USA > Illinois > Illinois in 1818, 2nd ed > Part 6
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These various acts relating to preemption rights created dis- tinctions in different parts of Illinois, the reasons for which are not apparent. Thus in the Shawneetown district those who had settled on the land before February 5, 1813, were given the preference in the purchase of a quarter section only, while within the reserved tract, the preference was extended to a whole sec- tion. Especial provision was made in the Kaskaskia district, moreover, for settlers on fractional sections; but the law was so interpreted as to allow such settlers no preëmption rights in the Shawneetown district, with the result that a few had to pay advanced prices for their lands at the public sales. The worst discrimination, however, was with reference to that part of Illinois within the Vincennes district. The act of 1813 was in- terpreted as not applying to this tract at all and the settlers there were left to compete with speculators in the public sales for the lands on which they had made improvements. The legis- lature of Illinois territory, at its session of 1816-17, after the sales had taken place, forwarded to congress a long memorial devoted to proving that the preemption act had not been correctly interpreted in this particular, and asking for some measure of redress for those settlers who had lost their land or had been forced to pay advanced prices for it. This memorial, together with a petition from the settlers themselves drawn up in 1818,
65 Statutes at Large, 2:797; 3:125, 218; Treat, National Land System, 382-385.
A CLEARING From A History of Travel in America, by Seymour Dunbar, used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis]
LEAD-BEARING ROCKS AND FURNACE NEAR GALENA [From a copy owned by Chicago Historical Society]
49
THE PUBLIC LANDS
was referred and re-referred to the house committee on public lands until finally congress passed the relief act of May II, 1820. By this act all settlers who would have been entitled to preëmp- tion rights, had the act been interpreted to apply to the part of Vincennes district in Illinois, were given credit certificates for the sums above the minimum price which they had paid; or, if they had not purchased, they were allowed to exercise a preëmp- tion right on any land in Illinois which might be surveyed before September 1, 1820.56
The first government sales of land in Illinois took place, as has already been stated, in 1814. During the year ending Sep- tember 30, 1814, the only sales were 8,837 acres in the Shawnee- town district; these were all made to settlers in accordance with the preemption act of 1813, and consequently at the minimum price. The first public sale in the territory took place in the same district in October of 1814 and included the sale of town lots in Shawneetown, which had been laid out for that purpose by the government surveyors under acts of April 30, 1810, and March 28, 1814. Only a part of the land in the district could be offered at this sale because the surveys were incomplete, and only a little over fifty thousand acres were sold in the district in the year ending September 30, 1815. Sales under the pre- ëmption acts began in the Kaskaskia district in the fall of 1814, and about thirty thousand acres were disposed of during the fiscal year. During the year ending September 30, 1816, the sales were still smaller, amounting to less than thirty-four thou- sand acres in the Shawneetown and less than thirteen thousand in the Kaskaskia districts. The bulk of the Shawneetown sales must have been of land which had been offered in 1814 and which was now available at private sales at the minimum price. while at Kaskaskia land could still be purchased only by pre- ëmptioners.
The largest offerings of land at public sales in Illinois, prior to the admission of the state to the union, took place in October and November, 1816, when sales were held at all three of the
66Legislative memorial in Intelligencer, January 22, 1817; petition of James McFarland and others, November, 1818, and petition of inhabitants of Craw- ford county. December 25, 1818 in House Files; Statutes at Large, 3:573.
50
ILLINOIS IN 1818
offices in the territory.57 The intention was that the government land in the respective districts, not hitherto offered and not reserved for schools or other special purposes, should be offered at these sales; but the officers at Kaskaskia reported that certain townships could not be sold because descriptions had not been received from the surveyor-general, while certain sections in fifteen townships in the Shawneetown district were not actually offered until October, 1818. Nineteen townships and fractional townships, comprising about two-thirds of the part of the Vin- cennes district in Illinois, were offered at public sale in Septem- ber of the same year. So much of the best land in the Kaskaskia and Edwardsville districts had been covered by private claims and preëmption rights that only small amounts were disposed of at these sales. In Edwardsville the bidding could not have been very brisk for none of the sixty or seventy tracts sold brought more than the minimum price, while at Kaskaskia only five or six tracts which were located near the mouth of the Ohio, and were bought up by town-site speculators sold for an advanced price, the highest being five dollars an acre.58 The significance of the public sales, however, lay not in the amounts
"The following table gives the acreage of land sales in the three Illinois districts for the periods indicated, with amounts of reversions deducted from the sales. It is compiled from statistics in Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, I:550; 2:68, 97, 135, 137, 157; American State Papers, Public Lands, 3:312; Executive Documents, 16 congress, 2 session, no. 8, p. 19.
Years ending
Shawnee- town
Kaskaskia
.Edwards- ville
Total
Sept. 30
1814
8,837
....
8,837
1815
51,735
31,005
. . . .
82,740
1816
33,975
12,765
....
46,740
1817
67,084
78,508
104,073
249,665
1818
239,0II
160,446
193,259
593,316
1819
161,654
124,303
97,398
383,355
Total
562,296
407,027
394,730
1,364.053
Total to Sept. 30, 1818.
400,642
282,724
297,332
980,698
Est. total to Dec. 31, 1818.
440,000
320,000
320,000
1,080,000
Area of districts
3,018,240
2,188,800
1,059.840
6,266,880
Proportion sold Dec. 31, 1818
141/2%
141/2%
30%
17%
See also Statutes at Large, 2:591; 3:113; president's proclamation, April 5, in land records, auditor's office, Springfield.
58President's proclamations in Intelligencer, June 12, 1816; August 5, 1818; Letter Book A, 109-III, 115, and land record, Palestine district, auditor's office, Springfield; Intelligencer, November 20, 1816; House Documents, 15 congress, 2 session, no. 46, p. 6.
51
THE PUBLIC LANDS
of land disposed of but in the fact that after they were over extensive tracts of land in all parts of Illinois below the frontier line of survey were available for purchase at private sale at the minimum price.
With the return of peace on the frontier after the war of 1812, immigrants poured into the territory, and the sales in- creased by leaps and bounds. During the year ending Septen- ber 30, 1817, almost a quarter of a million acres of land were sold in the three districts wholly within Illinois, Edwardsville leading with over a hundred thousand acres. This was nearly twice as much as had been sold in all the previous years, but the amount was again doubled in the next fiscal year, the total being nearly six hundred thousand acres. This time the Shawneetown district led with about two hundred and forty thousand acres. The fiscal year ending September 30, 1819, shows a falling off in the total sales to less than four hundred thousand acres, due in part to the fact that the choicest tracts had already been selected, and in part to the financial panic of 1819. The total sales of public land in these districts to September 30, 1818, amounted to 980,698 acres. Approximately the sales to the end of 1818 amounted to about 1,080,000 acres, of which 440,000 were in the Shawneetown, 320,000 in the Kaskaskia, and 320,000 in the Edwardsville districts. Thirty per cent of the Edwards- ville district had been sold but only fourteen and a half per cent of the Shawneetown and Kaskaskia districts. Taking the three districts together, only about seventeen per cent of the available land had passed out of the possession of the government.59
The actual location of the land in Illinois which had become private property by the end of 1818, is indicated on the accom- panying map.60 From this it appears that the largest solid blocks of private holdings were in the present Madison and St. Clair counties. In the American bottom, also, stretching along the Mississippi above Kaskaskia, practically all the land had been taken up. On the opposite side of the territory a tract equivalent
"See table in note 57.
"Compiled from records in the auditor's office at Springfield, and in the general land office in Washington.
52
ILLINOIS IN 1818
to about two and a half townships had been entered in Edwards county, where the English settlement was located. There was a smaller block in the neighborhood of Shawneetown, and along the lower Ohio an extensive tract had been purchased by firms of speculators who hoped that great commercial cities would spring up on their holdings. The map brings out in a striking way the importance of streams in giving value to land in their vicinity. Along the Kaskaskia river and its tributaries, as far as the surveys extended, along the Big Muddy in Jackson county, and the Cache in Union county, extended ribbons of purchased land. On the eastern side of the state, the land along the Saline river was all in the United States reservation, but the influence of the Little Wabash is clearly seen. Another factor in giving value to land was its location along the main roads which crossed the state. Thus the lines of the roads from Shawneetown to Carlyle, Shawneetown to Kaskaskia, and Golconda to Kaskaskia, are clearly indicated by the holdings, although these are more broken than those along the streams. Between these roads in the interior of the state were tracts containing ten or a dozen townships in each of which scarcely a single section of land had been sold.
Significant as is the distribution of purchased land, it is not a definitive index of the progress of settlement for two reasons ; in the first place much land was purchased for speculation rather than for settlement, and in the second place many settlers lived on land which still belonged to the government.
Before land could be purchased from the government, the speculators had been obliged to confine their operations to the field of private claims; but many of the original French and American holders of these claims were readily induced to dis- pose of them to the more enterprising men with capital, and as a result thousands of acres passed into the possession of such men as John Edgar and William Morrison. When the govern- ment land sales began, speculators were always on hand to pick up the choice tracts which, because of their supposedly favorable location, were expected to rise in value rapidly. As has already been noted much of the land along the lower Ohio was pur-
52
ILLINOIS IN 1818
to about two and a half townships had been entered in Edwards county, where the English settlement was located. There was a smaller block in the neighborhood of Shawneetown, and along the lower Ohio an extensive tract had been purchased by firms of speculators who hoped that great commercial cities would spring up on their holdings. The map brings out in a striking way the importance of streams in giving value to land in their vicinity. Along the Kaskaskia river and its tributaries, as far as the surveys extended, along the Big Muddy in Jackson county, and the Cache in Union county, extended ribbons of purchased land. On the eastern side of the state, the land along the Saline river was all in the United States reservation, but the influence of the Little Wabash is clearly seen. Another factor in giving value to land was its location along the main roads which crossed the state. Thus the lines of the roads from Shawneetown to Carlyle, Shawneetown to Kaskaskia, and Golconda to Kaskaskia, are clearly indicated by the holdings, although these are more broken than those along the streams. Between these roads in the interior of the state were tracts containing ten or a dozen townships in each of which scarcely a single section of land had been sold.
Significant as is the distribution of purchased land, it is not a definitive index of the progress of settlement for two reasons; in the first place much land was purchased for speculation rather than for settlement, and in the second place many settlers lived on land which still belonged to the government.
Before land could be purchased from the government, the speculators had been obliged to confine their operations to the field of private claims; but many of the original French and American holders of these claims were readily induced to dis- pose of them to the more enterprising men with capital, and as a result thousands of acres passed into the possession of such men as John Edgar and William Morrison. When the govern- ment land sales began, speculators were always on hand to pick up the choice tracts which, because of their supposedly favorable location, were expected to rise in value rapidly. As has already been noted much of the land along the lower Ohio was pur-
LANDS ENTERED IN ILLINOIS 1818
Tracts in the Edwardsville district have been taken from the Tract Book, those in the Kaskaskia district from the Application Books, and those in the Shawneetown district from the Tract Book and Entry Books. These records are in the auditor's office, Springfield, Illinois. Entries in the Illinois part of the Vincennes district have been plotted from the Entry Books in the general land office, Washington, D. C. Lands included in the old surveys have been plotted trom copies of the plats in the surveyor's office, St. Louis, made for and certified by F. R. Conway, surveyor of the public lands in the states of Illinois and Missouri, February 7, 1848 (bound volume in the auditor's office, Springfield). The boundaries of the Wabash saline reservation have been taken from American State Papers, Public Lands, 3:270.
SEMINARY
TOWNSHIP
EDWARDSVILLE
3
2
6
2
LE
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
10
11 14
S
N
3
CKASKASKIA
SHAWNEETOWN
WABASH SALINE
RESERVATION
Land office districts and reservations.
Present county boundaries.
Townships.
Tracts entered prior to January 1, 1819.
VINCENNES
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9 N
A
2
53
THE PUBLIC LANDS
chased in large tracts by firms of eastern men. The resident speculators wisely devoted themselves largely to land in the Edwardsville district which was settling up rapidly, while on the eastern side of the territory, Morris Birkbeck entered 26,400 acres of land in Edwards county during 1817 and 1818. Birk- beck's purchases were made in part to secure the land for the - English immigrants whom he was inducing to come to Illinois, but it is undoubtedly true that he and the other leaders in the English settlement hoped for great personal returns from the rise in value of the land. The effects on settlement of the exten- sive purchase of land by speculators were very great. Desirable tracts in the neighborhood of settlements were held at prices too high for most of the immigrants to pay, and consequently they were forced to go farther afield or take up less desirable land. The result of this and of the uniform price of government land, regardless of quality, was a wide spread scattering of the settlers over a vast extent of territory instead of an orderly pro- gression along a definite frontier.61
The occupation of the public lands by settlers long before they could purchase and the measures which were taken for their relief have already been noted. The preemption acts did not entirely solve the problem, however, for no provision was made for those who settled after February 5, 1813; and many who had established themselves before that were too poor to exercise their preemption rights. Nor were these people inclined to surrender the land when it was purchased by others. The situation is well described in a letter written by the register of the Shawneetown land office to his superior in Washington in 1815. "Several persons," he wrote, "have called on me as the public Agent, to give them peaceable possession of their Lands -persons who are residing on them now, & were previously to the sale, refuse to give them up-a [n]d the rightfull owner is kept out of possession, who thinks his case a very hard one to be compelled after paying the Government for a tract of land to be reduced to the necessity of commencing a suit at Law to
"1Thwaites, Early Western Travels, II :277; Birkbeck, Letters from Illi- nois, 37, 81, 85, 120; Dana, Geographical Sketches, 143; Intelligencer, Novem- ber 20, 1816.
54
ILLINOIS IN 1818
obtain his just right-There are nearly a thousand improved places in this district that are not located, and if the Government does not adopt some energetic measures to nip this conduct in the bud it will retard the Sale of all those places which are or may be improved hereafter I hope this subject will present itself forcibly to your mind as it will materially affect the public sales."62 The situation was so serious that the matter was taken up with the secretary of state, and the president issued a proc- lamation directing that after a certain day in March, 1816, all squatters on the public lands should be removed. Against the execution of this proclamation, Benjamin Stephenson, the dele- gate from Illinois territory, protested vigorously. "Should this order be inforced," he wrote to the secretary of state, "it [wi]11 be distressing to many Citizens and not beneficial to the interest of the government, My object in addressing you, is, to solicit that a time may be set for the removal of the above settlers one or two months after they shall have an oppertunity of purchasing the land on which they have setted and made improvements." The marshal of Illinois territory actually made preparations to remove the intruders; but the secretary of the treasury wrote him on May II, 1816, recommending "a prudent and conciliatory course ;" and nothing seems to have been accom- plished. Two months earlier congress had passed an act author- izing the land officers to issue to settlers on unsold public lands permits to remain as tenants at will on condition of their agree- ing to "give quiet possession" whenever required to do so; but very few applications for such permits appear to have been received.63
The situation in Illinois at this time is typical of the history of the American frontier. Although large quantities of govern- ment land were on the market, the attraction of the wilderness and the desire to secure the choicest locations regularly led to
"Extract from Sloo to Meigs, March II, 1815, in United States State Department, Bureau of Indexes and Archives, "Miscellaneous Letters."
"3Stephenson to Monroe, January 19, 1816; Dallas to Fouke, May II, 1816; Fouke to Pope, January 5, 1817; all in United States State Department, Bureau of Indexes and Archives, "Miscellaneous Letters"; Statutes at Large, 3:260; Intelligencer, June 5, 1816; correspondence in auditor's office, Spring- field.
55
THE PUBLIC LANDS
settlement in advance of the purchase of the land; and this was true regardless of whether or not the land sales were delayed. Often, indeed, the frontier line of settlement was beyond the line of survey and even beyond that of the Indian cessions.
CHAPTER III
EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
The historian rarely has the aid of written records when he undertakes to determine the spread of population in a primitive region. In America, for instance, it is only with great difficulty that the location of the aborigines can be traced, because they migrated frequently and left very few records of their stay in any district. With the advent of Europeans, however, the problem assumes a very different aspect. From the first, their settle- ments had a permanency beyond the dreams of the savages; and the settlers, products of a mature civilization, kept definite written records of their activities. Instead of an evolution from a nebulous origin in prehistoric times, therefore, the settlement of the white race in America has been a well documented and comparatively orderly progress, like the advance of multitudi- nous chessmen across a gigantic board. .
Just how far the game had progressed into Illinois by the year in which the state was admitted to the union it is possible to determine with considerable accuracy from the records avail- able. In 1818 the legislature of the territory ordered a census to be taken, in order to substantiate the claim that the population was large enough to be organized as a state. The original law required the enumeration to be made between April I and June I, but a later act allowed the commissioners to draw up supple- mentary schedules listing settlers who came in after June I. That there was some padding of the lists is certain, but the greater part of this was probably in the supplementary schedules ; most of these appear to have been lost.64
"For an abstract of the census of 1818, see appendix, p. 318.
(56)
57
EXTENT OF SETTLEMENT
Commissioners appointed for the purpose canvassed each of the fifteen counties, recording the names of the heads of families and the number of individuals in each household. The commis- sioner for Franklin county was the only one who noted loca- tions of settlers; but since as a rule the other commissioners appear to have gone through the county from settlement to set- tlement, entering the information in the order in which they received it, the arrangement of names furnishes a good clew ; having learned from county histories and similar sources the location of a few of the settlers, it is easy to fix, at least roughly, the location of the rest.65 It is chiefly on the basis of the results thus worked out that the accompanying map of settlement has been constructed.66.
The frontier of extreme settlement, it will be noted, may be roughly indicated by a line drawn from outpost to outpost across the state. Starting at the Indiana boundary in the southeastern part of Edgar county, the line runs in a southwestern direction to the northeastern corner of Jasper county, then drops down to the Vincennes road, and follows that west to the third prin- cipal meridian. From there it curves back to take in the settle- ments on the Kaskaskia in northern Fayette county, crosses Hurricane creek in the southeastern part of Montgomery, and Shoal creek in the vicinity of Hillsboro, and then drops back to the settlements on Silver creek in northern Madison county. Curving northward again to the settlements of Macoupin county, it crosses the northeastern corner of Jersey, takes in the south- western part of Greene, and crosses Calhoun to the Mississippi river. Doubtless there were unrecorded establishments above this line in some places but in general it can be taken to indicate the extreme limit of the progress of settlement in 1818. Not all the region below the line, however, can be considered as settled territory. "In the year 1818," writes Ford, "the settled
"This procedure has been impossible in the case of St. Clair and Craw- ford counties, the names for which are arranged alphabetically. The sched- ules for Randolph and the principal part of Edwards have not been found.
"No attempt has been made to give specific references to the many county histories and biographical collections which have been consulted. A bibliogra- phy of these and a discussion of their value will be found in Buck, Travel and Description of Illinois, 253-382.
58
ILLINOIS IN 1818
part of the State extended a little north of Edwardsville and Alton; south, along the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio; east, in the direction of Carlysle to the Wabash; and down the Wabash and the Ohio, to the mouth of the last-named river. But there was yet a very large unsettled wilderness tract of country, within these boundaries, lying between the Kaskaskia river and the Wabash; and between the Kaskaskia and the Ohio, of three days' journey across it."67
From a study of the census schedules, it appears that what may properly be termed the settled area lay in two widely sepa- rated tracts. The larger of these was in the west and consisted of the triangle bounded by the Mississippi and Kaskaskia rivers, Shoal creek, and the frontier line of survey. In this region of less than two thousand square miles dwelt about fifteen thousand people, more than a third of the population of the state, and the average density was not far from eight to the square mile. The other settled district lay along the Wabash river on the eastern side of the state, extending from the site of York in southeastern Clark county to Saline creek and having an aver- age width of about fifteen miles. Nearly another third of the population, approximately twelve thousand, dwelt in this region of some fifteen hundred square miles, thus giving it a density about equal to that of the settled area in the west. Between these two districts and north of the one on the Mississippi lived the remaining third of the inhabitants in an immense area of at least seven thousand square miles. The density of the popula- tion in this region averaged less than two to the square mile, the number used by the United States census bureau in delimiting the frontier of settlement.
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