The Mad Genealogist

What land Warrants for the Military?

The granting of military bounty land in the United States to encourage enlistments or reward previous service began in colonial times, but its legislative heyday was from 1788 to 1855, though claims were still being received by the federal government in the 1960s. Genealogists find bounty-land records especially attractive because they serve the dual role of locating persons in time and place and of proving military service. Applications sometimes contain a wealth of information, especially when heirs claimed lands.

Colonial legislatures gave land for military service, such as for the Narragansett campaign of King Philip’s War, 1675 to 1676, but these were mostly private acts passed to reward meritorious service to the colony. In 1701, Virginia passed an act promising two hundred acres free of quitrents for twenty years to those who would make armed settlements on the Indian frontier. The Crown’s proclamation of 1763 ordered the colonies to give bounty land for service in the French and Indian War to “reduced” (indigent) officers and to British Army privates mustered out in the colonies who intended to remain there. This did not include militia units. In 1776, Congress promised so-called “Hessian deserters” fifty acres but had few takers. Also in 1776, Congress promised bounty land to soldiers of the Continental line, with privates and noncommissioned officers to get one hundred acres, captains three hundred acres, and other ranks various amounts. States that likewise promised or afterwards gave bounty lands were Connecticut, Massachusetts (with Maine), New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Revolutionary War Bounty Land Grants Awarded by State Governments (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1996), is a master index to approximately 35,000 persons named in the grants from these nine states. The states that did not give revolutionary war bounty lands were New Hampshire, Rhode island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware.

North Carolina was the most generous, giving 640 acres (a square mile) to a private in the Continental line. Maryland gave the smallest amount, fifty acres to a private, but the state had very little western land to give.  Massachusetts grants were in Maine but were in no specific reserve. Privates who got a one hundred-acre warrant from the federal government were not eligible for a Massachusetts state grant. Soldiers of the Continental line from other states could take both the federal and their state land bounties. Paul Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, discusses aspects of various state grants. Gates states, without elaborating, that Connecticut gave bounty land; but this seems to refer to the Fire Lands in Ohio granted to individuals burned out in the revolution rather than to grants to soldiers. Virginia is discussed below because its bounty-land records are widely scattered; some are in the National Archives.

Congress was slow to redeem its promise of land for its soldiers. In 1788, it directed that bounty-land warrants be issued to those applying. But the U.S. Military District in Ohio, the only federal lands where federal revolutionary warrants could be used until 1830, did not open until 1796—a full fifteen years after victory at Yorktown. A planned second federal reserve at the southern end of Illinois was not created; instead, the district in Ohio was enlarged. The Ohio Company and John Cleves Symmes in 1787 and 1788 had purchased millions of Ohio acres on credit from Congress and were permitted to pay one-seventh of the price in federal bounty-land warrants. Therefore, land offices of the two speculations accepted some federal warrants, the earliest locales where they could be used. Congress also created three military reserves for veterans of the War of 1812, but there were no federal reserves after these three in Illinois, Arkansas, and Missouri. Warrants usable in the Virginia and U.S. military districts in Ohio were made redeemable by scrip acts in 1830 and 1832, respectively, in any GLO land offices in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In 1842, all federal bounty-land warrants were made good for purchases at any GLO land office.

The 1788 act stipulated that warrants were assignable, meaning the soldier could sell his warrant and not wait to take the land. This created an instant market in bounty warrants and allowed land speculators to accumulate large quantities of warrants and land. Paul Gates shows that less than one soldier (or his heirs) in ten got land by using his warrant under any federal bounty-land act. Because few soldiers actually used their warrants to patent land, patents and land-entry case files are much less valuable than the warrants and the warrant applications for locating a soldier’s military service. Most soldiers sold their rights, using the back of the warrant to assign it to the buyer, who might in turn assign the warrant to another buyer. Sometimes the assignment left the buyer’s name blank, to be filled in by the last purchaser. The warrant certificates issued to Mexican War veterans were folios, with the insides and back unprinted so they could be used for assignments.

The warrant market was big business, especially when warrants were no longer restricted to military reserve lands. Major brokerage firms dealt extensively in warrants, buying in the eastern states and selling to western land brokers and settlers. Financial newspapers in the boom years of the 1850s frequently carried price quotations. The government set a price ceiling from 1820 by charging a flat $1.25 per acre for most of its lands. The average market price peaked at about $1.20 an acre in 1854–55 for 160-acre warrants, just before the market was flooded by the act of 1855.17 More warrants were used in Iowa than in any other state, and it is estimated that half of Iowa was purchased with bounty-land warrants.

The federal government gave no bounty land for service after 1855, but Union veterans of the Civil War received special homestead rights: in 1870, the right to claim 160 acres within railroad grant areas (other homesteaders got only 80), and in 1872, the right to deduct the length of their war service from the five-year residency needed to prove a homestead.

To get a federal bounty-land warrant it was necessary, under any act from 1788 to 1855, for the soldier or heirs to apply. The warrant applications are in Record Group 15 in the Military Service Records section of the National Archives. The surrendered warrants (those used to obtain land) are in land-entry case files of the patentees in Record Group 49 in the National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland. The case file categories are briefly described in Harry P. Yoshpe and Philip P. Brower, Preliminary Inventory of the Land-Entry Papers of the General Land Office, pp. 7–9, known as Inventory No. 22. The patents, obtained by using land warrants, were like any other GLO patents. The official copies are in the Eastern States Office of the BLM in Springfield, Virginia. In seeking the various records related to a federal bounty-land warrant, the researcher should try to learn the warrant number, the acreage claimed, and the act used—for example, warrant no. 8256, forty acres, act of 1852. This information could be unnecessary because the National Archives may handle the searching, but having it in full or in part allows for more precise requests, thereby increasing the chances of success. The best source is the bounty-land application files.