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Show COLONIAL LAND SYSTEMS 45 from different Colonies, and ineffective efforts to iron out the difficulties. The King's decision in 1764, that all the disputed territory west of the Connecticut River belong to New York, was not acceptable to those claiming title under New Hampshire. Ethan and Ira Allen, leaders of the Revolutionary party, raised the cry of absentee ownership against the New York grantees, even though the brothers themselves were among the greatest speculators of the time. The Revolution enabled the radicals to have the loyalists' estates confiscated and to question the legality of New York grants. What is surprising is the size of the Vermont properties, some of which included 13,000 acres and even 56,000 acres. The Onion River Land Company, the principal device through which the Allen brothers conducted their speculations, seems to have held 77,622 acres at the outbreak of the Revolution.36 Massachusetts, which had a huge quantity of land in its province of Maine, granted townships to numerous proprietors and at the same time began selling land in large tracts. Perhaps to guard against the worst effects of speculation and absentee ownership, the Bay State grants of six townships in Maine in 1762 required the grantees to survey their tracts, to settle 60 Protestant families in each township within 6 years, to build 60 houses at least 18 feet square each, to prepare 300 acres of land for cultivation, to erect a meeting house, and to settle a minister. Four lots were to be reserved in each township: one lot each for the parsonage, for the first minister, for Harvard College, and for a public school.37 In the 18th century the township grants of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire became the objects of extensive speculation. No longer was the proprietor committed to the new community to the extent of moving to it and working to aid its growth. Instead, he was a speculator who might have shares in as many as 50 towns. His proprietor's rights were hawked about for anyone who wanted to invest. The disparate interests of proprietors and settlers became marked, producing frequent appeals to the courts and to the legislature over such questions as the proprietors' rights in the commons, their liability to taxation, and their policy of withholding land from development for speculation.38 Roy Akagi has shown that not only was there an increasing tendency for small capitalists to speculate in proprietor's rights, but also that Massachusetts and Connecticut were caught up in the desire to make money from land and placed their remaining townships on the market. Connecticut sold individual proprietor's rights in the townships while Massachusetts offered full townships. Credit was allowed.39 Massachusetts has been pictured as trying, in the late 18th century, to compromise between two policies-selling its Maine land in large blocks to speculators and, at the same time, recognizing the occupancy rights of squatters in the improvements they had put on land, but refusing them preemption. Large buyers of its Maine land were required to colonize 40 persons in each township acquired, but extensions were granted and commutation to cash payment or road work was permitted. By favoring speculators, Massachusetts antagonized pioneer settlers who went west, not north, in droves; and by protecting squatters, it repelled investors.40 It might be expected that the New England Colonies, which were the most poorly endowed by nature for agriculture, would prove 36 Chilton Williamson, Vermont in Quandary: 1763-1825 (Montpelier, Vt., 1949), pp. 30 ff. 37 W. D. Williamson, History of the State of Maine (2 vols.; Hallowell, Maine-, 1832), II, 361. 38 James Truslow Adams, Revolutionary New England (Boston, 1923), p. 263, shows thai Ezra Stiles, one of New England's most learned divines, owned shares in many townships, of which 10 are named. 39 Akagi, Town Proprietors, passim; Florence M. Woodward, The Town Proprietors in Vermont (New York, 1936). 40 Oscar and Mary Flug Handlin, Commonwealth. A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774-1861 (New York, 1947), pp. 87 ff. |