Into market: the land office and the first entries

SPRING 1830 — 1833 AND AFTER

Surveyed land could be bought, and the county's land was bought fast: Chapman's county history states the opening plainly: "The lands in St. Joseph county, although ceded to the United States Government some years previous by the Pottawatomie Indians, did not come into market until the spring of 1830. The first entries made were on the 19th day of April, of the same year." The first two entries Chapman names are both in the tier above Mishawaka's township, in Section 11 of Township 38 North, Range 3 East, up against the state line: John Johnston entered the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter, and Samuel Bell the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter, forty acres each. "Other entries rapidly followed these," Chapman adds, "so that during the first year a large quantity of the most valuable land in the county was taken up." In the western part of the county the same account reports the market's end as well as its beginning: "By the year 1836, about all the Government land was taken up. The land office was at Crawfordsville."

The office geography matters, because the townsite's federal sections — 9, 10 and 15 — were entered somewhere, and the record reached does not say where or by whom. The frame is established. Before 1833 there was no land office in the north: the Indiana Archives' history of the land records states that a significant portion of the lands later forming the La Porte district "had been offered for sale in the Fort Wayne and Crawfordsville offices," and Chapman's western-county account names Crawfordsville as the office for this county's first market. A new district was then carved out for the north: the land office at La Porte opened in 1833 — the first sale of land in the new district took place on 12 August 1833 — embracing St. Joseph County among its nineteen counties; six years later the office moved to Winamac, and it closed 31 January 1855, its unsold lands passing to the Indianapolis office. The mechanics were the same at every office, in the Archives' description: a purchaser examined a plat book, entered his name with the Register against a tract in the tract book — the book arranged by township, every entry listed by its location — paid the Receiver, and in time received a patent; from the patent forward, all transfers were the county's records, not the government's. The individual entries for the south half of Section 9, the southwest fractional quarter of Section 10 and the northwest fractional quarter of Section 15 — the ground the Battells, Lawrences, Fowlers, Barbee and Harman platted in 1835–1837, and which they must therefore have held by those dates — stand in those tract books and in the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office records; they are named here as this section's open pull, not supplied from inference.

One other federal grant touches the county and misses the townsite, and the miss is worth printing. The Michigan Road — the hundred-foot strip from Lake Michigan to the Wabash granted by the treaty of 1826, with a section of land for every mile of its length to pay for its building — was run through this county in 1830. Chapman's own route description carries it into the county in Township 35 North, Range 2 East, north "to South Bend, and thence west, leaving the county on section 34, township 38 north, of range 1 west." The road never entered Township 37 North, Range 3 East, and no Michigan Road selection on the townsite ground appears in any source reached; the east–west road the townsite plats do name is the older Vistula Road, a different road entirely, which crosses the Hurd plat and gave its principal street its first name. The road grant's sections were selected along the road's own line; the tract books are the settling source for any selection claimed nearer than that.

Sources:

1. Chas. C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), "First Entries of Land" — the market opening of spring 1830, the entries of 19 April 1830 in Section 11, Township 38 North, Range 3 East; the same history's Olive Township account — the land office at Crawfordsville, the government land taken up by 1836; and its "First Road" account — the Michigan Road's route through the county.
2. Indiana Archives and Records Administration, "Land Records" and "LaPorte–Winamac Land Office Entries 1833–1855" — the district's creation, the first sale of 12 August 1833, the nineteen counties including St. Joseph, the move to Winamac in 1839, the closing of 31 January 1855, the earlier offerings through the Fort Wayne and Crawfordsville offices, the 48,562-entry database compiled from the district's tract books, and the entry-and-patent mechanics.