He Got Bounty Land WHERE???

He got bounty land WHERE??

One thing that throws a lot of people off is when they see their War of 1812 ancestor getting bounty land in a part of the country that they know he never lived in. While this can be confusing to see at first, there is an explanation.

One important thing to keep in mind is that most bounty land didn’t become available until the 1850s. These former soldiers (or their widows) would have been, at the youngest, in their late 50s when this land became available. Many of them were much older than that by that point. At that stage in their life, most of them didn’t want to pack up and start over again in a new area of the country.

What happened in a large majority of the cases was that the soldier or widow would apply for the bounty land sometime in the 1850s. If they were approved, they would get the warrant for the land. They could then sell that warrant to someone else, pocket the money, and the other person could then go claim the land. Most War of 1812 soldiers never even stepped foot on their bounty land– they sold their claim to the land right away.

In this case, Elizabeth Bounds of Tennessee, widow of John Bounds, received this warrant for 120 acres of bounty land in 1856. The back of the warrant, though, shows that she assigned (sold) the warrant to Harris and John Estes. The bounty land ended up being claimed in Missouri, even though Elizabeth never went there herself. She sold the rights to the claim and made some money on the deal.

All of the War of 1812 and Civil War records are at the National Archives. Now that they’re reopened, I’ll be making regular appointments there. Let me know if I can help you get your ancestors’ records in your hands!

www.CivilWarRecords.com