Original Land Sales Database

Catlin History Online
		History of the first sales The first land sales in present-day Catlin Township were made in 1822. There were several complex issues that had been settled to make these sales possible. First of all, the the surveys had to be completed. Present-day Catlin Township includes parts of four congressional townships. According to Lottie Jones (p. 52), here are the names of the surveyors and the dates the surveys were recorded for those four townships. Township 18N Range 12W -- Joseph Borough, September 12, 1821. Township 19N Range 12W -- Joseph Borough, September 12, 1821. Township 18N Range 13W -- Beal Greenup, July 5, 1821. Township 19N Range 13W -- Beal Greenup, July 5, 1821. The next step was to select the sections that the federal government would give to the state to encourage the development of the Vermilion Saline. Forty or forty-one sections in T19N R12W and T19N R13W were picked. In present-day Catlin Township there were 14 in R13W and 26 or 27 in R12W. [map] The final complication concerned the selection of Section 16, T19N R12W, as part of the saline lands. Since Section 16 was normally reserved for school use, another section had to be selected. Section 28 was finally designated as the subsitute, apparently some time in 1822. According to the law in force in 1822, the first offering of lands in a congressional township were made at auction with a minimum bid of $1.25 per acre. When the auctions were held for the four Catlin townships has not yet been discovered. They would have been held at the Palestine, Illinois, land office. After the auction, the remaining lands could be purchased on a first-come, first-served basis, again at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre. Six parcels of land, each for the minimum 80 acres, were sold in Sections 33 and 34, T19N R12W, on November 7, 1822. Purchasers were James Butler (160 acres), Charles and Joshua Caraway (240 acres) and Asa Elliott (80 acres). However the sale was made, auction or purchase, we can assume that on that date one or more of the four men (or their agent) showed up at the land office and plunked down $100 for each of the six parcels. Butler had arrived within present-day Catlin Township in 1820 (Beckwith, p. 313) with some of his neighbors from Clark County, Ohio. He planted a crop and perhaps began building his cabin before returning to Ohio in the fall. In the spring of 1821 he returned with his family and made a permanent settlement. His neighbors did not come with him. It was almost a year and a half before he could purchase the land he had chosen. There was little interest in Catlin area lands in the 1820s. Only 14 parcels, less than 1,200 acres, were sold from 1823 to 1830. No lands at all were sold in 1824, 1825 and 1828. In fact there was little interest in any east-central Illinois lands until the "the boom years of 1835, 1836 and 1837" (Bogue, p. 18). The exception was 1831 when the state decided to begin selling off the land it had been given for the Vermilion Saline. As a result, 69 parcels were sold -- more than 5,500 acres. For the lands within present-day Catlin Township, the boom sale years were 1833 to 1836. In those four years, 174 parcels of land were sold totalling almost 16,300 acres -- more than half of the acreage in present-day Catlin Township. One stimulus to the boom may have been a decision by the federal government to begin selling 40-acre parcels. Previous to 1833, the minumum had been 80. The biggest year was 1836 when purchasers bought 8,210 acres, more than 25 percent of the present-day township lands. The average acres per parcel in 1836 also was significantly higher -- slightly more than 195 acres. 1836 was the only year that the average per parcel was more than 100 acres (except for 1837 when the only parcel sold was 640 acres). It is interesting to see, by going through the land sale maps by year, how the original sale of land progressed generally from north to south, from timber land to prairie. Timber was a crucial need for the early settlers. From it he made his home, his furniture, his fences and his firewood. Prairie lands, on the other hand, were avoided. Wildfires were a danger and insects a nuisance. The prairie sod was too tough for wooden plows to break. The panic of 1837 and the resulting depression practically ended land sales in present-day Catlin Township. Except for the 640 acres sold in 1840, there were only five parcels sold totalling 400 acres between 1838 and 1847. 1840 was the exception because it was in that year that the school section, Section 28 in Township 19N, Range 12W was sold. As was mentioned earlier, Section 28 had been substituted for Section 16 because Section 16 was part of the Vermilion Saline reserve. An auction was undoubtedly held on February 17, 1840. All 16, 40-acre parcels were sold and prices paid were the highest for any lands in Catlin Township. Prices are known for 12 of the 16 parcels and they ranged from $3 an acre to an amazing $12.20 an acre. Thomas H. Keeney paid that amount for the SW quarter of the SE quarter. William O. Neal paid $10 an acre for the NE quarter of the SE quarter. This land may have been leased prior to its sale and purchasers may have been buying improvements as well as the land. The other school section in present-day Catlin Township was Section 16, Township 18N, Range 12W. It also was apparently sold at an auction on July 22, 1848, but prices were not as high as for the school section to the north. Only 12 of the 16, 40-acre parcels were sold at the auction at prices ranging from $2 to $2.62 per acre. The other four 40-acre parcels, the southern-most tier, were sold in 1849, 1851 and 1852 at $1 per acre. The last flurry of original land sales in present-day Catlin Township was from 1848 to 1851 when 81 parcels were sold containing more than 5,100 acres. The primary stimulus to this flurry may have been the federal government's decision to reward veterans of previous wars with free public domain land through the issuance of warrants. These warrants were used to obtain 69 parcels of land totalling 4,741.48 acres in present-day Catlin Township. Recipients were either veterans or persons who purchased the warrants from veterans or their widows. There was a brisk market in these land warrants and purchasers could buy them for significatly less than the $1.25 per acre minimum price. "Thousands of warrants were offered on the New York market at $.75 to $1.16 per acre." (Bogue, p. 22) Bogue also reports (p. 19) another rush of land sales in the Danville land office district in the early 1850s (followed by another panic in 1857) but by that time almost all of the land in present-day Catlin Township had been sold. The last parcel sold was a 40-acre tract in Section 15, Township 18N, Range 12W to Henry L. Miller on January 1, 1858. It has already been mentioned that the highest price paid for Catlin land was $12.20 per acre. The lowest price was paid by Frances Laflem in November 1855. For 80 acres in Section 14, Township 18N Range 13W Laflem paid 13 cents per acre -- $10.40. In 1854 the government passed a graduation law which "scaled the price of federal land according to the length of time it had been on the market." (Bogue, p. 22)