CHAPTER VI

THE WORK OF THE GREAT LAND COMPANIES

In the colonies there was much of the land hunger which has remained a characteristic feature of American life. The settler in the wilderness laid claim to as much land as he could. If he had no immediate use for it, he could hold it for a future increase in value, confident that there would be such an increase. Land speculation on a large scale held out promise of great wealth, when vast tracts could be bought from the colonies or the Indians for a few cents an acre. A large number of land companies were formed before the Revolution and many more after the rush of settlers to the west commenced, in the decade following the close of the Revolution. Some of the promoters of these companies used unscrupulous methods. False representations of the land to be sold were made and because of them much money was lost by the confiding public. Yet, almost without exception, the originators themselves lost money. They paid very little for the land, it is true, but it was at the best worth very little, on account of its distance from civilization and the great amount of unoccupied land available to all settlers. Often, too, after the purchase price had been paid it was found that the transfer was not legal, either because the Indian title had not been extinguished or because rival colonial land claims made it impossible for anyone to sell the land with a clear title to it.

The treaty of Fort Stanwix gave an impulse to land speculation and to the formation of various land companies

for taking up and settling the territory which it covered. None of these companies were successful, because of the attitude of the British government, which was consistently unfriendly to inland colonies. One of them, however, came very near success. If success had actually been reached there would have been fourteen instead of thirteen colonies at the outbreak of the Revolution. In 1766, Sir William Johnson proposed to Dr. Franklin, then in London, a plan for a new colony and asked his aid in carrying it out. Franklin approved the project, but a change in the ministry made it impossible to accomplish the scheme. A few years later this company was organized with Sir Thomas Walpole, a London banker of prominence, at its head, and in 1772 the company succeeded in obtaining a large tract of land west of the Alleghanies as the place for a colony. The promoter gave the tract the name of Vandalia, but it is generally called, from the name of the leading man in the company, the Walpole Grant. The stock of the company was divided into seventy-two shares. The promoters desired to buy from the Indians the land west of the Alleghanies, south of Ohio River and north of North Carolina-a tract including about two million four hundred thousand acres. For a form of government it was proposed to take the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The plan was strenuously opposed by Lord Hillsborough, who wrote a report to the Board of Trade. Hillsborough objected to the project because the lands asked for, had, in part, been given to the Indians by treaty. He especially emphasized the fact that such territorial acquisition would be contrary to the policy of the Board of Trade. This policy, as we have seen, was to keep the settlers near to the eastern seaboard, so that they would be within easy control of the Board of Trade and beneficial to the commerce of England. To an allegation that the distance of the proposed colony from the seaboard was so great that supplies could not be transported profitably to the coast, Franklin answered that the actual cost of transportation per hundredweight would be less than

between certain parts of England. Lord Hillsborough had said that if the settlers were crowded in the north, they might occupy some of the unoccupied lands in eastern or western Florida, at that time in British possession. Franklin made the objection that this could not be done because of the pestilential nature of the regions in the south. This was incorrect, as subsequent experience has shown, but he rightly understood and explained the tendency of a people to migrate along the same, or nearly the same parallel of latitude, and asserted that Vandalia, not Florida, was the natural place for the overflow of the population of the Middle States. He called attention to the fact that already there were settlements in this section, and that they needed some government other than the very loose connection with the nearest colony on the seaboard. They needed a strong government, such as they could have only when formed into a separate colony. Franklin's reply was so convincing that when the matter was voted upon in 1772, the petition of the Walpole Company was granted, but before the project could be carried out the impending Revolution made it impossible.

But settlers had not waited for the consummation of the Walpole plan. While there were great difficulties because of the mountains in the south, the advance westward in Pennsylvania by the branches of the Ohio was a very easy one, and settlements were begun on the Monongahela by 1770; and when Franklin presented his statement to the Board of Trade he was able to state that already five thousand families were in the West on Ohio River, and besides these there were several thousand families settled on the western lands claimed by Pennsylvania.

Another indication of the westward growth of population is given in the petition of the people between the mountains and Scioto River to be formed into a separate State. They asked Congress in 1776 that they might have an independent government free from the uncertainties caused by rival States claiming jurisdiction over them. They also wished

to be free from the control of various land companies. In this request they claimed that this new State which, if their limits were allowed, would include lands claimed by Virginia and Pennsylvania and a part of Kentucky, had already a population of twenty-five thousand. This was probably an exaggeration, but taken with Franklin's estimate shows a very rapid growth of population in the Ohio valley.

Another of the pre-revolutionary companies was the Susquehanna Company, of Connecticut. By 1750 the colony of Connecticut was crowded with inhabitants and the people turned toward the western lands for relief, especially to that part of the West under the Connecticut charter. Returning travellers brought enthusiastic reports of the fertility of the eastern end of the Susquehanna valley, which at that time was supposed to be a part of the colony of Connecticut. Under the American news from Connecticut the following note appeared in the London Magazine for July 27, 1753:

"Several hundred people of this Colony have agreed to purchase a large tract of land of the Six Nations of Indians on the Susquehanna River, about three hundred leagues to the westward, lying within the bounds of their charter to settle upon it, expecting that it will be in a short time a distinct government."

This company was formed at Windham, Connecticut, July 18, 1753, and articles of agreement were signed by two hundred and fifty subscribers. The company began its career amid great enthusiasm. The price of the shares quickly advanced from two Spanish milled dollars to nine. The Connecticut colonies invested heavily in this company formed "to enlarge his Majesties English Settlements in North America, and further to spread Christianity, as also to promote our own temporal interests." The land purchased of the Indians for £2,000 comprised an area of sixty miles in breadth, north and south, by about one hundred and thirty miles east and west, between parallels forty-one and forty-two, and bounded on the east by a line