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Show CASH SALES, 1820-1840 167 for the purpose of acting as agents for eastern capitalists in investing funds in the public lands, paying taxes, redeeming tax delinquent lands and managing property for absentees. Three years later Demas Adams bought 30,992 acres in the Lima district, possibly for eastern investors. Robert T. Cook advertised in the Richmond Enquirer of September 6, 1836, that, having examined and purchased several thousand acres in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas and knowing the country well, he was prepared to purchase lands on commission or for a portion of the net profits when sold. This latter practice became very common. Investors put up the money, including the fees, for the purchase of land and the western agent made the selections and entries and agreed to manage the lands for a third or a quarter of the profits. Many such advertisements offering to represent capitalists in land speculation enabled people of even small means to invest without making the difficult trip west to look over the lands. The stories of great opportunities and high returns makes understandable the westward flow of capital in large quantities.59 Although all parts of the West were attracting settlers and investors, the states in which land was in greatest demand during the thirties were Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Mississippi, and the most active land offices were Kalamazoo (southwestern Michigan), Fort Wayne (northwestern Indiana just south of the Kalamazoo district), Detroit (southeastern Michigan), and Palmyra (northeastern Missouri). In all these districts local residents constituted much the larger number of buyers and their purchases com- 59 For other examples of solicitation of funds for investment in western lands, see advertisements of Daugherty, Osgood and Dabney of New York in the Richmond Enquirer, Oct. 7, 1836, of George Megquier of Warrenton, Va., in the National Intelligencer, Oct. 12, 1836, Thomas Gough and Z. Platt in the Albany Argus, Sept. 9 and Nov. 22, 1836. By the 1850's agents located in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Council Bluffs, St. Louis, Peoria, Detroit, Keokuk, and Dubuque were advertising in the National Intelligencer for capital to invest in land. prised the larger part of the total sales. Examination of the abstracts of cash entries for the various land offices north of the Ohio shows clearly that the bulk of the land was passing into the hands of purchasers of 80 or, more commonly, 160 acres. If they borrowed money to make their entries but took title in their own names, the General Land Office records do not show this fact, but if the title was taken in the name of the lender of the funds, as was commonly done at the Iowa sales in 1838 and 1839, that information was recorded. Moneylenders and speculators from Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, and even Alabama were present at all the land sales. In Indiana, for example, there were more than a hundred individuals or partners who attended one or more of the public sales, buying from 1,000 acres to 10,000 and 15,000 acres. Their total purchases came to 236,000 acres in the boom days just before the Panic of 1837. Among the larger buyers of Indiana land was a Delaware trio, chief of whom was Arnold Naudain, United States Senator, whose purchases at the Crawfords-ville and Indianapolis land offices came to 11,000 acres. Levi Beardsley, lawyer, writer, and speculator has described in his reminiscences how people were carried off their feet by the opportunity of speculating in wild land in the West. In company with a partner, James O. Morse, Beardsley set out from Otsego County, New York, in 1835 to invest in public lands in the West. "In that memorable year," he wrote "every one was imbued with a reckless spirit for speculation. The mania, for such it undoubtedly was, did not confine itself to one particular class, but extended to all. Even the reverend clergy doffed their sacerdotals, and eagerly entered into competition with mammon's votaries, for the acquisition of this world's goods, and tested their sagacity against the shrewdness and more practiced skill of the professed sharper." Travelling by boat from Toledo via Mackinac |