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Nothing is known of the pivotal Basile Talbert.
His settlement right can be located on the map as a ghost
of other surveys that were recorded.
Talbert, the Lees, and William Crabtree traded land to
which they did not have legal title back and forth with the
elusive Alexander Outlaw.
These transactions were the basis for a half-century of
legal problems for everyone concerned.
Outlaw survey on file in Abingdon for LO
Q-345
Outlaw’s daughter, Elizabeth, married David Campbell, a relative
of Major Charles Campbell.
The surviving records refer to “The Outlaw Tract”, which
in fact was an ever changing entity composed of various moieties
of land of varied origins, and which was sold off in pieces as
moieties not related in form to the original ones.
A couple of Outlaw surveys are on record in Abingdon.
They were never granted, and the surveys badly overlap
legal grants registered with the Virginia Land Office.
Truth be told, Outlaw was part of a group who lived in Southwest
Virginia who acted as if they believed that the Revolutionary
War was not only going to separate them from Great Britain, but
also from the Commonwealth.
They bought and sold land that had surveys on file in
Abingdon, but they made no effort to register these transactions
with the State government.
Near the end of the war Outlaw just walked off and left
the legal chaos he had created in Southwest Virginia, and moved
to Tennessee. There he
was among fellow travellers, who set up the
...
Continue to Page 18
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