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Show AN INCONGRUOUS LAND SYSTEM 443 his holdings were further increased by purchases from private individuals until they totaled 134,234 acres in Kansas and Nebraska, 42,000 in Missouri, and 44,000 acres in Illinois. Other large buyers of land in Nebraska in 1870 were William McGal-liard, a farm manager of Scully, 7,607 acres; David Rankin, owner also of large holdings in Illinois and Missouri, 3,796 acres; Charlotte R. and Moses B. I. God-dard, and John Carter Brown and Robert H. Ives, all Providence, Rhode Island, capitalists, together 93,000 acres; and Jacob Shoff, a Nebraska speculator, 29,206 acres. In the 10 years following the adoption of the homestead law, 41 individuals and partnerships entered 488,000 acres in Nebraska, all well east of the 99th meridian, for nothing farther west was then open to unlimited entry. In Kansas 83 entries included 406,000 acres. To a somewhat less extent potential agricultural land was also being entered in Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, and Oregon by speculators. We have some interesting data on Pierce County, Nebraska, to which allusion was made in the previous chapter. Pierce was a reasonably promising county and, as was commonly the case, speculators acquired much of the better land shown on modern soil surveys before many settlers appeared. It is possible that some of the cash and warrant entries shown in the following table were made by settlers but most of them were made by speculators. By 1873, 179,920 acres-enough to satisfy 1,500 homesteaders-had been sold or entered with scrip and warrants, but only a few more than a hundred homestead entries had been filed.17 As late as 1880 only 184 farms were found in the county by the census taker. Original Land Entries in Pierce County in Acres11 Cash, Warrant Year & Scrip Homestead and Timber Culture Preemption 1867___ 160 320 1868___ 360 720 1869___ 5,120 4,160 1870... 44,880 3,120 1871___ 52,520 3,200 1872___ 63,840 3,400 1873.... 1874 13,040 360 1,800 3,440 160 1875.... 1876.... 1877 . 320 400 480 1,080 680 680 1878..-. 1879.... 1880.... 1881___ 1882___ 1883___ 1884.... 1885.... 1886.... 5,200 160 880 1,200 9,640 10,120 680 480 320 13,440 8,040 7,240 14,400 5,960 2,720 1,400 960 320 560 560 1,200 2,400 2,400 1,920 a See note 17. "Computed from Table 13 in John Arnett Cay-lor, "The Disposition of the Public Domain in Pierce County, Nebraska" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nebraska, 1951). Southern Homestead Act While public land in the pineries and on the iron ranges of the Lake States, in the prairies east of the 97th meridian in Kansas and Nebraska, in the Central Valley of California and the Willamette Valley of Oregon, and in parts of Colorado and Washington was being snapped up in great volume by men of means, land in the five southern public land states was reserved for settlers. During the Civil War, administration of these public lands had been assumed by the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida, which generally followed policies already in operation. Alabama and Louisiana retained the same price, preemption, graduation, and school reservations and Alabama actually adopted a free grant measure though its Representatives in Congress had bitterly fought a homestead bill. Some sales were made but the war and all its obligations absorbed the attention of the |