The use of land records enhances our understanding of our ancestors. It helps us find the "Where"
of our people as well as shedding light on relationships and other aspects of their lives.
When our country was founded settlements/companies often gave enticements to people to come to live in a colony. Land was the usual draw. In Virginia the king gave very large tracts of land to individuals who were to divide it up and issue it to those who would come to settle the land and make claim for the crown. The Beverly Grant and the Bordon Grant were two in the Virginia Valley where many of my family settled. The individual plots were laid out in the system of metes and bounds using poles and chains to do much of the measurements. This predates the Revolutionary War.
After the Revolutionary War the deed of John McClung in Botetourt County in
1780 demonstrates the terrible financial straights that the state was in. Colonial money had been devalued
to such a point that John's land was valued at 30,000 Virginia pounds.
In 1787 Isaac Ballengee gave power of attorney before the sale of his land
in Botetourt County, Virginia. He died shortly after that and his wife, Jean was granted
land in Greenbrier County bordering a previous grant to Isaac. This refers
to Isaac as deceased and the first record we have of his death. No cemetery gravestone has ever been
located for this ancestor.
Sometimes really unusual things turn up in deeds. We found a McClung deed in
Greene County, Georgia dated 1795 wherein the gift of a horse was the property being deeded. This
deed is very significant to the whole Georgia McClung line because of the people listed in it. The
witnesses include a Reuben Bellah who was probably the namesake for the Reuben McClung being gifted the
horse. The person gifting was a Linn - probably his other grandfather. Before finding this deed the
family had no idea what the female lines were in this family.
In Missouri the earliest land grants were not quadrangles but laid out with the metes and bounds system in
many different shapes. The land was measured in Spanish arpents rather than acres. After the Louisiana
territory was purchased, these land claims had to be converted to acres and were sometimes sold as the
original shapes but eventually encorportated into the quadrangle system. A county map of Jefferson County will
show the original grants. We have the Hildebrand deed index and some abstracts of
these deeds.
The original claims had to be registered with the new American government. There was a lot of dishonesty
and people making false claims. For this reason, the settlers had to have people witness for their claims.
These testimonies are very revealing. They are recorded in the American State Papers series. At this
time the records of these claims do not appear to be online. However individual records appear in family
histories, such as
this claim record.
People were given military warrants/grants for service in most of the early wars. Some of the first
land grants in Alabama were given for service in the War of 1812. Territorial
grants are represented in the group. First ones were granted by the Mississippi Territory and then
as politcal changes occurred, it became Alabama Territory and then the State of Alabama. The listing of
our McClungs in Alabama patents shows which county they entered their land. As
these properties were sold, they would have been entered in deeds. This is a
listing of the McClung Grantors in Limestone County and with abstracts of the deeds.
Each state has a unique history of the way their land was granted to the white settlers. You can do a
Google search and put in Land Grants and the name of the state.
This is the one for Tennessee.
We are all aware of the run for land in Oklahoma with the first settler staking a claim and then having
to race to the land office to register it before anyone else could get there. It caused a lot of problems
doing it that way. Georgia ran lotteries to divvy up new lands taken from the Indians. The land was
surveyed and then people would draw for a lucky win. Soldiers were given more than one draw and widows and
orphans were allowed to draw. There were several lotteries but if you had won in a previous drawing,
you were not allowed to draw again. Researchers, do not try to draw assumptions about migration patterns
in families because the lotteries pulled families apart in Georgia. Of course not everyone who won a plot
of land in Georgia moved there. Sometimes they remained where they were and just sold the land to
subsequent settlers. This is a listing of the McClungs who drew and sometimes won in the Georgia
land lotteries
You can e-mail me at Judith McClung if you have corrections or additions.
Page begun 12 June 2004
Last updated 21 June 2004
Last updated by Judith McClung