I have drawn many plots of the patents in the Robinson River Valley and in the Little Fork. They all look nice and pretty with all of the land taken up. There are some cases where there is overlap between the patents. (For examples of these plots, see the index at the back of the Beyond Germanna CD.) Let us look at how some of the anomalies come about.
[You can see two Land Patent Maps of the Little Fork area here .
You can see two Land Patent Maps for the Germanna Colonists in Madison Co. here .]
[Above inserted by: Webmaster GWD.]
A man proceeds into the wilderness with very little to guide him as to where others would like to make their claim. His first task is to mark out a block of land which is sufficient to contain the amount of land he would like to patent. He has to look for conflicting claims either by way of markers or by the word of mouth of other people who are simultaneously looking for land. He is no surveyor himself so he has to estimate how much to mark to be able to contain what he desires to patent. He probably puts up some markers at the corners of the land he is marking and perhaps he blazes some trees between the corners to mark his claim. None of this is formal; he is just tentatively making a claim.
Usually he will call in a surveyor and ask him to survey a certain number of acres, say 400 acres. He points out to the surveyor his original markers of no merit except that he believes within these original markers that there is no one else who has a claim. The surveyor knows that the 400 acres can be obtained by plots of X poles by Y poles so in discussion with the claimer they find such a plot. With the more exact measurements of the surveyor, this 400 acres probably is less than the amount of land contained within the original markers. The surveyor marks his survey with another set of markers which become the official description of the patent.
The patentee continues to describe, to his neighbors and other interested parties, that his claim extends to his original markers which actually have no legal standing except that the patentee might say that he plans on extending his patent to the original markers. Sometimes this bit of deception was carried on for years. Putting off the patenting of the additional land saved on the payment of fees and quit rents.
At some time in the future, the patentee may call for a resurvey of his patent but this time he instructs the surveyor to measure to the original markers. The resurvey may note that additional land, called waste land, was found. Thus, the original patent might say there were 400 acres but the resurvey might say that there was the 400 acres plus 300 acres of waste land. This waste land was the difference between the informal markers put down originally and the first patent description.
(10 Feb 06)
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.