Loyal Land Company

The members of the Loyal Land Company were given 800,000 acres of land in Southwestern Virginia in 1749, reflecting the influence of the Virginia gentry in converting the land resources of the colony into private gain. Just two years earlier, another group organized as the Ohio Company had obtained rights to as much as 500,000 acres. There was clearly no way for the Loyal Land Company to survey and sell so much land in just four years, as required by the grant:

Leave is given them to take up and survey Eight Hundred Thousand Acres of Land in one or more Surveys, beginning on the Bounds between this Colony and North Carolina, and running to the Westward and to the North so as to include the said Quantity, and they are allowed four Years Time to survey and pay Rights for the same, upon Return of the Plans to the Secretary's Office.

Thomas Walker, one of the members of the company, took the lead in exploring the territory targeted by the company - Kentucky. (The Ohio Company sent Christopher Gist to explore land in the northwestern part of the colony, near the start of the Ohio River.) In the process, Walker discovered an easy path through the Appalachian Mountains into the rich soil of Kentucky.

Links

• The Royal Proclamation of 1763: Its Effect upon Virginia Land Companies by Eugene M. Del Papa, published in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Oct., 1975), pp. 406-411