Many thanks for this reply. I know land patents are the way to go but have never searched them so your info will be a big help. Thank you for all your postings and your continued search/help to all us Harris Hunters. Paula Wolkerstorfer On May 30, 2012, at 10:26 AM, EVELYN WALLACE wrote: > > > Paula wrote: > > I am still trying to learn the parentage of Nathaniel Harris, > Group 2, born in VA in 1763 and m. to Martha Byars. I rarely read of > anyone in Group Two. > >> From E.W.Wallace > > Hi, my half-answer - have you searched the land patents which are online (abstracted, of course) at the Library of Virginia website?. I don't recall the URL presently. I just google for Library of Virginia, and up will come (eventually) an alphabetized list of *stuff* on the internet at that URL. > > Go down the alpha index to the L [for land patents]and choose the listing which includes the words *Northern Neck land grants* [these grants came from the Fairfax family as I understand and were different from the *ordinary* land patents. Those Northern Neck owners had to pay quit rents [look that up] to the Fairfax proprietary and are more like leases than grants.) > > These online land patents are alphabetized by surname, and your surname may show up in a *strange* patent as that person's lines [boundaries] are mentioned in the patent. (Don't forget those neighbors--and the watercourse. The neighbors may be in-laws, or may be in-laws several generations down the road!! They frequently migrated together. Some genealogists call this cluster genealogy. Get names of everyone who clustered together. And the watercourse is important too--main route of transportation, especially for tobacco.) > > Were I you I would try the Byars famly first, and note on which watercourse or other geographic markers there are--and what county. But be aware that the counties kept dividing. This is where an atlas, such as one > compiled some years ago by Michael F. Doran will help. It is called Atlas of County Boundary Changes in > Virginia 1634-1895 [Athens, GA: Iberian Publ. Co., 1987. The Library of VA bookstore, I believe sells a chart about boundary changes, which is cheaper, but it is somewhat harder to interpret, but it is portable (you can fold it and put in your carrying case.) > > What you need to know for your Harris family (at the approximate time and the place) WHO are his neighbors. And - what is the watercourse? > > Lloyd D.Bockstruck, author, lecturer, recently retired librarian of the genealogy section of the downtown Dallas, TX public library (a great place for Southerners to research)joked in a lecture some years ago in Richmond, VA: grooms always married a girl downstream (hence, what is the watercourse mentioned in the patent?) He then joked, the potential groom was so invigorated after the visit that he had the strength to paddle home!!! Imagine how heavily forested colonial Virginia was and how many streams there were to get to the sweetheart. Not to mention wolves and native Americans. (I read just recently that the hogshead of tobacco were rolled down to the stream for transportation downstream. No superhighways then. No truck either.) > > If your library has seven or eight volumes of Cavaliers and Pioneers, which are lists of land patents (except for the later > Northern Neck grants), I urge you to use these to supplement the online land patent abstracts. These books are wonderfully indexed, with not only surnames and given names, but also PLAces. Do not be hung up on one county as the counties changed all the time. Good luck. You will find cousins marrying cousins, of course!!!! > > E.W.Wallace > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to HARRIS-HUNTERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >