A reading of the entire War of 1812 pension application file for Thomas Brown indicated that the bounty land applications were contained within the pension file itself.
That's the reason the bounty land warrants were referenced on the cover packet for the file.
Obtaining the surrendered warrants (which were used to obtain the actual patent) probably won't tell me anything beyond what is in the pension file. The warrants will be issued in the name of the serviceman (or his widow). If the patent was actually issued to someone else because it was assigned to them, then the signature of the serviceman (or his widow) will appear on the back of the warrant. The chance that there is information on the surrendered warrants connecting Thomas Brown to Charlotte Lake (even indirectly) is very minimal.
And that's my goal--connecting Brown to Lake.
Sometimes children (or sons-in-law) would witness an aged parent assigning the warrant over to someone else. But since by the 1850s the Browns and the Lakes were living in different states, that is unlikely.
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Never seen surrendered warrants?
Here are images of a surrendered land warrant for another relative--for readers who have never seen one. That family has nothing to do with the Brown-Lake families but the surrendered warrants would be similar. Neat stuff, but I'm not certain I need to spend money on it at this point.
