http://sos.ky.gov/land This website now posts new databases for more than 23,000 treasury warrants for Virginia lands in what is now Kentucky. Under the May 1779 Virginia Land Law, warrants could be purchased from the Land Office for 40 pounds per 100 acres.
And they include some 300 treasury warrants issued to George Rogers Clark to help him recruit the army 1) to subdue the Indians in the Indiana country and 2) to take the land for the Confederated States of America.
The online database launch was announced at the NGS Conference in Richmond VA, 18 May 2007 Kentucky Secretary of State, Trey Grayson.
The real significance in making these warrants available in fully indexed and searchable databases must not be underestimated. For all these many years we have been dependent upon transcribed versions of the records–issued by the Filson Club with segments reviewed in genealogy and historical periodicals by genealogists, land speculators, and historians trying to understand the early land system.
Now you can examine these records yourself. Search spelling variants. Compare land entries made by the same men at different dates. Preview watercourses on which the lands lie and, using modern topographical maps, plot their boundaries with sophisticated digital mapping programs–who were the early neighbors? Did they actually take up residence on their lands?
By what rights did your ancestor claim his land? Tomahawk? Corn? Cabin? Preemption? The warrants will tell you–did your ancestor receive a certificate of settlement?
The databases include Lincoln entries, 1779-1792, preemption warrants, 1779-1780, and certificates, 1779-1780. There is full glossary and an online gazeteer to assist you in reading the documents and understanding where the land was located.
I recommend that you search the databases along with these resources:
VIRGINIA LAND RECORDS IN KENTUCKY AND OHIO: RICHARD CLOUGH ANDERSON COLLECTION – Registrar, Virginia Land Office and his son-in-law Allen Latham at Chillicothe, OH to 1822.
1. Illinois Historical Survey, University of Illinois at Urbana
Ledger Book A on spine; in Archive Inventory
Ledger Book 5 Cash Account Book, 1784-1799
Alpha list of names with year and page # in “Virginia Land Grants in Kentucky and Ohio, 1784-1799,” by Clifford Neal Smith, National Genealogical Society Quarterly 61 (1973) 16-27.
10,000 items include large ledgers
(includes warrants for French and Indian Wars)
2. Archives Division, Virginia Library, Richmond VA. 2,500 items.
3. Western Reserve Historical Society Collections, Cleveland, Ohio. 5 feet of archival material. Includes 4,000 Virginia Bounty-Land Warrants.
4. Virginia Land Office, Kentucky. 16,000 Bounty-Land Warrants in Kentucky
Land grants in the Virginia Military District of Ohio
Published: Kentucky Land Grants. 2 vols. 1925. Compiled by Willard Rouse Jillson. Filson Club Publication, No. 33-34; and Federal Land Series, Vol. IV: Grants in the Virginia Military Land District. Compiled by Clifford Neal Smith. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982-86. Study also Samuel M. Wilson, Catalogue of Revolutionary Soldiers and Sailors of the Commonwealth of Virginia to whom Land Bounty Warrants were Granted for Virginia Military Services in the War for Independence. Reprint of 1913 Year Book of the Kentucky Society of the SAR and 1917 Yearbook of Society of Colonial Wars in Kentucky. 1994. Southern Historical Press, P.O. Box 1267, 375 W. Broad Street, Greenville, SC 29602. Includes new index, and both warrants and surveys by bundle.
5. Early Kentucky Land Records, 1773-1780, by Neal O. Hammon. Louisville, KY: Filson Club Publications, 1992. A new reading of the original warrants, surveys, and military claims. Using computer property-mapping software, the author also provides land ownership maps for these early claims.
6. “Kentucky Land Lotteries, 1789-1800.” Advertised in newspapers throughout the East, offered 40,000 acres in 150 Acre lots for $15.00 per ticket.
7. Eakle, Arlene H. and Linda E. Brinkerhoff. Early Kentucky Stations and Settlers before 1800. Family History World, P.O. Box 129, Tremonton, UT 84337.
Your favorite Virginia genealogist, Arlene Eakle http://www.arleneeakle.com