Hardy County Virginia - Plat Maps
I am interested in finding plat maps for Hardy County Virginia for the period 1785-1800. Is anyone aware of their existence? I don't find them in the FamilySearch records.
Is anyone researching Hardy County Virginia?
Answers
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So the most likely place you will find plats are in the deeds themselves (sometimes in Chancerys). Unless someone has gone through old records and created a plat map from descriptions and/or old plats, there will not be a comprehensive plat map of the county. @Julie Cabitto and I and others have been building something of that sort in Mecklenburg county, working from land deeds and chanceries. We have used Google Maps, but there is also a program called DeedMapper that can do it using exact coordinates as given in old records. If there is an retro-platted map of the county, the local historical society or library should know about it, so you might check in with them.
Hope this helps!
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Thank you @Anne LoForte Willson, I think that I have viewed every deed book, for the time period that I am interested, in Hardy County, but haven't seen a plat drawing, but I have seen them for other counties, etc.
Great ideas about checking with the County historical society and also about the app, DeedMapper. I will followup on both.
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You might consider earlier and later deeds as well and don't forget to check Chancery court records as well. The reason for the alternate dates is because the land records usually specify the land and where it came from. Often stating it was inheritance or purchased from a specific person. So the other correlating deeds might have a plat in them, while the specific one that you are interested in may not.
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Please look at the Library of Virginia. What became Hardy County West Virginia was originally a part of the Northern Neck of Virginia. When I go to the link https://lva-virginia.libguides.com/land-grants and search for Hardy County, 1,738 records come up. Screen shot attached at bottom. All of them are digitized originals; many have surveys. I opened up the first record for Peter Harness and have attached the screen shot for that too, top. Look at the record that starts on middle of the page and count down to the 7th line and you will see County of Hardy.
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Land records in Virginia have a fascinating early history. I gave a presentation at a workshop on this a couple of weeks ago. Ancestry has a complete listing of abstracts of all Northern Neck land grants. FamilySearch links to it, but only Ancestry lets you browse the pages. See the screen shot below from the FamilySearch links. These links (outlined in a red square) go directly to Ancestry where they can be browsed page by page or searched. When you search for a specific ancestor, the results will give you (in addition to other info), the book and page number. The Library of Virginia digitized originals are organized by book and page number. Let me know if you need more info.
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