# DARE · NATION FAMILY ARCHIVE — John Nation: Quaker Creek Granville grant, 1757–1759

**Archive:** Dare - Nation Family Archive  
**Separation:** This research belongs only to Dare - Nation Family Archive. Do not merge with Family Tide.  
**Research date:** 2026-09-22

## Why this matters

A precise secondary transcription of the Granville District land material places John Nation on **Quaker Creek** at the Rowan/Orange county boundary, names **Christopher Nation** as a survey chain carrier, and now extends the tract forward into a reported **16 March 1759 conveyance by Capt. John Nation and wife Bethia to Robert Fields**. This creates a compact survey → grant → conveyance chain that can be tested against the original records.

## Claim ledger

### STRONG SECONDARY — survey and grant details
A compiled transcription of Orange County Granville grants reports:

- **Grantee:** John Nation
- **Grant date:** 23 May 1758
- **Acreage:** 403 acres
- **Watercourse:** Quaker Creek
- **Boundary context:** adjoining the Rowan County line / Orange County line
- **Survey date:** 19 August 1757
- **Surveyor:** William Churton
- **Survey chain carriers:** Christopher Nation and Robert Field
- **Reference:** Gv229 / SSLG 97-A-1 / Patent Book 12:11

Source: *Wandering through the NC Piedmont*, Orange County Granville grants index, entry Gv229.  
https://piedmontwanderings.blogspot.com/2022/02/land-grants-from-earl-granville-filed_14.html

**Status rationale:** useful detailed transcription, but the archive has not yet inspected the original Granville survey/grant image or Hofmann’s published abstract. Do not promote to DOCUMENTED/CONFIRMED until primary or authoritative derivative evidence is recovered.

### STRONG SECONDARY — 1759 conveyance closes the local chain
The same compiled index reports **Rowan Deed Book 4:80**, Capt. John Nation and wife **Bethia** to **Robert Fields**, dated **16 March 1759**, for **403 acres on Quaker Creek**. The matching acreage and watercourse make this a particularly useful continuity clue from the 1757 survey and 1758 grant into a later deed.

**Status:** STRONG SECONDARY pending direct inspection of Rowan Deed Book 4:80. The wife-name evidence is valuable but must not be upgraded beyond the source actually inspected.

### STRONG SECONDARY — corroborating grant abstract
A Bullard family narrative independently reports the 23 May 1758 Granville-to-John-Nation transaction and cites Margaret M. Hofmann’s *The Granville District of North Carolina (1748–1763), Abstracts of Land Grants*, pp. 78 and 93. It separately reports the 31 August 1757 Pole Cat Creek survey context with Christopher Nation and William Robins as chain carriers.  
https://www.bullardgenealogy.com/resources/JosephBullardNarrativeVer7%20PDF.pdf

### DOCUMENTED / CONFIRMED — 1758 neighborhood tax-list occurrence
A published Randolph County bicentennial history hosted by DigitalNC reproduces a fragment of the **8 October 1758 Rowan County tax list** for residents in the northwest quarter of present Randolph County. It includes **John Nation — 9**, with Marmaduke Vicry and William Robins nearby. This confirms the occurrence of the name in the published historical tax-list reproduction; it does **not** establish what the numeral 9 represents without the list’s assessment methodology.

### LEAD / CLUE — Christopher Nation relationship inference
Christopher Nation’s service as chain carrier on John Nation’s survey is evidence of association if the transcription is accurate. It is **not by itself proof of father/son relationship**. The proposed father/son identification must continue to rest on separate records.

### CONFLICTED — Polecat/Muddy Creek versus Quaker Creek descriptions
Secondary summaries describe John Nation’s North Carolina land variously as near **Muddy Creek and Polecat Creek**, on **Polecat Creek**, or on **Quaker Creek**. These may describe separate tracts rather than a contradiction. Keep the watercourse descriptions claim-specific until the original warrants, surveys, grants and deeds are reconciled.

## Visual-first production update

The public homepage now has a dedicated image-led door into this land story. Its visual is John Collet’s **1770 “A compleat map of North-Carolina from an actual survey”** from the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. It is labelled as a **1770 HISTORICAL MAP · LIBRARY OF CONGRESS**, not as the Nation survey itself and not as evidence for a family claim.

Library of Congress map: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3900.ar150000/

The eventual immersive story page should replace or supplement that contextual map with the actual Gv229/SSLG 97-A-1 survey image when recovered, then show a modern map with obvious Quaker Creek / Rowan–Orange boundary markers.

## Presentation / map opportunity

Build the Nation migration story around record-specific geography rather than a generic colonial route:

1. Burlington County, New Jersey — 1711 servant-boy occurrence (identity continuity still unproved)
2. Frederick County / Opequon, Virginia — 1740s Nation activity
3. Quaker Creek at the Rowan–Orange boundary — 1757 survey / 1758 Granville grant / 1759 conveyance
4. Polecat Creek / present Guilford-Randolph area — tax and deed network

Use visible placemarkers, route lines and a legend distinguishing **documented locations** from **provisional identity/migration links**.

## Primary-record recovery queue

- Locate **Gv229 / SSLG 97-A-1**, John Nation, survey 19 Aug 1757 / grant 23 May 1758.
- Recover the survey plat and metes-and-bounds description.
- Verify Christopher Nation and Robert Field as chain carriers against the original.
- Inspect **Rowan Deed Book 4:80** for the 16 Mar 1759 John + Bethia Nation → Robert Fields conveyance.
- Determine the exact historic watercourse and county-line geometry and map it to present-day geography.
- Compare Gv229 with Polecat Creek Nation deeds to determine whether web summaries have conflated multiple tracts.
- Preserve original spellings, acreage discrepancies and jurisdiction changes rather than normalizing them silently.

## Publish policy

Publish the useful geography now with the status labels above. Do not present the 1757–1759 land chain as proof that the 1711 New Jersey John Nation is the same man. That identity bridge remains **PROVISIONAL / UNVERIFIED** pending record-to-record correlation.