The creator of the NC Land Grants website, David McCorkle made a presentation about this website to NGS Live! on May 20, 2021. Audience members could type questions in the “Q&A” box, but unfortunately there was not enough time to answer them all. The following are the answers to those unanswered questions.
Q: Are citation standards included? A: We do not show how to cite the materials, but we do give an exact reference which you can use in your citation.
Q: What do “B.J.” and “B.O.” stand for in metes and bounds descriptions? For example, “Beginning at a B.J. running West nineteen Chains to a B.O.” It could also be R.J. and R.O. A. The abbreviations used back then were not always consistent, kind of like spelling and capitalization. The end points or corners were often trees, and two letter abbreviations ending in “O” were often Oak. “P.O.” for “Post Oak” is very common in NC surveys. In this case “B.O.” is most likely “Black Oak” and “R.O.” would be “Red Oak”. “B.J.” is typically “Blackjack” which is yet another type of oak. Direct Line software has a huge list of surveyor terms and abbreviations at http://www.directlinesoftware.com/survey.htm .
Q: When will you get to other states? HA! A: I do plan to give links to sites in other state land states with online land grant information such as Library of Virginia, but I’m a 100% NC guy and will stick to doing that (-:
Q. Were any Rev. War Bounty grants made in locations other than TN? In Georgia, for example? A. Different states had different areas for their bounty land, and for NC Revolutionary war bounty it was exclusively Tennessee. Bounty lands did not necessarily have to border the state issuing them. For example, Connecticut had bounty land in Ohio. I remember seeing all the details in a book, but did a quick google search and did not see a complete list. I’m sure it’s there somewhere!
Q. But Bounty Land Grands were in Middle Tennessee, so are those in this database? All grants issued before Tennessee became a state in 1796 will be in the NC land grants database. You will also find grants where the bounty was awarded but the grant itself wasn’t issued until well into the 1800s. Also note there was a lot of shady dealings with that land, so research carefully.
This wasn’t a specific question, but I wanted to clarify that the images on the website from the State Archives of NC are not just for personal use as I said in the talk. You can publish them in books, articles, blogs, etc. without prior permission from the archives. They do ask that you give them credit.