Which colony is notable for its early adoption of a system of land grants to encourage settlement?

The colony that is notable for its early adoption of a system of land grants to encourage settlement is Virginia. In the early 1600s, the Virginia Company implemented a headright system, granting settlers parcels of land based on the number of people they brought to the colony. This was an effort to promote growth and development in the Virginia colony and to attract more settlers, especially laborers, to work the land.

Virginia's land grant system played a significant role in its economic development, allowing families and individuals to acquire land that could be cultivated for agricultural purposes. This helped establish the plantation economy that would become central to the colony and later, to the southern states.

The other options did employ various methods to encourage settlement, but Virginia's headright system was among the first and most impactful in shaping colonial land ownership and economic structure. Pennsylvania, for example, had a more egalitarian approach rooted in Quaker beliefs but did not use land grants in the same way. North Carolina and Massachusetts also had their forms of settlement encouragement, but they did not implement a land grant system as prominently as Virginia did.