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Show COLONIAL LAND SYSTEMS 37 Governor Alexander Spotswood.10 In Spot-sylvania there were, in 1723, numerous large individual holdings. Twenty-seven individuals and partnerships held 207,753 acres.11 In addition, extensive tracts had been acquired by the land companies, whose shares were distributed among most of the influential men of the day. The two major Virginia companies were the Ohio Company which was given in 1749 grants of 200,000 and 500,000 acres, and the Loyal Land Company which received a grant of 800,000 acres. Then, in the turbulent days before the American Revolution, a number of companies made up of great names appeared, all scrambling for grants ranging into the millions of acres. Professor Abernethy has traced the involved lobbying efforts of Benjamin Franklin, George Croghan, and Sir William Johnson for the Vandalia, the Indiana, and the Mississippi Land Companies. They were ably aided by English officials who hoped to make fortunes from the spoils.12 Greatest of the grants in Virginia and larger than the claim of any land company was the Northern Neck, located between the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers. It dated from 10 Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, William Byrd. The London Diary, 1717-1721 and Other Writings (New York, 1958), p. 41; Thomas Perkins Abernethy, Western Lands and the American Revolution (New York, 1937), p. 2; Voorhis, be. cit., pp. 499 ff.; Morris, op. cit., pp. 394 ff.; Marshall Harris, op. cit., p. 208, lists seven other individuals and groups to whom 360,000 acres were patented on condition that they would settle one family for each thousand acres. The most detailed examination of Virginia's land policy is in Manning C. Voorhis, "The Land Grant Policy of Colonial Virginia, 1607-1774" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1940). It is especially good on the failure to implement royal instructions to allow indentured servants headrights when they were freed, on the failure of the Colony to enforce "seating" requirements, and for the large number of grants in excess of 5,000 acres which are listed. 11 Louis de Cognets, Jr., English Duplicates of Lost Virginia Records (Princeton, N. J., 1958), p. 114. 12 Abernethy, Western Lands and the American Revolution, pp.14 ff. the early 17th century when Lord Culpepper, one of the members of the Virginia Company, was given this huge tract of 6 million acres. It later fell into the hands of the Fairfax family by marriage.13 The rent rolls of the Virginia counties for 1704 and other data showing grants of land indicate that for every large holding there were dozens of small holdings which presumably were given as headrights or were bought from the Colony or from large grantees. As Professor Wertenbaker has said, "it was the small farmer who owned the bulk of the land . . . ." One may suspect that this was more true in 1700 than it was in 1775. By that time, in the richer areas, many small farmers who lacked the resources with which to develop their property had been eliminated and their land consolidated into more efficient farm units.14 Also, primogeniture and entail, which were brought to Virginia by the earliest colonists, and intermarriage among families with the larger land holdings tended to increase the size of ownerships.15 Major Developments in Virginia Land Law-Occupancy, Adverse Possession, Preemption A Virginia grant or warrant for land entitled the original owner or his assignee to "locate" his right to land on areas not claimed or settled upon by others, and to which the Indian title had been surrendered. Since Virginia did not survey and sectionize its public lands, the landlooker with his warrant for 50 or 100 acres was obliged to search out undeveloped and unclaimed land and to make sure that no speculator's claim covered his 13 Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (2 vols.; Chapel Hill, N. C, 1960), contains much information concerning grants and the efforts of the larger speculators to settle and develop their estates. 14 Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebian in Virginia (New York, 1959), vii. 15 Richard B. Morris, Studies in the History of American Law (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 69 ff., discusses primogeniture and entail. |