Land Entries and Surveys of Davidson County, Tennessee, 1824-1852

By Albert Bruce Pruitt, published 2007, reprinted 2026, 372 pages, index, soft cover, ISBN #978-1-63914-754-0. Davidson County was created in 1783 from Washington County and later became the parent county to: Sumner County in 1787 and Tennessee County in 1788. This book contains abstracts from the 2 following books: Davidson County Entry Book 1824-1836 and plats & surveys Davidson County 1824-1852. The first book contains 1,053 land entries. The best contemporary documentary evidence for an accurate location of these settlers when the county was created is the original Land Entry Book. It has better details than that to be found in the subsequent land grants. It was customary for the settler to describe the location of his plantation on some stream or head waters of some stream, or on some mountain. Each entry is dated. There were numerous transfers of entries before the issuance of a grant. Some are referred to in the entry, but generally the entry taker would mark through the name of the original entree and insert the name of the one to whom it was transferred. Not only was the first named entered, frequently marked out, but many times erased and the next name written in its place. Many of the entries had as many as four names marked out and written in with no way of knowing whose name was the last one written. North Carolina started recoding land transactions through the Land Entry System around March 1778. These1,053 abstracts of the Entry Book will be of help to many whose ancestors who either passed through or remained in Bladen County. The second book contains 915 surveys most of which are based on entries between 1824 and 1852. This book contains a plat and metes & bounds for each survey. The names of the surveyor and chain carriers appear at the end of all but a few surveys. The general shape of the plat is mentioned when the shape was a rectangle, triangle, or square, or nearly one of those shapes.