Why Kentucky Land Titles are a Problem

Remarks on the Settlement of Kentucky by Benjamin F. Stevenson, Burlington, Kentucky, 1886:

What is now known on the map as the State of Kentucky was, during our Revolutionary struggle, an appanage of the then colony of Virginia; and in the year 1777 it was organized by the House of Burgess as a county under the name of Kentucky, and it was allowed two representatives in the House of Burgess. In 1781 three counties were organized out of the one—Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln — with two representatives assigned to each county, the territory still retaining its designation as Kentucky, but losing its organization as a county. At the close of the Revolutionary War, Virginia was encumbered with a heavy debt, contracted mainly in the common defense of the Nation.

The vast body of land north of the Ohio River — an empire in extent—claimed by Virginia to be within her chartered limits, she with singular magnanimity surrendered to the National Government — in trust — as a fund out of which the general indebtedness, contracted during the war, should be paid. Out of this grant five States have grown up, viz.: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The lands of Kentucky were reserved by Virginia to aid in the liquidation of the debt to her own citizens.

In pursuance of this policy the Land Office of the State was opened at Richmond, where patents were granted to all who were able and willing to pay a nominal price per acre, and then undergo the fatigue and additional expense of a survey of the tract. A certificate of survey was required at the land office at Richmond to perfect the title. The State made no surveys, nor was it responsible for the accuracy of any made. It established no meridian line and no point of departure for surveys. If the wit of man had been taxed to devise a scheme to delude and defraud the unwary, none more fertile could have been adopted.

Fabulous stories of the fertility and beauty of the new territory open for settlement spread over all the land, and a steady stream of emigrants poured in, much the larger portion of it from Virginia, each head of a family carrying with him a land patent, with authority to locate and survey any vacant or unoccupied land he might fancy.

The inevitable result of this loose method of business was reaped in after years in numerous land suits, when it was found that all the more valuable portions of the State was shingled with conflicting patents and interlapping lines of survey three or four times over.

The courts first held that the oldest patent carried the land, but afterward, under the Occupying Claimant Laws of the State, the same courts decided that a junior patent with twenty years of occupancy held to the extent of its survey and claim.

Benjamin F. Stevenson, “Kentucky Neutrality in 1861” (Paper read 2 June 1886) Cincinnati: H. C. Sherick & Co., 1886, p. 3-4.