Who Owns My Land?

The Federal government's land surveys lagged behind the settling of the Western lands.  The settlers had little or no patience with Federal bureaucracy assigning lands.  Only gradually did Federal laws begin to take into account the needs and life of the new residents out West.

One of those who championed the rights and interest of the settlers was Thomas Hart Benton during his 30 years in the Senate, 1821-1851.  He argued for a fixed minimum price for all Western lands, and urged that the price be based on the quality of the land.  Benton secured changes in the laws to protect the settlers who had cultivated land on public domain without prior formalities.  The law was slowly changed to save the "squatters" rights.

Even so, these changes were incredibly slow to materialize.  In 1830, but not made permanent until 1841, the settlers was give some temporary legal protection against purchase by a non-resident.  Now a settlers had the first bid on a tract of land up to 160 acres at minimum price, but acreage over 160 acres usually went up for public auction.

The Homestead Act of 1862 enabled a settler to secure Federal title of 160 acres free of any charge except the registration fee.  The settler had to have lived continuously on the land for five years at the time of application.  By that time though most of the best land had been settled and a Western lifestyle established.

Next time...Protection Unions

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 18, 1983,  Dr. Sally Ride becomes the American women in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger on its second mission.  

This Land in My Land

Traveling back in time to a wide open West.  Before the Gold Rush.  A nearly empty continent west of the Allegheny Mountains.  The Great Land Rush of the 19th century in America.  When there was no government rule, just land for the taking.  Or was there?

The western public lands were technically under the control of the Federal government headquartered in the East.  The belief was that you could not deal with land at a distance without an accurate definition of what you were dealing with.  This led to surveying the lands into rectangle townships - each six miles square with 36 sections, each a mile square of 640 acres.  The sale of these large tracts of land to those in the East with money seemed the simplest and most orderly way of settling the West.  Beginning with Ohio in 1803 (the first public land state) the government kept the title to all ungranted land with the exception of that for education.  Nice and orderly...

That's not how it actually happened though...the first settlers, called "squatters" were those that got there first and they didn't wait for any laws or deeds to tell them they owned the land.  They cared less and knew even less what the government said.  To have waited for protection by law would have been to lose all the advantages of being there first.  So they made their own laws.

These settlers came without proper documentation, nor the intention of adhering to any program or surveys.  They stopped here, they stopped there, according to how the land looked, how the wagon was faring, if the oxen were tired.  More times than not they didn't stay put and moved on - not really knowing where their final destination was, but hoping for the best land.  However orderly and neat might the Federal plan be, the settlement of the West was anything but that - nearly all westward movement in America in the 19th century was a land rush.

Next time...building a system of laws.

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 15, 1846, the Oregon Treaty is signed between the US and Great Britain, establishing the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Georgia as the boundary between the United States and British Canada.  The United States gained control of the Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana while the British retained Vancouver Island and navigation rights to part of the Columbia River. 

Ceaseless Propaganda

One of California's most ardent supporters against Mexican rule was a Harvard graduate and self proclaimed doctor named John Marsh.  Marsh arrived from Missouri and became successful in Los Angeles before buying a large tract of land in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1830s. (see his house in left photo!) He believed that American migration would increase the value of his property so much that he began a campaign to convince his friends in Independence about the perfect life in California.

The town's newspapers picked up the story and began to tell of how California was the life for any farmer tired of low prices and high debts.  According to the Marsh's stories, no man need to stoop to manual labor out in California when the Indians could do it for little or no pay.  He wrote, "the only thing we lack here is a good Government.  What we want most is more people.  If we had 50 families we could do exactly as we please without any fear of being troubled."  (California was still under Mexican rule.)

Marsh's propaganda about the "good life" in California was supplemented by sailor and writer Richard Henry Dana, by explorers Joseph Walker, Jed Smith, and James Ohio Pattie.  By 1814 these men had turned a tiny group of traders and merchants into a steady overland migration of farm families from Missouri to California.

By 1842 Monterey, for example, was a small but prosperous shipping center for American hide buyers. Richard Dana called Monterey, "the  most civilized  looking place in California" in 1840.
Some of that original "civilization" stood well into the 20th century...California's first theater, American consul's house, court house, and the royal presidio chapel (which is still standing and the only presidio chapel still in existence in California).

Next time...Ranch life in California
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On November 28, 1520, after sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships, becoming the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic

Emotional Time for Women

To women of the mid-1850s traveling on the Overland Trail, the decision to go west in the first place was an emotional one. 

Says Mary A Jones.
       "In the winter of 18 and 46 our neighbors got hold of Fremont's History of California and began
talking of moving to the New Country and brought the book to my husband to read and he was carried away with the idea too.  I said, 'Oh let us not go;  Our neighbors, some of them old men and women with large families but it made no difference.  They must go...We sold our home and what we could not take with us and what we could not sell, we gave away and on the 7th day of May 1846 we joined the camp for California."

(Ed note:  I do not correct spelling or punctuation in the diary accounts)

The decision to leave was never the wives' or the children's wishes - it was solely the husband's. 
A woman went with him because it was her duty to follow him.

As the grandmother of General George S Patton, Margaret Hereford Wilson, wrote in 1850:  "Dr. Wilson has determined to go to California.  I am going with him, as there is no other alternative.  I thought I felt bad the last time I wrote at Independence, but it was nothing like this."

Some women wrote years later in their memoirs and the emotions had not waned over the years.
Many families lost children during the long journey west...

Twenty years later, Abby E Fulkerath said "Agreeable to the wishes of my husband, I left all my relatives in Ohio and started on this long and perilous journey.  It proved a hard task to leave but still harder to leave my children in graveyards."



Next time:  The Broken Social Circle
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Today in Pioneer History: On June 30, 1876, after a two day walk, wounded soldiers are evacuated from Little Big Horn by Steamboat.