VA Headrights Explanation
						June 2004

	One of my favorite rootsweb lists is VA-Southside, which excels as a place 
to find discussions between knowledgeable people over a wide range of topics.  I 
feel one of the more recent discussion threads, on the VA Headright System, is 
worth passing on.  I am only passing along the highlights, thus recommend those 
preferring the full, uncut version go to the list archives for June 2004: 

http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/VA-SOUTHSIDE/2004-06

	To omit any confusion, my comments will be within 'indented' paragraphs, 
while direct extraction from the list messages, will not be indented. Paul Drake 
noted the best discussion of all appears on the VA Library site. Thus I begin 
with the section titled  -- Colonial Land Office Patents 1623 - 1774.  Again, go 
to the URL for the uncut and longer version of how land was distributed by the 
Crown or proprietors, before 1623 and after 1774.

http://ajax.lva.lib.va.us/F/?func=file&file_name=find-b-clas30&local_base=CLAS30

				Colonial Land Office Patents, 1623-1774

With the abolition of the charter of the Virginia Company of London in 1624, the 
administration of the colony was placed directly under the crown. As this 
included the disposal of land, it fell to the governor to use his broad powers 
to issue land patents. In 1634 the Privy Council authorized the patenting of 
lands under the principle of granting patents to any person who qualified as a 
planter. In practice, the acreage was awarded to the person who paid the 
transportation cost of the emigrant and not to the settler himself. This method, 
called the headright system, was employed as the major means of distributing 
virgin lands in the 17th century.

The office of the Secretary of the Colony was key to the process, and it 
remained in place until the Revolution. This office issued patents after all the 
steps were approved. First, the patentee was required to appear before a county 
court and present proof that a stated number of persons had been imported to the 
colony at his expense. The certificate of importation rights issued by the 
courts was taken to the Secretary of the Colony in the capital, where a "right" 
was issued that, when presented to a county surveyor, authorized him to survey 
the tract located by the patentee. Once the survey was completed, it and all 
supporting papers were returned to the office of the Secretary, and, if no 
discrepancies existed, two copies of the patent were made. One copy was signed 
by the governor, sealed, and delivered to the patentee, and the other was 
retained by the Secretary. No Land Office surveys are extant prior to 1779 
although some county court records include survey books. Also, none of the 
supporting papers mentioned above are extant prior to 1779.

Another method of land distribution authorized during the 17th century was the 
military right granted to persons who would settle in hostile territory, but 
this was seldom used. In the 18th century the treasury right was established 
whereby land could be purchased. The office of the Secretary of the Colony 
continued to act as the official channel for the legal distribution of land 
until the establishment of the Virginia Land Office on June 22, 1779.

Colonial Land Office patents, whether issued on importation, treasury, or 
military rights, or as part of an order of Council, were consistent in format. 
The patent always recited the titles of the sovereign or protector under whom it 
was issued, the consideration for which it was issued, the name of the patentee, 
the size of the tract, the county of location, a description of the land, any 
reservations for the crown, and the date the patent was signed.

This collection consists of the patents as recorded by the office of the 
Secretary of the Colony. These copies were hung on strings in the office and, as 
time was available, they were recorded in bound volumes. A random method of 
selection of documents to be entered accounts for the haphazard dating in the 
early volumes, and the method of hanging the patent on string accounts for loss 
of documents. The system of recording was improved in the 18th century. Rather 
than having duplicate copies made and entered in a bound volume at intervals, 
the patents were recorded when issued. All other accompanying documents 
including surveys were annually destroyed.


	I begin the discussion from the VA-Southside list with Paul Drake 
commenting:: 

In the 17th- and 18th-centuries the word "transport" did NOT mean only that some 
named sponsor saw to the boat trip and trans-Atlantic fare.  That word also was 
used to designate those who had reimbursed or otherwise supplied money those who 
actually had provided the trip over.  Why the dual definition?  Because 
Parliament and the Virginia Land Co had provided that any person who transported 
another across the sea would gain (usually) 50 acres of VA land to be broken to 
the plow and rendered habitable to some minimal extent.  

Thus it  was that if you were of a business mind you could own a ship (or hire 
one) and provide the ride across the ocean for enough folks to fill that ship, 
folks who would come here as servants for some number of years in exchange for 
that ride over.  When your ship arrived here with those new "servants", you 
would and usually did sell the terms of service of those folks to farmers and 
planters here who needed those laboring folks to work the crops, the sale price 
for those terms being sufficient to make the whole venture profitable for  you.  

It was said to cost about L10 (Pounds) to ship a person here, including the food 
and shelter in England for whatever time it took to round up a full shipload.  
Thus, if you could sell those servants to a planter for L15, you had a net 
profit of L5 on the deal per head.         

The rights to claim the years of service owing by each servant was called a 
"headright" (rights per head of people), and - as said - that headright brought 
to the new owner 50 acres of new land. Though it seems to us to be a stretch of 
the rules, the law took the view that the new owner really had "transported" 
that servant since that he had paid for the fare by reimbursing the ship's 
master in full, plus a profit.

As you can now see, Nugent's list of servants transported does not reflect who 
really brought the person here, but rather who somehow later saw to the payment 
to the original transporter.  The last legal step was that, since if you owned a 
"headright", as with almost all other property, you could sell, mortgage, loan, 
give, trade, will or deal in those headrights as you chose.  

Considering that state of the law, notice that you could pay a shipowner for a 
man and thereby gain that man-servant's duties, go downtown and sell that 
headright to a friend or give it to one of your kids, and those new "owners" 
could, in their turn, sell or otherwise again be rid of that servant and his 
work period.   

Since each of those new owners had paid you, who had paid someone else, they had 
in fact "transported" that servant.  When the trades and sales all were 
finished, the final owner - the last fellow to "pay" for the fare over went down 
to the clerk and stated he had "transported" those people.  He then got his 50 
acres per head.
   
Thus, as is now obvious, any list of folks appearing in the records only 
reflects the name of those who ended up paying someone else for the headrights, 
and in no way reveals who bought and sold anyone.  Many made a lot of money by 
speculating in headrights, the servants all the while wondering and waiting to 
be told for whom they would work out their terms.  

	Donald King then raised the question:  is there a "reasonable" time frame 
which NORMALLY occurred between the time of the arrival of the transported 
persons and the date of the award of the land?  Paul Drake again replied:

Good question, Don. The answer is no, there was no time limit.  So long as a 
servant, for WHATEVER reason, had not served out his/her term of servitude upon 
which he/she had agreed way back  when he shipped out of the old country, that 
term he owed could be given as a gift, mortgaged, sold back to the servant, 
given away by will, passed by descent and distribution, or simply abandoned.  

The result is that a name in a list of headrights really can not be said to 
provide us any positive evidence of when a servant came, who transported  him 
actually or by paying another who had already paid the fare, where he lived, 
where he worked, or even, in fact, whether or not that servant ever saw, spoke 
to or even knew his "master."  It is also known that some headrights were 
claimed by ships'masters and seamen, since they had "transported" themselves on 
every trans-oceanic trip.  To render the system even more tedious, it is written 
that some ships' masters claimed headrights for those they had taken aboard, yet 
who had died enroute.  In short, headrights as listed really tell us almost 
nothing.  


	Patrick J. Anderson  turned the discussion toward duplication of names on 
several lists.

It is important to remember that the ships didn't go back to England empty. It 
was common for men of the 1650-1715 period to make one or two additional  trips 
back to England  for family or mercantile affairs.  Upon returning to Virginia 
the traveler would generate a new headright for his name. A typical event of 
1680 would be:

30 or so landowners, craftsmen and merchants of York County Virginia would get  
together and pick some competent member of their group to act as agent for them.  
He would be given letters of credit, powers of attorney, and other commissions 
to perform on behalf of his neighbors.  The ship he traveled on to England might 
have many hogshead of tobacco or cords of timber belonging to his neighbors 
which he was under instructions to sell in England. It might even have several 
bundles of furs purchased from the Indians. He might be accompanied by several 
young children of his neighbors and he would have moneys given him to establish 
accounts at the best English or Scottish schools for the education of the 
children.  He would personally see them established at their school in control 
of the headmaster.  He would sell the tobacco or timber and collect the letter 
of credit or cash.  He might then visit the taverns and tea houses and jails and 
cast about to recruit some new servants for his neighbors in Virginia since 
their old servants terms of service were routinely expiring. He might visit the 
market streets of London and purchase in bulk, building hardware like locksets 
and hinges, coloring agents for glazes needed by potters and glaziers, quality 
cloth not available in Virginia. He would carefully record all of the accounts, 
income and expenses - gather his new servants and recruits and  book passage 
back to Virginia.  When he got back to VA he was responsible for generating his 
own headright as well as the headrights of the servants he brought with him, but 
as has already been pointed out the eventual claimant of those headrights is 
whoever eventually pays him the cash for them.  If he is a shrewed businessman 
he gets a bulk rate for his servants passage and sells their headrights and his 
own to some landowner looking to expand his land holding upon arrival in 
Virginia.  He makes a profit on the deal.  He reports to his neighbors on the 
circumstances of their children, parcels out the servants, pays the landowners 
their moneys from the sale of their tobacco and timber, turns over the incoming 
shipment of hardware to the carpenters and other specialty items from London 
merchants to his neighboring craftsman and merchants and gets paid for them at a 
profit.

Sounds like a lot of work and time consuming, but a study of Virginia patents 
will show that many of the wealthy landowners did exactly that at least a couple 
of times in their live and the reason is because when you are in charge of the 
books it is easy to make a profit.  That's how they got rich. The laws varied 
over time, but for most of the 1650-1715 time period anyone over the age of 10 
accrued a headright. Under ten you were ignored.

This brings up another point, children born in VA and sent to England for 
education as 12 year olds might return to VA at the age of 14 or 15 and have a 
headriight accrued to their name. Thus the appearance of the name of an 
individual in a headright does not  "prove" they were born in Great Britain.  
They may easily have been born in VA and sent back to a Scottish boarding school 
to be educated.  There are repeated appearances in British literature of the 
period references to children at British boarding schools who were colonials and 
were derided as backward and boorish  because of their clothing and manners. 
There were other young men who were even college educated at the time and  
earned their headright upon returning from schools like Kings College of 
Aberdeen

	Paul Drake added:

I should have added that no one rode free, no matter their age, except babes in 
arms, and those who had ships and were in the business of hauling people to and 
from Britain did not work for fun.  All other than such infants were indentured 
for some term if they or someone in their behalf could not pay their fare.  
Those terms generally were until age 21 and older, and it is written that their 
labor terms commonly and on the average extended to age 25.  If a man and wife 
had several kids they wished to bring with them to the New World, it was a 
matter of bargaining with the shipper for the best terms of labor possible.  

Again, supply and demand controlled and the law was not strictly enforced; the 
King needed money and developed land in the Colonies was the only way to make 
those colonies pay their way.  As with ships' owners, the King was not in the 
charity business. The free market controlled, not age.  Kids were expected 
usually to be bound till age 25 and adults for whatever term their talents and 
skills made possible; a dumb plow boy worked longer for his passage than a man 
skilled in leather work or some other trade.  Of course, the first requisite was 
that the person serve long enough to repay the amount invested. Pure dollars and 
cents.


	I end with one final, paraphrased quote from our own Mary Stewart -- the 
ONLY THING we can 'assume' by the appearance of a name on the head right list of 
those transported is, a 'person by that name was in the colony before the date 
the head right was granted'. 

Mary adds: 
	
Paul Drake's discussion of headrights is interesting but I think it leaves a 
false impression that everyone named as a headright was an indentured servant 
and that simply is not true.
 
At its highest point (1623-1637) indentured servants represented about 75% of 
the names of headrights. See William G. Stanard's article in the April 1901 
issue of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. In addition to paying 
for the transportation of prospective settlers, men taking out patents claimed 
headrights for their own transport as well as for their wives and other family 
members -- hardly servants!  There were some who crossed the Potomac to 
Maryland, returned and claimed another headright for themselves. Ship captains 
were notorious for claiming headrights for all the sailors on their ships and 
then selling them. As time went on, there were more and more abuses of the 
headright system and land patents became granted more often through the use of 
Treasury Rights.
 
There are several very good sources for a real understanding of the system of 
land grants. Read the introductions to Cavaliers & Pioneers, especially volumes 
one and four. See also Mother Earth, Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 by W. 
Stitt Robinson, Jr. and Virginia Land Grants by Fairfax Harrison.



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