Thomas Garner's War of 1812 Bounty Land

     

     Today is one of those days I'm feeling a little discouraged.  It's been quite a while since I've found anything new on my ancestors, or even any new ancestors, so I decided to spend today rechecking my old ancestors I haven't looked at lately.  One fellow I'd like to know more about is Thomas Garner Jr., my fourth-great-grandfather.  Thomas was born at Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard in 1773 to Thomas Garner Sr. and his wife Ann Williams.  The elder Thomas was a soldier of the revolution and Thomas Jr. too battled the British, he in the War of 1812.

     I'd previously read Thomas Jr's pension application and found mention of bounty land but never any details about that land.  Today I did a Google search for-- "Thomas Garner" 1812 Vermont-- I used Vermont because that's where Thomas wound up directly after the war.  A hit at Google Books brought up the book, "War of 1812 Bounty Lands in Illinois", and there on page 183 was Thomas and a description of his land along with a date of April 7, 1818.   The description also gave the number of Thomas' warrant so my next step was to try and find an image of it. By the way, the preface of the book is a good source of information on early land warrants and the rules governing them.  It's worth looking at.

     I found a site with printed material taken from microfilm in the National Archives, but it was cumbersome to use and the volumes were poorly labeled.  Growing frustrated I performed another Google search, this time for-- War of 1812 bounty land numbers-- and got lucky!  At a site called Ancestry Paths  I found an index of warrants arranged by number with links to digital copies of the volumes containing the warrants.  These are handwritten records so not searchable, but they do go in numerical order so they're easy to use providing you have the warrant number.  Reading the warrant I soon realized why I'd had such a hard time using the site I gave up on.  Both the book mentioned above and records on Ancestry, (no image),  give a date of April 7, 1818 for Thomas' land warrant.  The actual warrant uses the date January 25, 1817.  I'm sure they all refer to the same individual as they all say Thomas was a member of the 31st Regiment of Infantry under Capt. Ethan Burnap.  I have no explanation for the discrepancy in the dates.

     Regardless, even though the warrant expressly forbids assigning or transferring the warrant in any manner, it appears that is what Thomas did.  I've found nothing to suggest he ever went to Illinois and in fact the book's preface mentions that by 1825 most of the veterans had sold their claims.  Illinois, which was still a territory at the time, must have seemed a long way off in 1817, distant and uncivilized.  It no doubt made good sense to men with families especially, to take what they could get for their bounty land in the western wilderness and stay on in their present homes.  In Thomas' case his health may have been a factor in remaining in the east; the war had destroyed it and he never fully recovered though he would live a further forty three years dying in Summerhill, New York in 1857 at the age of seventy four.