North Carolina Headrights

In North Carolina's proprietary period (1663-1729), the primary means of acquiring land was by headright. A free person was allowed to claim a specified amount of land for each person, including himself/herself, that he/she transported into the colony for the purpose of settlement. While the amount of land attached to a headright varied throughout the era, the most common amount was fifty acres.

New Voyages to Carolina offers a bold new approach for understanding and telling North Carolina's history. Recognizing the need for such a fresh approach and reflecting a generation of recent scholarship, eighteen distinguished authors have sculpted a broad, inclusive narrative of the state's evolution over more than four centuries. The volume provides new lenses and provocative possibilities for reimagining the state's past. Transcending traditional markers of wars and elections, the contributors map out a new chronology encompassing geological realities; the unappreciated presence of Indians, blacks, and women; religious and cultural influences; and abiding preferences for industrial development within the limits of "progressive" politics. While challenging traditional story lines, the authors frame a candid tale of the state's development. Contributors: Dorothea V. Ames, East Carolina University Karl E. Campbell, Appalachian State University James C. Cobb, University of Georgia Peter A. Coclanis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Stephen Feeley, McDaniel College Jerry Gershenhorn, North Carolina Central University Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Yale University Patrick Huber, Missouri University of Science and Technology Charles F. Irons, Elon University David Moore, Warren Wilson College Michael Leroy Oberg, State University of New York, College at Geneseo Stanley R. Riggs, East Carolina University Richard D. Starnes, Western Carolina University Carole Watterson Troxler, Elon University Bradford J. Wood, Eastern Kentucky University Karin Zipf, East Carolina University

This book presents most of the religious traditions North Carolinians and their ancestors have embraced since 1650. Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, Jews, Brethren, Quakers, Lutherans, Mennonites, Moravians, and Pentecostals, along with African American worshippers and non-Christians, are covered in fourteen essays by men and women who have experienced the religions they describe in detail. The North Caroliniana Society is a nonprofit, nonsectarian, membership organization dedicated to the promotion of increased knowledge and appreciation of North Carolina's heritage through the encouragement of scholarly research and writing and the teaching of state and local history, literature and culture.

" ... provides updated county and town listings within the same overall state-by-state organization ... information on records and holdings for every county in the United States, as well as excellent maps from renowned mapmaker William Dollarhide ... The availability of census records such as federal, state, and territorial census reports is covered in detail ... Vital records are also discussed, including when and where they were kept and how"--Publisher decription.

Reprints. Lists originally published in the Magazine of Virginia genealogy, February 1984-August 1986; Interpreting headrights in Colonial-Virginia patents: uses and abuses originally published September 1987 in National Genealogical Society quarterly.

Most of the McDowells in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina, Kentucky were related with their common ancestor being Thomas or one of his sons. However, their relationships were sometimes confused. Many family members had similar names such as John and Joseph and were born about the same year for example Joseph “Pleasant Garden” McDowell in 1758 and Joseph "Quaker Meadows" McDowell in 1756. I have also found family historians have recorded birth and death dates to the wrong family member with the same name or attributed erroneous parents probably hoping to place them in their ancestral line. Erroneously, son Ephraim is thought of as the progenitor of the McDowells in Virginia, as well as in the territory that became Kentucky. Some historians go further and attribute all McDowells as descendants of Ephraim. However, this confuses the ancestry of the descendants of Ephraim with the descendants of his brothers. There were six brothers (the six sons of Thomas McDowell) who were responsible for the many McDowell descendants. The different branches lived in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky and made significant contributions to the establishment and growth of these areas. Also many fought in the American Revolution to establish our freedoms. I hope to sort the different family branches using Thomas McDowell (b. 1628) as the starting point and focus on each family member’s location and who they are with to determine to which branch they belong.