CHAPTER III

LAND GRANTS FOR THE SUPPORT OF SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

At the time of the first settlement in Virginia and for some years thereafter there existed in England an extraordinary interest in the Christianizing of the Indians. It was this remarkable missionary spirit that led to the first land grant for the support of an American college. In 1618 King James issued a letter to the bishops of England asking them to collect money for the establishment of an institution of learning to educate the natives of Virginia for missionary service. The same year, in its instructions to Governor Yeardley, the Virginia Company directed him to choose a convenient place at Henrico "for the planting of a University

in time to come." In the meantime preparations were to be made for the building of a college "for the children of the Infidels." Ten thousand acres within the borough of Henrico were allotted "for the Endowing of the said University and college with sufficient possessions." Later one thousand acres of this grant were set aside for the "Colledge."

By the next year fifteen hundred pounds had been collected for the support of the institution, a part of which was used by the Virginia Company to provide tenants for the "Colledge" lands, in order to make them immediately productive.*

With the exception of the so-called college and university in Virginia, which appear never to have gotten beyond the endowment stage, the great Massachusetts university was the first American institution higher than a grammar school to become the beneficiary of a land grant.

It is interesting to find that the town of Cambridge, to-day one of the greatest centers for higher education in the United States, was the first American community to make a reservation of public land for the support of a college. The following entry, taken from the town records for May 3, 1638, tells the story: "the 2 acres; & 23 above mentioned to the Professor is to the Towns vse for eur for a publick scoole or Colledge." The public school referred to was Harvard College and the professor was Nathaniel Eaton, the first American college professor. In 1649 Cambridge granted one hundred acres for the use of the "Colledge" and four hundred acres

1 Records of the Virginia Company, 1: 220.

2 "Instructions to Governor Yeardley," in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 2: 159. 3 Records of the Virginia Company, 1: 268.

4 Ibid., 1: 220, 230, 234, 256.

5 Records of the Town and Selectmen of Cambridge, 1630-1703, p. 33.

to the president of the institution. During the course of the century various other grants followed."

In 1640 the legislature of the colony gave to the little school at Cambridge the ferry between Boston and Charlestown, but it was not till twelve years later that this was followed by a land grant. In 1652 the general court granted to the college eight hundred acres of land. In 1653 the general court devoted two thousand acres to "the incouragment of Haruard Colledge, & the societie thereof, & for the more comfortable mayntenance and prouision for the psident, ffellowes, & studente thereof, in time to come." In 1683 there was added to the endowment of the institution "Merrykoneag necke," within the present state of Maine, and one thousand acres of land adjoining.10

In connection with the study of school lands reference was made to the reservations for Harvard College in the grants of townships. One of the first of these was made in 1762, one sixty-fourth part of six townships. From this time until 1774 at least twenty-nine townships were granted within the present state of Maine, all of them containing reservations for Harvard College, generally one sixty-fourth part of the township, but in several cases one eighty-fourth.11

For a number of years after the first settlement the colonists at New Haven made grants of grain, called "colledge corne," for the maintenance of the institution at Cambridge.12 But they were ambitious to have a college of their own and were anxiously waiting for the time when they would be able to meet the necessary expense.18 Some time before 1660, by the reservation of a tract of land known as "Oyster-shell-feild," a modest beginning was made toward the endowment of the great New Haven university of the future.1 In 1715, 105,793 acres obtained by Connecticut from Massachusetts in settlement of a boundary dispute were ordered to be sold and five hundred pounds of the proceeds paid to the college at New Haven "for the building a college house."15 This was followed in 1732 by a

@Ibid., 82.

7 Proprietor's Records of the Town of Cambridge, 165, 171, 246, 247.

8 Records of Massachusetts Bay, 1: 304.

Records of Massachusetts Bay. 3: 299; 4: pt. 1, 114.

10 Ibid., 5: 397. The account of the land grants to Harvard College given by Frank W. Blackmar, Ph.D., on page 90 of his monograph on "Federal and State Aid to Higher Education in the United States," published in United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, No. 1, 1890, is not accurate. He says: "In 1652 the court granted eight hundred acres of land to the college; in 1653, two thousand acres; and in 1683, one thousand acres.

"In 1657 the court also granted two thousand acres in Pequot County, and subsequently, in 1682, granted a large tract on Merriconeag Neck."

There was no new grant of 2,000 acres in 1657, but on March 23, 1658, 2,000 acres were laid out for the college "in lejw of" the 2,000 acres granted in 1653. (See Records of Massachusetts Bay, 4: pt. 1, 344.) Nor was there a tract on "Merriconeag Neck" granted in 1682. This grant was made the next year at the same time as the grant of 1,000 acres to which Blackmar refers.

11 Maine Historical Society, Collections, 13: 253, 258, 261, 263, 329, 407, 419, 420, 421, 423; 14: 81, 96, 101, 132, 162, 163, 164, 165, 215, 219, 222, 228.

12 New Haven Colonial Records, 1638-1649, pp. 149, 210, 225, 311, 318, 354, 357, 382.

13 Ibid., 1653-1665, p. 141.

14 Ibid., 372.

15 Colonial Records of Connecticut, 1706-1716, p. 529. New Haven and Connecticut had now been united. The whole tract brought only 683 pounds.

grant of three hundred acres in each of five townships just laid out in the western part of the colony.

In 1746 the institution which has become Princeton University received its first charter under the name of the College of New Jersey. Six years later, when the original location was abandoned and Princeton was chosen for a permanent home, the inhabitants of the town granted to the little school ten acres for a campus and two hundred acres of woodland.16

Dartmouth College owes its origin to the efforts of Reverend Eleazar Wheelock to establish a school for the education of the Indians for missionary service among their own tribesmen.17 In 1771 the town of Hanover, New Hampshire, in which the college was finally located, granted to the school three hundred acres of land.18 The year before the provincial government had given to the trustees of the institution the township of Landaff. The title to this tract proved to be defective; but in 1789 compensation was made to the college by the grant of 40,960 acres on the Connecticut River.19

After the separation from England the land holdings of many of the colonies were greatly increased by the taking over of the Crown lands and the confiscation of the estates of the loyalists. In several of the states a portion of this land was used for the endowment of colleges.

In 1780 Virginia donated eight thousand acres of her recently acquired lands within the present state of Kentucky "for the purpose of a publick school, or seminary of learning," to be established west of the Alleghanies.20 Three years later these lands were given to Transylvania Seminary."1 In 1784 several tracts of land near Williamsburg and Jamestown were granted to "William and Mary university."22 From the time of its establishment in 1693 this college had received government aid, but not in the form of land grants.

23

During the Revolutionary period and the years immediately succeeding, the most extensive grants for the support of colleges were made by the new state of Vermont. Reference has been made to the reservations for a a college in the township grants by New Hampshire before the war and the reservations for the same purpose by Vermont during the final years of the war. So extensive were these reservations that in 1787 provision was made for the appointment of an overseer in each county to care for the college

16 David Murray, "History of Education in New Jersey," United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1899, pp. 212, 227-228.

17 F. W. Blackmar, "The History of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education in the United States," United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1890, pp. 116-117.

18 Hammond, Town Papers, New Hampshire, 12: 159.

19 Ibid., 361.

lands.2 The policy was further extended in 1785 by the granting of twentythree thousand acres to Dartmouth College.25

In 1779 the legislature of Pennsylvania authorized the executive council to reserve as many of the confiscated estates as might be necessary for the support of the provost and masters of the College, Academy, and Charitable School at Philadelphia, the present University of Pennsylvania.26 The yearly income of the institution from this source was not to exceed fifteen hundred pounds. In 1786 Dickinson College became the beneficiary of a grant of ten thousand acres. 27 The next year Franklin College received a similar endowment.2

28

In 1782 the legislature of Maryland gave the "visitors of Kent County School" authority to raise the school to the rank of a college and granted to the new institution the lands of its predecessor.20 Two years later it offered a campus to St. John's College in case it should choose to locate at Annapolis.80

In a measure ordering the survey of two or more new counties the Georgia legislature of 1784 provided for the reservation of twenty thousand acres of land in each county for the endowment of a college or seminary of learning. This grant was a first step toward the establishment of the University

of Georgia.

The College of Charleston was incorporated in 1785 and was vested with the land provided for the free school at Charleston half a century before.32

In 1789 the act of incorporation of the University of North Carolina provided that all property that had theretofore or should thereafter escheat to the state should be vested in trustees for the benefit of the University.33

34

The next year New York devoted several large tracts of land to the support of Columbia College, an institution to-day known as Columbia University.

Prior to 1787, the time when the question of federal land grants for the support of universities came up for serious consideration in Congress, eight of the original thirteen states had made use of public land for the maintenance of institutions of learning of college rank. In a ninth, New Jersey, the only land grant of this kind had come from a local community. Two other states, North Carolina and New York, adopted the policy within the next three years. Delaware and Rhode Island had no college until the next century.

CHAPTER IV

LAND GRANTS FOR MILITARY PURPOSES

Land grants for military defense took two forms during the colonial and Revolutionary period: to encourage the settlement of armed men on exposed frontiers and to reward soldiers for military service. Virginia adopted the former method in 1679 to guard against the incursions of hostile Indians. A tract of land on the Rappahannock River containing about fortyfour square miles was granted to a military officer upon condition that he locate two hundred fifty settlers upon it within fifteen months and keep fifty of them equipped with arms and in readiness to repel an attack at a moment's warning. Provision was made in the same manner for the defense of the region at the headwaters of the James.1

In 1701 the colonial assembly offered ten thousand acres of land to any group of men that should settle on an unprotected frontier and maintain there twenty men fully equipped for military service. For every additional soldier the grant was to be increased by five hundred acres, the total, however, not to exceed thirty thousand acres. The executive council of Georgia, in 1778, proposed a similar system for the Florida frontier.

In 1696 Connecticut granted a township to a company of volunteer soldiers in reward for their services in a war with the Narragansett Indians.* In 1755 the proprietors of Pennsylvania, to regain possession of their western lands and to safeguard them against future encroachments, offered a bounty, varying from two hundred to one thousand acres, according to the military rank of the grantee, to every man who should join the expedition to drive the French from the Ohio and who should settle on the land within a fixed time thereafter."

At the close of the French and Indian War in 1763 the King of England granted to every private soldier who had served in that war fifty acres of land, to non-commissioned officers two hundred, and so on up to five thousand for field officers."

It was, however, not until the commencement of the War for Independence that land grants were used extensively for soldiers' bounties During this critical period the burden of taxation became exceedingly oppressive

4 Colonial Records of Connecticut, 1689-1706, p. 186; Connecticut Historical Society, Collections, 3: 300.

5 Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, 6: 504.

6 Laws of the United States, 1: 446.