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Show Chapter VI Private Land Claims No problem caused Congress, officials of the General Land Office, and Federal courts more difficulty or took up as much time as the private land claims, that is the grants of land made by predecessor governments in areas acquired from Great Britain, France, Spain, Mexico, and in the Oregon country by agreement with Great Britain. These claims ranged in size from town lots in Detroit, Mobile, New Orleans, St. Augustine, St. Louis, and San Gabriel, through small settlement grants of a few hundred acres, to concessions of 10,000 to 15,000 acres, colonizing grants of 200,000 to 700,000 acres in Louisiana, and finally the huge Forbes grant of 1,427,289 acres in Florida. French, Spanish, and Mexican land law differed widely from that of Great Britain and the United States. Most of the larger grants were conditioned upon the performance of some task such as erecting sawmills, tanneries, rope walks, distilleries, making roads, stocking cattle ranges, or settling a prescribed number of people on the grant. Other grants rewarded military officers and soldiers or governing officials, pacified pirates, and gained political favor and "the affection of inhabitants." Grants were rarely surveyed, and even after they had reached the equivalent of a patent title, boundaries were vague and few owners seemed to care. Nowhere did the grantees appear anxious about their titles or feel the need to clarify their rights, and before American occupation there was a marked readiness to dispose of them for small sums. Some of the grants had been practically abandoned and there was little evidence that the owners of others held them in high esteem. Some, including the town lots and older grants given for settlement, had been improved and were deserving of swift confirmation when the territory was transferred to the United States. The first private land claims with which the United States had to deal were the claims of the French settlers at Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Fort Wayne, and Green Bay. When the territory east of the Mississippi was transferred to Great Britain in 1763 the British agreed to permit the French settlers to sell their claims to British subjects but had in no other way guaranteed the possessions of these people. Nor was there anything in the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain in 1783 which touched upon the rights of the settlers at these places. In the Virginia Act of Cession of its western lands on March 1, 1784, however, the French and Canadian inhabitants who professed themselves citizens of Virginia, were promised "their possessions and titles confirmed to them, and that they would be protected in the enjoyment of their rights and liberties." This condition in the Act of Cession was accepted by Congress and was in effect a compact, says Francis Philbrick, though if one accepts the Maryland position that the territory had been won by the military power of the Confederation and that Virginia's rights had long since been lost by the Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774, the compact would appear less meaningful.1 1 Francis S. Philbrick, The Laws of Illinois Territory, 1809-1818 {Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library), Vol. 25, ccxxiii ff., ccxxvi. 87 |
