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The availability of land helped attract settlers to North Carolina. Until the border survey was begun in 1728, grants of land in North Carolina occasionally were made by Virginia. Surviving Virginia grants may be found in Nell Marion Nugent, Cavaliers and Pioneers : Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 3 vols. (1934; reprint, Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1983).

The process of patenting land in North Carolina was not complex. The person wishing to patent land first made application, also called a land entry, to a land office. The land officer then issued a warrant. Land officers included the secretary of state (1669–1776), the agents of Earl Granville (1748–76), or the county entry taker (1778–present). The warrant was taken to a surveyor who surveyed the land and sketched a plat (map) of the claim. The plat was then filed in the land office or, after 1777, recorded by the county register of deeds, and a patent for the land was issued and recorded. The land grants of North Carolina are indexed in the Master Card File Index to North Carolina Land Grants, 1679–1959, available from the Land Grant Office, Office of the Secretary of State, 300 North Salisbury Street, Raleigh, North Carolina 27603. When writing, furnish the full name of the grantee and the county in which the grant was made.

During the proprietary period (1663–1729) the Lords Proprietors relied on a headright system to distribute land grants. The standard headright of fifty acres per person established in Virginia was adopted in the Carolinas about 1697; before that time a sliding scale was used that granted one hundred acres to heads of families but only six acres to women servants when their terms expired. The governor also was allowed to sell tracts of 640 acres or less to those without headrights, or who had used their headrights for free land. To keep people in North Carolina, the assembly forbade the sale of headrights until the claimant had been in the colony for two years. The proprietary land patents are available at the North Carolina State Archives and on microfilm at the FHL. See Margaret M Hofmann, Province of North Carolina: 1663–1729, Abstracts of Land Patents (Weldon, N.C.: Roanoke News Co., 1983), for abstracts of over 3,400 land patents made between 1663 and 1729. See Jo White Linn and Thornton W. Mitchell, “Headrights in North Carolina,” The North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal 15 (February 1989): 2–11, for detailed information on the headright system used in North Carolina. Seven of the original proprietary shares were sold to King George II in 1729, and North Carolina became a royal colony. Only John Carteret, second Earl Granville, chose not to sell the share he had inherited. The Crown continued the headright system instituted by the Lords Proprietors, but modified the system in 1741 to allow one hundred acres for the head-of-household. The Crown land office first opened in 1735, six years after the Crown purchased the province. Abstracts of Crown land patents are in Margaret M Hofmann, Colony of North Carolina, 1735–1764, Abstracts of Land Patents and Colony of North Carolina, 1765–1775, Abstracts of Land Patents (Weldon, N.C.: Roanoke News Co., 1983–84).

The Granville District, an area that encompassed the upper half of present-day North Carolina, was created and partially surveyed in 1744 for John Carteret, second Earl Granville. Unlike the early proprietors, Granville owned all unsettled lands but had no right to govern the area. Earl Granville never visited North Carolina, but appointed agents there as representatives to grant land, collect rents, and conduct his business. The Granville land office opened in 1748. See Margaret M Hofmann, The Granville District of North Carolina 1748-1763: Abstracts of Land Grants, Vol. 1– (Roanoke Rapids, N.C.: the author, 1986– ), which is a continuing project, presently with four volumes. The Granville land records are indexed in full in the Lord Granville Index in the Land Grant Office of the Secretary of State. The North Carolina State Archives also has a group of Granville land office records in the Granville Grant Card File.

After the Revolutionary War the state of North Carolina granted land formerly owned by the Crown and Earl Granville. A settler could claim as much as 640 acres of unsettled land for himself and an additional hundred acres for his wife and each minor child for a fee of two pounds ten shillings per hundred acres. If the amount of land claimed exceeded the above allotment, the additional land cost five pounds per hundred acres. Most of the state grants have been microfilmed and are available at the North Carolina State Archives and the FHL, along with grants made in Tennessee to veterans who served in the Revolutionary War .

When land was sold by individuals, the transaction generally was recorded in county deed books. Most deed books are partially indexed, but, to facilitate research, most North Carolina counties also have general indexes to grantees and grantors. Descriptions of land follow the “metes and bounds” survey system. Copies of deeds may be obtained from the county register of deeds, but many North Carolina county records have been microfilmed and are available at the North Carolina State Archives and the FHL. Additionally, many early North Carolina deed books have been abstracted and published. Copies of these publications may be found in libraries with genealogical collections.

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