North Carolina Land Records From Ancestry.com Wiki This entry
was originally written by Johni Cerny and Gareth L. Mark for Red
Book: American State, County, and Town Sources. North Carolina
is a State-Land State. The availability of land in North
Carolina drew thousands of settlers from Virginia, Pennsylvania,
and Maryland during the mid-to-late 1700s. Until Colonel William
Byrd of Westover surveyed the northern border of North Carolina,
Virginia sometimes granted to its citizens land that belonged to
North Carolina. Those grants may be found in Nell Marion Nugent,
Cavaliers and Pioneers, Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and
Grants, 4 vols. (1934; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical
Publishing co., 1991). The process of patenting land in North
Carolina was not complex. Anyone wanting to patent land
submitted an application (also called a land entry) to a land
office. The land officer then issued a warrant. Land officers
included the secretary of state (1669–1776), the agents of Earl
Granville (1748–76), or the