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Show CREDIT SALES EXPERIMENT, 1800-1820 133 Analysis of the land entries for the years 1801-06 in the four offices of Marietta, Cincinnati, Chillicothe, and Jeffersonville is useful in testing out some of the preconceptions of the time. For example, Gallatin had been convinced that a high price would discourage speculation and allow the lands to be taken up and purchased by settlers as their resources permitted. There was general agreement that the $2 price was high, but did it discourage speculation? The answer is a qualified no. True, no great land companies such as the Ohio Company and the Symmes Associates purchased a million or more acres, but men of substantial means began buying at the first auctions and their holdings ran to a considerable figure. Belazeel Wells, a local judge and founder of Steubenville, entered 24,000 acres, some of which reverted to the United States. Henry Massie, owner of 48,325 acres in the Virginia Military Tract, entered 7,328 acres partly with others. Thomas Worthington, one of the largest landowners in the same tract, entered 6,587 acres, part of which seem to have been owned jointly with others. Elias Boudinot, a New Jersey politician who was deeply involved with Symmes in land deals, entered 2,000 acres. John Smith, United States Senator from Ohio, entered 30,000 acres. Altogether some 200,000 acres, or 8 percent of the total acreage sold in the Ohio country between 1800 and 1806, were acquired in lots of two or more sections (1,280 acres) for investment. In accordance with Hamilton's notion of the capitalist being the middleman between the government and the actual settler, many of the sales of 640 and 320 acres were doubtless partly for speculation, for large farms have never been characteristic of Ohio agriculture. For 1850, the first year for which we have statistics on the size of farms, the average size in Ohio was 125 acres. Pioneer settlers as a rule were not in a position to buy 320 or 640 acres, even on credit, and many purchases of this size were intended to be retailed to them in smaller quantities. It is noteworthy that most of the buyers, whether they bought large or small tracts, either listed themselves as Ohioans or as residents of western Pennsylvania and Virginia. Aside from Elias Boudinot, Joshua Satterthwaite who listed himself from Burlington, New Jersey, and William Hough of Loudoun County, Virginia, all large buyers were from Ohio. This is in sharp contrast to the later periods of wild speculation in the thirties and fifties when huge quantities of land were bought by eastern capitalists. Though speculation was not altogether discouraged, the reduction in the size of tract and the easing of the terms of credit brought into the market a new and larger class of purchasers who bought the greater part of the land being sold before 1810. On page after page of the abstracts of entries at the Ohio land offices, nothing but quarter-section entries appear-indicating that the small man was buying.28 These early auction sales in Ohio, it was thought, might produce competitive bidding and bring to the government substantially more than the minimum price of $2 an acre. They did no such thing in these early years. The land sold for the minimum price and, except for a few exciting auctions at a later date, this was generally true throughout the history of the public domain. Sales of Public Lands and Average Price in the Northwest Territory" Average Price per Year Acres Amount ir i Dollars Acre 1802 340,009 $680 ,019 $2, ,00 1803 199,080 398 ,161 2, ,00 1804 373,611 772 ,851 2, .06 1805 619,266 1,235 ,953 1, .99 1806 473,211 1,001 ,358 2 .11 a Compiled from American State Papers, Finance, II, 7, 52, 112, 147, 211 28 Data concerning land entries is from the manuscript volumes of abstracts of land entries and receivers' receipts for the years from 1800 to 1820, in the National Archives. |
