There are numerous instances of "lost patents." Causes include at least 
five fires and references to mismanagement.

Records of land distributed prior to the repeal of the Virginia 
Company's charter essentially do not survive. There were two at least 
state house fires prior to  October 1666 ( Hening, Statutes, 2:245). 
Bacon's 1676 burning of the statehouse apparently also resulted in 
record loss (Virginia Land Office Patent Book 7, p. 43.). It was 
followed by a fourth fire on 20 Oct 1698 (McIlwaine, ed., /Executive 
Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia/, 1:392. ), an apparent  
fifth in 1699 (McIlwaine, ed., Executive Journals of the Council of 
Colonial Virginia, 3:193). A sixth fire on 30 Jan 1747 was followed by 
the erection of a separate building to hold the Secretary's records. 
There appears to have been no record loss in the evacuation of Richmond 
during the Revolutionary War; however Hening notes "in books labelled 
‘Bonds, Commissions, Deposition, &c.’ there are several hundred patents 
which ought to have been recorded in the books now in the Register’s 
Office, besides a variety of other papers which no one could expect to 
find under such titles. This fact will probably account for the many 
unsuccessful applications at the Register's Office, for ancient patents, 
they being improperly recorded in books, now in the office of the clerk 
of the general court." (Hening, Statutes, 2:509).

His source was probably a court suit either in the few surviving for 
Caroline or in the Fredericksburg District court records. The land 
likely (based on Dennis Hudgins' work) was in the  in the southeast 
partr of Caroline between Maracossic Creek and the Mattaponi originally 
patented to Joshua Story and William Morris.

Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FUGA, FVGS
PO Box 1273
Orange, VA 22960

540-832-3473
[log in to unmask]

CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used
under license by board-certified genealogists after periodic evaluation; the board name is
registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.

On 8/10/2023 7:19 PM, Arend Flick wrote:
> Would someone happen to know if there were seventeenth century land patents
> or grants that simply didn't make it into the patent books or *Cavaliers
> and Pioneers*?  I am befuddled by a very specific reference in T. E.
> Campbell's book on Caroline County (*Colonial Caroline*), published in
> 1954, to a grant to a Thomas Hoomes in 1667 for 3000 acres "On a swamp
> leading into north bank of the Mattapony, below the Lewis grant." There is
> absolutely no record of this grant in the patent books (that I can find) or
> in *C & P*. Perhaps Campbell, researching in Caroline in the late 40s or
> early 50s, had access to some sort of county record (or whatever) that just
> didn't make it into any of the usual sources? This is not the only large
> grant he refers to in very specific terms that I simply can't find evidence
> of elsewhere. (Some confusion, by the way, between "Hoomes" and "Holmes"--a
> Thomas Holmes did a lot of patenting NE of this area at about the same time.
>
> Thanks for any help!
>
> Arend Flick
>
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