The document discusses the probate court systems and records of several original 13 colonies - Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, and Maryland. It notes that Connecticut established probate districts within counties, while neighboring Rhode Island handled probate matters at the town level. It provides details on the specific counties and time periods of surviving probate records in each colony. The document also discusses the types of early records that exist for each colony, including land grants and court proceedings.

1. Colonial Connecticut
The system of probate districts in Connecticut is unlike that in any other colony or state. Neighboring Rhode Island handled
probate matters at all times at the town level. Vermont, many of whose earliest settlers came from Connecticut, eventually
divided some of its counties into districts for probate purposes, but these districts, once established, did not change in si ze.
As noted previously, soon after the union of Connecticut and New Haven colonies, four counties were established: Hartford,
Fairfield, New Haven, and New London. Throughout the rest of the seventeenth century, the courts of these counties also
handled probate matters. In 1719 the legislature began the process of dividing the counties into smaller probate dis tricts,
creating Guilford, Windham, and Woodbury districts. From this date forward, the researcher must look in the towns for land
records, in the districts for probate records, and in the counties for court records.
By the time of the Revolution, there were twenty probate districts in Connecticut. The last of these erected in colonial times was
Westmoreland District, created in May 1775, considered to be derived from Litchfield District. Westmoreland was actually in
Pennsylvania, in territory claimed by Connecticut and formally ceded to Pennsylvania in 1782.
The probate records for the Hartford District from 1635 to 1750 have been published by Charles William Manwaring as Early
Connecticut Probate Records.[1] Since these published records begin in 1635, and Hartford County (and therefore the associated
probate district) was not established until 1666, it is clear that the earliest of these documents must have been recorded
somewhere besides Hartford County. Manwaring, in fact, took them from a number of sources. Some of the earliest are found in
the records of Connecticut Colony.
The bulk of the probate records for the Hartford District down to 1700 were recorded in six volumes. Each volume was a double
volume. One side contained the records of the Hartford County court, and the reverse side, with separate pagination, contained
the probate records. However, the “court side” also included probate proceedings, such as letters of administration. Thus, in the
published version of these records, the proceedings for any given estate might include material from both the “court side” and
the “probate side” of the same volume. Furthermore, if the administration of a given estate lingered for some years, some of the
documents might have been included in one of the later manuscript volumes but would be entered out of place in the published
volume, along with the earlier documents. In addition, when the only surviving version of a given document is in the loose
papers, these items are also gathered in the printed version along with the records from the court volumes. The transition to the
records of Hartford County, as established in 1666, takes place in the middle of the third of these manuscript court volumes,
which covers the years from 1663 to 1677.
Colonial Delaware
Courts certainly operated on the Delaware prior to 1676, under the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English, but very few records of
these early bodies have survived. What does exist may be found in records preserved in New Amsterdam and New York:New
York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes 18–29, Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) . . . 1648–1664 and New York Historical
Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes XX–XXI, Delaware Papers (English Period) . . . 1664–1682.
On 25 September 1676, Governor Edmund Andros of New York promulgated to the Delaware a set of instructions, which had
already been in use for more than a decade in New York. The second of these instructions was that “there be three Courts held
in the Severall Parts of the River and Bay as formerly to witt. one on New Castell, one above at Upland—Another below att
Whorekill.”
The most northerly of these three counties, Upland, had the majority of the Swedish settlers. The records of this county have
been published for the years from 1676 to 1681 (The Record of the Court at Upland in Pennsylvania 1676 to 1681 . . . ). In 1681

2. this upper region of the settlements on the Delaware was chosen for the settlement of William Penn. Upland became Chester,
and the later records for this area are found in Chester County.
The records of New Castle County for the same time period have been published as Records of the Court of New Castle on
Delaware 1676–1681, as have been the records for Sussex County from 1677 to 1710, as Records of the Courts of Sussex
County, Delaware, 1677–1710.
In 1680 the county structure of Delaware was completed with the erection of St. Jones County, carved out of the northern part of
Whorekill County. Later in the same year, the name of Whorekill County was changed to Deale County. In 1683, St. Jones
became Kent County and Deale became Sussex County. The Kent County records from 1680 to 1705 were published as
Volume 8 of the American Legal Records series.
During the period when New York administered Delaware, the representatives of the Duke of York made grants of land (Original
Land Titles in Delaware Commonly Known as The Duke of York Record . . . From 1646 to 1679). Those already holding land
granted to them under Swedish or Dutch rule were asked to come forward to have their holdings confirmed, and many of these
confirmations were recorded in New York.
After 1681 additional new land grants were made by the Penn proprietors of Pennsylvania. The western reaches of Kent and
Sussex counties were claimed by Maryland, and records of landholders in these areas may be found in Maryland colony and
county records. When this land dispute was eventually settled in favor of Delaware, confirmations of these lands were often
entered in the records of the Penn proprietors.
The early court proceedings noted previously included original grants of land, sales of land from one person to another, and
probate proceedings. In the early 1680s, very soon after the three “lower counties” came under the Penn government, separate
Orphans’ Courts were established to handle probate, and registries of deeds were also established.
Colonial Georgia
The range of surviving colonial Georgia records is quite limited for several reasons. Georgia existed for less than half a century
in the colonial period, retained no records at the county level prior to 1777, and suffered serious record losses beginning during
the Revolutionary War. Probate and land records were maintained at Savannah. Robert Scott Davis Jr. has compiled a list of
such records as have been published or microfilmed.
In 1904, Allen D. Candler, with the authority of the Georgia legislature, began publishing records from the Public Record Office in
England pertaining to Georgia and, by 1916, had brought forth twenty-six volumes. More recently this project has been revived,
and six additional volumes have been published, based on the copies obtained by Candler.
As an example of what is contained in this series, the earliest volumes contain the records of the meetings in England of the
Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America, and of the Common Council of the Trustees. The most recently
published volume incorporates “Entry Books of Commissions, Powers, Instructions, Leases, Grants of Land, Etc. by the
Trustees” for the years 1732–38.

3. Colonial Maryland
Vast portions of the colonial records of Maryland have been published by the Maryland Historical Society in the series Archives
of Maryland, now numbering seventy-two volumes, published from 1883 to 1972. These published volumes consist of material
extracted from a large number of manuscript volumes of early Maryland records, with the material in any given published volum e
being selected from several manuscript volumes.
The first volume of Archives of Maryland includes in the front matter a detailed inventory of the original volumes from which the
published books are drawn, with information on both the original volume (if it survives) and later copies. For example, the first
book described is Liber Z, which includes four separate sections, the first covering business relating to the patenting of land and
the other three sections containing probate matters. The fourth volume of the Archives of Maryland, entitledJudicial and
Testamentary Business of the Provincial Court, 1637–1650, begins with probate material from the second section of Liber Z,
with appropriate marginal notations indicating the page from which the particular extract was taken. The patent records from the
first section of Liber Z are not included in the fourth volume of the Archives of Maryland.
In the various manuscript copies of these records, Liber Z is gathered in the same volume with Liber A of the original records,
which also contains a wide range of record types, including a variety of patent, probate, and court matters. A recently published
volume, prepared by V. L. Skinner Jr., presents the material from Libers Z and A, and also from some other early books, in a
different format. The abstracts are here presented in a highly condensed format, taken page by page from the original, including
the patent material not published in the fourth volume of Archives of Maryland.
These examples show that the same material may have been published more than once, in more than one format. They also
illustrate that a published volume does not necessarily conform in whole or in part to any one of the manuscript volumes, and
vice versa. This feature of the Maryland records, and of the records of several of the other colonies, may require the researcher
to consult the original, not just to verify the reading of a particular document but to determine the broader context of that
document.
Throughout the colonial period, the granting of land to individuals was, to a greater or lesser extent, in the hands of the Lords
Proprietors, members of the Calvert family. During the years when Maryland was a royal colony, from 1689 to 1715, some
authority over land policy was relinquished to the royal government but not all. The details of the changes in this authority, and in
the officers who administered land policy, may be found in a study by Elizabeth Hartsook, published in 1946, contained in pages
11 through 77 of Land Office and Prerogative Court Records of Colonial Maryland. The land was granted in the typical fashion,
through warrant, followed by survey, followed by patent.
Colonial Massachusetts
Plymouth Colony came into existence when the Mayflower made landfall off Cape Cod near the end of 1620. The small band of
colonists struggled to survive at the town of Plymouth for a number of years. With the arrival of spillover immigrants from
Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s, a number of other towns were settled, and the colony began to grow. Over the next few
decades, new towns were founded on Cape Cod and to the north and west of the town of Plymouth, toward the borders with
Massachusetts Bay to the north and Rhode Island to the west.
For much of the existence of Plymouth Colony, there was a single registry for deeds and probate at Plymouth. In 1685 three
counties were erected (Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable), which were barely established before Massachusetts Bay Colony
absorbed Plymouth Colony in 1692, and these counties became Massachusetts counties.

4. Most of the records of Plymouth Colony were published in the nineteenth century Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in
New England, edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer. The best modern guide to Plymouth Colony history and
genealogy is Eugene Aubrey Stratton’s Plymouth Colony: Its History & People, 1620–1691.
Certainly among the New England colonies, Massachusetts is abnormal in its normality. Unlike Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
New Hampshire, Massachusetts very early erected a strong county system. For the most part, deeds and probates are easily
located in those jurisdictions, with very few losses over the centuries. The colony records of the Massachusetts Bay General
Court, which carried out both legislative and judicial activities, are well-preserved. The minutes of the General Court have been
published in Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1628–1686, edited by Nathaniel
B. Shurtleff.
Even with this regularity, there are some peculiarities of the record-keeping system in this colony that require special attention,
most importantly the early transition from town-based to county-based recording of land transfers. Before the creation of the first
four counties in 1643, all land records were maintained at the town level. This included both proprietary grants from town to
individual and, later, transfers from individual to individual. The General Court required the early towns to submit to the c olony
the inventories of the landholdings in each town. These inventories survive for a number of communities, including Boston,
Watertown, Charlestown, and Cambridge. These documents are sometimes referred to as the “Book of Possessions” for the
town.
These town land inventories were sometimes employed also as town deed registers. Towns for which such inventories do not
survive also recorded brief entries that may be interpreted as deeds, even for many years after the creation of the counties in
1643. As a rough rule, the more distant the town from the county seat, the more likely that the early deeds for that town were still
entered in the town records, even after other towns were using the county deed registry for this purpose. The town of Dedham is
a good example. For instance, on 10 February 1650/51, thirty-five brief items of the following form were entered in the first
volume of town records: “Elea. Lusher sell to Joh[n] Fraery 2½ acres upland. 2 of swampe together abutting east street east[, ]
brooke in the swampe west[,] Pet. Woodward south[,] Joh[n] Fraery north.” As brief as this entry is, it provides sufficient data to
establish this link in the chain of title.
Colonial New Hampshire
Once the jurisdictional maneuvering was done in the early 1640s, the towns that form the early core of New Hampshire were
served by two county courts. Hampton and Exeter were in (old) Norfolk County, while Dover and Portsmouth were in Piscataqua
County.
In Norfolk County, courts were held alternately at Hampton (in the fall) and Salisbury (in the spring). Although Hampton
eventually ended up in New Hampshire and Salisbury in Massachusetts, each of these courts covered all the Norfolk County
towns. These early Norfolk court records have been published along with the other courts that operated in the area that is now
Essex County, Massachusetts. Separate deed registers, referred to as Norfolk Deeds, were maintained for these same towns,
and these volumes also contained wills and other probate material. This probate material has been included in the published
volumes of Essex County probates, but the deeds have not been published.
The court that sat at Dover and at Portsmouth (Strawbery Banke), known variously as Piscataqua County or Dover and
Portsmouth County, entered all its records in a single volume in its earliest years. The book, designated as Volume 1 of the
provincial deeds (and a number of succeeding volumes), contains court records, deeds, and probate material. The court records
themselves have been extracted and published in the last volume of the provincial and state papers, New Hampshire Provincial
and State Papers.

5. Probate records for these first four New Hampshire towns may be found in a number of places. Transcripts of these records
have been gathered together in Volume 31 of the New Hampshire Provincial and State Papers. Most of the probate documents
for the earliest years are taken from the first volume of New Hampshire deeds and from the first volume of Norfolk County
deeds. A few additional probate records were recorded in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which at various times and for various
reasons had superior jurisdiction over some estates.
Finally, the recorded deeds for these towns may be found in the same places as the probate and court matter discussed
previously. In addition, original land grants and some later transfers between person and person may be found in the town
records.
In summary, the published volumes of court and probate records for early New Hampshire have selected their material from
several sources, and portions of the original sources have been published in various places.
West of the Merrimack River, the most southerly tier of towns in what is now New Hampshire was part of Massachusetts until the
border was adjusted in 1741. Prior to that time, deeds for these towns should be sought in Middlesex, Worcester, or Hampshire
County records, as appropriate.
Colonial New Jersey
Like New York, New Jersey was a region of transition from the town-based proprietary system to the colony-based system. This
section focuses on East Jersey to see how this system worked.
Prior to the English takeover in 1664, most of the European population in what would become East Jersey was in the settlement
of Bergen, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Almost immediately after the grant from the Duke of York to Berkeley
and Carteret, township grants were made to settlers who came from various parts of New England. In 1664 the patent for
Elizabethtown was issued, and in 1666 this tract of land was subdivided into three parts, thus giving rise to the new towns of
Woodbridge and Piscataway. In 1665 the Monmouth Patent was issued, and, within a few years, this area evolved into the
towns of Middletown and Shrewsbury. Finally, in 1666 the patent for Newark was granted. Thus, by 1670 most of the settlers in
the northeastern part of New Jersey could be found in one of these seven towns, one (Bergen) dating from the period of Dutch
settlement, and the other six being formed within five years after the English conquest by men from New England.
These New England-style towns were issued charters by the proprietors. For example, Woodbridge received its charter on 1
June 1669. Among the rights granted was that the “Freeholders or the major part of them are equally to divide the aforesaid t ract
of upland and meadows among themselves,” very much in the way that the proprietors of New England towns
operated. However, the patent goes on to require that these town grants made by the freeholders were “to be entered upon
record by the Secretary or Recorder General of the province” and “to hold his land by patent from the Lords Proprietors and to
pay them . . . rent yearly,” which were actions not required in New England. For much land in this part of New Jersey, then, there
may well be two distinct records of the original grant: an entry in the town book and a patent issued at the colony level.
The earliest records of the granting of land at the colony level are contained in a series of books that also include a wide variety
of other records, including probate matters, Indian deeds, court proceedings, and so on. These volumes were begun before the
division of New Jersey into East and West Jersey in 1683. The years 1664 through 1703 have been abstracted into Volume 21
of the New Jersey Archives series. This series of records also contains straightforward warranty deeds from
person to person, of land earlier granted by the town or colony.
After the division of the region into East and West Jersey in 1683, the focus for landgranting was in the two capitals of Burlington
(West Jersey) and Perth Amboy (East Jersey). Although counties were formed very soon after this, the recording of deeds was
retained in these two capitals until 1785 (although the recording of mortgages at the county level began in 1766). Thus, for most

6. of the first century of the existence of New Jersey, the researcher must look both in province and town records for information
about land transfers. For those generations living in the middle of the eighteenth century, the researcher may need to look in all
three jurisdictions: province, county, and town.
Colonial New York
The arrangement of probate records in New York is perhaps more complicated than in any other colony. First, during the Dutch
period, probate matters might have been handled in a variety of ways. Some were recorded by notaries, such as those
preserved by Salomon Lachaire as “New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch,” in The Register of Solomon Lachaire, Notary
Public of New Amsterdam, 1661–1662. Other probate records are found in theMinutes of the Orphanmasters of New
Amsterdam.]Yet other papers were recorded in the town records of the English towns within New Netherland. (For an overview
of records created during the Dutch period, see Charles T. Gehring’s “Documentary Sources Relating to New Netherland,”
in Colonial Dutch Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach.)
Second, in the English period, from 1664 to 1787, and especially after the formation of the original twelve counties, many
probate documents were filed centrally, at the province level, as well as at the county level.
Third, abstracts of the wills and administrations in the central, province-wide collection have been published in seventeen
volumes of the Collections of the New-York Historical Society, issued from 1892 to 1908. The last two volumes in this series
contain corrections to the abstracts in the previous volumes; therefore, researchers should always consult the last two volumes
in conjunction with the abstracts themselves. These will abstracts should then lead the researcher to the full record in the will
registers, or will libers, and in some cases to the original will itself.
Fourth, at the same time, many of these probate cases also were recorded at the county level, with various degrees of survival.
Abstracts of many of these have been published as well, on a county-by-county basis.
In 1991, Harry Macy Jr. published a detailed description of the pre-1787 New York probate records. His description includes a
table showing the location of originals and copies of the province collection of probate papers, a listing of the records held by the
early counties, and a number of recommendations for researching in these records.
Colonial North Carolina
Colonial, Revolutionary, and early state records of North Carolina were published in twenty-six volumes between 1886 and
1909. The first ten volumes, published in Raleigh between 1886 and 1890, covered the years from 1662 to 1776 and bore the
title The Colonial Records of North Carolina. Later volumes in the series covered the years from 1776 onward, with the twenty-
sixth volume containing a full transcript of the 1790 census for North Carolina. In 1909 a four-volume index to the entire set was
published.
More recently, the Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission and the North Carolina Division of Archives and History have
published ten volumes entitled The Colonial Records of North Carolina [Second Series] (1963–1999). The first volume in this
series has North Carolina Charters and Constitutions, 1578–1698, and the last volume presents The Church of England in North
Carolina: Documents, 1699–1741. Volumes two through six cover North Carolina Higher-Court Records from 1670 to 1730, and
volumes seven through nine have Records of the Executive Council from 1664 to 1775. This section looks more closely at the
higher-court records.
The third volume of the second series of The Colonial Records of North Carolina has the volume title North Carolina Higher-
Court Records, 1670–1696. The volume begins with an introductory essay of nearly a hundred pages, including a description of

7. the sources of the documents included in the volume and of the operation of the courts that produced those documents. The
records reproduced here are not a connected series of court proceedings but a miscellaneous collection of what has survived
from these earliest years. For example, the very earliest documents reproduced are from two very distinct sources: first, loose
papers surviving in both official and private collections at the Division of Archives and History and, second, previously published
transcripts of court minutes from the early 1670s, the originals of which vanished within the last century.
A complete overview of all colonial record types for North Carolina may be found in Helen F. M. Leary’s North Carolina
Research: Genealogy and Local History
Colonial Pennsylvania
As is the case with most other colonies, a series of colonial and state papers has been published for Pennsylvania, in this
instance one of the largest such series, with 138 volumes. In 1997, Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer published a detailed
description of and guide to these volumes in Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine. This monograph contains excellent guidance
on searching and interpreting the information in these volumes, and also suggests a “plan of attack,” a sensible sequence in
which to search the volumes. The author includes a bibliography of other publications that also describe this series and related
records.
The set of 138 volumes is divided into ten different subseries, the first called Colonial Records and the rest designated
Pennsylvania Archives, First Series through Ninth Series. Records from the colonial period are not limited to the subseries
entitled Colonial Records but are found throughout the entire set. As one might expect, the Colonial Records series contains
official documents of the provincial government, mostly the minutes of the Provincial Council.
Almost all of the later series include some material from the period before the Revolution. For example, the Second Series and
the Sixth Series include, along with much other material, church records from several different denominations, some as early as
the seventeenth century. The Third Series contains some colonial tax records.
Looking more closely at some of the volumes, researchers can see that the eighteenth volume of the Second Series is
entitled Documents Relating to the Connecticut Settlement in the Wyoming Valley. This volume includes such items as “Minutes
of the Susquehanna Company” and “Miscellaneous Papers Relating to the Wyoming Controversy.” The nineteenth volume of the
same series, originally published in 1893, is entitled Minutes of the Board of Property of the Province of Pennsylvania and
includes records of land granted by the Pennsylvania government from 1687 to 1732.
Colonial Rhode Island
Rhode Island is, and has always been, the most localized colony or state for record keeping. With minor exceptions, each town
or city holds all deeds and all probate materials. For this reason, a large proportion of the surviving records of three of t he
original four Rhode Island towns have been published. (Most of the early Newport records were accidentally destroyed during
the Revolutionary War.)
 Providence: The Early Records of the Town of Providence, 21 vols. (Providence, 1892–1915).
 Portsmouth: The Early Records of the Town of Portsmouth (Providence, 1901).
 Warwick: The Early Records of the Town of Warwick (Providence, 1926); and More Early Records of the Town of Warwick,
Rhode Island: “The Book with Clasps” and “General Records” (Boston, 2001).
Some of these town records are incorporated in John Russell Bartlett’s Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations in New England. This volume also includes early records of the colony court, which combined legislative and judicial

8. functions. For example, Bartlett included sixteen pages of the early records of Portsmouth (after the split in early 1639 that led to
the settlement of Newport). Comparison of these transcripts with the above-cited volume devoted to the early records of
Portsmouth shows that the same material is presented in the latter on pages one through thirty-four but with far greater fidelity
than in the former. The original is badly damaged in this early period. Bartlett took great liberties with the text, inserting text in
these bad sections without editorial comment and simply omitting sections that he found difficult to read.
An excellent example of an original manuscript that has been published incompletely and in disjointed parts is “Rhode Island
Colony Records 1646–1669.” Scattered through this manuscript volume are several sittings of a Court of Quarter Sessions that
was held alternately at Portsmouth and Newport. These proceedings have been extracted and published in Howard M.
Chapin’s Documentary History of Rhode Island. But the same manuscript volume also contains sessions of the Court of Trials
held from time to time in all the towns of the colony. These have been published in a separate and unrelated pair of
volumes Rhode Island Court Records: Records of the Court of Trials of the Colony of Providence Plantations.
This court material scattered over three volumes does not, however, exhaust the records in the manuscript volume. As yet, the
large number of early Newport deeds also included here, some from as early as 1642, remain unpublished. Given the near-total
destruction of early Newport town records, this source, once fully published, will be of great importance for early Rhode Island
genealogy.
Colonial South Carolina
Despite the existence of counties, judicial districts, and parishes at various times in the colonial period of South Carolina, all
South Carolina probate records prior to 1781 were maintained in a single repository in Charleston. Abstracts of colonial wills
have been published in various places and are discussed later in this chapter. In 1977, Brent H. Holcomb published an index to
inventories for the years 1746 through 1785 called Probate Records of South Carolina, Volume I: Index to Inventories, 1746–
1785. (This volume does not index the first five volumes of colonial inventories, covering the years from 1736 to 1746.)
In 1960, Caroline T. Moore published three volumes of will abstracts, the first of which was for the years 1670 through 1740.
This volume brings together abstracts of documents found in twenty-two different record books of the colony, most of which are
titled either “Will Book” or “Miscellaneous Records.” The first page of this collection contains three abstracts, taken from three
different record books; in each case, these are the only wills represented as coming from these record books. On pages sixteen
through eighteen are five abstracts, identified as coming from “Will Book 1671–1727,” and these are the only will abstracts from
this Will Book. Each is identified as being taken from a transcript made in 1851, with page references (presumably to the original
volume) of 2, 3, 73, 187, and 189. Clearly, far more wills were included in these original will volumes than have made their way
into this modern compilation.
In 1978, Caroline T. Moore published an additional volume of record abstracts, this time from the records of the secretary of the
province. This book contains abstracts of records from six record books, identified by the inclusive dates of the records
contained therein, along with some miscellaneous loose papers. The first volume from which abstracts were made, described as
“Book 1700–1710,” includes abstracts of wills, which were also published in the volume discussed in the previous paragraph,
and noted there as having been taken from “Will Book 1687–1710.” For example, in both of these sets of abstracts, the first two
wills are for John Crosse and his widow Mary Crosse. The abstracts represented as taken from the records of the secretary of
the province have more than just the wills abstracted in the earlier volume; there are also many letters of administration,
nuncupative wills, and other types of probate records.
Researchers who use these various will abstracts and other probate materials must be wary of the exact source of each
document and the nature of the particular copy or version being presented.

9. Colonial Virginia
In Virginia, the principal method for transferring land from the colony to individuals for the first century or so of the colony’s
existence was the headright system, in which land was awarded for each person transported into the colony. A single grant of
land might be based on a head of household, the remaining members of the household, and a number of servants, and so might
run to many hundreds of acres. (Less important were grants of land based on military service. Later in the history of the colony,
rights to acquire land could be purchased.) After the Crown took over Virginia in 1624, these transfers of land were referred to as
“crown grants,” except for the land distributed after 1649 by the Northern Neck Proprietors, which became known as “proprietary
grants.” This separate proprietary land office was established by Charles II in that year as part of his political maneuvering in his
attempts to regain the throne.
The actual process of making the grant of land was divided into four steps. First, the person or group of persons wishing to
exercise a headright or a military right submitted to the land office a petition that stated the number of acres requested and
described the location of the land desired. In the case of headright grants, the petition also included the names of the pers ons
upon whom the claim was based. The land office then issued a warrant, authorizing a surveyor to lay out the land. When the
survey was completed and returned, the land office then issued a patent, which became the legal basis for ownership of the
land.
The massive collection of Virginia land patents, from the years 1623 to 1776, has been abstracted and published in seven
volumes, the first three volumes of which were edited by Nell Marion Nugent. Several of these volumes contain extensive and
useful introductory essays on the records and the system that created them.
The Northern Neck land office, eventually controlled by the Fairfax family, covered an area in northern Virginia that was
eventually divided into nearly two dozen counties in Virginia and West Virginia. The grants made by the Northern Neck propriety
have also been published.
In 1987, Richard Slatten published “Interpreting Headrights in Colonial-Virginia Patents: Uses and Abuses,” an article that
described the granting process in detail and demonstrated techniques for interpreting the patents in the solution of genealogical
problems.
This same system, with variations, was used in all colonies other than the four New England colonies (although there were other
important landgranting processes in New York and New Jersey). From one colony to another there might be differences in
terminology, but the underlying process was much the same. For instance, the initial petition might also be called the “entry” and
the survey might be designated the “plat.”