Bounty Land Warrants

United States Military Records

United States Land and Property

The federal government provided bounty land for those who served in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and Indian wars between 1790 and 1855. It was first offered as an incentive to serve in the military and later as a reward for service.

Bounty land could have been claimed by veterans or their heirs. The federal government reserved tracts of land in the public domain for this purpose. The states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia also set aside tracts of bounty land for their Revolutionary War veterans.

A veteran requested bounty land by filing an application at a local courthouse. The application papers and other supporting documents were placed in bounty land files kept by a federal or state agency. These documents contain information similar to the pension files and include the veteran’s age and place of residence at the time of the application. If the application was approved, the individual was given either a warrant to receive land or scrip which could be exchanged for a warrant. Later laws allowed for the sale or exchange of warrants. Only a few soldiers actually received title to the bounty land or settled on it; most veterans sold or exchanged their warrants.

Bounty land applications and warrants for the Revolutionary War and some warrants for the War of 1812 have been microfilmed and are available at the Family History Library. Bounty land files, including those not microfilmed, are available at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in Record Group 15, Records of the Veterans Administration.

Record Group 15 is also available at Heritage Quest Online ($) and Footnote ($). Some local libraries provide access to Heritage Quest Online. The Heritage Quest Record Group 15 images only contain selected pages from each file, up to 10 pages. The Footnote images are complete files.

For more information about bounty land records, the following sources will be helpful:


 * Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives. Revised edition. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Record Administration, 1985. (FHL 973 A3usn 1985.) See chapter 8.
 * Hone, E. Wade. Land and Property Research in the United States. Salt Lake City, Utah: Ancestry, 1997. (FHL book 973 R27h.) See chapter 9, pages 115–26.
 * Oberly, James W. Sixty Million Acres: American Veterans and the Public Lands Before the Civil War. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990. This book explains how military bounty land warrants were usually sold for cash and the resulting effect on public land policy in the United States.