Hardin County Clerk

This record series is used to document land records from the settlement of Kentucky began in 1763 and became often used from 1779, thirteen years prior to statehood until the outbreak of the Civil War when further land speculation was no longer encouraged. In 1763 King George III made a proclamation for French and Indian War soldiers to be paid in land warrants instead of cash. Virginia, the mother colony, was too involved to effectively regulate the distribution of western lands and in 1779 a Land Law was passed which established a land office and commission to settle claims and provide for claims of existing settlers and treasury warrants were sold. Different Land Grants were called: Virginia Treasury (IN) Warrants (1780-1789), South of Green River Grants (1795-1866), U. S. Military District (OH) Grants (1796), Tellico Grants from the Cherokee Indians (1805-1853), War of 1812 Bounty Land Warrants (MO, AR, MI and IL) (1816-1873), West of Tennessee River Military Claims and West of Tennessee River Land Grants (1818-1858), Grants South of Walker's Line (1825-1923), County Court Order Grants for vacant Lands (1835), Federal Bounty Land Grants (Act of 1850), and the Homestead Act for Civil War Veterans to obtain land out west (1862). These records guaranteed legal rights to real property. This record series may contain (may be bound or loose) the actual entries, surveys, and applications for Land Grants, Warrants, Bounties, Claims, and Patents and combinations of these. Information which may be fo und includes: name of grantee, date of instrument, type of services rendered, number of acres in grant , signature of person filing the entry, signature of person bes towing the grant, and the clerk's attestation.