Part 8 (2/2)

The Loyal Land Company, by order of the Virginia council (1749), was authorized to take up eight hundred thousand acres west and north of the southern boundary of Virginia, on condition of purchasing ”rights” for the amount within four years. The company sold many tracts for 3 per hundred acres to settlers, but finally lost its claim. The Mississippi Company, including in its members.h.i.+p the Lees, Was.h.i.+ngtons, and other great Virginia planters, applied for two and one-half million acres in the West in 1769. Similar land companies of New England origin, like the Susquehanna Company and Lyman's Mississippi Company, exhibit the same tendency of the Old West on the northern side. New England's Ohio Company of a.s.sociates, which settled Marietta, had striking resemblances to town proprietors.

These were only the most noteworthy of many companies of this period, and it is evident that they were a natural outgrowth of speculations in the Old West. Was.h.i.+ngton, securing military bounty land claims of soldiers of the French and Indian War, and selecting lands in West Virginia until he controlled over seventy thousand acres for speculation, is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the tendency. He also thought of colonizing German Palatines upon his lands. The formation of the Transylvania and Vandalia companies were natural developments on a still vaster scale.[124:1]

XII. The final phase of the Old West, which I wish merely to mention, in conclusion, is its colonization of areas beyond the mountains. The essential unity of the movement is brought out by a study of how New England's Old West settled northern Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re and Vermont, the Adirondacks, central and Western New York, the Wyoming Valley (once organized as a part of Litchfield, Connecticut), the Ohio Company's region about Marietta, and Connecticut's Western Reserve on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Erie; and how the pioneers of the Great Valley and the Piedmont region of the South crossed the Alleghanies and settled on the Western Waters. Daniel Boone, going from his Pennsylvania home to the Yadkin, and from the Yadkin to Tennessee and Kentucky, took part in the whole process, and later in its continuation into Missouri.[124:2] The social conditions and ideals of the Old West powerfully shaped those of the trans-Alleghany West.

The important contrast between the spirit of individual colonization, resentful of control, which the Southern frontiersmen showed, and the spirit of community colonization and control to which the New England pioneers inclined, left deep traces on the later history of the West.[125:1] The Old West diminished the importance of the town as a colonizing unit, even in New England. In the Southern area, efforts to legislate towns into existence, as in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, failed. They faded away before wilderness conditions. But in general, the Northern stream of migration was communal, and the Southern individual. The difference which existed between that portion of the Old West which was formed by the northward colonization, chiefly of the New England Plateau (including New York), and that portion formed by the southward colonization of the Virginia Valley and the Southern Piedmont was reflected in the history of the Middle West and the Mississippi Valley.[125:2]

FOOTNOTES:

[67:1] _Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1908._ Reprinted with the permission of the Society.

[68:1] For the settled area in 1660, see the map by Lois Mathews in Channing, ”United Stales” (N. Y., 1905), i, p. 510; and by Albert Cook Myers in Avery, ”United States” (Cleveland, 1905), ii, following p. 398.

In Channing, ii, following p. 603, is Marion F. Lansing's map of settlement in 1760, which is on a rather conservative basis, especially the part showing the interior of the Carolinas.

Contemporaneous maps of the middle of the eighteenth century, useful in studying the progress of settlement, are: Mitch.e.l.l, ”Map of the British Colonies” (1755); Evans, ”Middle British Colonies” (1758); Jefferson and Frye, ”Map of Virginia” (1751 and 1755).

On the geographical conditions, see maps and text in Powell, ”Physiographic Regions” (N. Y., 1896), and Willis, ”Northern Appalachians,” in ”Physiography of the United States” (N. Y., 1896), pp.

73-82, 169-176, 196-201.

[70:1] See Osgood, ”American Colonies” (N. Y., 1907), iii, chap. iii.

[70:2] See chapter ii, _ante_.

[70:3] Sheldon, ”Deerfield” (Deerfield, Ma.s.s., 1895), i, p. 288.

[70:4] Parkman, ”Frontenac” (Boston, 1898), p. 390; compare his description of Deerfield in 1704, in ”Half Century of Conflict” (Boston, 1898), i, p. 55.

[72:1] Hanna, ”Scotch Irish” (N. Y. and London, 1902), ii, pp. 17-24.

[72:2] ”Half Century of Conflict,” ii, pp. 214-234.

[72:3] ”American Husbandry” (London, 1775), i, p. 47.

[73:1] For the extent of New England settlements in 1760, compared with 1700, see the map in Channing, ”United States,” ii, at end of volume.

[74:1] Schafer, ”Land Grants for Education,” Univ. of Wis. _Bulletin_ (Madison, 1902), chap. iv.

[75:1] On New England's land system see Osgood, ”American Colonies” (N.

Y., 1904), i, chap. xi; and Egleston, ”Land System of the New England Colonies,” Johns Hopkins Univ. _Studies_ (Baltimore, 1886), iv. Compare the account of Virginia, about 1696, in ”Ma.s.s. Hist. Colls.” (Boston, 1835), 1st series, v, p. 129, for a favorable view of the New England town system; and note the probable influence of New England's system upon Virginia's legislation about 1700. See chapter ii, _ante_.

[76:1] Amelia C. Ford, ”Colonial Precedents of our National Land System,” citing Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, House of Rep. ”Journal,” 1715, pp. 5, 22, 46; Hutchinson, ”History of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay” (London, 1768), ii, p. 331; Holland, ”Western Ma.s.sachusetts” (Springfield, 1855), pp. 66, 169.

[76:2] ”Conn. Colon. Records” (Hartford, 1874), viii, p. 134.

[77:1] Holland, ”Western Ma.s.sachusetts,” p. 197. See the comments of Hutchinson in his ”History of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay,” ii, pp. 331, 332.

Compare the steps of Connecticut men in 1753 and 1755 to secure a land grant in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, for the Susquehanna Company, and the Connecticut governor's remark that there was no unappropriated land in the latter colony--”Pa. Colon. Records” (Harrisburg, 1851), v, p.

771; ”Pa. Archives,” 2d series, xviii, contains the important doc.u.ments, with much valuable information on the land system of the Wyoming Valley region. See also General Lyman's projects for a Mississippi colony in the Yazoo delta area--all indicative of the pressure for land and the speculative spirit.

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