The Land Company Experiment

The first major federal effort to remake territorial property came through large sales to land companies. This chapter recounts this history through the stories of three land companies: the Tennessee Company, the Ohio Company, and the Miami Company. The Tennessee Company represented what the federal government hoped to avoid. Created by speculator Zachariah Cox, the Company purchased millions of acres of land in Georgia’s Yazoo sale. Cox then spent the next decade challenging federal authority, threatening Native nations, bamboozling investors with dubious title, and asserting his own sovereignty in the southern borderlands. When it created the Ohio and Miami Companies in the Northwest Territory, the federal government sought to avoid such outcomes. The two companies, headed by Rufus Putnam and John Cleves Symmes, promised to distribute title systemically while also preserving peace with Native peoples. Yet this supposedly mutually beneficial relationship did not work out. Both companies felt abandoned and betrayed by the federal government when war with the Northwest Indian Confederacy ensued. Yet, like the Tennessee Company, the Ohio and Miami Companies also both succumbed to the lure of profit on bare promises of future title, creating still more property confusion and uncertainty that fell to the federal government to resolve. The experiment’s failure led Congress to reject large-scale land sales as a viable solution to the territories’ property uncertainty.

Alien and Corporate Ownership of Lands

This chapter describes Article XXII of the Oklahoma constitution, which concerns alien and corporate ownership of lands. Section 1 provides that an alien or person who is not a citizen of the United States may not directly or indirectly gain legal title to or own land in Oklahoma. An alien, however, who can show he or she has taken up bona fide (or genuine) residence in Oklahoma may acquire and hold lands during the time he or she actually resides in Oklahoma. If that resident alien ceases to be a bona fide inhabitant of Oklahoma, then he or she must dispose of those lands within five years from the time he or she is no longer a resident of the state. Meanwhile, Section 2 prevents land companies from buying rural land and prevents private corporations from buying more rural land than is necessary and proper for their operation. This provision is meant to encourage private rural home ownership.

Generation of Violence

Although population in North America grew at an astounding rate in the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin believed the vast open lands in North American could easily absorb the growth. He underestimated the tensions created by farm parents seeking land for their children in a time of rising prices. Through the seventeenth century, open lands along the coast and up the rivers provided adequate acreage for the rising generation. Land was distributed by headrights and grants in the South and Middle Colonies; in New England, it was given as townships to groups of settlers. These systems broke down as the population grew and land prices rose. Settlers in search of farms were forced on to lands that were in dispute. Adjoining colonies laid claim to the same areas, or the native people refused to acknowledge purchases by colonies or land companies. In these contested areas, violence broke out between the rival claimants. From the Carolinas to Vermont, farmers used force to defend their titles. They resisted law officers or fought with the Indians to protect the farms that supplied their families. After the Revolution, the new federal government developed systems for distributing land. Conflicts occurred occasionally and Indian wars lasted through the century, but the violence abated as institutions formed to help families acquire land for their children.

The Chase

This chapter examines the bureaucratic maze of state regulations that community activists face. It quickly becomes clear that procedures within the state Department of Environmental Protection funnel citizen input away from critical decision making. Activists are told that only in the state legislature can they argue that mountaintop removal should not be allowed. That same legislature is awash in political campaign contributions from coal companies, and in fact populated with many members who are themselves tied to the industry. From the shady dealings of land companies in the nineteenth century to the shady dealings of Governor Moore, West Virginians are accustomed to Coal's institutional dominance over their politics and economics. Ultimately, layers of bureaucracy make it difficult to hold politicians or the industry accountable.

Settling the Canadian Colonies: A Comparison of Two Nineteenth-Century Land Companies

Two British land companies, the Canada Company and the British American Land Company (BALC), were active during the nineteenth century in settling what are now Ontario and the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Both purchased large tracts of land from the British government, with two goals: to provide funds for the governors of Canada and to relieve Britain of its surplus population. The Canada Company worked closely with the government to meet these objectives, whereas BALC indulged in land speculation and made immigration a secondary priority. One was successful, and the other struggled throughout its existence. Their success or failure was the directresult of how well they dealt with both the changing economic climate and the British and Canadian political situation.

Selling Cut-Over Lands in Wisconsin

In 1906, nine important lumber firms set up a jointly owned company to sell their cut-over lands in northwestern Wisconsin to potential farmers. The land company learned, from its experience with various classes of buyers, that the most reliable was the owner-occupant who had made a substantial down payment. Even when a settler fell behind in his payments, the company did not foreclose unless the debtor left his land or was obviously making no effort to pay. Competition from other land companies tended to lower the price of land and also to inflate sales costs, but at its dissolution in 1940 the company showed a moderate profit. Thus the policy adopted by the nine lumber firms, of holding the cut-overs for sale to settlers rather than letting the land revert to the state for taxes, found a commercial justification.