America’s first relief act in 1815 caused a wave of violations

The area near New Madrid, Missouri, one of the few populated areas in the Missouri region, was hit by three damaging earthquakes in 1811-12.

The first earthquake occurred on December 16, 1811, another on January 23, 1812, and the third and most destructive earthquake on February 7, 1812, devastated the city of New Madrid and inflicted structural damage to St. Louis, more than 150 miles to the north.

The massive damage to the area’s towns, as well as the crop lands, prompted William Clark, Governor of Missouri County; George Bullitt, Speaker of the Regional House of Representatives; And Samuel Hammond, Chief Legislative Counsel, to write a petition dated January 12, 1814. This request demanded Congress in dramatic language that “provisions must be made by law, to grant the said residents relief, either from public land, or in any other way they may It seems to meet the wisdom and generosity of the general government. “

On February 17, 1815, Congress responded with a law that compensated victims whose lands had been physically damaged by earthquakes at the time by allowing them to designate an identical area of ​​land on which public land was permitted to be sold. This became the first disaster relief law enacted by the federal government. Among the other provisions of the bill, “The Commissioner of the General Land Office must deliver to the party a certificate explaining the circumstances of the case and that its legal owner is entitled to obtain a patent for the course assigned to it.”

These certificates had immense value for land speculators as they could be bought and sold by assigning the rights to redeem that certificate for public lands that would be available for sale. At the time of passage of this bill, Missouri public land surveys had not yet begun, and the fifth prime meridian had yet to be established. This law had the effect of allowing certificate holders to retrieve them and locate them, at their choice, regardless of town lines, extent, and divisions associated with the new General Land Survey System. Waiting for the area to be surveyed will not provide comfort to the owners of the lands that it was supposed to provide.

Public lands were not offered for sale in Callaway and Cole Counties until early February 1819. In the intervening four years, certificates were bought and sold, more than once. Some speculators were only interested in the profits to be made from buying and reselling the certificate. Others were interested in purchasing it to reclaim prime farmland at riverbeds but it was not available to the public who would buy it in public sales.

A total of 516 new Madrid Relief Certificates were identified and approved by the Land Title Commissioner. 1 incorrectly issued certificate and revoked. Twenty-two certificates failed to obtain the certification site and were either withdrawn or not recovered as a signatory at all. Twenty-two of these recovered sites were in Arkansas, and 471 certificates were recovered in Missouri. Most of these certificates were retrieved in Howard County; However, 31 were replaced in Calaway County and 11 in Cole County.

Most of these patents are located in counties bordering the Missouri River. In Callaway and Cole Counties, all but a few precious ones were found at the riverbed of the Missouri River or bluff above. It is necessary to follow the summary of subsequent assignment sales to the final assignee to determine who has actually redeemed the certificate against the land.

As with many government programs today, this relief work has not been free from fraud, graft, and corruption. There were many individuals who were trying to use the purchased certificates to prevent others from claiming land as the expected location of our new state headquarters might be. These unscrupulous individuals included employees of the Office of the General Surveyor of Illinois and Missouri, provincial legislators, future governors and federal legislators. These schemes were extended several times to include the relatives of these exploiters.

One of these questionable land patents, the patent for Baptist Delail represented by Angus Langham, was within the 4 square miles assigned to the new town of Jefferson and resulted in lawsuits that would last for several decades. Osage, now called Osage, was created by a group of land speculators in St. Louis including, among others, Alexander McNair, Samuel Hammond, Richard Gentry, and Thomas Hart Benton.

In most cases, the land granted under the New Madrid Certificate did not have the effect the federal government wanted. The original recipient rarely ever recovered the certificate, and by selling the certificate he received only a fraction of what the ultimate buyer paid for that certificate.

Wayne Johnson is an engineer and chemist, born in Jefferson City. Over the past two decades, he has worked with local historical communities, creating websites and digital photography, finding and retrieving those images, and now collecting concise public histories of people, places, and events in Callaway and Cole counties.

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