Preemption Act of 1841

Transcription

Introductory Speaker: I’d like to welcome everyone to another installment of the Know Your Records lecture series that began back in September. In this series, in case you’re wondering, our focus is to try to have speakers like today’s speaker address certain subjects that haven’t been addressed in the past, that we feel that the staff and public would find of interest. Before we come to today’s lecture, I just want to remind you that on the back table there are some handouts that Chris has brought in for you to pick up. Sign in if you haven’t already signed in. There’s also a calendar of events copy. Your lecture is about thirty minutes? Christ will speak for about thirty minutes, and then we’ll have a question and answer session. If you have a question raise your hand so I can give you the microphone, so we can record you for posterity. Again, today’s lecture title is Public Lands and Claims in the American State Papers, 1789-1837. Our lecturer today is Chris Naylor. He works for the Research and Support branch at the National Archives building at 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a B.A. in History and German, and he specializes in genealogical records. So without further ado I turn it over to Chris. Chris Naylor: Well I want to thank you for coming to my lecture today. As you know, I’m going to be speaking on the American State Papers. Specifically on the Public Lands and Claims classes, although I will also mention the other eight classes in the American State Papers as well. I have handouts in the back which have printouts of all the slides of my PowerPoint presentation so you can follow along if you like. And you can keep that if you’re interested. I also have a few other handouts which I’ll talk about later on. One thing that I have noticed while working in the microfilm room at Archives I is that the majority of researchers interested in genealogy rely on the same few types of records for all of their research. Censuses, compiled military service records, pension and bounty land applications, and passenger lists, to name a few. They search through these records, find or don’t find what they’re looking for, and leave. And they do not look into the many other resources available at the archives. So I’ve recognized that there are several other resources such as published sources that are very easy to access, but rarely get used on a daily basis. This is specifically important to genealogical research in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to take advantage of all the resources available because so few records from this period have survived and are readily accessible. One of these published sources available for this period is the American State Papers, which is available both at Archives I and Archives II in the Archives Library Information Center. It is indexed, and it offers a virtually untapped but valuable resource to information on individuals living in America during this period. So my goal today is to get more people to incorporate the American State Papers into their research and show you just how easy it is to use. I’ll start by explaining what the American State Papers is and provide some background information on its development. Then I’ll talk about the genealogical value of the American State Papers, and finally how to use it in your research. So first of all, what is the American State Papers? It’s a 38 volume published compilation of executive and legislative records from 1789-1838. The documents contained in the American State Papers were selected by the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives for the manuscript and printed papers in both the Senate and House, as well as from several executive departments. As I said, there is a complete set of the American State Papers at the Archives Library Information Center in Archives I. There’s also a complete set on microfiche here at Archives II. So we’ll talk about the content in a minute, but first I’d like to explain how the American State Papers came into existence. Originally the records of Congress were kept in the archives of the two houses with very limited public access. And there were very few published documents of Congress. When printing was done, it was done without following any specific guidelines or specifications. In the early years of Congress there were several fires in Washington D.C. The most infamous, of course, being on August 24, 1814, when the British burned the Capitol and White House. Much more damage would have been done had it not been for a hurricane which arrived on the same day as the British which put out several of the fires and sent the British running. So lucky for the hurricane. But because of these fires, Congress really recognized the vulnerability of the records. Finally in 1817, several members in Congress had recognized the importance of having some important records of Congress in published form. In 1817, Congress began publication of the U.S. Serial Set which is a bound series containing reports and documents created by or presented to Congress that Congress felt needed a wider circulation. They began publication with the 15th Congress’s first session and went forward from there. The problem was that the Serial Set was initially not retroactive, and it lacked the records of the formative years of Congress. Several members of Congress recognized the importance of preserving these records. Finally, in the Act of March 2, 1831, Congress authorized the printers Gales and Seaton to publish 750 copies of what would ultimately be the American State Papers. And this was done under Congressional supervision. The act reads, “Be it enacted, etc., that the Clerk of the House of Representatives hereby is authorized and directed to subscribe for 750 copies of the compilation of the Congressional documents proposed to be made by Gales and Seaton, provided that the document shall be selected under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House, and provided also that the price paid for the printing of copies shall be at the rate not exceeding that of the price paid to the printer of Congress for printing the documents of the two houses. The American State Papers is ultimately a product of this Act of March 2, 1831 as well as a joint resolution of March 2, 1833, and ultimately the Act of June 12, 1858. From the time period 1831-1861 occurred the compilation, printing, and distribution of ultimately 38 volumes containing documents spanning an extended time period of 1789-1838. Originally, the American State Papers was completely separate from the Serial Set. And the main difference is that the American State Papers is organized by topic into classes or series, whereas the Serial Set is organized by session of Congress and document number. So I have here listed the ten classes of the American State Papers. I’ll briefly go through them and mention the genealogical value and the different documents that can be found in each of these ten classes. But I will then specifically concentrate on the Public Lands and Claims classes later on. The first class is Foreign Relations, which can contain information on people who served the U.S. in the international arena such as commissioners or consuls. Specifically you can find information on American relations with such countries as Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands, and Algeria. The second class is Indian Affairs which contains information on interpreters, Indian agents, commissioners, and military officers who had specific dealings with specific tribes. The third class is Finances, which deals mostly with the disbursement of public funds. Class four is Commerce and Navigation, which has information on owners of ships as well as people involved in trade. Class five is Military Affairs, which has specific claims of officers and soldiers, information on military bases, on West Point, as well as all other types of information on all types of military affairs. Class six is Naval Affairs, which has a lot of information on members serving in the Navy such as lists of officers as well as pensioners. And I’ll touch on that later. Class seven is the Post Office Department, which has information on postmasters, contractors, and other people who had dealings with the post office. I’m going to talk about class eight, Public Lands, and class nine, Claims, more in detail in a minute so I’ll hold off on that. And finally class ten, which is the Miscellaneous class, has all types of information that somehow didn’t fit into any of these other nine classes. It contains lists of civil and military officers of the U.S., and it has information on civil servants in all the agencies. It goes from the highest positions down to clerks. It also contains petitions of individual Americans, as well, that didn’t fit in with any of the other classes. Now that I’ve talked about how all ten classes of the American State Papers can be genealogically significant, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m concentrating specifically on the Public Lands and Claims classes. That’s for two main reasons. The first reason is that there are tens of thousands of claims of individuals contained within these two classes specifically. These can contain information such as ages of claimants, places of residence, names of spouses, children, and other relatives, as well as information on the military service of the claimants. The second reason, which makes the research so easy in these two classes, is a book titled Grassroots of America. It was originally published in 1972 by a gentleman by the name of Phillip W. McMullin. It contains a complete name index to the Public Lands and Claims classes for any name that shows up in any of the nine volumes of these two classes. It’s available in the Archives Library Information Center in Archives I and II. So now I’m going to start off by concentrating on the Public Lands class, class eight, which contains documents from 1789-1837. And when I say public lands, what I’m speaking of is a public domain: land owned by the federal government that is subject to sale or transfer of ownership under laws passed by Congress. Public domain includes both western lands that the original states ceded to the United States as well as acquisitions from foreign governments. Within the eight volumes that consist of the Public Lands class, there are around 80,000 individual claims of people living in America. Types of claims are military bounty lands, preemption rights, claims by refugees, agreements with Indian nations, as well as settlement of private land claims on public domain that the U.S. acquired from foreign governments. Specifically Britain, Spain, France, and later Mexico. And these private land claims from other foreign governments have all types of information which I will talk about in a few minutes. What states are dealt with in the Public Lands class? I’ve split them into two groups beginning with the public lands states, which are states that the federal government formed from public domain. These states are the states where the majority of the specific land claims in the Public Lands class appear in the American State Papers. Any one of these states that I have listed here are dealt with specifically and have land claims which are contained in the American State Papers. So if you were doing research on an individual who during this time period was living in what either was or would become one of these states, this would be a great resource. The second list are state land states: the original thirteen colonies and other states that control all land within their boundaries. As you can see on the list, I don’t have all of the original thirteen states. The reason is that not every one is dealt with specifically in this class, so I only listed the states that were touched on in the Public Lands class. But like I said earlier, the majority of the land claims are going to be in the public land states. The state land states dealt more with – I’ll use Virginia as an example. Virginia ceded huge tracts of lands to the U.S. government for the benefit of the United States, and had promised a lot of this land to Virginians who had served in the Revolutionary War. When they ceded this land, they were trying to work out deals so that the U.S. government would still recognize those claims – those bounty lands. I’m going to start off now by giving you an example of a private land claim. What I had was a family – a father by the name of Thomas Bassett and his two sons Thomas and Nathaniel. All I knew was that they lived in the Mississippi Territory, which is now present day Alabama. When I went to Grassroots of America – as I spoke, that is the index. I opened to the page where the Bassetts would show up, and as you can see here from this page there are several entries for Bassetts as well as several entries for both Thomas and Nathaniel. First of all, one thing that you have to be aware of when you’re using Grassroots of America is to check for different name spellings. There are several errors within the text of the American State Papers and the same person’s name appears in different places spelled in different ways. A few examples, as you can see on this page – Bassett is sometimes spelled with two T’s on the end and sometimes with one T on the end. And also Nathaniel Bassett, one of the sons, is spelled with Nathaniel ending with I-A-L as well as I-E-L on different pages of the American State Papers. It’s the same person, just different spellings. So you have to be sure to check all the spellings when using this index. Now this index is organized – as you can see, there is a single digit number followed by a colon, usually followed by a three digit number. That single digit number is the volume number of either the Public Lands or Claims class. The numbers 1-8 are referring to volumes 1-8 of the Public Lands class, and volume 9 is the single volume of the Claims class. That’s how Phillip McMullin decided to organize that, just using these specific nine volumes. Now there’s a colon and that’s followed by the three digit number, which is the page number where the person appears on that page of that volume. So what I did was using the index I turned specifically to Volume 1 page 664, which was one of the references for Thomas Bassett. And what I found was that he had two petitions for properties in the Mississippi Territory, which is present day Alabama. And he submitted these petitions in 1804 to a board of commissioners which was created by Congress to settle private land claims in that region. By going through all of the pages where Thomas or Nathaniel Bassett appear in the American State Papers, I was able to find affidavits, depositions, plots and surveys, land titles, letters – in their original Spanish, as well as translations. And by going through all the pages, what I’ve been able to do is create a timeline which builds an interesting portrait of the Bassett family over a 20 year time period. What I was able to find out was that in 1780, the Bassett family received British grants for two properties. However one year later in 1781, Thomas Bassett, the father of the family, was killed by Indians on or near his property when he was approximately 37 years old. He was survived by his wife Lucy and sons Thomas and Nathaniel. Misfortune struck when Lucy, the mother of the family, and her properties were seized and the titles were placed in the public vault. In 1783, the Spanish gained control of this territory from the British due to events surrounding the American Revolution. And we see a few years later in 1787 that Nathaniel Bassett has petitioned and received a title from the Spanish governor for that land. And his younger brother Thomas is about 21 years old. A year later in 1788 the Bassett family then travelled to New Orleans for business and allowed a gentleman by the name of William Powell to live on their property. A fire in 1794 in New Orleans destroyed the original British and Spanish titles, so around 1800 we see the land passing to the United States. Problem was that Nathaniel Bassett no longer had the original title because they had been destroyed. So we see him petitioning the Spanish government once again to reconfirm his title to the land, which occurs. In 1804 Thomas Bassett, the younger brother, is petitioning the U.S. government for title to the land on behalf of his brother Nathaniel who had passed away a few years previously. And the United States government, using all of these documents that we have found here as part of his petition, then confirms title to the land. One thing that’s interesting is that we see William Powell’s family also has a petition before the commission for the same land. And his petition is rejected on the terms that the land is owned by Thomas Bassett. One thing I noticed on the claims was that everywhere that there was supposed to be a plot it said “plot omitted” in the American State Papers. So I thought to myself, “Where would this plot appear?” I thought, “These records would appear under general land office records, which are now part of Record Group 49, the Bureau of Land Management – that is the successor agency to the General Land Office.” Using indexes in the consultant’s office at Archives I, I was able to find that Thomas Bassett did have two claims and they appear in these records. And when I went to the records I actually found two hand-drawn plots to his properties. So this is one example of how you can use the American State Papers to then find information in textual records here at the archives. And a few things that are interesting on the maps are – one thing is you can see the little house there. It’s kind of hard to see here, but it’s where William Powell was living. And secondly you can see where the Tombigbee River comes through his properties, and it was actually colored in. So now that I’ve talked about how to use the Public Lands class to research private land claims, I’d also like to show how you can use this resource to find information on the military service of individuals. I have an individual here by the name of Abraham Forbes who I believe served in the War of 1812. However, when I search for information on his service I was not able to find anything. There was no compiled military service record for his service, there was no pension or bounty land application, and he does not show up on the register of army enlistments. Most people probably would have given up at this point and thought either he didn’t serve or that there is no record of his service that has survived. However I went to Grassroots of America, and I found that there were two references to Abraham Forbes in the Public Lands class: One in volume 6, page 362, and the second one in volume 8, page 342. When I turned to these two claims – you can see that I’ve put them on here. I’ll specifically read the second one, which was the later of the two. It had just sort of developed into this second claim, although they both deal with the exact same issue. It states, “On a claim to land by a person who acted as a spy. Communicated to the House of Representatives January 12, 1836. That said Forbes was a citizen of the United States and removed to Upper Canada prior to the last war. That he joined the troops of the United States and was employed as a spy, and had the entire confidence of the officers of the United States, and performed many valuable and important services to the United States in that character. That he had been promised a handsome remuneration by Colonel Christie, whose premature death perhaps prevented any communication to the government on behalf of said Forbes. That he acted with the United States troops until the close of the war and was honorably discharged. It further appears that before the war he was independent in his circumstances, and that when his family was sent to the United States they were sent over a few boxes of goods of but little value. He alleges that his other property was confiscated, but of this fact no evidence is furnished to the committee. The committee are of the opinion that the important and faithful service that was rendered the United States by Forbes entitle him to the provision made by the Act of 1816 for the benefit of Canadian volunteers. They therefore introduce a bill allowing for 320 acres of land.” So what I was able to do was use a private claim to find information on his military service that did not show up in War Department records. A few things that were interesting: First, it mentioned a gentleman by the name of Colonel Christie whose premature death had caused repercussions here. I looked up Colonel Christie and found that he served in the 13th Infantry Regiment and led two unsuccessful attempts to invade Canada. And he was captured and died in 1813, which corroborates the information in the claim dealing with his premature death. However, I felt like this was a really interesting story and I wanted to find more. So what I did was I turned to Petitions and Memorials within the House and Senate Committee Files. Very often when somebody has a claim before Congress they submitted a petition or memorial to Congress. And these petitions and memorials are often stored in specific committee files. This is dealt with specifically by the Center for Legislative Archives out at Archives I. I spoke to a gentleman by the name of William Davis who actually gave a lecture on Petitions and Memorials in the fall lecture series. And what I was able to find is that Abraham Forbes had several claims before Congress. We have indexes out at Archives I which index each person who had claims before the House and Senate. And I used these references to actually go to the House Private Land Claims and Claims Committee Records, and I was able to find his original petitions, affidavits, discharge papers, and all types of other information about his life. What I found was that when the war broke out he was living with his family in Canada. And he actually left his family in Canada, crossed the border, and joined with the 13th Infantry Regiment; but as a guide and spy, not in actual service. He was working through the inspector general, and several affidavits actually tell all about his services. He has little papers and everything that he submitted from his time of service. Following his service as a guide and spy he then joined the 48th New York Infantry as a private, and I was able to find his actual discharge paper. One thing that’s interesting is that he does not have a compiled military service record in the 48th New York Infantry, although this Captain Stevens here who signed off does. So it just goes to show that the compiled military service records are not always complete. Now that I’ve given a few examples of different ways that you can use the Public Lands class in your research, I’m going to now turn to class 9, the Claims class; which has records from 1789-1823 and is one single volume. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s referenced in Grassroots of America as volume 9. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states that, “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” It is this duty to pay the debts that led Congress to take on a role of dealing with private claims and so forth. And this was in a time before there was a court of claims. Many of these duties were later passed on to several federal executive agencies. But at this time for many people, when they had a problem they came to their congressman. And that’s why there are so many claims that show up in congressional records at this time. In the Claims class there are all types of non-land-related claims which were brought before Congress between 1789-1823. Some examples are pensions, property destroyed by the enemy, militia claims, compensation for wages, relief of contractors, as well as many others. I picked one specifically to concentrate on here. There’s a gentleman by the name of Thomas Toms who served in the Revolutionary War. However, he has no compiled military service record at the National Archives. But when I turned to Grassroots of America I found that he has one entry in the Claims class on page 105. When I turned to page 105, what I found was Thomas Toms on the 1794 War Department pension list for Virginia. And these War Department pension lists actually have an interesting story to them. There was a War Department fire on November 8, 1800 which destroyed all pension and bounty land applications which had been submitted to the War Department up to that date. Had it not been for several War Department pension lists that the Secretary of War submitted to Congress between 1792-1795, information on these applicants could have been lost. The American State Papers contain specifically 1792, 1794, and 1795 pension lists which are organized by state and there under by individual. What I found for Mr. Toms was that he was living in Albemarle County, Virginia and also that he served as a private in Captain George Maxwell’s company of militia. It states here that there are no militia rolls in the office, which would explain why he has no compiled military service record. The most interesting part is the statement of his disability, which states, “Severely wounded on the head, being scalped on the left temple with a stroke from a hatchet which does much injury to that eye. He is also disabled on two finger on the left hand and wounded in the right hip and neck. All of which he received in the service of the United States against Major Ferguson on King’s Mountain.” This is one specific example of how you can use the Claims class, although there are all types of others. The best thing to do if there is an individual that you are researching is to just open up Grassroots of America and see if there’s an entry for that person. Now that I’ve talked specifically about how to do research in the Public Lands and Claims classes, I’d like to end by talking about researching in all classes of the American State Papers. All 38 volumes contain an index. However, this index is not as comprehensive as Grassroots of America. It’s more of a topical index, and when it does contain individuals it’s either prominent individuals or people who appeared in the titles of documents and so forth; not necessarily anyone who showed up anywhere throughout the text. Which means you have to do more legwork if you actually find someone. One thing that makes it a little bit easier is the Congressional Information Service U.S. Serial Set index from 1789-1969 which indexes every volume. Once again, it’s not a complete name index; it’s pretty much just a compilation of the 38 individual indexes. And it is available on CD-ROM at the Archives Library Information Center, both at Archives I and Archives II. And another advantage is that when you do your search it also searches the U.S. Serial Set as well as the American State Papers. Finally, I’d like to end with an example from class 6, the Naval Affairs Class – the Navy Pension Fund. This gives a good overview of how to do your research and what you would have to put into doing research in the other 8 classes. The Navy Pension Fund was established in 1800 by Congress to offer disability payments to officers, seamen, and marines disabled in the line of duty. It was funded by the sale of captured ships and other prizes. The problem with this organization was that when there was a war going on, there was a lot of money coming into the Navy Pension Fund. But when there was no war, there was no money to pay pensioners. Another problem was that the commissioners of the Navy Pension Fund were actually allowed to invest the money as they saw fit. So there’s all types of stories about corruption – investing in their own companies and the companies going under – and Congress had to bail the Navy Pension Fund out several times. Finally in 1841, Congress had enough and took over control of the Navy Pension Fund. How the Navy Pension Fund is valuable for genealogical research is that every year, the Navy Pension Fund had to submit an annual report to Congress. Several of these annual reports contain lists of the pensioners who were receiving money through the Navy Pension Fund. What I have done is written a reference report which we keep in the microfilm room out at Archives I which gives an overview of what the Navy Pension Fund is, and then it organizes by volume and page every place that there’s a list of pensioners in the Navy Pension Fund. The main difference, obviously, is that the individual pensioners are not indexed. So if you know that an individual served in the Navy from the Revolutionary War through the mid-1830s, you would have to go through each one of the lists and see if that person appeared. There’s more work, but if you are willing to put the time in there’s a lot to find. So I hope that I was able to accomplish my goal of explaining to you how to incorporate the American State Papers into your genealogical research. I want to thank you for coming today, and I’d be more than happy to answer any of your questions. Introductory Speaker: Again, if you have a question just ask for the microphone. Audience Member: I was just wondering, are the American State Papers still being published? And if so can I order a set? Chris Naylor: They have been reprinted several times. The most recent that I know of was in 1992 by Southern Historical Press. And if you want I’d be more than willing to find out for you and send you an e-mail or contact you however you like. It would be no problem. One other thing that I want to mention is that the Library of Congress placed the American State Papers online through their American Memory website. One difference is that – as I stated earlier it was originally published by Gales and Seaton. There was also another publisher, Duff Green, who also published sets around the same time. The Library of Congress placed the Duff Green set online, while the National Archives has the Gales and Seaton. And also Grassroots of America uses the Gales and Seaton, so sometimes the numbers don’t match up exactly online. But it is a great resource and it is searchable. Once again it’s not searchable by everything in the text; it’s only topical and so forth. Introductory Speaker: Do I understand the original papers are with legislative archives? Chris Naylor: The originals are with the Center for Legislative Archives. What appears in the American State Papers are the records that they deemed the most important or most valuable and printed. Introductory Speaker: Did they create any finding aids other than just relying on the printed American State Papers? Chris Naylor: The Center for Legislative Archives – what they do have is a few different finding aids. One is the actual House and Senate Private Claims indexes which are available at Archives II. They deal specifically with the textual records, not where they show up in the American State Papers. But you can also use that to then find – that’s how I found the petition of Abraham Forbes. Introductory Speaker: What dates do the General Land Office records start, roughly? Chris Naylor: They start roughly late 1780s, early 1790s and move forward from there. To the best of my understanding, although I could check on that for you. Because they were starting to form these commissions, and I believe that the commissions were going on before the actual General Land Office was formed. But then the General Land Office incorporated those records. Introductory Speaker: Does cartographic have General Land Office material? Chris Naylor: Yes, they have some. Although the actual plots that I found were in Record Group 49 out at Archives I. Introductory Speaker: Any other questions? Just as a little caveat, the name Bassett that you picked to research – I went to a Bassett High School in Henry County, Virginia on the south side. And Bassett Furniture is like the largest furniture maker in the world. Chris Naylor: I didn’t know that. Introductory Speaker: You freaked me out for a moment. I’m not a member of the family, obviously. Any other questions?