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Head and shoulders above all the land jobbers stood Robert Morris, once banker to the Revolution and senator from this state during Washington’s administration. Through his surveyor-politician, James Cunningham, he had grabbed the bulk of Cunningham’s district. At one time he owned over a million acres in this state as well as vast acreages in others. In Butler County he had inchoate title to 90,000 acres and almost as much in Allegheny [some now in Armstrong County]. James Cunningham became his agent for the sale of all his lands and had managed to pick out a few thousand acres for himself. |
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… [Surveyor] Joshua Elder selected for Benjamin Franklin large tracts in his district, and for a generation Franklin's heirs sold to pioneers the lands he bought for one to three pence per acre lying between the river and Buffalo Creek, the finest in southern Armstrong County. |
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… The vast areas north of the Depreciation Lands were designated Donation Lands … to be allotted to the officers and soldiers of the state troops in the Revolution … As the Depreciation Lands were taken, [the politicians] devised a plan to open these lands to speculators. They did it by legislative decree that much was unfit for settlement and by legislation … [to] exclude the so-called untillable land from the donation lists. … Large areas were taken out of the donation lists … and designated “Struck Districts” … the sole object was to put the land on the market for the jobbers to acquire. They acquired it. |
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By 1795 the Depreciation Lands were almost wholly taken by the jobbers. Some of the settlers knew it, many did not [John McAninch, William McAninch, and Henry McAninch all came in the late 1790’s]. |
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The law was unconstrued, and it was the popular belief that settlement and improvement were necessary within the time limit fixed by law to perfect title. The influx of settlers after 1795, when Indian troubles ended, were legally helpless to select their homes. The State Land Office was in Philadelphia. … Rumor said the lands were largely taken. The law said location and improvement were prerequisites. Inspection showed no trace of man upon vast areas. |
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The Scotch-Irish for a hundred years had been contesting this very situation with the Penns. Their indomitable spirit solved the situation by entering upon and claiming the lands previously sold to the political jobbers. They were designated squatters. They became squatters, some by choice, others from necessity. Those who chose to defy the speculators’ rights were ready to fight and, if they lost, move on to western lands. Others who would buy found the speculators’ titles doubtful. … The devious ways they obtained warrants clouded many titles, which cloud was not removed until nearly a quarter of a century later, when the Supreme Court of the United States sustained speculators’ titles over those who based theirs on settlement and improvement as prerequisites to validity. The searchers for land who had money to buy passed on to the west where Federal titles were clear and incontestable [John McAninch and William McAninch remained in Armstrong County, and Henry McAninch moved west into Ohio]. |
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… But all back of the river to the northern confines of the Depreciation Lands was largely held by unmitigated speculators, many unscrupulous, who deliberately stayed in the background until the reckless squatters had cleared and improved tracts of their lands.” |
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Source: book Flood Tides along the Allegheny, by Francis Roy Harbison, 1882; The Depreciation Lands chapter, pg.51; whole book available online at the Historic Pittsburgh site, a joint project of the University of Pittsburgh’s Digital Research Library and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania; http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/pitttext-idx.pl?notisid=00z836437m&type=header |
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Originally found by Lorna Gilbert, Houston, Texas. |
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McAninch Family History NL, v.XI.n.1 January 2003 Copyright Frank McAninch page 2003-07 |
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Table of Contents for this Year |