Volume 14 , Issue 17

Highland County Virginia - Land Ownership

[The photo on the left is a penny postcard sent by R. B. Doyle, Vanderpoole, Virginia, 6 September 1907, to Miss Constance Estella Warwick, received 10 September 1907, in Alva, Oklahoma.]

We have learned that the letter of the law, the unoccupied lands of colonial Virginia belonged to the king, as a personification of the state. The public domain was parceled out to private individuals in a way very much like the homestead law by which a great part of the West had been settled during the last half-century.



Old Postcards IV - Virginia
Those hunting land had a tract set off by the county surveyor, and this survey being the basis on which a patent was issued after a lapse of one, two or perhaps more than a dozen years. The patent was signed by the royal governor as the king's proxy. The fees for the survey and patent were small, but the head right, without which the land seeker might not lawfully enter a selection, was dependent on his having paid his passage from Europe.

The intent of this condition appears to have been the elimination of worthless persons, so that the land might be held by men who would make desirable citizens. The patent required that a least six per cent, of the entry be reduced to tillage within a specified time. The fulfillment of this condition was in favor of the genuine settler and against the land monopolist.

The survey could be transferred and was often patented by another person. Oftentimes, the size of the entry seemed very small, considering the unlimited appearance of the public domain. But in an age of hand labor, only a small tract could be made use of by a person controlling no labor but his own.

It was thought back then that proper and expedient to grant a large body of land to an individual or a company, who in turn would put settlers upon it within a stated time. So the governor and his senate would issue an Order of Council in favor of one, but usually a number of persons, authorizing the grantee or grantees to select 30,000 acres front he public lands. This would not be taken in a single body but in choice tracts, the cull lands being left on the hands of the state.

These choice selections were then sold to actual settlers at what might seem a nominal price, but which must have seemed none to light when money was not plenty and when a little would go a great way. But when, as in the case of the Bullpasture Valley, the surveyors found settlers already on the ground, their selections might at the pleasure of the grantee be confirmed to them without purchase.

Although the homestead regulations of the colonial and early state governments were generally good, the advantage of surveying a county by a regular system, such as was afterward used in the West, was not observed, and consequently the individual survey was likely to have some complex and perhaps absurd outlines. The line ran for different persons would often interfere with one another, and the patches of cull land would be left in shapes that would throw into the shade the figures on a crazy quilt. This utter lack of system was, therefore, a fruitful source of confusion and lawsuits.

At a later date the state was less careful of the rights of the actual settler, and huge areas would be conveyed to an individual or a company, the same being held indefinitely by absentee owners to the disadvantage of the counties in which they lay. This indefensible monopoly appeared in Highland in the Hollingsworth survey on the west side of the county, and the Chambers survey on the east side.

Before the crown government passed away in 1775, all the more desirable lands in Highland had passed into individual or corporate ownership. The second-class and the cull lands were gradually absorbed, being a long while before the entire area had come under private ownership.

The crown patent, under which all lands were conveyed by the state prior to American independence, was a cobweb of finely-spun legal verbiage. It seemed to have been the intent of the lawmakers of that age to throw a mystery into the processes of law, and to render them hard of comprehension to the uninformed. It was under our independence that a much simpler method of wording deeds came into use, though.

In the list of surveys and patents and dating from before 1790, compiled front he records in the Surveyor's office of Augusta and in the Land Office of Virginia, the name of the person for whom the tract was surveyed or patented was followed first by the number of acres, by the year of the survey or grant, and then by a description of its location. Unless this was followed by a capital P (Patent), the tract was a survey. Otherwise, it was a patent granted in the same year.

The descriptions on record were often vague, and sometimes of little or no service. Owing to this circumstance, doubtless a few of the tracts mentioned are really within the limits of Bath or Pendleton, while a few thought to belong to one or the other of those counties may belong really in Highland. The original descriptions have generally been followed, and sometime it was evidently better to give a landmark of the present day. The date of patent was not in every case given. This was not always owing to a difficulty in identification. Sometimes the tract has been thrown into an inclusive survey of later date. Many of the surveys toward the end of the period were not patented until after 1790.

Abbrevations: CP for Copasture; BP for Bullpasture and BPMn for Bullpasture Mountain; Jr for Jackson's River; CB for Crabbottom; BC for Back Creek; SC forStraight Creek; br for branch or draft; n for near; mo for mouth; NF for North Fork; SF for South Fork' SB for South Branch; h'd for head; adj for adjoining; for for corner; NW for northwest, etc. "Adjoining himself" referred to a tract surveyed or patented by the person at an earlier date.

Going down through the listing I did find a few ancestral names that married into my Warwick, Gwin and Hull (Hohl) ancestry. There were the ARbogast, Carlile, Estill, Given, Gum, Hines, Lockridge, Matheny, Seybert, Slaven, Steuart, Wiley, Lightner.

My 4th Great Grandfather, David Gwin, is listed as such:

1. (1) 48- 1780 JR - P. 1787.
2. (2) 380 - 1780 - n. h'd of BC - P. 1786.
3. (3) 56 - 1781 - BC, adj. Sam'l Gregory - P. 1787.
4. (4) 100 - 1789 - JR.
5. (5) 268 - 1789 - Dry Br. - P.

My 4th Great Grandfather, Peter Thomas Hull, III, had listings such as:

1. (1) 97 - 1772 - h'd of JR, at Osten's Camp - P. 1773.
2. (2) 160 - 1781 - CB, adj. himself - P.
3. (3) 341 - 1782 - CB, adj. himself - P.
4. (4) 198 - 1783 - CB.
5. (5) 198 - 1783 CB.
6. (6) 157 - 1785 Straight Fork?
7. (7) 115 - 1785 - CB.
8. (8) 32 1787 - h'd of N.F. on an "old path".

Peter's half-brother George was also listed along side of Peter. Peter as a popular name in my Hull ancestry with three or four Peter's to follow, before it split to an Adam and the female Hull's married into the Gwin's and Warwick's.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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