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Hibbard, Benjamin Horace, 1870-1955 / The history of agriculture in Dane County, Wisconsin
(1904)
Chapter III: The purchase of land from the government, pp. 91-104
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Page 91
HIBBABD-HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE IN DANE COUNTY. 91 CHAPTER III. THE PURCHASE OF LAND FROM THE GOVERNMENT. The land laws under which the land of Dane county was purchased from the federal government were comparatively sim- ple. The system of credit had worked itself out into such a nuisance that after i820 cash payments were required. The clamor of the poorer class of purchasers had resulted in a series of reductions in the minimum number of acres sold in a unit lot, until congress, on April 5, i832, passed an act requiring the public domain, still unsurveyed, to be divided into forties, and after that each forty was sold separately. This was just in time to insure the division of Dane county into these smaller lots, as the survey of southern Wisconsin was then in progress, this county being finished in x834.15 There seems to be no particular order in the way land was put upon the market, except that it had to be surveyed. The land to be sold was "proclaimed" by the president not less than three months, or more than six months before coming into market, i. e., it was advertised in certain newspapers officially designated, and descriptions by number were given of each separate parcel offered. These proclamations were copied by western newspapers so that ample notice was given to all interested. It is worthy of note that in most cases the land offered for sale was scattered promiscuously about, so that it was difficult to buy more than a quarter or half section in one block. It would appear that this was a precaution against purchase by speculators of large tracts in a body, purchase that would give them the power to control and retard actual settlement to a greater iArehlves, office of secretary of state. U I U I U I U I U I U I U I U I U I U I
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