Settlers seeking to acquire land from the Proprietors were required to follow five steps: first, application for a warrant; second, upon being granted a warrant by the Proprietors, the Deputy Surveyor would initiate a survey of the described tract of land; third, the survey would be conducted as authorized by the warrant and recorded; fourth, application for a patent; and fifth, the granting of a patent, which was the full, clear release of title to the land by the Proprietors of Pennsylvania. Until 1776 the price for land purchased from the Proprietors was 15 pounds 10 shillings for each 100 acres and quit rent was one sterling halfpenny per acre per year.

But immigrants rarely requested warrants from the Proprietors prior to or immediately upon settling land. More often a settler would request a warrant only after already improving the land, and later record a survey to clarify ownership if other settlers had moved in nearby. Patents sometimes weren't obtained until decades after land had been settled. Warrants for parcels surrounding Peter Finger's farm (e.g. 50 acres to Martin Raiser on June 1, 1762, 150 acres to Jacob Nunemaker on Jun. 16, 1763, 40 acres and 130 acres to Peter Marsteller on Sept. 25, 1766, and 150 acres to Leonard Foreman and 175 acres to Stephen Fuhrman on Feb. 6, 1767) were not granted until quite a while after Peter had been resident at his farm.

A survey for almost every parcel adjacent to Peter Finger's farm was recorded between Aug. 9 and Aug. 30, 1773. The flurry of warrant and survey activity beginning in the mid-1760s may have been due to a shift in colonial policy that permitted squatters who were willing to accept the results of a land survey to be granted an official warrant for their land upon application. In such cases, the warrantee agreed to abide by the subsequent land survey and to pay the original purchase price of the property with back interest. For example, the warrant for 200 acres (which was the northern portion of Peter Finger's farm, originally warranted by Andrew Hershey in 1751and mapped for Peter via the 1754 survey) granted to Martin Brunkart on September 4, 1773 required him to pay interest on quitrent dating back to March 1, 1752. Brunkart followed up his warrant with a 220-acre survey dated November 18, 1774, and a patent, registering 262 acres, dated June 22, 1789.

Warrants, surveys and patents are available for viewing at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Division of Archives and Manuscripts, 350 North Street, Harrisburg, PA 17120, which can be reached by phone at (717) 783-3281.

Manheim Township is dotted with beautiful old limestone houses, many of which appear to have been restored. Peter Finger built one of these houses some time prior to his departure from Pennsylvania. Its address today is 3983 Glenville Road, just southwest of the village of Blackrock. The house is three stories tall, not including a half-story on the downhill side.

James Avery Finger first visited Peter Finger's house in 1983. The woman living there at the time told him word of mouth from former owners dated the house to 1774. When I visited the house myself and spoke to the current owner in March of 2006, she was aware that it had belonged to Peter Finger in colonial times.

There are also huge barns to be found on most of the farms in the area. These barns are generally square in shape and built on a slope with a stone foundation and at least two-stories of wood-frame construction above. In virtually all of these barns the upper levels are cantilevered over the foundation level, with access to the barn from the downhill side underneath the cantilever. It is striking how neat and well-maintained the farms appear today, all over York County.