more land by buying unimproved land from the Crown. What you have to do is look around for land that no one else has purchased. This was not always easy.
Say you were Adam Yager, and you were interested in land in the neighborhood of Mt. Pony. You would visit the area. (He probably had visited the general area several times already, because he has been living a few miles to the east for eight years). He had to identify land that was available. If there was someone who was already living in the area, he probably would ask them which land was owned, and which was available. And, he might look for markers. Having found some land (290 acres), he might put up his own markers to warn others that this was his intended property.
Patents show evidence of three methods which were used to pay for the land. The original method was to give 50 acres to anyone who came into the Colony. These head rights were transferrable. About 1702, a new method was introduced, although head rights still remained valid. Treasury Warrants became acceptable at the rate of five shillings per fifty acres. In the 1720s, land was free in Spotsylvania and Brunswick Counties. So, Adam paid nothing for his land, because it was in the time of free land.
Adam had to have a surveyor come and survey the land to generate a legal description. Adam had to pay for this. The surveyor turned in his description and the land office wrote up two copies of the deed (patent) based on this. One copy went to the purchaser of the land, and the other copy was maintained in a book. These latter copies are available today, and may even be accessed on line through the Library of Virginia.
By the time Adam got his copy, he was probably living on the land. When he did get it, he found that his name was spelled Adam Eager, which has confounded researchers since then. It is recorded in Patent Book 13, on page 476.
(28 Jun 02)
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