Julie's Mecklenburg, Virginia Discoveries

I’ve studied John B. Kidd’s land records for over 100 hours now. Frustratingly, so far, I remain unable to identify from who John B. Kidd bought the piece of land where the Carroll Cemetery is located. In the small map above, I used the GPS coordinates I took when visiting the cemetery to mark it’s location on the map . It is located south of Nellie Jones Rd near Great Creek, and was part of Arimenta Kidd’s estate. Arimenta was the daughter of John B. Kidd. She first married Granderson Glover (one of my great…grandfathers), then secondly married Robert Carroll. This post is about some things I’ve learned regarding the rest of John B. Kidd’s land. The upper plat, where John B. Kidd lived, was easy to see and draw on my map. The lower plat was much more difficult to draw and correctly place on my map. Some of the property boundary lines on the lower plat do not seem to line up correctly with the written description of the boundary lines given in the plat description. This plat also borders Great Creek where the water changed drastically when the dam was built. I used calculators and measuring tools on “Google My Maps”, to recheck the boundary lines of each property division line. I have made huge adjustments and updates on my map this week, to where the lower Kidd plat used to exist. I rechecked 25 measurements of rods and poles, corrected a few lines, and can say this piece is plotted in exactly the right place now.

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I got the plats above from a chancery case. The land shown in both plats total 1,337 & 1/4 acres. I have searched for John B. Kidd in Mecklenburg deed indexes in both the grantor and grantee indexes. He is listed in seven land transactions. John bought 5 pieces of land, sold one piece of land (50 acres to Elizabeth Wall) which I can’t yet account for him having purchased. and gifted some land to his brother in law, Roderick Temple. It actually says “My brother-in-law Roderick Temple” in the deeds. Roderick married John B. Kidd’s sister Elizabeth Kidd.

The outline below is a summary of all of John B. Kidd’s land transactions including acreage totals. When I first added the acreage, I noticed the numbers did not add up. The estate’s total acreage purchased was 1,266 & 1/2 acres, subtracted by the 248 & 1/2 acres he sold and gifted. That leaves 1018 acres in deed records, which was about 319 & 1/4 acres less than the estate plats showed. I wondered, where did the other 369 acres came from? I began looking for people John could have inherited that acreage from. I couldn’t find any record that showed John B. Kidd had inherited any land. I noticed that sometimes when land was auctioned, or sold by a commissioner for the court, that the index didn’t necessarily mention the previous owner. The deed might be indexed by the Sheriff’s name, or the Commissioner’s name. I already had a plat for Nellie Jones and Presley Hinton, so I knew that some of the land from their old estate ended up being part of John B. Kidd’s estate. I have not yet found the land records showing the purchase of these two lots from Presley Hinton’s and/or Nellie Jones’s administrators.

Note on above chart: John Griffin also shows up as John Griffice in land records. I believe Willis & Robert Kennon were Willis and Robert Cannon.

I like to think of these deeds as puzzle pieces. I draw test puzzle pieces on my map. I look at one piece at a time, looking to see if names or other boundary items match up with other known boundaries, turning it around, trying different angles. In addition to not being able to account for all the acreage, I also wondered, how could almost every deed pertaining to John B. Kidd’s properties have Great Creek as a boundary? At first I thought all of the deeds mentioning Great Creek as a property boundary were south of Nellie Jones Rd. I knew from Julius Lambert’s plat, that the Lamberts were living on the west side of Great Creek, south of Nellie Jones Rd, at the same time that these properties were being purchased.

I colored in the water of Great Creek on a screen shot I made of the map. The upper left branch is called Hagood Creek today, but Presley Hinton’s plat which was drawn in 1828 labels that part of the waterway as a branch of Great Creek. Originally, I thought that the tail part of this “Y” shaped plat, all sat above and east of Great Creek, so that is how I previously drew it. However, I could see the plat didn’t quite fit right, so, I reviewed the lower plat again. I read in the plat description “situated on both sides of Great Creek.” I wondered if that meant it was describing more than just the Nellie Jones older dower property, but rather the whole plat? I focused on the area south of where Julius Lamberts’ estate ended. Prior to John B. Kidd purchasing the land, I only have a plat of old Nellie Jones lot. I am not sure of exact boundaries for Palmer, Griffin and Jones properties, which were the internal lines of the Kidd plat. These boundaries are calculated and estimated based on some boundaries visible on the satellite view of the map, the county GIS map, and property divisions made to Arimenta’s land that were made in 1890. I studied all the neighboring properties over a 50 year time period to see where each piece was, and check the puzzle piece boundaries still fit during each time period. John Griffin’s property should be this backwards “L” shape in order to touch all the boundaries of the properties referenced in the deeds over a 50 year time span. The aqua colored labels show the land that John B. Kidd had at the time of his death, which I can’t find in any deeds or wills. The parcels with white lettering are for those that I have found the deeds, showing the correct acreage amounts with the boundary shapes as close as I can get without an actual plat.

Deeds usually say “more or less” after the acreage amount given. I realized that Presley Hinton’s land and Nellie Jones’s dower piece together were 242. 75 acres of the total acreage that I couldn’t account for. Maybe the remaining 11 acres in the northern area fits that “more or less” part. The remaining 65.5 acres in the lower plat that is unaccounted for should be part of Arimenta’s land, but my map only shows 59.3 acres unaccounted for. The acreage sizes of each of the property divisions between John B. Kidd’s children match the acreage of the plat, but the parts of land not previously owned by Griffin or Palmer total only 59.3 acres. Most of this land eventually became Oliver HP Glover’s inheritance. He purchased about 20 acres of his mother Arimenta’s estate, to help Arimenta pay for her debts to her mother, (his grandmother) Elizabeth Rainey Kidd. Arimenta’s land was divided after her death in 1890, giving each of Arimenta Kidd’s children about 19 acres each. Oliver Glover got the adjoining 19 acres, giving him a total of 49 acres. The other approximate 10 acres was the southernmost area which went to Oliver’s half brothers’ (surname Carroll) inheritance. I’m currently investigating if there was another purchase from an old estate in probate, because the index could show different names involved in the purchase and/or sale. I wonder if the unknown eastern portion of Arimenta’s land and the the 50 acres sold to Elizabeth Wall could be from something like that . Or, could this 60 acres be part of ‘more or less’? That seems like a lot though, so I’m not convinced. Robert Joyce’s land was the adjoining property to this unknown approximate 60 acres. This image below is part of Robert Joyce’s deed, which says, “containing by estimation between seven & eight hundred acres (be the same, more or less).” I’m having trouble understanding how there could be as much as 100 acres they were unsure about? That complicated things a little too much for me!