Return to the Land

which to purchase land and set up a household. It is also possible that his wife Ann brought a dowry to the union upon which they built their future. By 1823 they had acquired land on Walkers Creek then located in Giles County. This area was to become Bland County in 1861.

Original Land Grant of Charles Miller

The following is the text of a Treasury Warrant recorded in Giles County for the year of 1823:

The Treasury Warrant – On the payment of five shillings for every fifty acres of land, the receiver-general of the revenues of the Colony was directed to deliver to any person desiring to take up vacant lands a certificate, upon which the surveyor might lay off for the claimant the quantity expressing such treasury warrant, returning the survey to the secretary’s office that a patent might issue. Each claimant was limited to five hundred acres, unless he owned five or more tithable servants or slaves, in which case he might take up two acres more for every such tithable: and after that grants for more than four thousand acres in any one tract were prohibited, except in entries before made for larger quantities. Swamps, marshes and low grounds adjacent to patented high lands could not be taken up till one year after notice, in the presence of two witnesses, to the patentee of the highlands. 27 Such land grants continued long after 1776 when independence was declared from England. Charles was a recipient of such a treasury warrant. His farm was located near what is now Crandon, Virginia on Route 42. In addition to his ministry he made a living by farming. These early farms were self-contained units. Life was sustained from what they grew and by excesses that were sold or traded for other goods. Their garden supplied much of their vegetable requirements. Swine, cattle, sheep, poultry, and wild game supplied their protein. The farm located on Walkers Creek also provided fishing and leisure activities such as swimming for the youngsters. By now, in the early nineteenth-century, much of the Indian hostility had been subdued and so Charles and Anna reared their family in a peaceful pastoral setting.

27 Kegley’s Virginia Frontier , p. 54.

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