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A land bounty is a grant of land from a government as a reward to
repay citizens for the risks and hardships they endured in the service
of their country, usually in a military related capacity.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, the practice of awarding bounty
land as an inducement for enlisting in the military forces had been
a long-standing practice in the British Empire in North America. Besides
imperial bounty land grants, both colonial and municipal governments
had routinely compensated participants in and victims of military conflicts
with land. Land was a commodity in generous supply, and governments
seized upon its availability for accomplishing their goals.
In their colonial tradition, the Revolutionary governments patterned
their struggle for independence from Great Britain on the principle
of bounty lands. They generally offered free lands in exchange for military
service, but they strategically did so on the presumption that they
would be victorious in their struggle. They would not actually award
the lands until the war had been concluded and the British defeated.
Such a policy not only imposed no financial constraints on the war effort
but also insured a degree of support for the Revolutionary cause. The
Revolutionary governments were cognizant that to the victor belonged
the spoils and that defeat brought no reward. Bounty lands were an effective
propaganda technique for enrolling support for the war among the citizenry
and preventing them from lapsing into the British fold when the tide
of battle ebbed.
Those colonies with unseated lands used their advantage to enlist
support for the cause with the offer of free lands. Unfortunately,
some of the Original Thirteen enjoyed no such advantage. There
was no bounty land policy in Delaware, New Jersey, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, or Vermont. Those states lacked enough vacant land
to support such a policy. Bounty lands were a feature, however,
in Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North
Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. Administratively,
these nine states selected reserves in their western domains for
the location of bounty lands. Such a choice was seemingly quite
logical. By placing veterans on the frontier, the states would
be able to rely upon a military force which in turn would be able
to protect the settlements from Indian incursions. These state
governments also realized that they had to encourage the ex-soldiers
to occupy their newly awarded bounty lands, so they granted exemptions
from taxation ranging from a few years to life to those veterans
who would locate on their respective bounty lands. Such a policy
also had the effect of retarding the exodus of a state's population.
Since most of the Indian nations had supported the British during
the Revolutionary War, the Thirteen States were cautious in approaching
their former enemies. Populating the frontier with citizens skilled
in defense offered the best prospect in enticing other settlers
to join them. Veterans were knowledgeable in the use of firearms
and in military strategy. Knowing that they would be defended
if the need arose was reassuring to many settlers. The state governments
also realized that the revenue derived from the sale of vacant
lands in the west was badly needed. The extension of settlements
on the frontier would, in time, also increase the tax rolls and
contribute to the reduction of their Revolutionary War debts.
In the aftermath of the war, the states with transappalachian
claims ceded some of those claims to the federal government, but
not until they had the assurance of being able to fulfill their
bounty land commitments.
Accordingly, the issue of bounty lands has far wider geographical implications
than the area encompassed by the nine state governments which instituted
the practice. Besides the original states of Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina,
and Virginia, the future states of Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Ohio, and
Tennessee were directly affected by the bounty land system. While the
administrative records were, with one exception, the purview of the
former nine, the bounty land reserves involved the five transappalachian
states. The states of Georgia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and
South Carolina either had no claims to transappalachian territory or
relinquished their claims to the national government. Accordingly, their
reserves for bounty lands lay within their own western borders. In the
cases of Georgia and New York, these reserves were to be situated on
the definition of their western borders as they existed in 1783. The
bounty land reserves in those two states today would be described as
being centrally located. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts allotted
its bounty lands in the then District of Maine, which in 1820 achieved
statehood status.
While most of the states awarded bounty lands for military service,
there were two exceptions. Connecticut compensated its citizenry
with lands in Ohio if their homes, outbuildings, and businesses
were destroyed by the British. The Nutmeg State seemingly awarded
no bounty land for military service per se. Georgia also
issued lands to its civilian population who had remained loyal,
or at the very least neutral, to the Revolutionary cause after
the British restored royal control. There were no Revolutionary
War bounty land grants within the current borders of the southern
states of North Carolina and Virginia. The former issued its bounty
lands in its western lands which became Tennessee. The latter
selected reserves for its bounty lands in Indiana, Kentucky, and
Ohio before ceding its claims to the federal government.
It is important to emphasize that the Continental Congress also made
use of the policy of bounty lands. The index to those claims appears
in the Index to Revolutionary War Pension Applications in the National
Archives (Washington, D.C.: National Genealogical Society, 1976). The
federal bounty land records are included in the National Archives micropublication,
Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files,
1800-1900, Series M804, 2,670 rolls. Abstracts of these files appear
in the four-volume work of Virgil D. White, Genealogical Abstracts
of Revolutionary War Pension Files (Waynesboro, Tenn.: The National
Historical Publishing Company, 1990-1992). The federal government likewise
selected a reserve in the Northwest Territory where bounty land warrants
could be used to locate land. The U.S. Military Tract in Ohio encompassed
portions or all of the counties of Coshochton, Delaware, Franklin, Guernsey,
Holmes, Knox, Licking, Marion, Morrow, Muskingum, Noble, and Tuscarawas.
These records appear in the micropublications U.S. Revolutionary
War Bounty-Land Warrants Used in the U.S. Military District of Ohio
and Related Papers (Acts of 1788, 1803, 1806), Series M829, 16 rolls,
and in Register of Army Land Warrants Issued under the Act of 1788
for Service in the Revolutionary War: Military District of Ohio,
Series T1008, 1 roll. Since the federal land grants are readily accessible
via these sources, they are not included in this work.
With the exception of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the other
states permitted qualified veterans and/or their dependents to receive
bounty lands from both the federal and the respective state governments.
Accordingly, there may be relevant bounty land files for soldiers in
the Continental Line at both the federal and state levels. While New
York made some adjustments, double dipping was the norm in the other
states.
Following the American victory at Yorktown in 1781, the various governments
sought to implement their bounty land programs. The delay in establishing
a governmental agency to fulfill the bounty land pledge holds dual benefits
genealogically. Firstly, it increases the likelihood of the survival
of a paper trail for proving Revolutionary War participation for many
individuals who may not be mentioned in any other record. Secondly,
because the benefits were still being processed as late as the 1870s
in some jurisdictions, there may be a wealth of information pertaining
to heirs in bounty land files. Not only do the records locate the veteran
in time and place him in a given locality during the Revolutionary War,
they also do so for him and/or his dependents in the years following
independence when internal migrations within the nation complicate the
identification of specific individuals in their various removals.
The appearance of an individual or family in the west after 1783 offers
considerable challenge in learning the former domicile or in establishing
filiation. A master index to the bounty land grants of the relevant
state governments seemed to offer expeditious access to the records
holding the potential solution to such a dilemma. While access to the
federal records has long since been available in a master index, and
while many localities have been treated individually by others works
of varying quality, the absence of an overall index has impeded effective
use of these significant records.
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