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Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
Pennsylvania State Archives
Below are links to the indexes and interfaces for the scanned pages of the New Purchase Register, which is a typed register of applications for Pennsylvania land in the area known as the "New Purchase." Information in the register includes the date of application, application number, name of applicant, acreage, description of location, names of adjoining land owners, the county and township of location, as well as the volume, book, and page where recorded.
The New Purchase tracts lie inside the present-day counties of Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Washington, Greene, Fayette, Westmoreland, Indiana, Cambria, Somerset, Clearfield, Centre, Union, Lycoming, Northumberland, Montour, Columbia, Luzerne, Sullivan, Bradford, Wyoming, Susquehanna, Lackawanna, and Wayne Counties. For a depiction of the actual boundaries of the New Purchase see the Genealogical Map of the Counties that appears in Donna Bingham Munger's book Pennsylvania Land Records, A History and Guide for Research (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1991).
A separate section of this register contain entries identifying officers who
served in the 1st and 2nd battalions under Colonel Bouquet during Pontiac's
Rebellion in 1764. They were rewarded for their service by a grant of 24,000
acres located along the waters of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River and
then divided amongst themselves. These grants were authorized on February 3,
1769, and laid out in three locations. The Susquehanna River Tract lies entirely
in present day Northumberland County and extends along the east shore of the
West Branch of the river from the northern portion of Point Township through
most of the length of Delaware Township. The Buffalo Valley Tract lies entirely
within Union County. The Bald Eagle Tract lies along the Bald Eagle Creek in
portions of present-day Centre and Clinton Counties. Connected drafts of these
three "Officer's Tracts" are depicted in Kenneth D. McCrea, Pennsylvania
Land Applications, Volume 2: New Purchase Applications, 1769-1773 (Philadelphia,
Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 2003), pp. xxiv-xxvii.
The New Purchase Register has three sections, links to which appear below:
a NAME INDEX of New Purchase Register
listings
a NUMERIC LISTING of New Purchase
Register applications
a
NAME INDEX AND NUMERIC LISTING FOR OFFICER'S TRACTS granted in
the New Purchase
Full information for each application is given only in the numeric listing
of applications. If the application number is not known, consult the name
index first. The name index is arranged alphabetically by the surname of the
applicant. More specifically, entries are grouped by the first letter of a person's
surname within county and township, and thereunder arranged by application number.
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