Land Entries of Orange County, North Carolina, 1778-1795

By Albert Bruce Pruitt, published 1990, reprinted 2026, 228 pages, index, soft cover, ISBN #978-0-94499-230-2. Orange County was formed in 1752 from Bladen Granville, and Johnston Counties. 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. These 1,807 abstracts of entries to this old Entry Book will be of help to many whose ancestors either passed through or remained in Orange County.