Ordinary grants, as distinguished from bounty grants, required payment of a small fee. The head of each family was allowed to petition for 100 acres for himself and 50 acres for each member of his family, including servants. The size of the grant was based upon the "head rights" and most settlers who came to the backcountry from the eastern colonies secured their land by such grants. To secure a grant, the early settler secured a precept from he surveyor general directing a deputy surveyor to lay out a certain tract. The deputy surveyor then made his survey and certified it, and the settler petitioned the Council for a grant of this land. The non-bounty settler paid taxes from the date of the warrant or precept and paid quitrents to the crown commencing two years after the grant was made. Claim jumping was not rare. Often other settlers appeared before the Council to contest the granting of the land and in other instances claimants attempted to secure grants for themselves after the warrant had been issued for the survey. One case arising in what is now Newberry County required several long trips to Charleston and several hearings before the grant was settled. On August 3, 1753, John Garey petitioned the Council for an order to the surveyor general to lay out to him 200 acres of land on Bush River, upon the waters of Saluda River. In this petition, he states that he came to South Carolina from Virginia, together with his wife and two children, with a design to settle and improve some of his majesty's vacant land; that he found a spot of ground on Bush River which he judged proper and accordingly built himself a small house and made several improvements on the land, intending to apply for a grant of the same. He avers that one Abraham Pennington thereupon purchased a bounty warrant from a foreign Protestant without leave of the Council and had employed a deputy surveyor to run out the same, and that, when Pennington learned that the petitioner was planning to appear before the council, he had gone to the petitioner's father and offered to sell him the same land. The petition was read and approved on August 28, 1753, and the Council ordered the surveyor general to run out the 200 acres to the petitioner. On February 1, 1754, John Gary again petitioned the Council concerning this land on Bush River. His neighbors, Thomas Johnson and George Dalrymple, appeared before the Council and proved that Abraham Pennington had run the land out of spite upon a warrant he had purchased and sold again without any grant. The surveyor general was ordered to resurvey the land of John Gary. He was finally granted the 200 acres on Bush River on August 19, 1768. As has been stated, the head of a family could acquire fifty acres for each servant. It was not uncommon for a person unable to pay his passage from Europe to bind himself over to serve another immigrant for a term of years in return for transportation to the colony. Indentured servants became citizens with full rights to secure grants of property themselves after they completed their terms of service. The other method open to new settlers to acquire lands was that of purchase. Many immigrants preferred to buy lands that had already been cleared and houses which had already been built. They did so by paying the original settlers for their lands; these early deeds were recorded in Charleston. _______________________ end of Chapter One ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com