FootNote
The new kid on the block, FootNote is known for digitizing historical
documents... many of which are genealogical gems. With naturalizations,
city directories, war records, newspapers, town records, etc... this new
kid is quickly being recognized as an alternative to Ancestry.
While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
State-land state surveyed partly in indiscriminate metes and bounds and
partly in lottery lots. The Georgia Surveyor-General Department in the
Georgia State Archives and Records Building, Atlanta, holds the grants,
surveys, and related papers for Georgia from the colony’s founding. Its
major records and indexes are microfilmed. The department is one of the most
active in the United States in indexing land records and publishing guides,
including an admirable work by Marion R. Hemperley, Georgia Surveyor General
Department: A History and Inventory of Georgia’s Land Office (Atlanta: State
Printing Office, 1982). A sampling of other titles issued by the department
include Marion R. Hemperley and Pat Bryant, English Crown Grants, 1755–1775,
9 vols. (1972–74); Pat Bryant, Entry of Claims for Georgia Landholders,
1733–1775 (1975); Alex M. Hitz, Authentic List of All Land Lottery Grants
Made to Veterans of the Revolutionary War By the State of Georgia (1820,
1827, 1832) (1955), and his Georgia Bounty Land Grants, reprinted from the
Georgia Historical Quarterly 38 (1954): 337–48. For a price list, write to
the Georgia Surveyor-General Department, Archives and Records Building,
Atlanta, GA 30334. [p.270] The three major means of granting land in Georgia
were headrights (usually two hundred acres for heads of households plus
fifty acres for each family member and slave), revolutionary war bounty
warrants (for citizens purportedly loyal to the revolutionary government),
and lotteries. The headrights are listed in Index to the Headright and
Bounty Grants of Georgia, 1756–1909 (1970. Reprint. Greenville, S.C.:
Southern Historical Press, 1992). The revolutionary war bounty warrant files
are very incomplete. The lotteries began with an act of 1803 and disposed of
public lands in ceded Indian territories in 1805, 1807, 1820, 1821, 1827,
and 1832. Eligibility required Georgia residency with extra draws for
special categories, such as revolutionary war service. See Robert Scott
Davis, Jr., Research in Georgia (1981. Reprint. Greenville, S.C.: Southern
Historical Press, 1991), for a summary of qualifications for each lottery.
The statewide lists for all lotteries have been published but give only
winning draws—except for the 1805 list, which shows all persons eligible
under the enabling act of 1803. Its year’s residency requirement from May
1802 makes it a good substitute for the missing 1800 Georgia federal census.
There are some county eligibility lists in manuscript for later lotteries,
and these might identify additional revolutionary war veterans. See also
Robert S. Davis, Jr., and Silas Emmett Lucas, Jr., The Georgia Land Lottery
Papers, 1805–1914: Genealogical Data From the Loose Papers Filed in the
Georgia Surveyor General Office Concerning the Lots Won in the State Land
Lotteries and the People Who Won Them (1979. Reprint. Greenville, S.C.:
Southern Historical Press, 1987). Prior to 1777, Georgia conveyances were
recorded only in Savannah and survive mostly in the state archives. See A
Preliminary Guide to Eighteenth-Century Records Held by the Georgia
Department of Archives and History (Atlanta: Georgia Department of Archives
and History, 1976). The R.J. Taylor, Jr., Foundation of Atlanta has
published indexes to several of these colonial records and promises more.
The State Tax Commission lists for 1787 to 1899 have been microfilmed. For
essential background on headright grants, subsequent laws, Indian treaties,
land reserves, boundaries, maps, county surveys, surveyors’ field notes,
frauds, and land transfers in Georgia see Farris W. Cadle, Georgia Land
Surveying: History and Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991).
