Website: Hatcher Families Resource Center
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~nhatcher
List Admin: Hatcher email list
Researching: Cook, Hall, Hatcher, Kuhns, Miller, Shepherd, Timberman
HATCHER DNA Project  http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~nhatcher/hatDNA.htm
"Genealogy Without Documentation is Nothing" - Paul Drake

Paul wrote:
"As I said yesterday, primogeniture was abolished in VA in 1785 and in 1784
in NC.  If he died with the land title unperfected and it was perfected
after those years, then primogeniture is irrelevant to your investigation.
Finally, minors of intestate death had their living parents as their only
heirs at law, and their siblings gained nothing, since the minor could not
hold valid title to land, then or even now without a proper guardian."

Now it seems we're getting into a tight timing problem. I am pretty sure the
Act of Assembly was dated 1783 that set aside land for vets of the RW. The
earliest date in my records is the court order (State of NC) to perform the
survey dated Mar 1785. The survey was completed in 1786. John Hatcher, heir
of David, sold the land to the assignee, John Marshall, in 1788.

So it would seem to me that technically, when the Act was passed in 1783,
David's "brother" would have been the heir under primageniture, but by the
time the survey was ordered in 1785, the father would be the legal heir.
Seeing how slow this entire process was, spanning several years, it would
seem that the "heir" would have had to go thru a process with the military
to prove his relationship and have a Military Warrant # assigned before any
survey was ordered. If the process was started by David's brother prior to
the NC law changing in 1784, would the court have continued to recognize him
as the heir (grandfathering?) or would they have followed the new law and
only recognized the father as the heir? Hmmmm...........

Nel

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