Original Warrant Registers of Pennsylvania on CD-ROM
Warrant Registers hold the names of prospective landowners who filed an application for newly opened lands in Pennsylvania. A survey of the desired tract would follow, that resulted in a precise description and a drawing of the tract, one that usually included names of neighbors.
This CD contains all of the indexes to the Warrant Registers (67 volumes which are the master indexes) for the original sales from the Penns, and then the state, to a majority of the first legally-recognized owners of private land throughout Pennsylvania.
An explanation of the Warrant Registers’ structure: The original three counties--Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks--were established in 1682; other counties were set up as population growth warranted a new courthouse. Thus, each new county meant a new Register. The Pennsylvania Land Office would then begin entering the land sales as they occurred. Thus, the warrantees are entered under the county as it existed at the time of the sale, then under the first letter of the last name, and then more-or-less chronologically thereafter. For the researcher, having all of the county Warrant Registers in one place makes the search of the records far easier.
As the published description of the registers states, "This is the primary finding aid [in the Pennsylvania Archives] for locating patents and surveys when the name of the warrantee is known. Information given is warrant number, name of warrantee, type of warrant, acreage warranted, date of warrant, date of return, acreage returned, name of patentee, the patent volume, book, and page number and the survey book and page number. The names of the warrantees and warrant dates extracted from some of these registers were published in Pennsylvania Archives (series 3) volumes 24-26, but the published version omits the warrant numbers, return of survey information, and patent information."
Note also that those county registers which were published also omit the names of the patentee and the location of the land (usually the watercourse or the township), two vitally important pieces of information for the genealogist.
ALSO included on this CD is the "Old Rights Index" for Bucks and Chester Counties, as well as the "Old Rights Index" for Philadelphia. These indexes predate the warrant registers described above, covering the three original counties from 1682 to 1740. Used together, these registers encompass all of the sales from the Penns and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania except for the Last Purchase Warrant Index, and the Proprietary Rights Index (for warrants issued to the Penns or their associates) which have never been scanned.
Some final thoughts by the publisher of this CD-ROM: in our experience, perhaps 60-70% of the warrantees of a county were also the patentees. Often, however, the original warrantee died and the land passed to a relative or was bartered (sometimes for a gun or a coat) or sold to someone else; or he stayed on the land for a short while before moving on (usually west) and transferred the land to someone else who then patented it and became the patentee; or he was a speculator who never intended to settle on it and transferred ownership to someone else to then patented it.