Gage County, Nebraska - Chapter 8: The Public Domain, 1918

Nemaha Land District - Brownvili<e; Land O^nct - Registers and Rbcbivers - PERED AND UNOFFERiiD Lands - Rreemptions - Free Homestead Law - Agricultural College Land Grant Act - Operation oe the Act - College Scrip Entries in Townships - Homestead Entries

The public domain of the United States has dwindled to a mere fraction of what it was in 1854, when the territory of Nebraska was created by act of congress. The system by which the United States government undertook to dispose of its lands has worked as efficiently as any department of the public service. In every state and territory where public lands were located, and particularly here in the west, the federal land office has always proved an effective and a most important factor in the settlement and development of the country. The prospective settler has met, at the very outset of his inquiries, the organized agencies of his government, prepared to lend him all possible assistance in selecting and locating upon a tract of land.

The local land office for the district in which Gage county was situated in the early pioneer days, was established at Brownville, Nemaha county, Nebraska, under an act of congress, dated March 3, 1857, and opened for business about that time. The land district was officially described as the Nemaha District, while amongst the people it was almost universally designated as the Brownville land district. The office continued in operation at Brownville from the date of its establishment to July 7, 1868, when it was removed to Beatrice. The district was thereafter known as the Beatrice land district, and it embraced Nemaha, Richardson, Pawnee, Johnson, Gage, Jefferson, Saline, Fillmore, Thayer, Nuckolls, and Clay counties.

The office was maintained at Beatrice from July 7, 1868, to the 15th day of September, 1887, when the district was consolidated with the Lincoln land district and the records of the Beatrice office were removed to Lincoln.

For more than thirty years this office was a necessary and an imjxirtant factor in the affairs of the inhabitants of the district which it served. Through its ministrations many homes were established and the foundation for many a fortune laid. The volume of business transacted at this office through the greater portion of its existence was enormous. Its officials were called upon to advise the settlers both with respect to the laws under which public lands were granted to individuals and the methods of complying with these laws once the entryman had availed himself of their benefits. The officers of the local land offices of the United States are designated as register and receiver. The fixed salary attached to each office was $500 and an additional amount, on the fee basis, was allowed, not to exceed $2,500, or $3,000 in all. The officers of the old Brownville-Beatrice land office were uniformly gentlemen of high character and excellent ability. Their names may be regarded as worthy of preservation in a work of this kind. At Brownville the officials were:

In the beginning of the land office in the old Nemaha district, the public lands were classified as offered and imoffered lands. The former comprised all those tracts which had been formally ofi'ered by the local land office for sale at public auction, for cash, to the highest bidder, the minimum bid allowed being one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The unoffered lands comprised all public lands which had not been placed on sale at public auction, for cash, to the highest bidder. This distinction in the public land laws was made by act of congress in the early '40s, and continued from that time until May 18, 1898, when the law creating the distinction was repealed.

In districts where offered lands were located, those not sold at public vendue when offered, could be afterward bought without settlement for cash, at one dollar and twentyfive cents per acre. Unoffered lands were not open for cash entry. In both classes title could be acquired by entry and actual settlement under the preemption laws of congress. Likewise military-bounty land warrants issued, under the acts of 1847 and 1855, to the soldiers and sailors of the Revolutionary war, the war of 1812, the Mexican war, and the various Indian wars, could be used in purchasing public lands of the United States, regardless of the foregoing distinction. And under the homestead act, efiFective January 1, 1863, this distinction was also ignored and entry could be made anywhere on the public domain on lands not reserved or otherwise appropriated by congress.

The offered lands in the old Brownville- Beatrice land district were confined to the Missouri river counties. From first to last Gage county presented a clear field for entry of. land under the preemption, homestead, and other acts for acquiring title on the public domain. Prior to the passage of the homestead law the settlers acquired title under the preemption act, where purchase was not made by military-bounty land warrants. The procedure under the preemption laws as applied by claimants was simplicity itself. It consisted in performing some act which amounted to notice to the world of an intention on the part of the settler to claim the tract selected by him - as the erection of some sort of a dwelling or the placing of a foundation for a cabin on the land selected; any act, in fact, which manifested an intent to claim a given tract of land and which at the same time amounted to notice of such intent to an adverse claimant. Such act must of course be followed by filing in the local land office a written declaration of intent on the part of the claimant to enter and purchase said land ; it must also be followed by actual settlement on his part, and in twelve months by proof of settlement, of improvement, and the payment to the government of one dollar and twenty-

A number of preemption filings were made on Gage county land prior to the taking effect of the homestead law, January 1, 1863, but these were followed by comparatively few final entries. In actual practice, the squatter on the public domain performed his acts of settlement, filed his declaration of intentions in the local land office to appropriate said land and pay for the same, made improvements, established his residence upon the land, and in many instances, without perfecting his entry under the preemption acts, remained in open, exclusive, adverse possession until the homestead law became effective, when he availed himself of its benefits by changing his preemption into a homestead. Once in actual possession the "Squatter Sovereign" ran little risk of being disturbed by a rival claimant. By a sort of freemasonry existing between them, the settlers allowed it to be understood that there must be no claim -jumping, and claim jumpers in Gage county were pretty scarce.

The passage of the free-homestead bill by congress nearly two and one-half years before the close of the great Civil war, was followed, after the close of the war, by a tremendous influx of settlers on the public domain, wherever free homes could be found, and Gage county rapidly filled with actual settlers seeking permanent homes in this beautiful section of country, many of them veterans of the Civil war. But in 1867 this movement was suddenly and permanently halted by the operation of what is known as the Agricultural College Land Grant Act.

Whatever one may think of the beneficent purpose of this act, whereby the national legislature was induced, without the slightest financial consideration, to appropriate nearly ten million acres of the public lands of the United States for educational purposes, there can be no difference of opinion as to the improvidence and wastefulness of this legislation. As set forth in the title to the act, the purpose of this vast donation was to provide for the establishment of one or more institutions in each state, "the leading object of which shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military practice, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states shall respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life."

Had the operation of this act been confined to those states and territories whose wealth consisted chiefly in the public lands within their boundaries, and which, on account of poverty, were unable to make suitable provision for the education and training of their young men and women, it would be beyond just criticism and worthy of all praise. Probably that was the original intent and purpose of the act, but the selfishness of the old and wealthy states, where there were no public lands, resulted in a distortion of the original intent, and in the end imparted to the act the appearance of a land-grabbing device of colossal proportions, by which states with large delegations in congress profited enormously at public expense.

For the bill in its passage through congress to secure the support of the representatives of those states where there were no public lands subject to entry or purchase under federal laws, an ingeneous scheme was devised whereby scrip was to be issued to all such states for the full amount of their donative shares, at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, for the entire acreage due them on the basis of thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative in congress. The states holding this scrip could under the law either enter land with it themselves or sell it at private sale and use the proceeds of such sale as they deemed proper to carry out the purposes of the law. The result is perfectly obvious - the weak, helpless, needy states, rich only in the public lands within their borders, were restricted to the land itself at the rate of thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative in congress, while the great, strong.

healthy, powerful states took their share in prices, some of the states were enabled, on acscrip, and either located it themselves at the count of the vast amount of their donative rate of one dollar and twenty-five cents per shares of the public lands, to endow most libacre on vast tracts of public lands or sold it erally the institutions founded under the act. upon the market for cash. Thus Nebraska Thus, Pennsylvania, with 780,000 scrip acres, received under the act ninety thousand acres received, at the low rate of fifty-two cents per of public land, which formed the nucleus for acre, from scrip sales alone the sum of $406,- its State University, while the great state of 000; Massachusetts, with a donative share of New York received college scrip covering 390,000 acres of the public domain, from scrip 989,930 acres, part of which was sold on the sales alone received $219,000; and the other market at a fraction of its face value, the re- wealthy eastern states profited from scrip sales raainder being used to purchase vast areas of proportionally. When we take into account the finest pine land in the world, in Wiscon- the fact that the populous eastern states resin and Minnesota. From her donative share ceived the lion's share of this vast donation, New York realized $6,651,473.88, which vast and that the new prairie states and territories sum constitutes the endowment of Cornell and the northern timbered states and terri- University. Not a single state or territory tories were despoiled of their rich and valuable failed to avail itself of the provisions of this lands under this act, to build up existing eduenactment, by which a grand total of 9,597,340 cational institutions in New England, New acres of the public lands of the United States York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Inwere nominally dedicated to the cause of diana, Illinois, and other landless states, the higher education. Only a comparatively few, improvidence and the selfishness of this legishowever, actually received their donative lation must be apparent to the dullest mind, shares in land. As might have been foreseen Gage county suffered severely from this by any patriotic and prudent statesman, the wasteful policy. Speculators thronged her vast profit of this legislation inured to indi- prairies, their pockets and carpetbags stuffed viduals. The process by which this curious with college scrip bought at nominal figures and unexpected result was achieved was very from Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, simple. The scrip was thrown indiscriminately Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Mison the market and sold for cash to speculators, souri, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Rhode usually for a fraction of its nominal value, the Island, New York, and other scrip states, and purchaser or assignee succeeding to the rights in the summer of 1867 her broad, fertile acres of the states to select and pay for the public disappeared as by magic, at the very moment lands of the country with agricultural-col- when Nebraska had ceased to be a territory, lege scrip so purchased, at the rate of one dol- when the railroads had come or were on their lar and twenty-five cents per acre. Thus, way, and when the pioneer days were over Alabaina scrip sold for one dollar and six and immigration was setting toward her in an cents per acre, leaving a margin of nineteen ever increasing stream. Keen-eyed appraisers' cents per acre profit to the purchaser ; Arkan- went leisurely over our county's finest upland sas scrip sold for ninety cents, Connecticut regions and marked for entry every desirable scrip for seventy-five cents, Delaware ninety- tract of land. The following table shows aptwo cents, Illinois one dollar, Indiana eighty- proximately the acreage thus entered in the seven cents, Kentucky sixty cents, Maine and several townships of our county during the Massachusetts fifty-six cents, Maryland and years 1867 and 1868, by the use of college " New Jersey fifty-five cents, Missouri and scrip:

In the northern portion of the county at that time, most of Nemaha township, practically all of Highland, and a large part of both Clatonia and Grant townships had been withdrawn from public entry as state selections under the grant by the general government to the state of Nebraska of 500,000 acres of the public domain for internal improvement, under the act of September 4, 1841. In 1871 these lands were opened for homestead entry, the state's application for the reservation of such lands having been rejected by the general land office at Washington, and were thus saved from the predatory effects of the Agricultural College Land Grant Act. In the south part of the county the Otoe and Missouri Indian reservation, of course, escaped speculative spoliation of the college scriptor. The dense population of those townships, where practically each quarter-section of land went to an actual settler, shows what would have taken place had not more than one-half of Gage county's fair domain gone to increase the educational facilities of the wealthy eastern states and line the pockets of speculators in college scrip.

It may interest the reader to know that, notwithstanding the donation of this b.rge acreage of Gage county land in the way here described, a great many homestead entries were, in fact, made in the county by actual bpnafide settlers prior to 1871, when the opening of the

In the several townships of the county where homestead entries could be made prior to the above date, the number of such entries exclusive of cancellations, was :

A total of four hundred and forty-four entries. Assuming that each entry covered the maximum of one hundred and sixty acres, the total acreage embraced in these homestead entries is 71,040. Subsequent to January 1, 1871, the public lands in our county subject to homestead entry were almost wholly confined to Nemaha, Highland, Clatonia, and Grant townships, with an occasional entry in some of the other townships; usually growing out of the relinquishment and cancellation of a previous one.

In these calculations the lands of the Otoe and Missouri Indian reservation, which were ceded to the United States in 1881 and which were afterward sold for the exclusive benefit of these Indians, for cash, to actual settlers only, under virtually the same conditions and restrictions as prevailed under the homestead law, are not considered. But if we add the acreage of these lands to the acreage covered by homestead entries in our county, it will be seen that even then less than one-half the territory of Gage county passed from the government of the United States to actual settlers.

Nor are the lands the titles to which were acquired under the preemption laws or cash entries with military-bounty land warrants, considered in the above calculations, but the lands so purchased from the United States were not of sufificient acreage to affect to any extent the foregoing results.

contrast between the beneficent influence of the free-homestead law and the effects of the agricultural-college act, not only in the early settlement and development of our county but in existing and future conditions. The one operated as a gift from heaven, descending upon an independent, self-respecting and industrious population; the other forms the basis of nearly every large landed fortune in the county. Without it there would have been no such individual domain as the Scully estate, and the problem of landlordism in Gage county would be scarcely worth considering.