This form the OIEAHC list in response to a query about repetitions of 1630s names in a land patent for Isle of Wight in 1683 may be of interest to VA-HIST subscribers:

   If your friend got the 1683 names from vol. 2 of Nell Marion Nugent's Cavaliers and Pioneers, she may wish to consult the brief discussion in the introduction -- pp. viii-ix -- about the abuses of the headright system that contemporaries complained of.  (The author is not an expert, but he quoted aptly.)
   Having supervised the indexing and publication of Nugent's volumes 2 and 3 (and quoted well for the introduction), I can pretty much assure you that transcription error on the late Mrs. Nugent's part is highly
unlikely.  Whenever we noticed something peculiar while editing the
indexes, I took that opportunity to compare Nugent's abstracts with the
original patents and in every instance the late Mrs. Nugent had things dead right.  While there is of course an abstract _possibility_ that a clerk copied names wrong back in 1683, the much more likely suspects are shipowners and Virginians playing fast and loose with the headright system (as described by Hartwell Chilton and Blair and quoted in the introduction).
   Fairfax Harrison's Virginia Land Grants: A Study of Conveyancing in
Relation to Colonial Politics (Richmond 1925) is still a useful
introductory monograph if your friend wants to go further.

--
Jon Kukla ......................... Executive Vice-President
1250 Red Hill Road ....... Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation
Brookneal, VA 24528 ...... www.redhill.org .... 434 376-2044

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