Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Having worked with the land warrants and patents for more than thirty years as a reference archivist at the Pennsylvania State Archives and having made extensive use of the Bedford County tax records in my personal genealogical research over the same period, I was interested to read the article entitled “Open House in Bedford County to Show Connected Warrant Survey Maps” in this past week’s issue of the Morrisons Cove Herald. Unfortunately, the article is marred with inaccuracies and errors. I would like to correct a few of them.

First, there were not “several ways that land was given out” in Bedford County. There was only one process whereby the land title (allodial title) was transferred from state government ownership to private ownership. To understand the records, one must understand that in Pennsylvania, settlement frequently preceded purchase. Thus, a person likely lived on the land they wanted to buy before beginning the

process to actually purchase that property.

To commence the purchase process from the Penns (prior to the American Revolution) or from the Commonwealth (after the Revolution), a settler initially submitted a land warrant application (1) to the Land Office located at the seat of state government — Philadelphia, Lancaster or Harrisburg. The application was a simple slip of paper on which the settler indicated the desired number of acres to be purchased and the general location of the tract (usually in relationship to a known municipality or geographical feature such as a creek).

If the Land Office agreed that the desired property was available for purchase and upon payment of the warrant fee, the Land Office then issued a land warrant (2) to the applicant or to the person who paid the warrant fee. The warrant had three purposes: 1) it allowed the settler to legally hold the tract, 2) it initiated title to the property, and 3) it authorized a survey to be made of the tract. Since title to the property began with the warrant, it could subsequently be legally transferred among private owners by deeds such as those found at the county courthouse. Contrary to the statement in your article, it was not necessary to wait until the patent was obtained.

Once a warrant had been issued, then a survey (3) of the property boundaries could be done. In the field, the surveyor set the corners of the boundaries of the tract. A drawing showing the boundaries and corners was submitted to the Land Office. This drawing is known as the “survey.” Because the application and the warrant generally showed only an estimated acreage (e.g., 300 acres), the survey determined the exact amount of land to be purchased from state government.

Based on the amount of land determined by the survey, the Land Office then calculated the final price of the land. Upon payment of that amount as well as related fees, the Land Office issued a land patent (4) for the tract. The patent reads like a deed with the grantor being the Penns or the Commonwealth and the grantee being the person who paid the final fees. The entire process may have taken months, years, decades or centuries, so the patentee (the person who received the patent) often was different than the warrantee (the person who obtained the warrant). The property may have legally exchanged hands any number of times between the date of the warrant and the date of the patent.

For example, my Stayer ancestors owned land near Texas Corner in South Woodbury Township, Bedford County, for which William Chambers obtained a warrant (#184) on October 25, 1765, when the area was under the jurisdiction of Cumberland County. After passing through several hands, my fourth-great-grandfather, Adam Steer/Stayer, received a patent for it on May 24, 1836 (Patent Book H-35, p. 581) — about 70 years later!

Your readers may be interested to learn that the Blair County Genealogical Society in Hollidaysburg holds a relatively complete set of the microfilms of the applications, warrants, surveys and patents. Digital copies of the microfilms can be accessed on http://www.FamilySearch.org. Indexed copies of some applications and warrants are available on http://www.Ancestry.com. Digital images of the copied survey books — books containing the Land Office’s nineteenth-century copies of the surveys — can be found on the website of the Pennsylvania State Archives (www.PaStateArchives.com). That website also provides much detailed information about all of the Land Office records (Record Group 17).

Regarding Bedford County tax records, they do not indicate how the land was “issued,” but rather, they identify the step in the aforementioned process at which the property was held at the time of the assessment. “Location” indicates that a land warrant application (1) had been filed for the property. If the next step had been taken, the tax records will show “warrant” (2) for the acreage. If a patent had been issued for the property, then the word “patent” (4) appears on the tax records. It is important to note that the person listed on the tax records in a particular year may NOT have been the same person who filed the application or obtained the warrant or patent. This assumption had led to errors in several family genealogies and in some title searches. The note on the tax records about the step in the patent process pertains only to the land, not to the person being taxed. Research in the land records themselves must be done to verify the name of the applicant, warrantee or patentee of a particular piece of property. The tax records are not a reliable source of that information.

I hope that these insights are helpful to your readers. I encourage them to attend Mr. Bower’s presentations and to delve into these fascinating records for their genealogical and historical pursuits.

Jonathan R. Stayer

York