Posted on 04/09/2014 8:28:06 AM PDT by xzins
Not much. It certainly wasn't sold off and the vast majority of it remained federal land for over 50 years until the Homestead Act of 1862 allowed people to claim land. Even then, though, there was a lot of land no one wanted--like the vast chunks of the west with no water. When the western lands were organized as territories and then granted statehood, the land that belonged to the federal government remained in the hands of the federal government.
Homesteading remained possible well into the 20th Century, but there's a reason no one ever claimed a lot of that land.
Jefferson was still involved in settling the northwest territory. Louisiana was a future vision except for immediate control of the Mississippi and getting the British out of Ore/Wash
The feds sent survey parties into Ohio, etc, settled the boundary claims of the eastern states who were extending fa into the west.
After the surveys the feds could sell off the land resulting in a solvent federal government.
I think this method of selling off land kept the income tax at bay for a century, when the states were all settled.
You mark it, and it’s yours.
Which is why Kentucky lands became such a nightmare of overlapping claims, provoking endless court battles. Daniel Boone ended up spending more time in court than he did at home and in the end lost everything, prompting him to move to the Spanish territories in Missouri.
This is some interesting stuff. (Thanks for getting me looking...:>) The following was all buttressed in the Northwest Ordinance which recognized those claims.
THE IRISH IN IOWA
Claim and Cabin
For many days the ox-drawn prairie schooner moved slowly, slowly westward. Progress, always slow and tedious, was impeded now and again by swollen streams or wide expanses of almost impassable prairie slews. At last, as the shadows of evening lengthened behind the travelers, the weary oxen ceased to strain at the yoke, and the great canvas-covered wagon came to a final halt. The pioneer had arrived. yet his adventures, hardships, and privations were not at an end. The conquest of the prairie lay before him.
First of all he had to determine the boundaries of his homestead. This was done not by the surveyor’s chain, but by “stepping off” certain distances from a given point. Approximately fifteen hundred paces each way was considered to include three hundred and twenty acres “more or less”-the amount designated as a legal claim. The boundaries were marked by driving stakes in the prairie or by blazing trees if the claim was located in the timber. Many of the boundary lines were crooked and not infrequently they encroached upon other claims. But it was understood among the settlers that when the lands were surveyed and entered all inequalities would be adjusted.
Paradoxical as it may seem, in a land without courts or judges, justice prevailed. By honorable adherence to the rights of others, claims staked out in good faith were as secure as property held by law. The Golden Rule governed the rights of the squatters. Local extralegal protection became so general and the claim associations of the settlers were so powerful that it was extremely hazardous for a speculator or a stranger to bid upon a claim which was protected by a “pre-emption right.”
To break five acres of ground was recognized in many communities as sufficient evidence of ownership to hold a claim for a period of six months. To build a cabin “eight logs high with a roof” was considered as the equivalent of plowing an additional five acres and was sufficient to hold the claim another six months. If a newcomer arrived and complied with these “by-laws” of the neighborhood, his rights were almost as much respected as if he had occupied the land by virtue of a government patent.
In June, 1838, Congress established land offices at Dubuque and Burlington and offered to sell the public domain in Iowa for $1.25 an acre. Settlers who had pre-empted claims hastened to purchase the homesteads they had already established, and woe to the outsider who bid on the claim of a squatter.
The first homes in a new settlement were necessarily very simple. In the prairie country where wood was scarce and sod was plentiful, the earliest houses were mere sod huts. The materials were obtained by taking a breaking plow into the lowland where the sod was heavy and plowing in a furrow sixteen to eighteen inches in width. The sod thus obtained was cut into sections about two feet long, which were then laid like brick. The roof was made of large rafters covered with prairie hay or grass, and this in turn was covered with strips of sod.
If a pioneer selected a claim of timber land, as the earliest settlers invariably did, he forthwith began the construction of a log cabin. Most of the work he did himself, though perhaps the neighbors were called over for a “house raising” when the logs had been cut and dragged to the site. The walls were of selected logs, formed straight and true by nature, cut to a length measured off not with a carpenter’s rule but by a notch cut in two sides, the logs were then “saddled”, “notched”, and fitted at each end, with the ax in skillful hands. The walls, mounted with a roof made of clapboards, “rived off” from the butt-end of a tree that had been permitted broad, thin pieces of boards to be thus obtained. These clapboards, laid to overlap, were held in place by poles laid across at proper intervals. The logs of which the walls were constructed were so skillfully fitted that only small spaces were left between and these were filled or “daubed” with clay, often mixed with straw or rushes to hold it together.
Doors were formed of clapboards riven in the same manner as those for the roof and spiked with wooden pins to a dove-tailed frame, and then the whole was hung to the jambs by thongs of deer hide or by wooden hinges. The door was fastened shut by a wooden latch which could be raised from the outside by pulling a leather string. For security at night the latch string was drawn in, but for friends and neighbors and even strangers, the “latch string was always hanging out” as a token of friendship and hospitality.
The large open fireplace occupied one end of the cabin. This fireplace and chimney was constructed with smaller logs framed together in the same manner as the walls were made and lined inside for a fire-box with large flat stones set upright, while the chimney was plastered inside and out with clay.
Thus shelter and warmth was provided, with fire for cooking as well. As soon as possible the floor of earth was covered with puncheons, hewn flat and smooth on one side, then set into the earth floor, and skillfully joined with the ax. A puncheon table was pinned to the logs on one side near the fireplace. In a corner of the cabin a large on-legged bed was built. The chairs, or rather stools, were homemade and had but three legs. A fourth leg was unnecessary, for only three could touch the uneven surface of the puncheon floor at one time.
An improvised three-sided barn or shed was erected for the protection of livestock. This was constructed by driving two rows of posts into the ground, stuffing hay between them and likewise covering the roof with hay. At first cattle, horses, and swine ran at large so that fences had to be built to keep the stock out instead of in. These early rail fences were not straight but zig-zag, constructed of rails ten or twelve feet long and laid with ends overlapping. At every intersection stakes were driven obliquely into the ground., the upper ends crossing near the top of the fence. In the forks formed by the supporting stakes, the top rails or “riders’ were laid. These stake and rider fences were said to be “hog tight, horse high and bull strong.”
In the yard surrounding the pioneer cabin a few rude implements-perhaps a plow, a heavy wagon, a grain cradle, an ox yoke, and a grindstone may have been seen. Yonder picturesque well sweep and watering trough might indicate also the presence of an oaken bucket.
Cabin rightsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search It has been suggested that Tomahawk rights be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since October 2013.
At an early period in the settlement of the American Frontier, pioneers asserted their claims to parts of wild lands by blazing trees around the desired boundary, and later comers customarily recognized the claims: tomahawk rights, they were called.
Building a cabin and raising a crop, however small, of grain of any kind, led to “cabin rights,” which were recognized not only by custom but also by law.[1] The laws of the colonies and states varied in their requirements of the settler. In Virginia the occupant was entitled to 400 acres (1.6 km2) of land and to a preemption right to 1,000 acres (4 km2) more adjoining, to be secured in either case by a land-office warrant, the basis of a later patent or grant from colonial or state authorities.
References[edit]1.Jump up ^ Albigence Waldo Putnam -History of Middle Tennessee 1859 - Page 62 “Grants known as “cabin-rights” were in that day offered for sale, as land-scrip or warrants are in this. These were bestowed under an act of much liberality passed by the State of Virginia.”
Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940
Same with Simon Kenton. Most historians, though, don’t doubt the honesty of either man in regard to what he did or didn’t claim.
The Cabin Rights were less disputable.
By the letter of the law, sounds like this rancher is on land he doesn’t own and hasn’t paid to use.
Having said that, his FedGov opponents are a Communist cabal led by an illegal alien with forged ID and seven (7) stolen SSNs, so f**k them.
Moslem Brotherhood thought they could waltz in here, take over and send the Ostapo after citizens? Eventually they will regret their moslem hubris.
As more folks WAKE UP and realize we have moslem infiltrators in the WH, this tide will turn hard.
Going after that rancher with a usurped govt is about as legit as ‘Achmed from Islamabad’ picking up his disposable phone, dialing the rancher and demanding he vacate the land.
I’m concerned that his cattle are doing what those cattle did for generations...that man says back into the 1800’s
The same problem is also why Abraham Lincoln's father left Kentucky. He bought a piece of land, but it turned out the man he brought it from hadn't paid the guy HE got it from. More court battles that dragged on for years, ending with the Lincolns evicted.
It reminds me of the Mark Twain line about the town that had one lawyer and he was starving. Then another lawyer moved to town and now they're both rich.
I’m also concerned that the Feds have come with guns, snipers, helicopters, etc. as if this should be a shooting match.
What’s that all about?
The land issues are really secondary to that concern.
Hussein needs Martial Law ASAP.
He tried 100 things. He tried closing the WW2 Memorial for no reason.
Nothing triggered an armed citizen uprising.
This rancher standoff looks like yet another attempt.
Don’t give him the violence he needs.
Arpaio supposedly has the goods on Soebarkah. Let it come out.
If we weren’t at such a critical juncture I’d tell the rancher ‘send them all to hell.
That is an excellent post, Bubba Ho-Tep. Good information.
Hussein NEEDS Martial Law. Now.
If the rancher surrenders, the Feds might shoot him anyway. Just to get folks angry.
I feel sorry for the rancher, and for the nation. The freedom we used to have is seen in the way land claims were made in the past. Now we have a federal government rich in land, not as caretakers of the expanse within our borders, but as land holders, owners, fiefdoms.
You couldn’t pry it out of the clammy fingers with a crowbar.
THEY are the “Lords” and we are the serfs.
“Whose land is it?”
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It’s ours—public land.
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If public land is ours, then it’s not the Fed’s.
“If public land is ours, then it’s not the Fed’s.”
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Yep,we paid for it,they manage it,but it shouldn’t be used,without charge,for a private business to make a profit.
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free range was not a private business. it was recognition that allowing the value of grazing to simply waste away each year was silly. the answer was that the public had access to it. the same way as we could fish the rivers and lakes, hunt the unowned lands, picnic, etc.
It was public.
Now we’ve got licenses and fees for everything that used to belong to us. Freedom is slowly taken away by a greedy government.
” Freedom is slowly taken away by a greedy government.”
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Thanks for a most informative post.
It’s discouraging,isn’t it? The government is like the Godzilla depiction in the early ads.
.
A Constitutional overthrowing is always the first choice.
You just wonder sometimes when the elitists get so much power and are spread throughout all the important institutions and positions if it’s even possible for a constitutional overthrowing to happen.
If not, then a Declaration of Independence overthrowing becomes the first choice....the only choice
Ann is wrong. If FEDGOV-BLM has a problem with this rancher. Get a warrant for his arrest and do it legally. It is not “Okay” for 200 armed BLM thugs to surround his ranch, use weaponized helicopters to round up 300 cattle and take them.
This about control. Obama thugs are waging a war of attrition against western ranchers. They seize land by declaring an endangered species. Creating little “pens” for 1st amendment “zones”? Snipers training their weapons on unarmed citizens with cameras? Arresting protesters who refuse to get into the 1st amendment pens?
I do not care what religion the rancher is. If he was Catholic...then Ann would be right there foaming at the mouth.
This IS the time to take a stand and fight. No more Waco’s...No more Ruby Ridges...
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