There are no restrictions.
There are no restrictions.
Virginia. Land Office. General operational records of the Virginia Land Office, 1769-1920. Accession Land Office inventory entry no. 15, State government records collection, The Library of Virginia, Archives Branch, Richmond, VA 23219.
Accession LOI 15 transferred by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, 1948.
The act which established the previous Land Office next hit passed the General Assembly on 22 June 1779. The register was the head of the Office and was appointed by joint ballot of both houses of the legislature.
These records contain records generally related to the operations of the Land Office but which do not fit into any existing series, including memoranda pertaining to searches of the records made by office clerks for unnamed individuals, warrants, post office box receipts, unrecorded caveats and surveys, preemption certificates not of record, and fragments.
This collection is arranged into the following series:
By subject
Contains a variety of documents from the Land Office, as well as a number of papers unrelated to Land Office affairs. Some of these documents include lottery tickets authorized by the board of the Literary Fund, 1819; an account of sales of furniture for Gervas S. Burton, 1855; the draft of a speech about a painting to be unveiled at Yorktown, undated; a J. K. Cilley and Co. price list for furs and pelts, 1887, with handwritten survey notes on the back; a Craven County, North Carolina, court abstract involving the supposed disappearance at sea of an individual, 1834; a pamphlet from the Committee for the Relief of the Poor for the city of Richmond, 1881; and a United States Weather Bureau 12th monthly report of the Virginia Weather Service, 1892. Other documents in the collection include a commission for Francis Wilks as justice of the peace in South Carolina, 1819; an invoice from the Richmond and York River Rail Road Company, 1855; and a list of delinquent lands purchased by the Commonwealth in Tucker County, 1860.
Contains records related to searches of records made by clerks in the land office for various individuals. These records include memoranda, copies of series of grants, lists of copies of patents and warrants, a plan from the Ohio River area, the abstract of a title for lands belonging to the Virginia and West Virginia timber and mineral land associations, and a copy of power of attorney for Felix Richards.
Contains a number of records granting various individuals preemption right on tracts of land, meaning that these individuals had the rights to preference in buying the land indicated. These preemption rights typically were granted based on prior occupation and improvement of the land by the grantee, allowing squatters to purchase the land they had been living on and farming. The file also contains a warrant to survey issued for John Dougherty in 1780.
Contains fragments of a number of land office records, including warrants, plats, and patents. The records are in pieces, often with sections missing.
Contains a variety of Land Office records, including abstracts of titles, memoranda of numbers that have been skipped or are missing, unrecorded caveats, certificates, surveys, receipts, exchange warrants, and a list of the amount of fees for copies of grants. There is also a handdrawn map showing an area of Buckingham County along the James River, near Alexander Farm, and a set of land grants issued to Chester H. Markham in 1928.