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Map of Military Lots assigned to soldiers, Garrett County, Maryland. 1787
In 1777 the Maryland General Assembly in Annapolis passed An act for recruiting
the quota of troops of this state in the American army, and furnishing them
with cloathing and other necessaries. “Every effective recruit is to
receive, besides the continental allowances, a bounty of forty dollars, a pair
of shoes, a pair of stockings, and at the expiration of his term, provided he
shall not desert from the army, 50 acres of land, to be procured and laid off
as aforesaid, to him or his representative” (Laws of Maryland 1763-1784,
page 182). Officers were to receive four lots of 50 acres each. Land was also
to be granted to those who recruited soldiers to fight in the Revolutionary
War.
The Assembly agreed that “all the lands in Washington county, westward of Fort
Cumberland, except as in the said act is excepted, were appropriated to
discharge the engagement of lands heretofore made to the officers and soldiers
of this state.” The land to be allotted was that “beginning at the mouth of
Savage river, and running with the north branch of Patowmack river to the head
thereof, then north with the present supposed boundary line of Maryland until
the intersection of an east line to be drawn from the said boundary line, with
a north course from the mouth of Savage river” (Laws of Maryland 1785-1791,
page 350). This land is now in Allegany and Garrett counties.
Colonel Francis Deakins was appointed to “lay out the manors, and such parts of
the reserves and vacant lands belonging to this state, lying to the westward of
Fort Cumberland, as he might think fit and capable of being settled and
improved, in lots of fifty acres each” (Laws of Maryland 1785-1791, page
351). He, with the help of 10 surveyors, returned a general plot of the state
of Maryland west of Fort Cumberland (now Cumberland in Allegany County), on
which 4165 lots of fifty acres each are laid out. Deakins also found 323
families already living on 636 of these lots, and the Assembly agreed that
settlers could purchase the land. Some did. For example, Joseph Warnick and his
wife, Sarah, occupied lots 3836 and 3837 on Big Savage Mountain, and in 1787,
George Fazenbaker was listed as a settler on Military Lot 3869 near Barton
(Walt Warnick).
The Maryland auditor-general reported that there were 2475 soldiers entitled
under the several acts of the legislature to the bounty of these lands. The
Assembly in 1788 decreed that 2575 of the allocations should be distributed by
lot among the soldiers and recruiting officers. This meant that, although
Francis Deakins surveyed over four thousand parcels of land, only 2575 of them
were assigned as payment for services rendered during the Revolutionary War. Of
those assigned all were in what is now Garrett County, even though Deakins’
original survey included areas in western Allegany County. Only Garrett County
is shown on this website, since the lots in Allegany were not used for
military land grants.
The oldest known map based on Deakins’ survey was the Map of military lots,
tracts, patents, etc. in western Allegany and Garrett Counties, Maryland
copied from the original by Hezekiah Veatch in 1787. This map is available at
the Library of
Congress and there is a copy at the Ruth Enlow Library Oakland, Garrett
County.
The map used on this website is a more modern one. In 1874 the Maryland General
Assembly authorized a revision of Deakins' map to remedy omissions and provide
additional information. The resulting product, directed by the Land Office and
signed by W.A.H., numbered all military lots and showed topography. It also
indicated land that had, since 1787, reverted to the state when no legal heirs
or claimants existed. The 1874 map was redrawn and reformatted in 1898 and
1935. The Western Maryland Room of the Washington County Free Library owns a
copy of this map.
The list of names of those to whom land was assigned is taken from J. Thomas
Scharf’s History of Western Maryland, 1882. Scharf, in addition to being
a historian of note, was the Commissioner of the Land Office and so had access
to the records, as the general plot and books of certificates were lodged in
the Land Office.
There is no one-to-one match of names and lots. On a number of occasions, the
1874 map includes the same lot number in two areas of the map. That map seems
to confuse 0s and 6s, at least as compared to the Veatch version. Scharf’s list
of names occasionally assigns the same lot to more than one person. He also
lists a number of people who have no assignment. Given the difficulty in
transcribing the original handwriting and the number of versions of both
documents over time, discrepancies are to be expected.
The information on the officers and soldiers is from Scharf. The abbreviations
in rank are B, Bugler; D, Drummer; G, Gunner. M is the abbreviation for
Matross, a soldier who assists artillery gunners in loading, firing, sponging
and moving the guns. A number of the soldiers had been assigned to the German
regiment, named possibly because Ludowick Weltner was in charge of one of the
regiments.
References
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