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Show MILITARY BOUNTY LAND POLICIES 259 the Ohio Company and the Symmes associates failed to complete payments and actually gained title to much smaller acreages than they had bargained for: 892,900 for the Ohio Company and 272,540 for the Symmes associates. A total of 238,150 acres of military warrants were presented in payment for these lands.26 Practically none of those who had turned in warrants to Symmes joined his colony; few of them received more than a pittance for their rights. In 1787 Congress finally designated two tracts for warrant locations, one in Illinois and one in Ohio, but difficulties with the Indians prevented any further action and they were abandoned for this purpose. Some bounties were accepted in payment for land in the Seven Ranges but they were offered not by veterans but by others who had bought them at low rates. Not until June 1, 1796, did Congress provide for the establishment of a military tract in Ohio on land to which the Indian title had been surrendered.27 The reserve consisted of 2,539,110 acres. It was to be divided into townships 5 miles square, not 6 as the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Land Act of May 18, 1796, required for other parts of Ohio. Only quarter-townships were available, leaving two choices to warrant holders: either they would have to combine with others to obtain land or they would have to sell their warrants. During the long wait between the issuance of the warrants and 1800, when lots as small as 100 acres were finally made available, a large part of the rights-at least two-thirds- were assigned. In this way, according to a later report of the General Land Office, "many of the old soldiers were defrauded of their rights, and from this cause most of the litigation for lands in this district had 26 Archer Butler Hulburt, Ohio in the Time of Confederation (Marietta, Ohio, 1918), passim; Hutchinson, "The Bounty Lands," p. 94. 27 Annals of Congress, 4th Cong., 2d sess., 1796-97, p. 2935. arisen. . . ."28 We may contrast this long delay in satisfying the promises made by the government during the war with the record of the British officials in Canada. In 1783 they received instructions from the British Colonial Office to grant each loyal citizen who had fled from the States 100 acres plus 50 acres for a wife and each child. Within a year the loyalists, not speculators or absentee owners, received the land whereas Americans had to wait at least 17 years and when the land was acquired, soldiers did not always receive it. Although the rectangular system of survey was applied to the United States Military Tract, the provision that quarter-townships were to be the smallest unit led warrant holders to group together to make their entries and then to divide the 4,000 acres into farm units according to the lay of the land, thus approximating the indiscriminate locations of the neighboring Virginia Military Tract.29 The long delay, the impossibility for holders of 100-acre warrants to use their rights unless they could find some way of cooperating with others, and the need to capitalize upon their rights, forced many to sell when the demand was low. Hutchinson found that the warrants sold for 5 to 10 cents an acre in 1793-95, rose to 30 cents in 1801 and to SI in 1809. These figures are based on single warrant notations and doubtless the price fluctuated from community to community, but it does appear that in the early period the soldiers profited little from their warrants.30 That they sold for so little helps explain why public land held for $2 an acre in the Seven Ranges or elsewhere in southern Ohio attracted so few buyers. Only the advantage of location could have persuaded people to pay this price when land 28 S. Ex. Doc, 30th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. II, No. 2 (Serial No. 504), p. 23. 29 Hutchinson, "The Bounty Lands," pp. 139-40. 30 Ibid., p. 156. It is doubtful that the warrants ever brought in a bona fide sale more than $1.15 or SI.20 an acre. |