Earliest Tennessee Land Records & Earliest Tennessee Land History

Once in a generation someone compiles a genealogy reference work that instantly becomes a standard in its field because it aggregates a vital collection of records in one place explains how those records originally came to be and in the process promises to save its users hours of toil. Earliest Tennessee Land Records and Earliest Tennessee Land History by Irene Griffey is such a book. In the first portion of this book Mrs. Griffey explains why the various county land offices were established the six-step process for obtaining a land grant the differences between military and other types of land grants and of course how to use early Tennessee land records. The bulk of this remarkable volume however consists of abstracts of some 16000 of the earliest Tennessee land records in existence arranged in a tabular format. For each record we are given the name of the claimant the file number the name of the assignee (if any) the county number of acres grant number date entry number entry date land book and page number and a description of the stream nearest to the grant.