The information contained in this exhaustive compilation was compiled by Edgar Sims, the State Auditor of West Virginia, from copies of land grants filed in his office. More than 50,000 entries are included, each containing the name of the grantee, amount of acreage, location and date of grant, and the grant book and page numbers. Sims meticulously examined each record to ensure that the spellings of the names of grantees, location, and descriptions of tracts were accurate, and that any variations of spellings of grantees' names were also indexed or noted. Records are listed for Barbour, Berkeley, Boone, Braxton, Brooke, Cabell, Calhoun, Clay, Doddridge, Fayette, Gilmer, Grant, Greenbrier, Hampshire, Hancock, Hardy, Harrison, Jackson, Jefferson, Kanawha, Lewis, Logan, Marion, Marshall, Mason, McDowell, Mercer, Monongalia, Monroe, Morgan, Nicholas, Ohio, Pendleton, Pleasants, Pocahontas, Preston, Putnam, Raleigh, Randolph, Ritchie, Roane, Taylor, Tucker, Tyler, Uphur, Wayne, Webster, Wetzel, Wirt, Wood, and Wyoming counties, West Virginia, as well as for the portions of Augusta, Bath, Botetourt, Frederick, Montgomery, Russell, Tazewell, and Wythe counties, Virginia, that were used in the formation of West Virginia. In a great many cases the land grants indexed here pre-date the earliest extant census records or supplement existing census records, and are thus indispensable for finding individuals who lived in the area that later became West Virginia.