A more selfish reason to research and collect land grant and ownership documents would be "Mineral Rights". YES, Virginia, your family may have some long lost mineral rights to previous land ownership. Every state is different with their mineral laws. But take Texas, for instance, when mineral reservation is declared, the mineral are held in perpetuity. This means forever. So, say Davy Crockett could have "reserved the minerals" of land he previously owned. His present relatives could have legal rights to payment of oil/gas/wind/cell towers/and other mineral royalties being generated on that land today. And folks there are lots of "plays" (term for a mineral generating formation) out there now. You might have some ownership in some nice royalty checks. Typically, if the mineral ownership cannot be traced to present day, most companies hold that $$ in escrow for the day they find the owners.
Now, every state can have differences in their mineral code/law. It might be worth checking it out. My GGGF owned 3/4 of a section ( a section is 640 acres) in Iowa. I'll be checking the mineral code and the ownership docs to see how the minerals are transferred or held by owners.
Just a thought.......
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