At 08:49 PM 4/18/01 -0500, you wrote: >Seeking information on the process of acquiring Federal land in the 1850s. > >How did this work? Did the settler go to the land office and buy the next available parcel of land or did they first find some unoccupied land and then go to the land office and buy it? Some of the purchases I've seen are for parcels of unconnected land -- 40 acres here and 80 acres there -- purchased at the same time. I wonder how much they knew about the land before they bought it (water, roads, etc.). > >Ken > > I just talked to a surveyer this last Sat about this very subject as he was trying to find survey points on my neighbors property for 1870!! According to him, yes they knew what the land looked like. OR NOT, didn't matter, They didn't have to settle on it. This wasn't homesteading like in OK or the very western MO. Water was important. Springs, creeks (no wells back then and no running water. No roads either. whether it would be tillable, or had usable timber, or other desirable traits for the time period. It was sold by the federal gov to repay war debts, in cash for a certain amount. At the disginated patent offices. The undesirable land, that no one wanted, was given or sold to the State to disperse. There was land speculation, Some believe recent immagrents (sp) weren't allowed to purchase it. there may have restrictions on how many acres could be bought per person. Cash was hard to come by. AND 40 acres was a huge amount of land then to farm, with Mules and horses