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Show PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS 95 provisions: nothing in the act was to be construed as recognizing any grant or incomplete title dated after October 1, 1800, or to authorize the commissioners to make any decision on them. Protests from New Orleans about prospects for confirmation of claims under the Act of 1805 led to the adoption of an act supplementary to it on June 21, 1806, by which persons who had actually settled on land by October 1, 1800, and continued to cultivate it until December 31, 1803, were considered as having an outright grant even though they had no documentary evidence of permission by the Spanish authorities. The measure also removed the age qualification of the Act of 1805 provided claimants had inhabited the land for 10 years before December 20, 1803.20 The next claims measure applying to Orleans and Louisiana Territories enacted on March 2, 1807, "exhibited a willingness to compromise with the Spanish system," says Professor Henry Lewis Coles. The age and head-of-family qualifications of the Act of 1805 were repealed, grants up to 2,000 acres which had been continuously inhabited by the claimants for the 10 years preceding December 20, 1803, were to be confirmed, and the Boards of Commissioners were authorized to decide claims up to a league square that were made before December 20, 1803, by persons who were inhabitants of Louisiana; most important, they were to decide cases "according to the laws and established usages of the French and Spanish Governments and customs. . .".2l On June 13, 1812, Congress sanctioned confirmation of claims up to 800 acres that had neither been approved by the Spanish governor nor cultivated, if they had been inhabited on December 20, 1803. By this statute the recorder of land titles was required to extract all claims approved by the land commissioners and to submit them to the Commissioner of the General Land Office who, if he found them proper, was to issue a patent for them. The framers of the Acts of 1803 and 1805 were anxious to do justice to all who had equitable claims to land conceded by Spanish governing officials, while at the same time eliminating all fraudulent, antedated, and unfounded claims. Congressional sensitivity to the rights of the claimants is evidenced by the long series of measures further relaxing and liberalizing the requirements originally set forth. Time after time the period in which claims were allowed to be presented was extended beyond the final date set at which all claims were to be forever barred. At first it was 1806, then 1808, 1812, 1814, and so on indefinitely. Rarely, if ever, has a government shown the patience the United States showed with dilatory claim owners in Louisiana and Orleans Territories.22 The land commissioners were required to divide the claims into three categories: first, those meeting all requirements as prescribed by Congress; second, those not meeting all such requirements but deserving confirmation in conformity with the laws, usages, and customs of the Spanish Government; third, those neither meeting the requirements nor deserving of confirmation in accordance with the laws, usages, and customs of the Spanish Government. The Secretary of the Treasury, under whose jurisdiction the adjudication of private land claims was conducted, was authorized to appoint a government agent who should investigate the claims, and when presented to the Board of Land Commissioners in the territories, oppose all that appeared fraudulent or unfounded. Nothing in the law required members of the boards or the agents to be 20 2 Stat. 391. 21 2 Stat. 440. 22 The phrase, "an act for the final adjustment of claims," was adopted over and over again. Act of Feb. 15, 1811 (2 Stat. 617), March 3, 1811 (2 Stat. 663), April 12, 1814 (3 Stat. 121), July 9, 1832 (4 Stat. 565). |