Grant (land)

“ Use of the headright had been adopted by the company as an expedient to increase population of the colony and to encourage immigration without further expenditure from the company treasury. The practice continued with the fifty acres of land granted to the persons who financed the transportation of the immigrant, but the grant itself was not valuable enough to compensate for the expense involved. ”

“ Any land thus granted which shall not have been brought into cultivation or otherwise improved or reclaimed from its wild state, to the satisfaction of the Government, within twenty-one years from the date of the grant, shall at the end of twenty-one years revert absolutely to the Crown. ”

“ For ages unnumbered the Highland landlord deemed that wealth consisted in the number of families, and troops of chubby children who lived upon his lands; farms were divided and subdivided in the fertile glens, until 'every rood of land maintained its man;' and on every lot and rood was a tenant—a hardy soldier, a tiller of the soil, and the father of a sturdy and a faithful race. The laird valued his property not by the rent-roll, but by the number of brave and leal-hearted swordsmen whose homes were made thereon. ”

“ That it is the fact that the old organic law gave grants of land, this same thing is plainly the opinion expressed in the memorial to Congress of 1846; but notwithstanding the English-Scotch memorial of '46, notwithstanding many of our wise men at home and our most wise congress should be of this opinion if you or they look again you will not find any grant given by that old instrument. It makes certain rules by which any man shall be governed who was then holding or wishing to hold a claim of land in this territory ”

“ The consequence has been, that large grants of land have fallen into the hands of those who have never lived upon them, or spent anything upon their improvement, beyond a fictitious amount which they were required to specify to the Government before they could obtain possession of their deeds of grant. ”

“ But, strange to say, money will not be considered as "capital;" for otherwise, a number of settlers going up in succession with the same bag of sovereigns, might take up half the land in the Colony.—When the claimant has ascertained the number of acres to which he is entitled, he may select his grant in any district which may be opened for location, wherever the land be not reserved by Government or taken up by prior applicants. ”

“ In other words, it is said that the grant in question operated simply to designate a large tract of country within which the empresarios might establish a colony or colonies; that no title to any land passed to them until such colony was established; that if a colony was established, the colonists were to be supplied with land taken from this large body of land; that the amount of lands to which the empresarios would be entitled, upon the establishment of a colony, was to be determined by the number of families introduced by them, and must also be taken from this large body of land ”

“ It is a well-settled principle that when lands are granted according to an official plat of the survey of such lands, the plat itself, with all its notes, lines, descriptions, and land-marks, becomes as much a part of the grant or deed by which they are conveyed, and controls, so far as limits are concerned, as if such descriptive features were written out upon the face of the deed or the grant itself. ”

“ From the beginning of land grants the Land Department has exercised the power of withdrawing from pre-emption and homestead entry any body of lands which in its judgment might be necessary for the satisfaction of the grant. ”

“ The sixth dealt with the Land Regulations, and condemned the departure, in 1832, from the original terms promulgated by the Colonial Office in 1829, in that it entailed great hardships on the settlers. The meeting desired that a request should be conveyed to the Home Government that the spirit of the old terms should be adhered to, and that location duties performed on one part of a grant should be estimated as fulfilling the requisite expenditure, according to amount, to obtain the remaining parts of the grant. ”

“ After observing upon this grant, this writer proceeds to state the conditions on which other settlers obtained land in the following passage:—“It was declared that all the world should be entitled to unlimited grants on either one of two conditions, as the grantee should prefer; either an outlay of one shilling and sixpence per acre in conveying labourers to the settlement, or the investment of capital on the land at the rate of one shilling and sixpence per acre.” ”

“ But to give this land value, inhabitants are necessary. I therefore propose, in the first place, that a grant be made of a tract of land at the mouth of the Ohio, between that and the Mississippi, equal to two hundred miles square, to a company formed indiscriminately of Europeans and Americans, which company should form a distinct state, confederated with and under the general regulations of the United States General of America. That the Congress of the United States shall, out of such grant, reserve the defraying or discharging of the public debts or expenses ”

“ We can give very little weight to a possession so limited as to duration and in extent, when offered in support of a grant of ninety or one hundred thousand acres of land. If the grant cannot be maintained by its own force and effect, this possession will scarcely uphold it. Coming then to the grants, we may as well lay aside the first one, the colonization grant, at once, as entirely defective within the law of 1824 and the regulations of 1828. The only document in evidence is the naked grant itself. ”

“ The grants by the United States of land to aid in the construction of reilroads, in relation to which we have had many cases before us, are in many particulars analogous to the grant by the swamp-land act. ”

“ Is it not marvellous that there should be land owned by the people and yet that we should have to discover this momentous fact from a few casual phrases occurring in three documents of the ninth and tenth centuries? Are we to suppose that whenever the king is giving away land, this land is the land of the people? Why do not the charters say so? Repeatedly the king speaks of the land that he gives as ‘my land’ (terram iuris mei) , and this too in charters which state that the witan give their consent to the grant. ”

“ Every grant of land will be duly described and registered before delivery, and, by the terms of the grant, no transfer or alienation will be legal until the same shall be registered. The registered owner of every grant or portion of land will be the legal owner, and thus certainty and security will be afforded to land-holders, as well as to persons advancing money on such security. Land which may at any time be occupied without a grant and proper registrations, will be taken as belonging to the Crown. ”

“ No one of them holds that a grant, in proesenti, of public lands, with the ordinary reservations, embraces lands which, at the date of such grant, are under the operation of a formal order of the Land Department, of record, withdrawing them for the benefit of a prior grant in the event they should be needed for the purposes of such grant. Nor does any of them hold that the subsequent cancelation of such withdrawal order had the effect to bring them under the operation of a later grant of public lands. ”

“ This articel makes plain the meaning of article three of the grant, and shows that that means simply that, in consideration of the setting apart of this large tract of land, the petitioners agree to introduce and settle on that land two hundred foreign families. Articles 12 and 13 together provide what shall be given to the empresario who introduces eight hundred families, and receives more than eleven square leagues of land. ”

“ If this be true as to one part of the grant of 1864, why is it not equally true as to another portion of the grant, all of it being to the same grantee? When congress makes a grant of a specific number of sections in aid of any work of internal improvement, it must be assumed that it intends the beneficiary to receive such amount of land; and, when it prescribes that those lands shall be alternate sections along the line of the improvement, it is equally clear that the intent is that, if possible, the beneficiary shall receive those particular sections. ”

“ Authorization for the headright was then passed on to a commissioned surveyor who ran off fifty acres for each person imported and located the grant in the area selected by the claimant as long as the land had not already been patented and had not been barred for white settlement in order to maintain peace with the Indians. Upon completion of the survey and of marking the boundaries, a copy of the record along with the headright certificate was presented to the secretary's office where a patent was prepared and a notation made of those imported. ”

“ Whenever three respectable negroes, heads of families, shall desire to settle on land, and shall have selected for that purpose an island or a locality clearly defined within the limits above designated, the Inspector of Settlements and Plantations will himself, or, by such subordinate officer as he may appoint, give them a license to settle such island or district, and afford them such assistance as he can to enable them to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement. ”

“ And if persons were permitted to take up their grants wherever they pleased, in any unallotted part of the Settlement, the whole country would be interspersed with patches of land, greatly in the way of any extensive capitalist, who would naturally wish to take up his grant in one place, without the annoyance of having it intersected by the estate of another ”

“ All grants or titles issued at any time by the Transvaal Government in respect of land outside the boundary of Transvaal State, as defined, Article 1, shall be considered invalid and of no effect, except in so far as any such grant or title relates to land that falls within the boundary of the Transvaal State, and all persons holding any such grant so considered invalid and of no effect will receive from the Government of the Transvaal State such compensation either in land or in money as the Volksraad shall determine. ”

“ Resembling its larger prototype, the London Company, the Berkeley Hundred group had a governor and council. The adventurers were granted 100 acres of land for each share of stock with the promise of an equal amount when the first grant was settled; likewise they were promised fifty acres without quitrent for every person transported at their expense who remained for three years or died within this period. For promoting both a church and school, the adventurers were also granted 1,500 acres. ”

“ The line or boundary of the overflow that renders the land unfit for regular cultivation may be adopted as that which regulates the grant.' The lists were to be made out on forms prescribed for that purpose, and transmitted to the department, the lands selected reserved from sale, and the selections, when approved by the secretary of the interior, were directed to be entered by the register as granted to the state. ”

“ Under these provisions of "the greate charter," it is evident that not only was the headright grant of fifty acres per person open to shareholders who brought settlers to the colony, but also to anyone who had migrated to the colony at his own expense or who had financed the expedition of other persons. Individuals paying their own transportation were entitled to fifty acres for themselves and for every member of the family, providing they fulfilled the residence requirement of three years. ”

“ The quantity of land in market will amply supply the present demand. The claim of the settler under the homestead or the preemption laws is not, however, limited to lands subject to sale at private entry. Any unappropriated surveyed public land may, to a limited amount, be acquired under the former laws if the party entitled to enter under them will comply with the requirements they prescribe in regard to the residence and cultivation. The actual settler's preference right of purchase is even broader, and extends to lands which were unsurveyed at the time of his settlement. ”

“ Natives will be allowed to acquire land, but the grant or transfer of such land will, in every case, be made to and registered in the name of the Native Location Commission, herein-after mentioned, in trust for such natives. ”

“ Every Volunteer, whether officer or private, who shall have served continuously for a period of five years, and qualified under the regulations, has claim to a grant of 50 acres of land, to be assigned by occupationcertificate, exchangeable, at any time within three years after date, for grants in fee simple, on proof that improvements have been made to the value of £35. ”

“ That the plaintiff having made out a regular title from the grantor, and the defendant being in possession of the land covered by the title, the only question was upon the validity of the grant; and the decision of this inquiry will depend upon which was the temporary boundary line between the state of Georgia and the Indian tribes in 1787, the grant having issued at that period?
A grant of lands, the Indian title to which has not been extinguished, is not void for that cause alone, independent of statutory regulations. 3 Johns. 365. ”

“ But owing to the use of the words 'all the vacant land' lying in the rear of the 40 arpents, in the recital of the grant, a pretension was set up, after the cession of the country to the United States, that the grant covered all the vacant land within the lines of the original concession extended to the limits of the possessions of the Spanish crown. ”