Ross, Jonathan

LAND: Centre County Land Warrants, Pennsylvania Archives Third Series, Volume 25, pp. 785-809
Copyright 2003. All rights reserved.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm
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PROVINCIAL PAPERS:

WARRANTIES OF LAND IN THE SEVERAL COUNTIES OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA 1730-1898
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Edited by William Henry Engle, M.D., M.A.
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PENNSYLVANIA ARCHIVES
Third Series
Volume 25
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Wm. Stanley Ray,
State Printer of Pennsylvania
1898.

Land warrants were the first document issued to a person who wanted to obtain land from the state. A land warrant gave the applicant permission to have the land surveyed. When the survey was returned to the state with a fee, a patent was issued to the individual. There can be many years between the issuing of a warrant and the issuing of a patent, and it may not have been issued to the same person. A patent is the equivalent of a deed between the state and an individual. All land transfers after a patent was issued would be by deed.
Most deeds (but not all) were recorded in the county courthouse of the county that had jurisdiction at the time the deed was recorded. This may be the current county, but it could also be any of the parent counties for a particular location. Some deeds were never recorded, and some may have been recorded much later than the date of the deed, some more than 100 years later.

Copies of the original documents are available through the PA State Archives in Harrisburg. In most cases, the documents do not include the signature of the person warranting the land. Many of the warrants include the year the land was first settled (listed as the date when interest was to start, almost always on March first). This, however, may not be the date the warrantee settled on the land if the land had changed hands before a warrant was applied for.

Centre County, Pennsylvania, Land Warrantees

Ross, Jonathan 400 Dec 11, 1804