Coweta County, Georgia, Deed Index

Grantees 1827-1886

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).

Listed By Surnames

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Source: This information was contributed to the USGenWeb Archives by Nel Rocklein.