“By a Line of Marked Trees”

Description

Currituck County, North Carolina, was one of the original precincts established in Albemarle County in 1670. The original Currituck County includes present-day Currituck and Dare counties and parts of Hyde and Tyrell counties. Nearly all of the early records of Currituck County itself have been lost. Although Currituck County’s wills were abstracted in the 1960s, the task of abstracting the county’s colonial deed books went wanting until 1999. In that year, John Brayton transcribed for publication the contents of Currituck County Deed Books 1,2, and parts of 3. He has now completed the task of transcribing the remainder of Deed Book 3 and all of Deed Book 4 (which is now available as Volume Two).

Volume Two, chronologically, is something of a miscellany. The remaining portion of Deed Book
3 covers the period 1801 to 1804. Deed Book 4, uncharacteristically, takes up the earlier period from December 1781 to November 1784. Deed Book 4 also contains numerous records from the 1730s and 1740s, and many land patents from the late 1600s and early 1700s. Much of Deed Book 4, moreover, is the record of land patents issued by Governor Alexander Martin to inhabitants of Currituck County. Anyone who purchased the earlier volume must acquire this one too in order to possess a complete collection of the earliest extant land records for Currituck County.

As with Volume One, the deeds are replete with information concerning former owners, relationships between grantee and grantor, and various family connections.