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Show PREEMPTION 241 followed by actual sales, the parties generally moving off before their one year residence had expired.59 Meantime, several thousand preemption cases were suspended, leaving many people uncertain of their rights and disinclined to invest more in their claims until sure of ownership. In addition to the many cases involving the rights of a preemptor as against a cash purchaser, or two contending settlers, were those of settlers who had been entitled to a preemption under the Acts of 1838, 1840, or even 1841, but who had not prepared the required affidavits concerning improvements before they died. Under the law the heirs had no rights in the absence of such affidavits. Still another type of case not easy to solve involved settlers who unknowingly located on section 16, land reserved for schools. Under the Act of 1840 they were allowed to locate on any other quarter section in the same district on which no other person had registered a preemption. Settlers in this predicament could, and some did, file on other tracts but others who had improved their claims failed to file entry forms in time or were found not to have made the specific improvements the law required and therefore did not qualify for their substitute selections. The list of suspended entries was growing and threatening to overwhelm the General Land Office unless some way was devised to cut through the dilemma they presented. In 1846 a bill was reported from the Committee on Private Land Claims to authorize a special board to consider and decide the estimated 5,000 cases of suspended preemption claims then pending. It was brought out in the discussion that some cases had been in suspension for 15 years. David Yulee, Senator from Florida, where there were numerous suspended claims, described one of the contested cases. A man made a settlement on land reserved for a private claim; when the private claim was allowed and surveyed, the settler's land was excluded from it; but because his settlement had been made on land reserved for consideration as a private claim, the Preemption Act of 1834 did not apply to it and neither did the later preemption laws. Yulee summarized some of the reasons for suspension: Entry was allowed without affidavit at proper time; Affidavit was not exactly formal; Entry was allowed before the plat was returned; Conflicted with private entries; Defects in plats at time of entry; Defects in description; Irregularity on part of register; Conflict with reservations; 40-Acre tract without affidavit. In each case an irregularity in the proceedings, sometimes the fault of the officers, caused the suspension. In the past the only relief for these cases had been by a private act of Congress and a small proportion of the total ever got through the legislative mill. Some question was raised concerning conflicting claims and the application of the measure of 1846 to them was questioned. However, the measure as finally enacted was broad enough, it was thought, to cover all.60 59 S. Ex. Doc, 30th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. II (Serial No. 504), No. 2, Nov. 30, 1847, pp. 29 ff.; S. Ex. Doc, 31st Cong., 1st sess., Dec. 3; 1849, Vol. I (Serial No. 550), No. 1, p. 20. 60 Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 1st sess., May 4, 7, 1846, pp. 754 ff. Other irregularities that caused suspension of preemption entries were the inclusion of four forties in two or three sections and the allowance of a preemption claim on a tract for which the treaty of cession had not been ratified at the time the preemption act was adopted. Lucius Lyon, Jan. 16, 1838, to C. C. Clay, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, Historical Collections, XXVII (Lansing, Mich., 1897), 498. George L. Anderson delved into some of the papers of the Board of Equitable Adjudication of the later years for his "The Board of Equitable Adjudication, 1846-1940," Agricultural History, XXIX (April 1955), 65-72, but other than the emphasis upon the application of equity in cases involving disputes between the United States and the entrymen over intent and (Continued on page 242) |
