Ohio Land Grants

Yesterday, I wrote about the book, How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein, and commented on the Ohio Western Reserve of Connecticut. The territory that became the State of Ohio was pieced together from lands surveyed and sold by the federal government, private individuals, and by the states of Virginia and Connecticut.

Since parts of the state were surveyed at different times, Ohio was divided into areas called survey "districts" or "land grants."


Map from the OHGenWeb Project

In addition to the Western Reserve, the "Fire Lands" were a gift from the state of Connecticut to citizens who had property destroyed by the British during the American Revolution, the "Virginia Military District" was intended to be given to Virginia's veterans, and the "Refugee Tract" was given to Canadian refugees who had helped the American colonies during the Revolutionary War. See Ohio History Central for more detail.

These details are imporant not only for historians, but also genealogists. When tracking the birth, death or property of an ancestor during the period before Ohio's statehood, it is imporant to be able to identify the territories that eventually became the different counties. Concidentally, Shawna, the Genealogy Librarian at my library shared with me some maps she drew in grade school:





I have already sent these fine maps to the Hand Drawn Map Association for inclusion in that collection.