Introduction The 1805 Georgia Land Lottery was the first experiment of its kind in the United States. Partly in response to the Yazoo and Pine Barrens Land Frauds of the 1790s, the people of Georgia decided to distribute newly acquired lands using a lottery, thereby minimizing opportunities for corruption. Land lotteries had been used previously on a limited basis, but the 1 distribution of public lands on a mass scale by lottery is unique to Georgia. New land was 2 surveyed into square lots using public funds and then distributed by chance to eligible citizens. Widows and orphans, classes typically disadvantaged under the headright system, were specifically allowed to participate in the land lottery. As the first of eight Georgia land lotteries, the 1805 Land Lottery served as the operational model for those to follow and established districts and land lots as the foundational units of Georgia’s survey system (over the township, range, and section). The purpose of this book is to document the record of title transfer from the State of Georgia to an individual for each land lot distributed through the land lottery process in 1805. Land Lottery Process On 16 June 1802, at Fort Wilkinson, the Creek Indians ceded two strips of land, one in central Georgia just west of the Oconee River and the other in the southeast corner of the state. Today, the first tract is part of Morgan, Putnam, Baldwin, Jones, Wilkinson, and Laurens Counties. The second tract, known as the Tallassee Strip, is located between the Altamaha River and St. Mary’s River, and is now part of Wayne, Brantley, and Charlton Counties. The Act of 11 May 1803 established the general process by which the land lottery would 3 operate. The law outlined the creation of three counties and thirteen districts: five districts in Baldwin County, three districts in Wayne County, and five districts in Wilkinson County. Each district was to be surveyed into lots, containing 202 ½ acres each in Baldwin and Wilkinson 4 Counties and 490 acres each in Wayne County. In the end, 4,580 land lots were surveyed. All square (or whole) lots, as well as all islands containing more than 100 acres, were included in the land lottery drawing. All fractions were held out and sold at public auction in 1806. One surveyor was hired to map each district. Each surveyor was paid $2.75 per mile surveyed, which was used to pay salaries; create maps, plats, and field note books; and defray other incidental costs. Upon completion, survey records were forwarded to the Georgia Surveyor General. District maps, field books (when extant), and plat books for this land lottery are available at the Georgia Archives. Because districts and land lots, as numbered by the surveyors, serve as the organizational foundation of the survey system in land lottery areas of Georgia, they can be used to compile each lot’s complete chain of title from the grant to the current day.

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Besides the Georgia land lotteries from 1805 to 1833, the only other large-scale land lottery occurred in Oklahoma in 1901, when 3,250 sections were made available on formerly Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Indian land. Approximately two million acres were distributed in the Oklahoma land lottery, compared to more than one million acres in Georgia’s 1805 Land Lottery and more than 27 million acres in all eight Georgia land lotteries. 2 Farris W. Cadle, Georgia Land Surveying History and Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 169. 3 Augustin Smith Clayton, Compilation of the Laws of Georgia … 1800-1810 (Augusta: Printed by Adams & Duyckinck, 1813), 100. 4 202 ½ acre land lots are 45 chains square (66 feet per chain) and 490 acre land lots are 70 chains square.

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Introduction The task of registering eligible participants for the land lottery fell upon the justices of the inferior courts of the counties. They were charged with compiling a list of participants in their respective counties from May 1803 to 1 March 1804, along with the number of draws to which each person was entitled. Each list was sent to the Executive Department and a copy was deposited in the Superior Court of the county. Those entering the land lottery were required to pay 12.5 cents per draw to the justices for the privilege of being registered. Of all the land lotteries, the eligibility requirements in 1805 were the most succinct. Every white male over 21 years of age who was a United States citizen was entitled to one draw if they had resided in the state for twelve months prior to the land lottery act. White males of the preceding description, but having a wife and legitimate children under age 21, were entitled to two draws. Widows, with legitimate children under age 21, were also entitled to two draws. Orphans whose parents were both deceased, or whose father was dead and mother remarried, were entitled to one draw. The majority of eligible citizens registered for the land lottery. However, due to apathy, religious objections to gambling, or lack of knowledge about the process, many people did not participate. It is common to find established residents in county tax digests and deed records but not on the final list of land lottery participants. When the lists of participants were received from the counties, the names were consolidated into one list spanning four books, known as the List of Persons Entitled to Draws. The books were compiled by George R. Clayton and James Bozeman and were completed 19 July 1805, 5 three days before the drawing began. See “Fortunate Drawers” for more detailed information on how the books are arranged. According to the list, approximately 24,000 individuals participated in the land lottery and altogether were eligible for more than 40,000 draws. Each draw represented slightly less than a one in ten chance of winning a lot. For the land lottery, the number of each whole lot survey was placed on a ticket. A number of tickets labeled “blank” were then added to equal the total number of draws. The mass of tickets was placed in 6 a large container (a “lottery wheel”) built by John Jacob Schley for $40. Apparently, no accounts of the actual land lottery drawing were published, but it is possible to reconstruct the administrative events involved using knowledge of the legal process, the surviving land lottery books, and contemporary newspaper announcements. Beginning on 22 July 1805 and drawing approximately 1,250 tickets each day, six days a week, the process lasted more than five weeks, to 31 August 1805. Unlike later land lotteries with open-ended schedules, the 1805 Land Lottery was planned with precision. The draw schedule was published one month in advance of the land lottery and was followed exactly as planned. At the land lottery, the room was most likely arranged with a long table against one wall for the commissioners and their record books. The land lottery commissioners were Jared Irwin (President), William Barnett, George R. Clayton, Edwin Mounger, and George Watkins. The container full of prizes and blanks stood in front of the table where a young boy, 7 Burke Chisholm, was charged with drawing the tickets. At the table, a volume of the List of Persons Entitled to Draws was open. The commissioners read the names from the list in order, calling out the name and number of draws. Each ticket was drawn and passed to the commissioners, who marked a “B” (Blank) or “P” (Prize) beside the participant’s name for each 5

Georgia Office of the Governor. Executive Department Minutes (31 October 1805). RG 1-1-3. Georgia Archives. 6 Georgia Office of the Governor. Executive Department Minutes (30 October 1805). RG 1-1-3. Georgia Archives. 7 Augustin Smith Clayton, Compilation of the Laws of Georgia … 1800-1810 (Augusta: Printed by Adams & Duyckinck, 1813), 288. Burke Chisholm, an orphan, was registered for one draw in the lottery. The draw returned a blank.

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Introduction draw. If a prize was drawn, the fortunate drawer’s information and the lot description were written into a book known as the List of Fortunate Drawers. See “Fortunate Drawers” for more information. The land lottery ended on a Saturday and all the books and tickets were deposited at the office of the Executive Department. The first payments for grants were accepted September 3, the following Tuesday, and the first grants were issued that Wednesday and Thursday. In order to obtain their grant, fortunate drawers were required to pay four dollars per hundred acres, or $8.10 in Baldwin and Wilkinson Counties and $19.60 in Wayne County. A steady stream of fortunate drawers made their way to Louisville to claim their prizes until early 1807. By law, fortunate drawers were allowed one year following the land lottery’s conclusion to claim their grant, but in a pattern that continued during all subsequent land lotteries, the time limit was extended by the state legislature on an annual basis for almost ten years. Fractional lots were held out of the land lottery and sold at public auction in Louisville during October and November 1806. Grants for fractions were filled out early in 1806, except the name of the grantee, which was filled in upon payment of a grant fee following the auction. Many small lots received no bids and were not granted until many years later. The original grants for all fractional lots are dated 1 February 1806 and are recorded in Fractional Lots Grant Book A. Grants issued for those fractions that did not receive bids at the auction and were issued in later years are recorded in Fractional Lots Grant Book N. The record book from 8 the commissioner’s sale of fractional lots survived and is available at the Georgia Archives. Because of the low cost of registration and the undemanding nature of the oral oath, some people determined that it was worth lying about their status for a chance to win free land. If a lie was found out, the knowledgeable party, or informant, could bring charges against the fortunate drawer. If a jury found the defendant guilty of fraud, the lot was condemned and the informant received one half of the land. Georgia retained the other half and sold it at auction. Six land lots were condemned as fraudulently drawn or granted in the 1805 Land Lottery process. Other people probably registered fraudulently, but they either did not win land or received land with such little value that no informant was willing to go to the expense of a jury trial. The Georgia land lotteries were complex processes. Numerous records were created that fall outside the scope of this project, and many have not been microfilmed. For anyone interested in learning more, Georgia Land Surveying History and Law, by Farris Cadle, contains a wealth of information on each of the land lotteries and Georgia’s land system as a whole.

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Georgia Surveyor General. Wilkinson, Baldwin, and Wayne Fractional Sales, Proceedings and Ledger of Sales, 1805-1806. RG 3-2-31. Georgia Archives.

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Introduction Land Lottery Records The information contained in this book was compiled from a variety of sources, primarily the List of Persons Entitled to Draws, the grant books, and the Numerical List. Sources used that relate to specific events and requests include the Executive Department Minutes, records of the Georgia General Assembly, and three series of land lottery documents. In addition, the List of Fortunate Drawers, the Proceedings and Ledger of Fractions Sales, and the Index Leading to Page were used for verification purposes. Various ledgers of fees paid, though available, were not consulted for this publication and are not discussed here. Fortunate Drawers The List of Persons Entitled to Draws is the official list of land lottery participants compiled 10 by the state. The list includes the name of each participant, their residence and identifying remarks, their number, and the number of draws for which they were eligible. It is organized by first letter of last name, then by county, so that the list begins with As from Bryan County, Bulloch County, Burke County, etc. The names are numbered sequentially, beginning with “1” at the start of each letter, so that all number-letter combinations are theoretically unique, e.g. A-25, M-25, and Z-25. Despite their best efforts, the land lottery commissioners skipped and duplicated many individual numbers and some large sequences. The number-letter combination can be used to quickly locate a participant’s location in the original volumes. At the end of each book, the compilers included an official tally of the number of draws in each letter group. This calculation was used to determine the number of blank tickets to place in the land lottery wheel. At the land lottery, a “P” or “B” was placed by the name of each participant representing the result of each draw. This list was published as 1805 Georgia Land Lottery, by Virginia S. Wood and Ralph V. Wood. The List of Fortunate Drawers was created at the land lottery and contains the name of each fortunate drawer in the land lottery and the lot number of the prize, recorded in the same order 11 as they appear in the List of Persons Entitled to Draws. The last page includes a dated and signed certification by the commissioners outlining the process that had just been completed. Only a portion of the original book has survived, containing part of the letter H through letter Z. Letters A through the first half of H are missing entirely. The list was originally a single book and it appears that it was either rebound into two volumes or that the surviving second half was rebound so that it would be better preserved. This book and a small typescript index are 12 not included in Marion Hemperley’s Georgia Surveyor General inventory. Grants Three primary types of grant books were used for the 1805 Land Lottery: fortunate drawers 13 grant books, reverted lots grant books, and fractional lots grant books. Fortunate Drawers Grant Books. Each person whose name was matched to a specific land lot was considered a fortunate drawer. These individuals were given first right to claim the prize for themselves. Fortunate drawers who took up their land lot were issued a grant from the state. These lots, won legitimately in the land lottery and granted to the fortunate drawer, are recorded in the Fortunate Drawers Grant Books. The grants for each district are recorded 10

Georgia Surveyor General. List of Persons Entitled to Draws, 1805 Land Lottery. RG 3-5-21. Georgia Archives. 11 Georgia Surveyor General. List of Fortunate Drawers, 1805 Land Lottery. RG 3-5-75. Georgia Archives. 12 Marion R. Hemperley, The Georgia Surveyor General Department: A History and Inventory of Georgia’s Land Office (Atlanta: State Printing Office, 1982). 13 Georgia Surveyor General. Land Lottery Grant Books. RG 3-5-29. Georgia Archives.

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Introduction in separate books, so that, for example, all the Baldwin County District 3 grants are contained in one volume and appear in order by date of recording. Reverted Lots Grant Books. If a fortunate drawer did not assert his or her right to their lot, rights to the land reverted to the state. The state then sold the lots. Grants for whole lots won legitimately in the land lottery, allowed to revert by the fortunate drawer, and purchased from the state are recorded in the Reverted Lots Grant Books. A single reverted lot book exists for Wayne County. The reverted lots for all the districts of Baldwin and Wilkinson County, from the 1805 and 1807 land lotteries, are recorded in Reverted Lots Books A, B, and C, and appear in order by date of recording. Because of the poor quality of land being drawn for Wayne County, 31% of all the fortunate drawers allowed their lot to revert (310 lots). Thirty-seven Wilkinson County lots reverted and only two Baldwin County lots reverted. Fractional Lots Grant Books. Any lot surveyed that contained less than the acreage of a whole lot was considered a fraction. Fractions were not made part of the land lottery, but instead were sold to the highest bidder. The grants issued for these lots are recorded in the Fractional Lots Grant Books. Fractional Lots Grant Books A through N and HH cover all fractional lots granted in all eight land lotteries. Fractional lots grants for the 1805 Land Lottery were recorded together in Fraction Book A before being sold at public auction and are all dated 1 February 1806. Grants for lots that received no bids but were sold at a later date are recorded in Fraction Book N and appear in order by date of recording. In this land lottery, three condemned lots were re-granted in their entirety and are recorded in Fractional Lots Grant Book C. Numerical List and Index Leading to Page Soon after the land lottery, a list of all the lots drawn was created. This list is called the 13 Numerical List. Sorted by district and lot, the columnar record contains the name of the lot’s fortunate drawer and their residence, the name of the lot’s grantee if different from the fortunate drawer, and the date of the grant. The list was updated as needed until at least the late 1850s. It is not included in Marion Hemperley’s Georgia Surveyor General inventory. At some time between 1867 and the early 1900s, the numerical lists for every land lottery were copied directly into a new set of books. Some of the original numerical lists have survived, including the 1805 Land Lottery Numerical List. The Index Leading to Page was created during the same period as the copied numerical 14 lists. The books contain a record for every land lottery lot in the state, including fractional lots, showing the book and page location of the recorded grant. Because many grants were recorded in incorrect grant books, the Index Leading to Page is an essential tool for determining the location of a recorded grant. Executive Minutes and the Georgia General Assembly Clarification of facts, claims of error, and verdicts in fraud cases were forwarded to the Executive Department from local superior and inferior courts. Any time an executive order 15 was required to correct a problem, it was recorded in the Executive Department Minutes. The minutes contain information about frauds, name changes, deceased participants, duplicate grants, general errors, and the overall land lottery process. Each minute book contains a loose 13

Georgia Surveyor General. Numerical List of Fortunate Drawers and Grantees, 1805 Land Lottery. RG 3-5-40. Georgia Archives. The copied numerical lists were formerly referred to as the Index Leading to Name. 14 Georgia Surveyor General. Land Lottery Grant Index Leading to Page. RG 3-5-41. Georgia Archives. 15 Georgia Office of the Governor. Executive Department Minutes. RG 1-1-3. Georgia Archives.

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Introduction index, but no comprehensive abstract or index has been compiled. When available, executive orders dating from 1805 to the end of 1806 pertaining to specific lots distributed in the 1805 Land Lottery are included in this book as endnotes. Where references are made to specific executive orders in years subsequent to 1806, the text was retrieved and included in an endnote. Unfortunately, Executive Department Minutes from 2 January 1806 to March 1806 and from 22 June 1806 to 1 September 1806 cannot be located, and only the rough minutes from March to June are available. The rough minutes are only available in their original form, but the official minute books are available on microfilm at the Georgia Archives. The records of the Georgia General Assembly, including acts, resolutions, and journals of the House and Senate, are extremely helpful in understanding the land lottery process. In addition to establishing the land lottery rules, the legislature acted on behalf of individuals to overrule or amend decisions of the Executive Department or local Superior Courts. Original Documents The original documents associated with executive orders and legislative acts are located in 17 18 the Land Lottery Documents, Fraudulent Land Lottery Draws Records, and Land Lottery 19 Administrative Records collections at the Georgia Archives. The original land lottery documents are a tremendous resource for researchers, especially for later land lotteries. They contain a considerable number of important facts, such as the death dates and heirs of individuals who died before taking up a grant, the state of residence or country of citizenship of fortunate drawers who registered fraudulently, and the exact dates of residence in a county for people whose name was entered incorrectly on the registration lists. Selections of these documents were published by Robert S. Davis, Jr., in The Georgia Land Lottery Papers. Fractional Sales All fractional lots surveyed for the 1805 Land Lottery were sold at public auction in 1806. The Proceedings and Ledger of Sales contains minutes of the commissioner’s meetings and a ledger 20 documenting the purchaser of each lot. The ledger includes the following information: land lot number, land lot acreage, purchaser, purchaser’s residence, surety, surety’s residence, date of sale, and the price paid. The book was used to determine the residence of fractions grantees. The names of sureties are not included in this publication.

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Georgia Surveyor General. Land Lottery Documents. RG 3-5-28. Georgia Archives. Georgia Surveyor General. Land Lottery Fraudulent Draws Records. RG 3-6-32. Georgia Archives. 19 Georgia Surveyor General. Land Lottery Administrative Records. RG 3-1-20. Georgia Archives. 20 Georgia Surveyor General. Wilkinson, Baldwin, and Wayne Fractional Sales, Proceedings and Ledger of Sales, 1805-1806. RG 3-2-31. Georgia Archives. 18

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Introduction Using This Book This book is organized by county, then district and land lot, and includes all lots distributed through the 1805 Land Lottery process, including whole lots, fractions, and islands. Each record includes the following information: the name of the person who won the lot and his residence, the party who was ultimately granted the lot and his residence, the grant date, and the book and page reference to the recorded grant. Many records include information specifying relationships, such as “widow,” “orphan,” or “son of.” A full name index is included. Fractional lots, which were not included in the drawing, are denoted by Fraction in the fortunate drawer column. Fraction records include the total acreage of the lot. The residence of fraction grantees is not recorded on the grant, but was obtained from the ledger of the commissioner’s sale of fractional lots. In order to determine the name of the fortunate drawer of each lot, the Numerical List was consulted. This information was then compared with the List of Persons Entitled to Draws and the List of Fortunate Drawers. To maintain consistency, the name of the fortunate drawer as it appears in the List of Persons Entitled to Draws was used as the fortunate drawer, no matter how it is spelled in other records. The name as it is spelled on the grant appears as the grantee. There are instances when the name recorded in the List of Persons Entitled to Draws was transcribed incorrectly by the clerks, and later was corrected by executive order. In these situations, the incorrect spelling appears as the fortunate drawer and the corrected name as the grantee. The executive order is included as an endnote. Researchers should note that the residence of fortunate drawers included in this book reflects their location between May 1803 and 1 March 1804, not where they resided during the land lottery in the summer of 1805. A participant’s registration information was not changed at any time during the land lottery process, and grants, even those issued ten years after the land lottery, include the fortunate drawer’s location during the registration period, not their residence on the date of the grant. In general, the clerks’ handwriting is excellent throughout the land lottery records. The chance of spelling error has been reduced by comparing each name between at least four sources. Two sets of letters, lowercase i and e, and lowercase a and d, are consistently difficult to distinguish in the land lottery records. The names contained in this book have been indexed as they are spelled and researchers are, as usual, encouraged to look under any possible name variations. County names are spelled in a variety of ways in the record, such as Bullock, Clark, and Scriven County. All county names have been changed to today’s accepted spelling, e.g. Bulloch, Clarke, and Screven County. While it is impossible to address all of the errors and inconsistencies inherent in the land lottery process, footnotes and endnotes have been used to address specific problems and help clarify each lot’s history. In general, short notes related to grants are contained in footnotes and transcriptions of executive orders and original documents are included as endnotes. All notes contain information important to the interpretation of the land lottery record.

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Introduction Ungranted Land Instead of the name of a grantee, some fractional lot records in this book state “No grantee recorded.” In these cases, no record of a grant or other instrument transferring title from the state was located in Georgia state records. Researchers attempting to establish title back to the state have to contend with poor original surveys, unauthorized resurveys, burned county records, missing state records, and a variety of accepted legal methods for transferring title from the state in addition to a grant. Each of these lots’ title history presents unique situations and difficulties that require significant amounts of research. Because of this, no further information has been provided in this book. Abbreviations As mentioned, every record contains a reference to the book and page of the recorded grant. In order to overcome the cumbersome nature of the grant book titles, abbreviations were used to reduce the space needed. The following table may be used to determine the name of each grant book. GB RGB FB Ba Wa Wi D[1-5]

Grant Book Reverted Lots Grant Book Fractional Lots Grant Book Baldwin County Wayne County Wilkinson County District [1-5]

For example, Baldwin County District 3 Grant Book is abbreviated “BaD3GB,” Fractional Lots Grant Book A is abbreviated “FB A,” Wayne County Reverted Lots Grant Book is abbreviated “WaRGB,” and Reverted Lots Grant Book A is abbreviated “RGB A.”

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Introduction Acknowledgements I am grateful for the encouragement and assistance of my parents, Wayne and Lois Graham. Without their incredible support this book would not have been possible. Thank you to the staff of the Georgia Archives, especially Sandy Boling, Dale Couch, Lynda Jernigan, Ingrid Shields, and Joanne Smalley, for helping to locate, identify, and interpret the records used for this publication. The following people have given me insight and encouragement throughout this process: Ken Thomas, Jr., Renee Brown-Bryant, Farris Cadle, and Robert S. Davis, Jr. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the R. J. Taylor, Jr., Foundation and its Trustees and Advisory Committee for the financial and editorial support needed to publish this book.

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