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Show 168 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Straits to Chicago with many others bent on the same objective of buying land, he noted that they were continually inquiring prices, making bargains wherever the boat stopped, exhibiting "splendid lithographic maps" of towns and cities for lots in which extravagant prices were demanded. Beardsley and Morse had earlier bought 60,000 acres in western New York from the Holland Land Company, and the former had acquired a large tract near Columbus, Ohio, which he was renting to tenants. Their purchases near Fort Wayne and LaFayette, Indiana, came to 8,148 acres in addition to city lots in Toledo, and probably in Chicago.60 There was much more speculative purchasing in Michigan than in Indiana during the boom days of 1833-37. Almost 10 percent of the land purchased was acquired by speculators, very largely nonresidents. Three families who had acquired many thousands of acres of the rich soil of the Genesee Valley of New York between 1790 and 1815 and had developed it quite profitably participated in this rush to acquire western land. Charles H. and William T. Carroll and Daniel Fitzhugh had come up from Maryland and the Wads-worths had come from Connecticut. By the 1830's they were successful landed proprietors, having numerous tenants working their land and enabling them to live the life of country gentry. Whether they wanted to begin in Michigan another Genesee-type development with large estates running into thousands of acres operated by tenants is not clear, but in 1836 they entered 135,000 acres in the West, mostly in Michigan. A chronicler writing years later of the selection of 40,000 acres in Monroe County, Michigan, by the Carroll brothers, said when they arrived at the land office to make their entries, other settlers and speculators had taken the best of the land but the "reckless spirit of speculation" induced them to file on everything that was left without looking the tracts over in advance. Many of the tracts were low and wet, required drainage, and were to be a white elephant on their hands for years.61 A somewhat surprising fact about the speculative purchasing of the thirties and indeed of the fifties is that southerners, including some outstanding political leaders like John Slidell, Clement C. Clay, Eli Shorter and William S. Grayson were investing in northern lands. Mention may be made here of Thomas Lud-well Lee Brent, a member of a prominent Virginia family, who had been in the diplomatic service in Spain and Portugal. Upon his return to America he was induced in 1836 to journey to Michigan to invest his small fortune of $90,000 to $100,000 in land. There he bought 21,867 acres which he planned to develop. Innocent of the details of business management and of northern farming Brent struggled to keep his land, meet the taxes, and provide for his family. Eventually he lost much of the property and died prematurely, leaving his heirs one farm on which the work was being done by tenants.62 John M. Gordon, a member of a prominent Baltimore family of substantial means, was caught up in the excitement about rising land values in the middle thirties. He resolved to sell a part of his bank stock in 1836 and to invest the returns, perhaps as much as $20,000, in Michigan land. He had already heard much about investments by the Wadsworths and other influential families with whom he was in correspondence and was convinced that one could turn over investments in western lands quickly with large profits. On his long journey west by way of New York, 60 Levi Beardsley, Reminiscences; Personal and Other Incidents (New York, 1852), pp. 252 ff. 611. P. Christiancy, "Recollections of the Early History of the City and County of Monroe," Pioneer Collections. Report of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, VI (Lansing, Mich., 1884), 368. 621 found the entries of Brent to be 21,687 acres but Judge Albert Miller, who had some acquaintance with the family, wrote that he purchased 70,000 acres. For Miller's recollections of Brent see Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, Pioneer Collections, IX, 192-96. Also see Paul W. Gates, "Southern Investments in Northern Lands Before the Civil War," Journal of Southern History, V (May 1939), 169. |