Fincastle County, Virginia
We know that Ohio
County was formed from Hardin County
in 1798. But where did Hardin
County come from? If your ancestors might have arrived in Ohio County
pre-1798 (or another Kentucky County pre-1798 and moved to Ohio County
later) the information in this post might be useful to you. If your ancestors came to Kentucky
(Ohio County or otherwise) after 1798, then
the following will not help you, although you might find it interesting. If you
fall into the former category, then some of your early family records might be
found in a courthouse in Virginia.
Fincastle County, Virginia was
formed from Botetourt County in 1772; it was the westernmost county in Virginia and included all of what is now Kentucky and parts of Virginia
and West Virginia
that were west of the Kanawaha and New rivers. In December 1773, Governor
Dunmore announced that those who had military warrants awarded for service in
the French and Indian War would be allowed to claim land in this area. Fincastle County lost its identity after less than four years
of existence and fewer than three dozen court sessions, and in 1776, by an Act
of the General Assembly, the counties of Montgomery,
Washington, and Kentucky were formed from its original
territory. In all, an entire
state [Kentucky]
and two dozen Virginia/West Virginia counties count Fincastle as their parent
county. Kentucky County would eventually become an entire state
(1777-1780). Kentucky was first
divided into Fayette, Lincoln and Jefferson Counties
(1780), and Nelson was carved out of Jefferson
County (1785); Hardin
County was carved out of Nelson County
(1792); and Ohio County,
of course, was carved out of Hardin
County in 1798.
The original land entries for Fincastle County, Virginia,
are presently found in the Montgomery County, Virginia, Courthouse. The first
entry is dated 15 December 1773 and the entries continue through 17 August
1776. At first all the entries were by virtue of the military warrants issued
by Lord Dunmore for service in the French and Indian War. After December 1775
entries were allowed on preemptions. These generally consisted of several
400-acre tracts per man and were entered with a disclaimer that the claimant
had "produced memorandums of [a certain number of] entries of land on
Western Waters and demanded that they might be entered in my book which hath
been complied with, provided the same be legal, but should it appear otherwise,
there is no advantage to be taken of the surveyor." In other words, these
preemption claims were allowed to be entered on the county entry book in spite
of the suspicion by the county surveyor that such entries were illegal. John
Floyd, James Douglas, and Isaac Hite, the deputy surveyors who worked in Kentucky, also had preemption claims but never entered
them in Fincastle
County.
In the original records, the
entries are listed chronologically. The date is followed by the name of the
person, the amount of land, the location, and usually his authority to make an
entry. A typical entry reads:
January 1, 1774: Walter
Cunningham, Dunmore's warrant, 1000 acres at the confluence of Harwoods
[Harrods Creek] with the Ohio on the southeast side of the Ohio and said creek.
A careful comparison of these
entries with the Fincastle
County surveys reveals
that some of them were made after the surveys had been completed, which is
somewhat unconventional. However, the trip to Kentucky was long and sometimes dangerous,
so if the holder of a warrant instructed the surveyors to "do the best you
can for me," then it would not make much sense to enter the land until
after the surveyor had returned. It would even appear that after the
Revolutionary War began, many of the men with military warrants became somewhat
careless about making entries at all and relied upon their survey to uphold
their claims. For example, John Floyd purchased the military warrant of John
Draper, which he had surveyed on the Elkhorn
and withdrew the entry even though it had never been entered.
These entries have been
published by Mary B. and F. B. Kegle in Early Adventures on the Western Waters
(2 vols.; Orange, Virginia: Green Publishers, 1980), II, 3-21.
Their list was copied directly from the entry book and is therefore in
chronological order. There is no special index for these entries, which were
located in all parts of Fincastle
County.
Of the 300,940 acres that were
entered, 286,090 (ninety-eight percent) were in the present bounds of Kentucky and the remainder in either present-day Virginia or West
Virginia. These entries also show that many people
who made entries were not veterans of the French and Indian War but their heirs
or assignees. There were also a number of entries that were withdrawn after
they had been made and entered at other locations. Sometimes the entries show
the rank of the person making an entry on a military warrant. These entries can be seen on this web pages:
More
information on Fincastle County and Kentucky County:
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