Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
-
In reply to:
Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
David Clinard 8/12/08
David, I just happened to have a partial list of the fortunate drawers of the 1820 Land Lottery and it does contain the names of the fortunate drawers of Land Lots 214, 250, 254, and 255 in 20th Land District.
They were:
LL 214 Warren Jordan of Morgan County
LL 250 William Sailors of Lincoln County
LL 254 George Lewis of Tattnall County
LL 255 Francis Scott of Putnam County
You should be aware that a fortunate draw did not, in itself, constitute ownership. In order to obtain a land grant the drawer first had to pay a grant fee of $18 per Land Lot drawn. Failure to pay the fee resulted in the land reverting to state to be disposed of by selling to the highest bidder at auction. The Georgia Archives are custodians of the lottery documents, among which are the original grants. One would need to contact or visit the Archives to find out if a grant was issued to the above named drawers.
A very small percentage of the fortunate drawers in any Georgia land lottery actually occupied the land. In most cases it was sold to land speculators, sight unseen. The first time the land would appear in county deed records was when it was sold, and the buyer (grantee) was responsible for recording the transition, but there was no law concerning the recording of deeds. Often, these first transactions were never recorded or recorded years after the fact, and usually when it was sold the second or third time.
While it is clear that Land Lot 214 was in the 20th Land District, is not clear that the other three were. The sales of 2/18/1856 will specify the land districts. I am assuming they are all are in the 20th.
The only thing I can suggest you do now is to see if the name of the fortunate drawer appears on the grantor index starting with 1821 in Early County and 1823 in Decatur County and going forward to at least 1841. I can confirm that Jacob was not a fortunate drawer in the 1820 lottery.
It is very likely that Jacob did not record the deeds when he bought the properties since you found no deed records. Again, it was the grantee that had the responsibility to do this.
It does appear from the tax digests that half of Lot 214 was sold between 1848 and 1849 and, as you suggest, the remaining half was transferred to his son. This could be confirmed in the 1856 transactions. If that is a valid assumption, then there could be a record showing Jacob, Sr. as the grantor, but I suspect that you did check both the grantee and grantor indices. But that's just an observation and has no bearing on the initial title search.
The Georgia Archives web page at http://sos.georgia.gov/Archives/what_do_we_have/land_lottery/default.htmhttp://sos.georgia.gov/Archives/what_do_we_have/land_lottery/default.htm has some information on how the lotteries were conducted. The home page for the Archives is http://sos.georgia.gov/Archives/http://sos.georgia.gov/Archives/.
In addition to land lottery records, the Archives has the deed records for Early (1821-1900) and Decatur (1823-1919) counties plus wills and Inferior and Ordinary Court Minutes (jurisdiction over testate and intestate estates) on microfilm. If your title search problem can be solved, the documents for doing so are all at the Archives.
At one time, the Archives provided a list of professional genealogists. I don't think that is the case now, but they may know a source. You may not be interested, but if you are there is a contact link on their home page called "online" which you can use to inquire about this.
I hope this will be of some help.
More Replies:
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
Daisy Pack 9/11/09
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
ALFRED TURNER 9/13/09
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
Daisy Pack 9/13/09
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
ALFRED TURNER 9/13/09
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
Daisy Pack 9/14/09
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
ALFRED TURNER 9/14/09
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
-
Re: Record of Original Land Acquisition - Decatur Co, GA
David Clinard 8/16/08