equipment and supplies necessary to start them as freemen. They
received grain enough for one year, clothes, and in some cases a gun
and a supply of tools. As to receipt of land, the policy varied from
one colony to another, and at times there was uncertainty within one
colony about obligations to freedmen. In Virginia the indentured
servant did not usually receive land at the end of service unless he
had insisted, as John Hammond in _Leah and Rachel_ had advised, that a
specific provision be included in the contract to include the award of
fifty acres as "freedom's dues." There are some cases in which the
provision for land was included as illustrated in one of the earliest
indentures known to exist for Virginia. This indenture of September 7,
1619, was made between Robert Coopy of North Nibley in Gloucestershire
with the associates of Berkeley Hundred. Coopy agreed to work three
years in Virginia and submit to the government of the hundred in return
for which the owners were to transport him to Virginia and "There to
maintayne him with convenient diet and apparell meet for such a
servant, and in the end of the said terme to make him a free man of the
said cuntry theirby to enjoy all the liberties, freedomes, and
priviledges of a freeman there, and to grant to the said Robert thirty
acres of land within their territory or hundred of Barkley...."
The confusion over the question whether the indentured servant was
entitled to fifty acres of land upon expiration of his service extended
to the mother country. There was a widespread belief in England that
such was the case, and there were indefinite statements in commissions
and instructions to the Governors that left the matter in doubt. In
practice in Virginia, however, it is certain that the fifty acres under
the headright claim went to the person transporting indentured servants,
not to the servants themselves. Only where the contract specifically
stated that the servant was to receive fifty acres was he assured of
this grant.
Under the company there had been definite provisions that the fifty
acres went to the persons transporting servants, not to the servants
themselves. After its dissolution, Governors were instructed to follow
the rules of the "late company," and this continued until there was a
variation in Sir Francis Wyatt's commission of 1639 authorizing the
Governor and the Council to issue grants to adventurers and planters
"According to the orders of the late company ... and likewise 50 acres
of land to every person transported thither ... until otherwise
determined by His Majesty." Did "to every person" mean that the servant
was entitled to land? Such was the case across the Potomac in Maryland
where the servant could claim fifty acres from his employer or master
until 1646; after 1646 and until 1683 the proprietor provided land for
the servant. If such were intended, it was not followed and the
intentions were far from clear in the later commission to Sir William
Berkeley in 1642. In addition to assigning land for "adventurers of
money" and "transportation of people," the commission authorized the
Governor and Council to grant "fifty acres for every person transported
thither since Midsummer 1625, and ... continue the same course to all
persons transported thither until it shall otherwise be determined by
His Majesty." The loose use of the terminology "to" and "for" recurred
in subsequent years and again reflected the lack of precision in this
matter as well as the seeming misapprehension in England that the
servant was entitled to a fifty-acre grant. Under the articles of the
treaty of 1651 between Virginia and the commissioners of the
Commonwealth, the reversion to the term "for every person" was made and
the policy of no land to servants was implicit in the sixth article of
the agreement: "That the priviledge of haveing fiftie acres of land for
every person transported in the collony shall continue as formerly
granted."
Even though servants were not granted land by the colony at the
expiration of their service, a substantial number soon became
landowners. The exact proportion of servants that became landholders
after 1624 cannot be determined in the absence of a complete census.
However, an examination of the land patents and the list of headrights
makes possible some estimate of the percentage of landholders that had
once been indentured servants. The conclusions cannot be final and are
subject to limitations. Identification presents a problem because of the
frequency of the same name as Smith or Davis and because of the omission
of middle names. The problem is further complicated by the fact that
headrights were often transferred by sale. A person entitled to a
headright claim on the frontier may not have wished to settle there;
rather he may have preferred to sell his headright claim and purchase
land in an established county. As a result of the sale of his headright
claim, his name may have appeared in the headright list as the basis for
the claim for someone else even though he had not been an indentured
servant. Therefore, all persons so listed under the headright claim
cannot be considered indentured servants.
Fully aware of the limitations just suggested and equally conscious
that estimates in the absence of more complete records cannot be final,
Professor Thomas J. Wertenbaker in his _Planters of Colonial Virginia_
summarized his analysis of patents and concluded that both before 1635
and in the following two or three decades, thirty to forty per cent of
the landholders of Virginia came to the colony as indentured servants.
Professor Wertenbaker also indicated general agreement with conclusions
drawn by William G. Stanard about the proportion of immigrants that
were indentured servants. From an analysis of the patent rolls from
1623 to July 14, 1637, printed in the April, 1901, issue of the
_Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, Stanard estimated that
seventy-five per cent of immigrants from 1623 to 1637 were imported
under term of the indenture. Out of 2,675 names on the rolls, 336
entered as freemen at their own cost and an additional 245 persons were
believed for the most part to be of the same status although there was
some uncertainty about this group. Transportation expenses were paid by
others for 2,094. From these numbers, the conclusion was reached that
675 persons on the patent rolls were freemen, including women and
children; the remaining 2,000 were servants and slaves, the latter in
very small number at this time. Thus the analysis roughly confirms the
conclusion that three-fourths of the immigrants during this period were
indentured servants.
Use of the headright system for distribution of land had a close
correlation with expanding population, for it was hoped that the
increase of population would keep pace with the acquisition of private
title in the soil. As the seventeenth century progressed, there were
many abuses and evasions of the system; and by the end of the period its
significance declined in favor of acquisition of title by purchase, or
the "treasury right." To understand the various deviations from the
system, it will be helpful to review the steps by which title to land by
headright was obtained.
The first step involved the proving of the headright by the claimant
appearing before either a county court or the Governor and Council and
stating under oath that he had imported a certain number of persons
whose names were listed. The clerk of the court issued a certificate
which was validated in the secretary's office. Authorization for the
headright was then passed on to a commissioned surveyor who ran off
fifty acres for each person imported and located the grant in the area
selected by the claimant as long as the land had not already been
patented and had not been barred for white settlement in order to
maintain peace with the Indians. Upon completion of the survey and of
marking the boundaries, a copy of the record along with the headright
certificate was presented to the secretary's office where a patent was
prepared and a notation made of those imported. The final step was the
signing of the patent by the Governor in the presence of, and with the
approval of, the Council.
One deviation from the spirit of the law of the headright involved
claims based upon the person being imported into the colony more than
once. For example, John Chew in 1637 received 700 acres, using his own
transportation in 1622 and 1623 as the basis for the claim to 100 acres
in the grant. Carrying this practice to a greater extreme, Sarah Law
received a grant for 300 acres of land based upon the fact that she had
imported John Good, probably a sailor, six times.
On a larger scale, ship masters submitted lists for headright claims
which in actuality contained the roster of both the sailors of the ship
and the passengers. In neither case should the right have been
acknowledged, for the sailors were under agreement to continue service
at sea and the passengers had paid their own transportation to the
colony. But the lax administration of the system usually permitted
approval of such applications, and the ship master therefore found
himself with headright certificates which he could sell to others for
whatever price he could wangle. This practice was sometimes repeated by
the same unscrupulous ship master who was aided in the irregular
procedure by the failure of the clerks of the secretary's office to make
careful checks of lists submitted, and also by the fact that he could
present his lists to a different county court when importing the same
sailors for the third or fourth time.
Like the ship master, the sailor engaged in falsifying the record by
swearing that he had imported himself and sometimes others at his own
expense. Patents were obtained on the basis of the headright. Philip A.
Bruce concluded that the land obtained in Virginia by mariners was "very
extensive." To substantiate this general statement, he referred to
powers of attorney found in the county court records, authorizing an
agent in Virginia to handle the estates of the mariner. In the records
of Rappahannock County for 1668 is an example of the practice, in which
Thomas Sheppard of Plymouth, England, designated William Moseley to
handle his interest in 150 headrights which he claimed for importing 150
people to Virginia. It was likely in this case that duplicate claims
were issued, either to the individual if he paid his own transportation
or to some master if the immigrant became an indentured servant. In some
instances, as many as three or four claims were made for one
importation: one for the ship master, one for the merchant who acted as
middle-man in purchasing the service of the immigrant, one for the
planter who eventually purchased the indentured servant, and less often
one for a second planter who may have joined with the first in obtaining
the services of the imported person.
As abuse of the system increased, headright lists sometimes included
fictitious names or in some cases names copied from old record books.
The final stage in irregular procedure was reached when the clerks in
the office of the secretary of the colony sold the headright claim to
persons who would simply pay from one to five shillings. The exact date
at which this practice began has not been determined, but it was
prevalent sometime before 1692. Francis Nicholson reported to the Board
of Trade that while serving as Governor of Virginia from 1690 to 1692,
he had "heard" that the sale of rights by the clerks in the secretary's
office was "common practice." Another report to the Board in 1697
described the clerks as being "a constant mint of those rights."
The combined variations in the operation of the headright system
resulted in the distortion, if not destruction, of its original
concepts. The system continued to bring immigrants into the colony which
had been a very important purpose when inaugurated. But the abuses threw
out of balance the relation between patented land and the number of
people in the colony; and furthermore through perversion of the system,
speculation in land was not prevented and there resulted large areas of
wholly uncultivated and uninhabited lands to which title had been
granted. The headright was also originally intended to apply to
inhabitants of the British Isles, but by the middle of the seventeenth
century the names of persons imported from Africa appeared occasionally
as the basis for headright, and by the last decade of the century they
were frequently found.
The distortion of the headright system was done with considerable public
approval and in some ways reflected the evolution of economic
development that seemed to demand a more convenient and less expensive
method for obtaining title to large areas of unoccupied land. As the
population of the colony increased and as the labor supply became more
plentiful, there was a rather widespread demand to be able to obtain
additional land, particularly adjacent undeveloped tracts, without
having to import an additional person for every fifty acres. Partly
through this demand, impetus was given to the custom, which was not at
first sanctioned by law, to permit the granting of patents by simply
paying a fee in the secretary's office.
While the headright system was designed to maintain some proportion
between the population of the colony and the amount of land patented, it
was also designed to stimulate the migration of immigrants to the
colony. Therefore, under the system it was possible for individuals who
would engage in transporting or financing the transportation of
immigrants to obtain large areas of land. This trend was started under
the company; and in the four years prior to 1623, forty-four patents of
5,000 acres each were awarded to persons who were to transport at least
100 immigrants to the colony. In 1621, for example, 5,000 acres were
granted to Arthur Swain and Nathaniel Basse and a similar grant to
Rowland Truelove and "divers other patentees" each grant to be based on
the transportation of 100 persons; 15,000 acres were to go to Sir George
Yeardley for engaging to transport 300 persons.
For the years following the dissolution of the company, valuable
information of the nature and size of land grants can be found in the
"Virginia Land Patents" which fortunately have survived the usual
hazards of fire and carelessness. The two following tables (Tables I
and II) have been compiled from the analysis of the land patents by
Philip A. Bruce and summarized in his _Economic History of Virginia_
(volume I, pages 528-532).
I. TABLE SHOWING SIZE OF LAND GRANTS FROM 1626 TO 1650
BASED ON THE RECORD OF VIRGINIA LAND PATENTS
Year or years Average grant for Largest grant for
the period the period
1626-1632 100-300 acres 1,000 acres
1634 719 acres 5,350 acres
1635 380 acres 2,000 acres
1636 351 acres 2,000 acres
1637 445 acres 5,350 acres
1638 423 acres 3,000 acres
1640 405 acres 1,300 acres
1641 343 acres 872 acres
1642 559 acres 3,000 acres
1643 595 acres 4,000 acres
1644 370 acres 670 acres
1645 333 acres 1,090 acres
1646 360 acres 1,200 acres
1647 361 acres 650 acres
1648 412 acres 1,800 acres
1649 522 acres 3,500 acres
1650 677 acres 5,350 acres
II. TABLE SHOWING SIZE OF LAND GRANTS FROM 1650 TO 1700
BASED ON THE RECORD OF VIRGINIA LAND PATENTS
Period of years Average grant for Number of largest grants
the period for the period
1650-1655 591 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres ( 92)
2,000- 5,000 acres ( 41)
5,000-10,000 acres ( 3)
1655-1666 671 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres (252)
2,000- 5,000 acres (147)
5,000-10,000 acres ( 20)
1666-1679 890 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres (220)
2,000- 5,000 acres (154)
5,000-10,000 acres ( 25)
10,000-20,000 acres ( 12)
1679-1689 607 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres (143)
2,000- 5,000 acres ( 66)
5,000-10,000 acres ( 17)
10,000-20,000 acres ( 2)
1689-1695 601 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres ( 63)
2,000- 5,000 acres ( 23)
5,000-10,000 acres ( 7)
1695-1700 688 acres 1,000- 2,000 acres ( 14)
2,000- 5,000 acres ( 13)
5,000-10,000 acres ( 7)
13,400 acres ( 1)
[Note: In compiling this table, two changes have been made to
correct what seems clearly to be errors in Bruce's description.
Forty-one grants were listed for 2,000-5,000 acres from 1650-1655
rather than forty-one grants of 1,000-5,000 acres as noted by Bruce.
The date 1685 listed in Bruce has been changed to 1689 to give the
proper time period of 1689-1695.]
For the period from 1634 to 1650 included in Table I, there were
occasional grants of 5,000 acres, but the average size of the patents
for the period was not over 446 acres. It was possible, of course, for
one individual to build up a large landed estate by putting together
several smaller grants; and this was done by a limited number of persons
during the seventeenth century in Virginia as will be discussed later.
There was also the possibility that grants of considerable size in the
original patent might be broken up and distributed to others in smaller
amounts. In any case, the second half of the century as reflected in the
land patents saw a moderate increase in the size and number of large
grants as the population increased, and the average size for the land
patent of this period was 674 acres, an increase of 228 acres over the
period prior to 1650.
While the second half of the century witnessed this increase, much of it
came during the third quarter of the period. Near the end of the century
there was a definite trend to break up some of the larger patents into
smaller landholdings by sales to servants completing their indenture, by
distribution of land to children, or by sale because of an inadequate
labor supply either of slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers, or
wage earners.
The existence of the small farm and the small farmer as a major part of
the socio-economic system of Virginia at the end of the seventeenth
century has been well established. Professor Wertenbaker suggested that
"a full 90 per cent of the freeholders" at the time the rent roll was
compiled in 1704/05 included the "sturdy, independent class of small
farmers." Through examination of land patents, land transfers, tax
rolls, and a sampling of other county records, he found substantial
evidence to corroborate the suggested trend of the breakup of a number
of large patents and their distribution to small freeholders.
Illustrative of this development was the land known as Button's Ridge in
Essex County. Originally including 3,650 acres, the tract was patented
to Thomas Button in 1666. The estate then passed first to the brother of
Button and later was sold to John Baker. Baker divided the large tract
and sold small amounts to the following people: 200 acres to Captain
William Moseley, 600 to John Garnet, 200 to Robert Foster, 200 to
William Smither, 200 to William Howlett, 300 to Anthony Samuell, and 200
to William Williams.
Professor Susie M. Ames in _Studies of the Virginia Eastern Shore in
the Seventeenth Century_ found evidence of the same trend by which
original land grants increased in size by the middle of the century and
reached its peak in the third quarter of the century. Near the end of
the period many of the larger tracts were being divided by wills
distributing them among children or by sales in smaller units. Much of
the land obtained by the first two generations on the Eastern Shore was
broken up into small holdings by the third. As stated by Professor
Ames, "It is the subtraction and division of acres, with only
occasionally any marked addition, that seems to be the chief
development in land tenure during the last quarter of the seventeenth
century."
Even with the trend of dividing some of the large estates on the Eastern
Shore, a small per cent of the population held a considerable part of
the land. In 1703/04 the average size of landholding in Northampton
County was 389 acres, in Accomack 520 acres. When analyzed by use of the
list of tithables, Northampton County had twenty-one persons, only three
per cent of the tithables, holding thirty-nine per cent of the land;
Accomack County had a total of forty-six persons, only four per cent of
the tithables, holding forty-three per cent of the land.
Considering all of Virginia of the seventeenth century, one cannot say
that it was primarily a land of large plantations, of cavaliers, and of
noble manors which have been romanticized by some writers. Yet there was
a significant number of prominent planters who took an active part in
the social and political life of the colony and exerted an influence
disproportionate to their ratio of the population. Professor Wertenbaker
listed the following men among the prominent planters of the first half
of seventeenth-century Virginia--George Menefie, Richard Bennett, and
Richard Kinsman; for the second half of the century, a more extensive
list--Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., Thomas Ballard, Robert Beverley, Giles
Brent, Joseph Bridger, William Byrd I, John Carter, John Custis I,
Dudley Digges, William Fitzhugh, Lewis Burwell, Philip Ludwell I,
William Moseley, Daniel Parke, Ralph Wormeley, Benjamin Harrison, Edward
Hill, Edmund Jennings, and Matthew Page. Members of this group
accumulated large landholdings, mostly by original patent through the
headright system or by private purchase from holders of original
patents. For example, William Byrd I had obtained 26,231 acres of land
at the time of his death; and William Fitzhugh acquired during his
lifetime 96,000 acres of land and left at the time of his death in 1701
a little over 54,000 acres in family "seats" to five sons.
The land system and its administration that permitted the accumulation
of a few of these substantial plantations came under detailed discussion
by crown officials near the end of the seventeenth century. Before
examining this analysis of Virginia land policy, it will be helpful to
survey in the following chapter the major laws and the officials
responsible for their administration.
CHAPTER FOUR
Royal Administration of Land Policy
Attempts at Reform
The issuing of land patents and the administration of laws concerning
land involved a variety of officials during the seventeenth century.
Under the company the authority to convey title to land rested after
1609 with the treasurer, the Council in London, and the association of
adventurers in England. The Governor and Council in the colony were
authorized as ministerial agents of the company to make grants, but
final approval was to be made at sessions of the quarter court of the
company in England. This last step, as previously noted, was seldom
completed. After dissolution of the company, the process of issuing
patents was simplified. Most grants were made under the headright claim
and followed the steps outlined in chapter three, involving the county
court, the secretary of the colony, the Governor and Council, and the
commissioned surveyors.
The office of surveyor existed under the company and William Claiborne,
who came to the colony in 1621, was the first to fill the position
effectively. As surveyor, Claiborne received the annual wage of thirty
pounds sterling which was to be paid either in tobacco or some other
comparable commodity with a good price on the English market. Surveyor
Claiborne also had the use of a house constructed by the company as well
as receiving the necessary equipment and books needed for his work.