History of public land law development

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260 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT or warrants for location in the military tracts were selling for so much less. Ownership of land in the United States Military Tract became concentrated in a few hands just as it did in the military tracts of New York and Virginia. The largest amount of land was acquired by Jonathon Dayton, an associate of Symmes and a persistent speculator. As a member of Congress, Dayton had tried to make the military bounty warrants acceptable for public lands, which would have enhanced the market value of the warrants. Dayton entered 23 quarter-townships or 90,936 acres with military bounty warrants. Symmes himself entered 36,000 acres and Mathias Denman, who had cooperated with Symmes in founding Cincinnati, entered 40,000 acres. One hundred and fifteen individuals and partnerships acquired 1,043,000 acres, 70 percent of the area open to quarter-township entries. Apparently the greater part of the 100-acre bounties given to privates were acquired by or made a part of the quarter-township entries. The administrative history of the United States Military Tract, like that of Ohio generally, is anything but simple. Of the lands in the tract not acquired by warrant holders, the Federal government granted 18 quarter-townships of 4,000 acres each for schools, presumably to be administered by the state, and 55,000 acres for schools in the Connecticut Western Reserve, and provided for the survey and sale of the remaining unappropriated lands in 320-acre lots. After 1832 no further entries with military warrants were permitted in the tract. Instead, holders became entitled to receive scrip that could be located elsewhere in Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois on land subject to private entry, as holders of Virginia military warrants were entitled to do.31 A third, but very much smaller land district was created in Ohio to satisfy refugees from Canada and Nova Scotia who had to flee during the Revolution because of their support of the American cause. A tract of 100,000 acres just south of the United States Military Tract was set aside for them in 1783 and 1785. Sixty-seven claimants were given land in this tract, the selections being by lot, for a total of 58,080 acres. The size of the grants was not originally determined by Congress but later was made dependent on the services of the refugees to the United States and presumably on their losses. Again there was an unconscionable delay in getting the land into the hands of the claimants. It took six measures, in addition to the original promise of aid, to tidy up all claims and to provide land elsewhere for some of the claimants after the balance of the district had been disposed of. As late as 1847 the Commissioner of the General Land Office stated that some of these claims and locations "had been strongly litigated by adverse claimants, on the ground of frauds, and causes other than conflicts of entries." It was a rare case where Congress, in trying to aid small groups by land grants, did not involve itself in much subsequent trouble involving continued applications for relief and additional aid, numerous committee reports, and further legislation.32 Residents of the military tracts had much to complain about: the high tax delinquency characteristic of absentee- and speculator-owned land, the slowness with which some parts of these areas developed because the owners were withholding land for high prices, the alarming amount of litigation between squatters and absentee owners, the growth of tenancy, and the poor class of improvements frequently found on land that had a background of absentee ownership, tax delinquency, and title litigation. 31 In the Act of 1796 to create the tract Congress had donated 12,000 acres to Moravian missions which had worked successfully with the Indians. 32 Peters, Ohio Lands and Their Subdivision, pp. 284ff., and map on p. 286; S. Ex. Doc, 30th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. II, No. 2 (Serial No. 504), p. 24.