Land Records

Gentry, Daphne S. comp., rev. by John S. Salmon. Virginia Land Office Inventory, Third Edition. Richmond, Va.: Virginia State Library and Archives, 1988. Provides a general discussion of the land granting process and the extant Virginia Land Office records. Reprint soon available from Virginia Genealogical Society.

Harrison, Fairfax. Virginia Land Grants: A Survey of Conveyancing in Relation to Colonial Politics. 1925. Reprint Westminister, Md.: Willow Bend Books, 1998. Definitive discussion of the land grant process.

Vernon, Robert. “How Land Was Granted in Colonial Virginia.” Central Virginia Heritage. 12 (winter 1994): 1–11. A general discussion of the land granting process; of importance because it contains a list of extant county survey books.

Hughes, Sarah F. Surveyors and Statesmen: Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia. Richmond, Va.: Virginia Surveyors Foundation and Virginia Association of Surveyors, 1979.

McJimsey, George Davis. American Speech, Reprints and Monographs, No. 3: Topographic Terms in Virginia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940. Defines and documents early usage of archaic and unusual terms.

Robinson, W. Sith, Jr. Mother Earth: Land Grants in Virginia, 1607–1699. Williamsburg, Va.: n.p., 1957.
 

The introductions to the following volumes provide specific details about the land grant process:

Nugent, Nell Marion. Cavaliers and Pioneers, 1623–1732. 3 vols. 1934–79. Reprint, Richmond, Va.: Virginia State Library and Archives, 1992.

Hudgins, Dennis. Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patent and Grants, 1732–1776. 4 vols. Richmond, Va.: Virginia Genealogical Society, 1994–9.
 

All of Virginia’s colonial land patents are abstracted in the above seven volumes. Abstracts of the Northern Neck grants and their surveys can be found in

Gray, Gertrude, Northern Neck Land Grants 1694–1862. 4 vols. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1987–1993.

Joyner, Peggy Shomo. Abstracts of Virginia's Northern Neck Warrants & Surveys. 5 vols. U.S.A.: n.p. 1985–95.

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