>From Springfield Advertiser, Saturday, 5 Jul 1845: Land Sales By The President Of The United States In pursuance of law, I, James K. Polk, President of the United States of America, do hereby declare and make known, that public sales will be held at the under mentioned Land Offices, in the STATE OF MISSOURI, at the periods hereinafter designated, towit: At the Land Office at Springfield, commencing on MONDAY, the TWENTY-FIFTH day of August next, for the disposal of the public lands within the under mentioned townships, to wit: North of the Base Line and West of the fifth Principal Meridian. Township twenty nine, of range fourteen, Township thirty four, of range nineteen, Township twenty four, of range twenty, Township thirty two, of ranges twenty one and twenty four, Townships thirty three and thirty four, of range twenty five, Townships thirty, thirty one, and thirty two, of range thirty two. Fractional townships thirty, thirty one and thirty two, of range thirty three. ………..(article continues with listings for other land offices in the State.) None of the townships listed above are in Lawrence County. For the curious they are in, respectively, the following: Wright, Dallas, Taney, Polk, Cedar/Dade, Barton/Jasper. Sale of public land in Missouri was authorized by Congress 3 Mar 1811 but actual sale did not begin until 1818 due to adjudication of Spanish land grant claims and delay in the prerequisite public surveys. Five hundred thousand acres north of the Missouri River was opened for veterans of the War of 1812 under the Scrip Warrant Act. Other lands were opened for sale under the credit system, a rather complex and untenable system abolished in 1820 but with migraine inducing effects for years afterward. Since neither of these apply to land patents in Lawrence county I will not detail those policies here. Lands were not offered for sale until surveyed and, according to Goodspeed, T26 R26 opened for entry in what is now Lawrence Co in 1839 and Rayel Hazelton filed on land in section 1 on 25 Sep 1839. Bureau of Land Management records show transfer of title to Royel Hazelton of Greene County Mo on 9/10/1844. You’ll find there is generally a difference of three to seven years between date of application or “entry” and the date of title transfer. As part of Missouri’s admission to the Union, the state was not allowed to collect taxes on land from early sales by the federal government for a number of years from the date of the sale. So, the longer you waited to get the paperwork completed, the longer you lived without property taxes. This also helps explain the lengthy property tax lists printed in the county paper’s. I had always assumed they were “back taxes” or past due, but the county was required to track land sales and advise the state land office when properties became eligible for taxation. Land patents, such as Mr. Hazelton’s, record the transfer of land from the Federal Government to an individual. Land transfers from one individual to another are deeds and the records will be found at the county level, not with the Bureau of Land Management. Land patents issued for land in Lawrence County are listed on the BLM web site (http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/Visitors/PublicLan ds.asp) as occurring under the following: “The Act of April 20, 1820, authorized land to be sold for a minimum of $1.25 per acre and tracts as small as 80 acres. Public lands initially offered for sale by District Land Offices were sold at pre-announced, scheduled public auction. If any land remained unsold, the parcels would be available for purchase at the minimum price on a first-come-first-served basis. This replaced the credit system.” “1862 Homestead Act. Allowed settlement of public lands and required only residence and improvement and cultivation of the land. Any person, a citizen or person intending to become a citizen, 21 years of age or older, and the head of a household could make application. With five years residence and improvements/cultivation, only a $15.00 fee was required to get 160 acres. Repealed in 1976.” The earliest title transfers in Lawrence county under the Homestead Act of 1862 are recorded in 1870: George M. Dugger, John S. Hargrove, Harvey T. McCune and R. [T.] L. Stone. There are a total of 279 entries for Lawrence county under the Homestead Act of 1862 between 1870 and 1905. All other patents were purchases under the Act of April 20, 1820 (Cash Sale). Two other terms are applicable to many of the Lawrence county conveyances: preemption and graduation. I’ll cover those in a separate post. There was considerable discussion, both in the local papers and on the national level regarding dispensation of public lands. (Check out Gale and Seton’s record of the Congressional debates on line at the Library of Congress.) In 1844 the old questions of state’s rights and abolition of slavery were at the heart of the competition for new lands opening in the west. (to be cont.)