Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/577

 being entered together. After a grant had been recorded in the office of the Secretary, the first conveyance to a purchaser of the land included in it was often accomplished in the same general manner by copying the patent and the assignment of the patent in the books of the County Courts.

The whole acreage included in the patent entered on record was not always land in which no interest had been previously held by any person. The tract quite frequently was made up of an old plantation and a certain area of soil claimed upon the basis of new head rights. The patent now sued out covered this entire space as if it had never in any of its parts been in the possession of but one owner. In 1652, a grant was made to Jane, the widow of Edward Bland, which gave her a title to forty-three hundred acres, three thousand of which had been originally taken up by Thomas Hill, and the remainder by her husband; the two tracts, by order of court, were united into one under a common instrument. In every instance in which a grant was acquired that included in the extent of ground it covered land for which a series of patents had been previously secured, the latter had to be brought into the Secretary&#8217;s office and surrendered in order that the head rights represented might become the basis of the new deed. Occasionally, the documents delivered up in accordance with this regulation stood in the name of the same person, having been obtained by him in succession. In 1642, John Moone received a grant for twenty-two