The first surveyor in Jamestown in 1621 was William Claiborne when English settlers had been in the colony for fourteen years. Some owners had occupied their land for years prior to a survey being made. Incidentally, this was five years after the Virginia Company had promised its Colonists that a surveyor would soon be sent to Virginia. During this time, the people had chosen their own locations.
This precedent of irregular land plots might have been reversed by the decision of the Company to regularize the procedures, or in 1624 when Charles I dissolved the Company and made Virginia a Crown Colony. There are no records that show any discussion of these questions, either in Virginia or in England. The burning question was tobacco in the 1620s, when it was found that this was a profitable crop which might, in a good year, recover all of one's debts. This only intensified the efforts of the strong against the weak, and the use of public offices for private gain. No one considered what effect this course of events might hold. Though tobacco prices did not remain high, individualism endured. The effort to claim new lands on the frontiers was intensified as the market for tobacco grew and the older lands wore out.
In New England, the colonization followed a different path in distributing the public lands. In both places, at first, the lands were farmed collectively. When this policy led to dissatisfaction at Plymouth, individual plots of land were allotted to colonists at Plymouth following the pattern of contiguous settlement in close-knit villages with outlying fields. This became the model for the larger colonies founded on the Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut.
In the New England model, the tracts of land were not normally given directly to individuals, but to groups, or proprietors of townships. The legislature entrusted such leaders of new communities with huge blocks of territory which were usually laid out in rectangular form. In turn this land was subdivided among those who covenanted to abide in the town. Each male head of a household accepted as a citizen was also a joint owner of the town’s land. These citizens joined together in a town meeting to decide how to use their lands. Typically, house lots and small tracts of arable field and meadow land were given to families on the basis of their size and community status. Most of the land was reserved for future generations. The original grant to Dedham, Massachusetts, contained nearly 200 square miles, yet in the first twenty years less than 3,000 acres (less than five square miles) were allocated to individuals, and the average size of each farm was about 34 acres.
Professional surveyors were sometimes used in running the boundaries of these larger New England townships, but the usual practice was for the town meeting to appoint a committee of freemen to measure and mark lots prior to their distribution among the families of the communities.
(09 Feb 05)
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.