Headrights

The headright system was used in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It originated, and was most widely used, in Virginia which provided a model for the other colonies - so the discussion below focuses specifically on the Virginia system.

Through most of Virginia’s colonial period, headrights were an important means of obtaining land. Until 1699 it was the only means of obtaining a patent (except for a certain few favored individuals.) The origin of the headright system is found in the London Company’s Great Charter of 1618:

“That for all persons…which…shall go into Virginia with the intent there to inhabite. If they continue there three years or dye after they are shipped there shall be a grant made of fifty acres for every person … which grants shall be made respectively to such persons…at whose charges the said persons going to inhabite in Virginia shall be transported…”

After James I dissolved the Company and established Virginia as a royal colony, he permitted this system to remain in effect. Subsequent commissions to his Royal Governors instructed them to continue the practice, though the instructions were usually quite vague. For example:

“…50 acres of land for every person transported thither…until otherwise determined by His Majesty.”

Who Could Be Used As A Headright?

Any person entering Virginia was a potential headright. There were initially no restrictions on point of origin. For example, a person moving across the Potomac from Maryland became a perfectly legitimate headright. The first restriction of point of origin was the elimination of Africans in 1699, and there was a later restriction to English citizens.

There were no restrictions on age or gender. Headrights could be, and often were, children. A large proportion of indentured servants were teenagers.

Persons born in Virginia who left the colony and later returned were often claimed as headrights. Although this was not consistent with the spirit of awarding land in exchange for new settlers, it seems to have been accepted practice from the very beginning – several Ancient Planters did just that.

Due to the absence of a system for validating headright usage, headrights were often claimed more than once, and persons who had no intention of “inhabiting” were used as headrights.

Process For Claiming Headrights

The process required one to first prove the importation at a local county court (or to the Council itself) and obtain a certificate of importation. Some of these headright-related testimonies are preserved in county court records. The certificate became, in effect, a sort of warrant. There was no time limit on its use – a few cases are known in which the certificate was not used for two or three decades. The certificate was (in theory) delivered to the granting authority, and its clerk copied the names of headrights from the certificate into the grant itself.

Don’t Assume That The Patentee Was The Importer

Importation certificates were bought and sold like any other property. Unless we find a court record for the certificate, we can’t know the importer’s identity. In fact, some unpublished research comparing court-issued certificates to their resulting patents suggests that the majority of certificates were transferred to others. Even persons who imported themselves frequently sold their own headrights.

What Can We Assume About The Date Of Importation?

Not much. There are two considerations: First, (in theory at least) a headright did not become usable until either dying or surviving for three years. However, we don’t really know the extent to which the county courts observed that provision because they seldom noted the date of importation in the court records granting certificates. Second, there may have been a significant delay between importation and the issuance of the patent. As an extreme example, one Nicholas Sessums obtained a certificate in 1710 for importing himself 44 years earlier; and the certificate was used by a different person to obtain a patent in 1716 – at least 50 years after Sessums arrived in Virginia.

I might note that their was not a strong economic incentive to use certificates quickly. The cost of importing a servant generally exceeded the value of the fifty acres received. Passage from England cost in the neighborhood of £6 through most of the early colonial period. The incentive for importing servants was not so much the land received as the tobacco crop that servant could produce. Since one person could work only three or four acres of tobacco, there may not have been much incentive to immediately use the headright for that servant. How quickly a headright was used probably was influenced more by the availability of land than by a need for land. Thus one would expect that headrights would have been used relatively quickly as land became scarce in a given area.

Were All Headrights Used For Patents?

No. Recent unpublished studies have compared the names in headright certificates issued by several Virginia county courts to the headrights claimed in patents as published by Nugent. The conclusion is that nearly half of all headright certificates were never used. Therefore we should be cautious about drawing any conclusion from the absence of an ancestor from the headright lists. The reason for this may be that land had relatively modest value in the 17^th century – there was an effectively unlimited supply of it and a limited number of hands available to work it. High mortality rates assured that there were more potential headrights than there were workers available.

Misuse & Corruption

One factor which argues for caution in interpreting headright lists is the increasing corruption of the system. There was little or no auditing of headrights, so the system was routinely abused, particularly by the end of the century. Clerks did not check for duplicates, so the same certificate could be used more than once or the same person included on multiple certificates. Persons (like sailors) who had no “intent to inhabit” were often claimed as headrights. Abuse of the system increased over time, especially by the late 17th century when even the Royal Governors complained of corruption on the part of their own clerks. So be aware of the possibility for:

Duplicate claims (perhaps spelled differently if entered by different clerks).

Importation of the same person more than once legitimately or not.

Illegitimate” importations, such as merchants, sailors, and visitors from another colony.

Fictitious names or the sale of names by clerks.

The Headright system was responsible for a large portion of the early transportation of Irish, Scots-Irish, and British colonists. Many sold themselves into endentured servitude to gain transportation.