OCR Text |
Show CASH SALES, 1840-1862 201 by delinquency and tax sales. After the War the firm tried to salvage from the demoralized state of its business those lands worth recovering, but it found the task long, tiresome, and costly. Its records show that its Iowa holdings of 88,555 acres were scattered over 51 counties; its 37,920 acres of Missouri land over 11 counties; and 3,400 acres of Kansas land over six counties. Six years later the firm's Iowa lands were down to somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 acres, its Missouri lands to 20,000 acres.53 Miles and Elias White were similarly caught with a heavy investment in land from which they could obtain very little income during the years 1857-62. One agent alone wrote on November 12, 1860, that he was sending 58 deeds for forfeited sales. Having moved from the South to Baltimore, White's titles did not become as involved as did those of Easley & Willingham, but it was to take years before they could recover their investment from sales.54 The time entry business-the western term for entering land for settlers-left millions of acres in the Upper Mississippi Valley states in the possession of capitalists. These men had to carry their lands for years before they could recover their investments. As the carrying costs were rapidly mounting, immigrants who could not raise the capital to buy these lands were induced to rent them. Tenancy thus made an early appearance. In other instances the higher price that the capitalist exacted for his land contributed to heavier mortgage indebtedness and tenancy. Not only was the choice agricultural land of the prairie states being rapidly disposed of in the fifties; mineral bearing land in Upper Michigan, especially in the Keweenaw Peninsula, also attracted buyers. Congress had 53 These are estimates based on an examination of the books and papers of the Easley & Willingham Papers. 54 Edward A. Temple, Nov. 12, 1860, to Miles White, White MSS. provided for the creation of the Lake Superior land district with headquarters at Sault Sainte Marie, in an Act of March 1, 1847, and had ordered a geological survey to be made for the purpose of classifying the mineral and nonmineral land. Persons who were occupying mineral land for the purpose of mining it and had complied with requirements concerning registration were permitted to buy their claims up to a section at $2.50 an acre. Other mineral land was to be offered at $5 an acre. Jurisdiction over the mineral lands was transferred from the War Department to the Treasury Department. Non-mineral land was to be offered as elsewhere at public auction and thereafter to be available at private entry for $1.25 an acre.55 The North-West Mining, Pittsburgh & Boston Mining, Lac La Belle Mining, Minnesota Mining, North American Mining, Siskowiet Mining, Phelps Dodge Companies, and six other groups and individuals acquired 110,000 acres. Of this acreage 3,137 was sold at $5 per acre, 9,330 at $2.50, and the balance at $1.25 an acre. Meantime, the pineries of the Lake States were likewise coming into keen demand for the choice white pine timber wanted by builders. The demand was local until settlers began moving onto the prairies of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. The scarcity of timber in these states forced both town promoters and farmers to import their lumber from the distant pineries of Michigan, Wisconsin, and, later in the fifties, from Minnesota Territory. Some of the new groups buying timberland were Maine lumbermen who, fearing the early exhaustion of the timber resources of the Pine Tree State, were transferring their wealth and know-how to the richer pineries of Michigan and Wisconsin and to rising new lumber towns such as Saginaw City, Traverse City, and Manistee in Michigan, and Green Bay, Menasha, Wausau, Eau Claire, and Chippewa Falls in Wisconsin. 55 9 Stat. 146-47. |