A King's Grant
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Barbara Rumsey
Many times in my years of researching local history, people have told me that there is an existing "king's grant" for their Boothbay region land. The term "king's grant" conjures up a picture in some people's minds of a king sitting in a chair in his regalia signing, with a quill pen, a deed from him to a particular person. When I've asked to see the document, it can never be found. Somebody else has the document or it was burnt, or it disappeared, or it was appropriated by disaffected relatives, and so on. I often wondered about this phenomena. So many people are so sure that such a thing exists, yet it can never be produced, like a ghost.
Kings' grants that have a very remote connection to Boothbay land do exist. There were vague and often conflicting grants of American land by kings to groups and individuals such as Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the Council of Plymouth, and so on. Many grants were written in the first half of the 1600s and included such areas as all of North America between the 40th and 48th parallel. Those grants were of a different nature--they were development rights to proprietors for large tracts, some of which covered Boothbay. This is not the class of land grant in question here.
Lincoln County Deeds
Because people routinely destroy practically all personal records involving themselves and their ancestors, I have to look at probate, deeds, and court cases in public record repositories to discover aspects of Boothbay's history. Consequently I spend a lot of time at the county courthouse looking at deeds. I suppose I've looked at thousands of deeds in tracking local properties and people. I also started a personal project of methodically reading and taking notes on all early Boothbay deeds. Being busy with various things, I've only gotten to Lincoln County's book 19 which has taken me from 1760 to the mid-1780s. (I've looked for pre-1760 local deeds at York County and found only one.) Believe it or not, such squirrely work is my idea of a good time.
No land deed imparts legal ownership unless it is recorded at a county courthouse. In reading all the local deeds while we were subjects of the king of England and in my 14 years of studying local history, principally through deeds, I have never seen a king's grant to a Boothbay individual; they just don't exist. Not only do they not exist; I've had people tell me they have deeds that are downright impossible—a king's grant for land that was acquired after we won the Revolution and the king was kaput. Right there is a hint that a claim about a king's grant is probably wishful thinking, a way to aggrandize one's ancestors, which is a strong wish.
People normally want to take pride in themselves, their families, and their remote history; and some of us are not above a little embellishing. Along that line, I've had a great number of out-of-towners stop at the museum while tracing their roots; many were told that their forebears were wealthy landholders with huge estates here. I remember in particular one family, descendants of modest fishermen, who came in and said, "Our greatgrandfather lived in a mansion here, and we've driven all over and can't find the mansions anywhere." When I've explained to such families that Boothbay was a comparatively poor town, they usually get quiet as it dawns on them that (1) the accomplishments of their ancestors were exaggerated or (2) I don't know what I'm talking about.
Pre-Revolutionary Deeds and Court Cases
Back to king's grants. From 1760 to 1820 the British king was George III, so he's named in most local pre-Revolutionary deeds—at least until Lincoln County's deed writers and county clerks left off acknowledging him some time after 1776; the dates vary. But the naming of the king in the deed had nothing to do with his actually deeding or granting land. His name was only a dating mechanism.
For instance, in 1773 Thomas Reed deeded North Boothbay land to David Reed with the words, "in witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this twenty-fifth day of May, Anno Domini 1773, and in the Thirteenth year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Third, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, etc.," meaning 13 years after he ascended the throne in 1760. Similarly but more simply, in 1767 Andrew McFarland deeded John All (Auld) Damariscotta River land with the words, "in witness whereof I have set my hand and seal this thirteenth day of June, Annoque Domini 1767, and in the Seventh year of his Majesty's Reign." The king's name was just another device in the formal deed language having nothing to do with ownership and everything to do with the date.
Court cases were a little different. If a case involved the seizure and sale of land, it was recorded in the deed record, and the document started with the empowerment for a court session. When performing a legal act, the chain of authority is still sometimes invoked. So, we're all familiar with the words, "by the power vested in me by. . ." Many offices even have the chain of authority on the wall, showing how a clerk's authority is near the bottom of a chain starting way up with the president. It's how people are sworn in—by someone a step up in authority.
In pre-Revolutionary Lincoln County, a court session opened with an acknowledgment of the ultimate authority, "George the Third, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, Etc. To the Sheriff of our County of Lincoln. . ." Now King George did not actually sit on his faraway throne and pen a note convening the Lincoln County or any county court. The opening was a formality to remind the participants that they were lawfully convened, and if they wanted to know on whose authority they were compelled to attend, they could, in the end, blame the king.
A Specific Example
An example of king's grant misinformation is a 1958 clipping on the sale of a house near the Knickerbocker Bridge. When I was little and my folks rented part of the Knickerbocker from Emily Gove, Ruth and Tom Potter owned that house across the way. The headline described the Potter property as "Originally Kings Land Grant" to the Reeds dating to 1740. However, there is only one recorded local deed from the 1740s; in 1746 Samuel Barter of Barters Island deeded Sawyers Island to Joseph Patten, and that deed was recorded in the early 1760s. Nor did the Reeds own the Knickerbocker area land until Ebenezer Dean (a Barter son-in-law) deeded it to them in 1779. In the earliest recorded county deed it had been owned by Joseph Patten in the 1760s. Some time ago, it suited somebody to drape that land ownership in the dark recesses of the past and royalty.
You can say anything and perhaps be believed as long as nobody checks up on you. It's odd—to me the truth is much more interesting than a fictitious connection with a king. No Boothbay settler ever got a king's grant, and my best guess is the idea arose from the use of the king's name as a deed dating mechanism. If there was anything resembling a king near the Knickerbocker, I'd have to say it was Samuel Barter with all that land he owned on and in the Sheepscot River!
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