I have looked at the indexes for all of the Territorial Papers book series,
and there are very few mentions of Cato. I believe there were some names on
several petitions to Congress, but nothing that gives any details about
families or relationships. Interestingly, when comparing the actual
petitions to the abstracts of them that appear in the Territorial Papers
book series, many of the signatures were obviously transcribed incorrectly
in the books. Worse than that, some of the petitions had hundreds of
signatures and it was obvious that whole groups of 10 or 12 names were all
signed by the same person. It was a real eye-opening lesson in always going
back to the original source. The transcript in the Territorial Papers would
not have told the whole story.
As to the records of public lands at NARA...oh, I don't think I could look
through all of it if I live to be 100 (but I'm trying)!
When the United States bought the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, it added a
huge amount of land to the United States. The land was not vacant, of
course, there were some white settlers already living there who had bought
their land from the French, Spanish, or British government, depending on
when and where they bought their land prior to 1803. When these settlers
found themselves subject to the United States Government, they had a
problem...will the United States government recognize their land patents
that they had received earlier from a foreign government? Congress set up
various "court of claims", where settlers could gather up the documentation
that they had, and bring it to the U.S. officials in hopes of obtaining an
"official" patent on their land that would be recognized by the U.S.
Government. They brought proofs such as hand-drawn plat maps given to them
when their purchases were made, wills, witnesses who gave affidavits for
them, etc... These proofs were transcribed and included in "The American
State Papers". NARA also has the original books where the claims officials
drew reproductions of the plat maps that the settlers brought to them, and
recorded the evidence. Those books are the original sources for the
material published in "The American State Papers".
There are a number of McGee families (var. spellings) who are in a lot of
those early records, including the "land damaged by earthquakes". There are
other folks that I expected to find in the earthquake documentation, but I
didn't. Anthony Clubb, who was an 1812 soldier who applied for bounty land,
stated in his declaration that the reason he lived in Missouri but enlisted
in Kentucky is because that's where his father was living at the time,
having fled the earthquakes in MO. Yet I found no Clubb names in the
earthquake claims. Also, there were no Catos.
Right, records of the Bureau of Land Management (at NARA) contain records of
sales of all public domain land. Once the land was bought from the
government, subsequent sales of the same land would be in the various county
courthouses, not here at NARA.
Happy hunting!
Peggy Reeves
----- Original Message -----
From: <CoarseAU(a)aol.com>
To: <CATO-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 5:27 PM
Subject: Re: [CATO] Territorial Tax Records MO 1815
Cynthia,
The transcript I have of Territorial Taxes in the County of Cape Girardeau
only provides the given and surname of each individual with the exception
of
references to estates or heirs. There is no indication of the assets or
the
amount of tax.
The townships for Cape G include Tywapity, Cape Girardeau, Byrd, German,
and
Saint Francois, and I checked all of them for you.
Today I also reviewed some of the Territorial Papers, 1806-1814 (which
includes Arkansas)
_http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ar/territory.htm_
(
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ar/territory.htm) and did not find
a reference to
Cato or common allied surnames except a listing for Noah Rushing and
Rowland
Rushing. In the 1810 census for Christian County, KY, Noah Rushing is
enumerated. Noah is from Anson County, NC, and his relatives owned land
on
Thompson's Creek across the boarder from Lancaster County, SC, where
Lynches Creek
and Flat Creek are located. Lynches Creek is the area where John Cato
preached
and where I have found land owned by Johnson, Frizzell, Ladd, and Baker.
Some
of the Territorial Papers are also searchable online at
_http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/_
(
http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/)
On the rootsweb site listed above there is a letter dated April 20, 1814,
by
the Public Surveyor, William Russell, describing the lands in the
Territory
and appraising their value for sale as Public Lands, as well as other
digitized documents that you will find of interest.
As you probably know, the papers for the House Committee on Private Land
Claims are lodged with NARA at Archives I in Washington, DC, and
included in
the Center for Legislative Archives records cluster.The House Journal is
searchable online (Library of Congress). Just thought I'd throw that into
the
kettle regarding the research of land claims during the territorial
period. Of
course, these records only include public domain lands. Most of these
claims
were filed under the Constitutional right to petition for a grievance.
Kind regards,
John
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