USA > Maine > Maine Public Lands 1781-1795 : claims, trespassers, and sales > Part 2
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38. Petition of Bancroft, Spaulding et al., to 1781 Committee, Feb. 1, 1785, Eastern Lands, Box 15, Papers Relating to Jackson and Flint Purchase, 1791-1795; Agreement between Committee on Eastern Lands and Henry Dearborn et al. for Twelve Townships, 1792.
39. Noah Miller to Committee, May 20, 1784, Eastern Lands, Box 10, Papers Relating to Bakerstown, Belmont ... 1786-1820.
40. e.g. Petition of number of inhabitants of Pownalborough to General Court, (no date), with Mass. Resolve, Nov. 17, 1788, Chap. 37.
41. e.g. Memorial of inhabitants of Numbers Four and Five on Bluehill Bay and Numbers Six and One on Union River and a place called New Bordwine, Nov. 16, 1785, with Mass. Resolve, July 8, 1786, Chap. 130. .
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It has been suggested that some people thought the Government or the private proprietors would give them their holdings on easy terms.
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Once the settlers were on the land a lack of law enforcement and an absence of proprietary supervision left them there.
Some of those people said that once they settled they did want to buy the land and had attempted to do so, but for various reasons could not and therefore the 1780's found them still living there with- out legal right. The people of New Worcester explained that it was the confining presence of the British forces who controlled the area during the war that made it impossible for them to go to Boston to request a 43 grant. In another instance the settlers said they had tried to make application for the land but for various reasons had not succeeded in getting a grant. In the first place, either because their agent had been lax or for some other reason unknown to them, their application had not been presented to the General Court for action. Then when they did manage to get their petition before the Court, that body had tabled it, 44 and at that present writing still had not acted on it.
A special case grew out of the settlement of the Plymouth Company claim. Some settlers in Sandy River Lower Township applied to the
42. Letter, ["General Lincoln" and "1787" added in other hand- writing ], Kennebec Purchase Papers.
43. Petition of settlers of New Worcester, Nov. 4, 1783, in Maine Historical Magazine, vols I and II, I, 14-15.
44. Bancroft, Spaulding et al., to 1781 Committee, Feb. 1, 1785, Eastern Lands, Box 15.
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General Court for a grant soon after they settled. However, that was in the year 1778 and the war prevented any action. Since then they bad not made further requests of the State because they were led to be- lieve that their land was in the Plymouth Patent, and they had made an arrangement with those proprietors for about half a town. However, the newly established boundary had proved them to be actually on State land 45
so now they were asking the General Court again for their holdings. .
Experience was to show that these trespassers seriously hampered the job of conveying land to private individuals and mich time would have to be spent in reaching agreements with them.
Finally, great tracts of unappropriated land ready for transfer to private ownership spread out over the District. This constituted the third field of action.
Among the reasons that led to this transfer was a belief that the economic health of the State would be enhanced if the area were settled. Readers' letters to their newspapers setting forth their views on various subjects were a more important part of the paper then than they are today. Often they were quite lengthy and were given a prominent place in the publication. Wild lands was one of the subjects discussed and one writer pointed out that if those in Massachusetts who had decided to leave their old homes could find these fresh lands in Massachusetts, 46 they might decide to remain in the State. The wealth of the State,
45. Petition of associates with Mass. Resolve, Feb. 4, 1790, Chap. 68.
46. Letter from a "Taxpayer" in Boston Gazette, July 5, 1784.
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he must have thought, would be increased by their work. Of course, too, he may have been giving some thought to the need of maintaining a large potential of military manpower as Moses Greenleaf, who spent a great deal of his life promoting an interest in Maine lands with his writings 48
47 and other unceasing personal efforts, did some years later. An- other man wrote that foreigners settling in the State would add to
"our real wealth" greatly. 49 Governor Hancock stated that:
... every tree they (settlers] cut down and every acre of wild land they subdue contributes to the wealth of the State. And ... the strength, number and respectability of the Commonwealth are increased by extending our settlements into the wilderness ... . 50
Several years later Moses Greenleaf stated his belief that the principal reason for the State's selling these lands was the desire to ยท increase its prosperity by providing a chance for surplus money and 51
human energy looking for new outlets to go to work. The same idea is expressed by one of the more prolific writers of Maine town histories in his volume on Bethel. 52
47. Article on Moses Greenleaf in Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. plus supplements (New York, 1931), VII, 582-583.
48. Greenleaf, Moses A., Statistical View of the District of Maine, (Boston, 1816), p. 136.
49. "Scribble Scrabble" in Cumberland Gazette, (1785-1795) June 8, 1786.
50. Hancock's Message to General Court in Boston Gazette, Feb. 7, 1791.
51. Greenleaf, Statistical View of Maine, p. 107.
52. Lapham, History of Bethel ... 1768-1890, p. 17.
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A second reason for the interest in these lands was the thought that the sale of the land was a partial answer to the State debt problem. Again among those who wrote about this aspect of the situation was Governor Hancock whose messages to the General Court listed this item repeatedly. These messages contained the following reasons for a con- cern in the payment of this debt. In the first place the honor and 53 reputation of the State depended upon it. Further, a part of this State debt was Massachusetts's share of the Federal debt. If our young republic was to achieve significant stature in the eyes of the other nations, she, too, must pay the bills she owed. John Adams, who was well acquainted with European thought at this time, wrote about the importance of this in a letter to Hancock, and Hancock emphasized these 54 sentiments in his remarks to the General Court in October of 1783. In order for the Federal Union to pay this debt each state including Massachusetts must pay its share. In addition to the need for sus- taining the honor of the State and nation, justic demanded that those who had loaned money and those who had served in the army -- people who had come to the aid of the Commonwealth in her hour of need - should
53. Hancock's Message to the General Court, Sept. 24, 1783, in Boston Gazette, Sept. 29, 1783.
54. Hancock's Message to the General Court, Oct. 9, 1783, in Boston Gazette, Oct. 13, 1783.
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now be paid as they had been promised. The notes were due and those who 55
held them should receive their money.
The citizens were anxious that the burden of the public debt should not weigh on them any more heavily than was necessary and that it should not remain overly long. Their conviction that the lands should be used to help pay the debt also found its way into print. One writer, assuming it was a foregone conclusion that the land should be used for this purpose, said that the government must hurry or all the land would be claimed by people who had moved in without the blessing of official consent. These people would then perhaps stand on the pro- position that possession was nine-tenths of the law and would refuse to pay anything at all. As a result the state would lose out completely -- the settlers might even take example from the folks in Vermont and secede entirely. 56
There is evidence that the matter was also discussed at public ' meetings. The Boston Gazette printed extracts from a speech made at one of the county conventions, an institution of the times which had 57 as its purpose the redressing of grievances. In this speech the speaker, in accusing the General Court of failing to do its job, stated
55. Hancock's Message to the General Court, Sept. 24, 1783, in Boston Gazette, Sept. 29, 1783.
56. Letter from a "Taxpayer" in Boston Gazette, July 5, 1784. 57. Anson Ely Morse, The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800 (Princeton, 1909), p.36.
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that the lands were the principal source of the public's wealth and the debt could be paid with them. 58
If the Maine lands were to speed up the wheels of business and pour wealth into the state coffers, it was, of course, necessary that someone should be ready to buy them. People were moving out from the settled towns to new homes and some of them had come to Maine. There was no doubt every reason to believe that more would be wanting to go. Indeed, this did prove to be the case. The settled portions of New England had virtually all the people they could hold. Farming was then the foundation of the economy of the area, but it was a most unscientific sort of farming. No serious attempt was made to increase the productivity of the soil by fertilization or rotation of crops so that more could be raised per acre. This meant there was no chance of the farms supporting an ever increasingly larger number of people. At this time much of rural New England had already become overpopulated and, therefore, as the population increased some had to move on to new 59 places. Families were large and this meant that a large number did move. In some cases, in fact, it seemed that fathers foresaw that their sons would want lands of their own in a few years and went to
58. Extract from a County Convention speech in Boston Gazette, March 15, 1784.
59. Percy Wells Bidwell, Rural Economy in New England at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Transactions, XX, (1916), p. 390. .
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Maine to establish themselves where these sons could find it readily 60 when they grew into manhood.
Several reasons influenced men who moved to choose the unappro- priated lands of Maine as their destination. The military duties of some men had brought them to Maine; they had liked what they had seen, and they had returned after the fighting was over. One example was General Henry Dearborn. He had gone on Arnold's Quebec expedition, which had carried him through the District, and later came back bringing with 61
him a number of others from his home town of Epping, New Hampshire. In other cases it was the lure of game and the tales of those (largely men from older sections of Maine) who had gone into the Maine woods in 62 search of it that attracted men there. There surely were a number of other reasons, too. The coastal regions received numbers of people 63 from the shore sections of Massachusetts proper, people who became familiar with the area on sea voyages. However, it is impossible to compile a complete catalog of all the reasons involved for going to Maine because many left no record.
60. e.g. Letter, settlers of Seven Mile Brook to General Court, Eastern Lands, Box 8, Applications for Land, 1786-1853.
61. Harry M. Cochrane, History of Monmouth and Wales, 2 vols. (East Winthrop, 1894), I, 94-95.
62. Francis Gould Butler, A History of Farmington, Franklin County, Maine, (Farmington, 1885), p. 19; O. B. Classon, "Early Settlers" in History of Litchfield ... 1795-1895, (Augusta, 1897), p. 21.
63. Lois Kimball Mathews, The Expansion of New England, (Boston 1909), p. 141.
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In addition to the people looking for new homes, there was another class of people who were potential purchasers of real estate. This was the group that had surplus cash and was looking around for a chance to invest it or who wanted to get some quickly in an easy way. Since the economy of the nation was rural, land was considered a good investment. It is uncertain just how strong an interest in speculation there was in the early eighties, but a high fever developed within a short time and this unsettled northeastern section of the country largely unclaimed by private ownership did not go unnoticed. A certain Robert 64
Page was one of the very first to buy land. Later, when asked by the Land Committee to make a payment then in arrears, he wrote that due to the scarcity of money he had not been able to resell the land as he had 65 hoped. General Benjamin Lincoln, too, tried his hand at speculation 66 in Maine in the middle eighties. An indication that many others in- vested in this way at this time is found in the early history of the towns of Bethel, Turner, Jay, Livermore, and Paris where the records show that a number of people engaged in the buying and selling of
64. Report of Committee, Table 3, p. 6, June 16, 1795, Eastern Lands, Box 49, Report, June 16, 1795.
65. Robert Page to Committee, Feb. 23, 1788, Eastern Lands, Box 17.
66. It so happened that he lost heavily, but he remained a firm friend of the area, and some of the best insights into the life of the region are to be gained from long letters he wrote championing this or that project that he considered would be beneficial to it. (William Bingham's Maine Lands, ed. Allis, p. 174.)
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rights.
67 One group of settlers in this area wrote that there were only a few people who were not settlers who were included in their application 68 to buy a certain tract. This situation was quite likely typical of the whole District in this respect.
The question to be answered here is this: Did these people who vere anxious to procure land put pressure on the State Legislature to initiate a policy of transferring the state domain to private ownership as a means of satisfying this desire? There does not seem to be much evidence to show that they did. In other words the original motivating force behind the State's decision to sell was a desire to secure the benefits to be derived from the proceeds of the sales rather than a wish to please people who desired to acquire possession of the land.
There were two contemporary events that may have focused tention on Maine in the early eighties, spurring people on to straighten out land affairs there and pursue an active policy of development.
A letter has been mentioned which made reference to affairs in Vermont where a declaration of independence from any other state (that is from New Hampshire and New York claimants in particular) was pro- claimed in 1777 and agitation continued until the section was admitted
67. Lapham, History of Bethel ... 1768-1890, p. 392.
68. Bancroft, Spaulding, et al., petition for a tract on Twenty Mile River so called, Feb. 1, 1785, Eastern Lands, Box 10.
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to the Union as a separate state in 1791. Although allusions to this topic were not common in the newspapers, it is possible that these activities zay have colored the thinking of the citizens of the Bay State and spawned ideas designed to keep Maine within the fold of the mother state.
The dispute between this country and Great Britain over the exact location of the eastern boundary of Maine may also have been partly responsible for the development of a definite land policy on the part of Massachusetts. This dispute arose immediately after the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and continued until it was settled by the decision of a board of commissioners in 1793. 70 The nub of this dis- agreement was the identification of the river called the St. Croix by the drafters of the treaty when they used it as the boundary in that sector. Colonel John Allan, who knew the region vell, wrote a letter to Hancock informing him that British subjects were settling on lard there thought by the Americans to fall on our side of the boundary line. 70a Hancock in turn passed this letter on to the General Court. It vill be seen that the General Court suggested in October, 1783, that some
69. Edward Day Collins, A History of Vermont, (Boston, 1903), pp. 115, 128, and 134.
70. Smith, Edgar Crosby, "Our Eastern Boundary, The St. Croix River Controversy," in Maine: A History, ed. Hatch, I, 83-84.
70a. Hancock's Message to General Court, Sept. 24, 1783, in Boston Gazette, Sept. 29, 1783.
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townships might be laid out on the St. Croix River, meaning, of course, 71 the stream to which we gave that name.
It may have been thought that a permanent settlement there would strengthen our claim. However, on the other hand, the Land Committee reported in July of 1784, that it did not believe the General Court would want to incur the expense of laying out towns along the St. Croix, a step the Committee itself had approved the previous March, until the boundary had been settled. 72 This would indicate that the strengthening of this boundary was not an aim of the General Court's suggestion, or if it was, the Committee did not know it. Later in July the General Court did . reaffirm its approval of laying out these towns, but it did not say it 73 had to be done at once.
71. Mass. Resolve, Oct. 28, 1783, Chap. 102.
72. Report of Committee, July 7, 1784, Mass. Senate Document 173, Mass. Senate Documents, 1780 to date (Mass. Archives).
73. Mass. Resolve, July 9, 1784, Chap. 103.
PART II
FOUNDATION LEGISLATION
The various resolves dealing with the public land in Massachu- setis in the period from May 1781 to November 1784 are discussed in Part Two. They were the first steps taken by the State in this area of its responsibility and were climaxed by a resolve which established a standard method of procedure for tackling the three main jobs in- volved. Thus was the foundation laid for a state land program.
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CHAPTER II
FOUNDATION LEGISLATION
MAY 1, 1781
The first action taken by the General Court of the State of Massachusetts dealing with its Maine public land was a response to in- terest in the claim of the heirs of William and Bridget Phillips in York County. In early 1781 the Senate drew up a proposed resolve which provided for the appointment of a committee to find out what land was state property between the Saco River and the New Hampshire boundary and, in particular, to determine the location of the line that separated the state land from that owned by people by virtue of the Phillips 1 claim. At this point, the General Court was concerned primarily with the clarification of land claims with a passing thought perhaps being given to the possibility of future land sales.
This resolve, however, was not passed in this form or at this time. Rather the lawmakers examined the land situation as a whole more thoroughly and on May 1 passed a House sponsored draft which was much broader in scope than the original and in addition, gave directions for carrying on the work. 2 The whole state was included within its pro- 3 visions and a committee of five people was appointed to do the job.
1. Senate Order, Feb. 26, 1781, with Mass. Resolve, May 1, 1781, Chap. 115.
2. Mass. Resolve, May 1, 1781, Chap. 113.
3. These men were: Jedediah Preble, Jonathan Greenleaf, David Sewall, John Lewis, and William Lithgow.
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Some lands claimed by private owners were certainly state owned. Therefore the committee was instructed to report all claims of doubtful validity to the General Court.
Furthermore, lines between private holdings and the public domain were to be run out and marked wherever that was necessary to prevent trespassing and illegal entry on the latter. Here we meet the tres- passing problem; this resolve, indeed, gave it the lion's share of attention.
In order to stop these practices the committee was directed to make an investigation and deal with anyone found guilty of such an act. Its action was to be just and considerate but decisive. In the under- taking it would be concerned with two groups of people.
The first were those who had gone onto the state land and com- mitted damage, or who might do so in the future. Here the Court was probably referring principally to timber thieves as they were a scourge of the times and timber was the one thing most likely to be stolen from unguarded landa. The Committee was instructed to give these people a chance to pay for the damage they had done according to the Committee's estimate. If the culprits refused to avail themselves of this oppor- tunity, the Committee was then to prosecute them before the law.
The other group was composed of those who had made a settlement on the land, or who might do so later on. This group, too, was to be given a chance to settle with the State without a lawsuit being brought against them. If they showed a willingness to pay for the plot on which
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they were squatting and gave satisfactory security, the Committee could leave them alone for the time being and report the case to the General Court for a final decision, provided it considered that such a course of action would be in the best interests of the State.
The lawmakers wanted a minimum of trouble so they ordered the Committee to have this resolve, or such parts as it considered neces- sary, published in the Boston and Worcester newspapers. They thought that such a notice would help to save the persons involved the cost of a lawsuit.
Undoubtedly with an eye on the possibility of future land sales the Committee was instructed to "estimate and ascertain" the total amount of land that still remained the property of the state.
To enable the Committee to carry out this work, the General Court vested it with certain powers. It authorized it to make or have made whatever surveys it considered necessary, and it empowered it to hire and pay whatever attorneys were necessary to carry out legal action against those who failed to come to an agreement with the Commit- tee.
It was provided that any three of the Committee should be con- sidered a quorum for carrying on its official business.
From time to time the Committee was to make a report of its activities to the General Court and state under oath the amount of time and money it had spent, and the money and the securities for the payment of money it had received.
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JULY 11, 1783
Two years later, probably not realizing the size of the job it had given the Committee in 1781, the General Court took steps to bring this work to completion. First, it named a joint committee of the General Court to revise the 1781 Resolve and devise a method that 4 would expedite the work of carrying out its designs. Very shortly this committee drew up a new resolve and presented it to the Court. On July 11, it was passed. 5
This resolve directed the land committee to complete its work in York County with "dispatch." It was either to come to an agreement with those who had come on state property and committed waste before May 1, 1781, or, if this proved to be impossible, to bring a lawsuit against them. Those who were guilty of this wrongdoing after this date, however, were not given a chance to pay up out of Court; prosecution was the only treatment mentioned.
In the case of those who had made a settlement either before or after May, 1781, there was an innovation that for the first time gave a Massachusetts state legislative committee the power to sell state land and grant deeds. The resolve stated that:
..... and in case any of the illegal possessors aforementioned, shall agree with the said committee ..... in such case the said committee are hereby empowerod to give a good and sufficient deed of conveyance.
4. Order initiated in Senate, June 14, 1783, with Mass. Resolve, July 11, 1783, Chap. 99.
5. Mass. Resolve, July 11, 1783, Chap. 99.
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The alienation of state land which the Legislative had kept as a pre- rogative of its own was now delegated to one of its committees. However, it will be noticed that at this time this power was limited to very small amounts of land.
Trespassers who agreed to buy were allowed to pay for their land on time provided they gave good security to complete the payments with- in eighteen months.
The Court also wanted to arrange its affairs in York County on an orderly basis. State property in this county included a number of scattered strips too small to be made into townships. It also included a relatively large area below Fryeburg. The small strips were to be surveyed and appraised, and the appraisal, along with a plan and a statement of the contents of each, was to be given to the Court. The larger area was to be divided into townships of about six miles square each.
The surveyor was an important man in the work of the land com- mittees. In the very early stages the State set up a general surveying policy which was followed with but minor exceptions throughout the period. A significant part of this policy was set forth in this resolve. Of primary concern was the accuracy of the survey. If people knew that property lines vere correct, uncertainty was eliminated. Further- more, cheating was forestalled. Therefore it was specified that the surveyors with their assistants should be under oath to perform their
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duties faithfully when they surveyed the townships mentioned. This was 6
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