Old legal and record term 1770s-1850s
What does bounty land mean in old land records?
Bounty land was public land the United States and some colonies granted to veterans as a reward for military service. Bounty land warrant applications rival pensions for family detail: service proofs, marriages, widows, and moves are all sworn inside them. You will meet it in land grants and court records, mostly 1770s-1850s.
Where it appears: land grants, court records.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
Where will I see bounty land in the records?+
Mostly in land grants and court records, 1770s-1850s. Clerks abbreviated freely and spelling wandered, so expect variant wordings around it.
Do these old terms still matter for family history?+
Yes, a single word can settle a relationship. Relict names a widow, et ux hides an unnamed wife, natural son points at a parent. The words are dry, but what they encode about a family is not.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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