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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
The pre-1860 history of federal and state efforts to privatize public lands in Michigan is covered under six operational and policy themes: (1) quieting Native American claims to their lands, (2) surveying and platting the state's land, (3) reviewing the federal and state offices administering the privatization process, (4) analyzing federal and state land policies, (5) discussing the role that speculators had in the privatization process, and (6) reviewing the effects that privatization had on the settlement of the state. Privatization was both a partial success and a deeply flawed process.
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From its very beginning under the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Michigan was a public land territory and state. (1) This meant that the new national government, even under the Articles of Confederation, was responsible for disposing all of the state's land except for a small number of private claims. Of course the various American Indian groups could claim sovereignty over the state's acres as well. Before Michigan could be settled, these sovereignty claims had to be resolved, the Native Americans themselves removed from their lands, and the land surveyed and then sold (patented).
Historians have largely overlooked the privatization of Michigan's lands during often-trying economic times, high population mobility, and weak governments. The major works are two unpublished doctoral dissertations (2) and an unpublished Master's thesis. (3) Although Kenneth Lewis and others have covered selected portions of the results attributable to federal programs, (4) few scholars have responded to Paul W. Gates' 1960 challenge that "a great deal of intensive research in the entry volumes of various land offices needs to be done preparatory to the history of [land] disposal in states like Michigan." (5)
The present article revisits this under-reported history, one that can be seen both as a partial success and as a deeply flawed process. Success refers to the federal government's privatization of nearly 14 million Michigan acres by 1860 as well as over 12 million acres granted to the state for its own follow-on sale or pass-through to private interests. (6) By 1860, 53 percent of the approximately 26 million acres in the 68 counties of Michigan's Lower Peninsula had been privatized by the federal government and another four percent was privatized from the various federal land grants given to the State. (7) While these large numbers represent a significant success, the privatization process also suffered flaws, including cases of fraud, consequences attributable to a weak credit system, and the major role that speculators played in the market for Michigan land. Large landowners claimed 57 percent of all Lower Peninsula land patented as of 1850. (8)
Rather than follow a traditional time line history of the major federal and state land-disposal laws, agencies and their programs, the present review focuses on six operational and policy challenges that privatization programs had to address. First, we begin with the transfer of Native American sovereignty and native peoples themselves from lands they occupied and used. Second, completing the rectangular surveys was a major accomplishment performed under often very trying circumstances. Third, the national and state offices created to administer the privatization process accomplished much hut there were also occasional problems, some of them quite serious. Fourth, the design of federal programs and mistakes by the State of Michigan together helped create barriers to patenting land by fanner-settlers, Fifth, in line with prior research, we discuss speculation and speculators. Finally, we revisit one of the founding purposes of privatization - - to encourage settlement. Neither the state nor the federal governments developed comprehensive settlement policies for Michigan in specific and nationwide more generally.
De-Settling the Original Populations
The 1785 and 1787 Ordinances acknowledged the physical presence and sovereignty of Native Americans in Michigan and elsewhere. (9) Early national legislation stated that "The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent, and in their property, rights, and liberty they shall never be invaded or disturbed unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them." (10) The national government recognized the claims that Native Americans had to their vaguely demarcated domains. These claims had to be quieted, as was done in Michigan by six major treaties, not by congressionally enacted statutes. That is, Michigan's scattered acephalous (without a head) hands were treated by Washington as foreign governments that could sign treaties involving the transfer of property rights that were not part of the Native Americans' unwritten legal systems--systems that seemed to recognize sovereignty and rights of use hut not sole ownership nor land demarcated by clear boundaries. (11)
The first Indian cession was effected on August 3, 1795 (The Treaty of Greenville). (12) Beginning with the Treaty of Detroit in 1807, a series of treaties was initiated two decades after the Land Ordinance of 1785. (13) But quieting claims to sovereignty was not enough to encourage a large influx of white settlers. Under the threat or actual use of force as well as by deceptive if not dishonest means, the native populations were physically removed from the lands covered by these treaties. (14)
Rectangular Surveys
Land was not to be auctioned or sold until it had been surveyed. To accomplish this, the Land Ordinance of 1785 established the rectangular system of surveys. It took time to work out the administrative structures and technical procedures for implementing this ordinance. To this end, the Act of 1796 established the Office of the Surveyor General that in turn was to appoint a corps of surveyors- Private contractors performed actual on-the-ground surveys. These contractors were to divide land into congressional townships each with 36 square miles (in theory). A township's position (its "number") was exactly located as north or south of a "baseline" and east or west ("range") of a prime meridian. Townships were in turn subdivided into 36 squares, each theoretically one square mile or 640 acres. The resulting sections were numbered from 1 to 36 beginning with Number 1 in the northeast corner of the township and from there running west to Section 6, dropping one section south to Section 7 and then running in a systematic zigzag manner to Section 36 in the far southeast corner of the township. An east-west, north-south and fractional (1/4 and 1/2) system is used to identify any specific parcel of land within a section. (15)
This system of man-made grids and the history of the rectangular survey are covered in a number of excellent volumes. (16) The borders of the grids were marked by blazes in forested areas. (17) The grid was displayed as a plat (map) so that prospective settlers and buyers could more easily find and accurately define acres of interest to them. As a help to different potential patentees, surveyors in 1815 were directed to "be careful to note" in their field books the "quality of the soil" relating to potential agricultural use. (18) Lumbermen were also beneficiaries of these notes, as surveyors were to locate at each corner of a section "witness" or bearing trees, and their size and species were to be noted. (19)
Most of Michigan's Lower Peninsula was surveyed by the time the Territory became a state in 1837. Over two-million acres were surveyed as early as 1819. This number jumped to over eleven million in 1833. From 1837 to 1840, all except 23 townships were surveyed in the lower 68 counties. These accomplishments refer primarily to township borders. Laying out of section lines within townships lagged. In 1837, the Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO) authorized the survey of section lines in all townships south of 30 North that "would command purchasers to a reasonable amount, if brought into market immediately after the survey shall he completed." (20) With some possible exceptions in the southwestern part of the state, the number of acres proclaimed for patenting was well ahead of sales (demand).
These surveys provided patentees with a secure legal title to acres that had exact geographical coordinates. However, Michigan surveys and surveyors' notes were hardly fault free. As early as 1830, some Oakland County residents complained in a memorial to Congress that the surveys in their county "were so inaccurate that they were useless." (21) Land-buyers had to be aware that some surveys were complete frauds. Deputy Surveyor Austin Burt remarked in his re-survey of county 13N, R1W (Porter Township in Midland County) that "the old Survey was found to be mostly fraudulent." (22) As early as 1826, the Surveyor General's office located in Chillicothe, Ohio reported that "designing men" or purchasers of public land "with a view to deceive and mislead others" altered the marks and numbers of early surveys. Harvey Parke, a contract surveyor living in Pontiac was dismissed for his misrepresentations. (23) Large-scale fraud in complete surveys was discovered for 400 townships north and west of Saginaw. (24) Although Congress appropriated funds in 1845 "for extensive re-surveys to correct erroneous and defective surveys" in Michigan and three other states, problems remained as late as 1855. The Commissioner of Michigan's State Land Office noted in his annual report for 1855 that the GLO re-surveys of "considerable tracts of land" forced the State to suspend its sales of a good quantity of swampland. (25)
That is, although it appears that a very large proportion of surveys met the legal specifications set for them, savvy land-buyers had to be wary. Still, field notes and plats helped reduce the cost and time of identifying good agricultural land and valuable timbered acres. And the patents themselves, as noted above, gave the owner secure legal title to the spatially-specific acres that were patented.
The Federal Government's implementing Agency
Several federal departments administered the national land privatization laws until the GLO was created in 1812 and placed under the Secretary of the Treasury before being transferred to the newly created Department of the Interior in 1849. This office was staffed by its Commissioner, Surveyor General, registers and receivers, superintendents of public sale and various support staffs in Washington and in an ever-growing number of local land offices dealing with speculators, settlers, land agents, landlookers, timber cruisers, lawyers, and dealers in land warrants, scrip and tax titles. Disposing of nearly 240,000 square miles in the five states of the Old Northwest, as well as land in other public domain states, was a major operation and an industry in itself. (26)
GLO had two major responsibilities. The first, preparing rectangular surveys, was a one-time only task (except for the re-surveying of approximately 400 Michigan townships northwest of Saginaw). The second and more enduring work was to process applications for patents, collect the established fees, and enter the approved sales in tract books.
Once the surveys were completed and land was put up for auction, local district offices of GLO processed patent applications and requests for information. Detroit had the first Michigan office in 1804 but it did not become fully operational until surveys were completed and land proclaimed available for auction. The first recorded sales were in 1818. New offices were added and district borders redrawn over time. Thirteen offices existed at one time or another. (27) These new offices were to help spread the workload and accelerate the processing time - - to make it more convenient for the buying public. The workload varied by year. "Michigan entered the Union as a child of the land office business," and demand for GLO services in 1836 exceeded the capabilities of the state's busiest district office, Bronson (now Kalamazoo). Five or six hundred clients queued up for service, and nationally the Washington office of the GLO was said to be three years behind in its work. (28)
These basic operating units had two officials in charge, a Register and a Receiver. Someone who wanted to make an "entry" indicated to the Register the desired tract of land. The resulting application led to the completion of a series of signed documents, including any monetary receipts required. If a military warrant or scrip was used, a certificate of location was required. The completed papers were sent to Washington and, if accepted, were returned to the district office and given to the applicant ("entryman"). The district office had already noted on its plat book that the specific...
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