The State as Landowner: The Michigan Road Grant and How Grant Land Was Sold

The Michigan Road land mechanism, 1826–1835, and the point where the published record stops short of this township

The grant itself: By Article II of the treaty made near the mouth of the Mississinewa on October 16, 1826, the Potawatomi ceded to the United States a strip of land commencing at Lake Michigan and running thence to the Wabash River, one hundred feet wide, for a road, and also one section of good land contiguous to the road for each mile of it, and likewise one section for each mile of the road's continuation through Indianapolis to the Ohio River, the sections or their proceeds to be applied to making the road and to be at the sole disposal of the General Assembly of Indiana. The treaty was ratified February 7, 1827, and by an act of Congress approved March 2, 1827, the United States gave the ceded land to Indiana so the state could apply the proceeds of its sale to building the road. The banked fragment for this section puts the grant at about 168,000 acres; the mechanism below is what the published record adds.

Selection came first: The grant land was not sold off the treaty map. The State of Indiana made a selection of lands for the purposes of the Michigan Road, and the selections were afterwards sanctioned and confirmed by an act of the 21st Congress, chapter 67, approved March 2, 1831. A South Bend abstract of title shows the machinery working on a named tract: Section 1, Township 37 North, Range 2 East was among the land so selected, and the United States issued its letters patent to the State of Indiana for the Michigan Road selections on August 14, 1835, later recorded in St. Joseph County in Deed Record 154, page 187. Selection, federal confirmation, and a state patent — in that order — are how a treaty cession became state-owned, saleable land.

Sale was the road fund: The published scholarship on the road's northern-Indiana effects records that the land grants provided for in the 1826 treaty were to be put on sale by the first Monday of December 1830, on the expectation that the receipts would cover building expenses. By an act of February 4, 1831, William Polke was made the sole commissioner, land was to be offered for sale at Logansport on the third Monday of October, and rules had been laid down for the scrip — paper based on the ceded lands — with which much of the road was in fact financed. The standard state history adds that no Michigan Road land was to be sold under 1.25 dollars per acre, and that during 1832 lands were placed on sale at La Porte as well. Sales at a named office, at a floor price, with the proceeds pledged to construction contracts let by the mile, is the whole of the mechanism the published record supports.

Two land systems ran side by side, and they must not be merged: Alongside the state system stood the federal one. The Indiana Archives and Records Administration records that the federal land office at La Porte opened in 1833 — moved to Winamac in 1839 — and that its district embraced all or part of nineteen counties including St. Joseph; that a significant portion of the district's lands had previously been offered through the Fort Wayne and Crawfordsville offices, with some 500,000 acres actually purchased there; and that the La Porte–Winamac office's own first sale took place on August 12, 1833. The same Archives page lists the state lands separately — the Indianapolis Donation, Michigan Road Lands, Saline Lands, Seminary Lands, Swamp Lands, University Lands and Wabash and Erie Canal Lands — and states plainly that purchasers of state lands are not indexed in the Indiana Public Lands database, and that after a first purchase from the public domain, all subsequent transactions are held by the recorder of the county where the sale took place.

The named gap, printed as a finding: No published source found in this section — searching the Indiana Magazine of History scholarship on the road, the Indiana State Archives land-records pages and the La Porte–Winamac land-office introduction — joins a Michigan Road selected section in Township 38 North, Range 1 West to the plat of New Carlisle, or names the buyer, price or date of any such section's state sale. That silence is structural, not accidental: the Archives itself says state-land purchasers are unindexed in its public database. The documentary settler for that limb is therefore named precisely: the Indiana State Archives' Michigan Road Lands and Board of Internal Improvements records, read against the La Porte–Winamac tract books for the federal entries and the St. Joseph County recorder's books for everything after a first sale. One further distinction the record does support: the New Carlisle townsite itself did not enter the plat as Michigan Road grant land at all. It entered as an individual Native grant — Lazarus Bourissa's quarter — bought by the town's proprietor, a separate mechanism told in the tribes article of this wave.

Sources:

1. Treaty text as quoted in a St. Joseph County abstract of title (South Bend document viewer): Article II of the treaty of October 16, 1826; act of Congress of March 2, 1827 granting the land to Indiana; Indiana's selection including Section 1, Township 37 North, Range 2 East; confirming act of March 2, 1831; United States patent to the State of Indiana dated August 14, 1835, recorded in Deed Record 154, page 187.
2. “The Indians and the Michigan Road,” Indiana Magazine of History, vol. LXXXIII (September 1987), via ScholarWorks at Indiana University: ratification February 7, 1827, and the March 2, 1827 act giving the ceded land to Indiana to apply sale proceeds to the road.
3. Leon M. Gordon II, “Effects of the Michigan Road on Northern Indiana, 1830–1860,” Indiana Magazine of History, via ScholarWorks: treaty terms; grants to be put on sale by the first Monday of December 1830; act of February 4, 1831 making William Polke sole commissioner, with land offered at Logansport and scrip rules of the same date.
4. Logan Esarey, A History of Indiana from its Exploration to 1850, part 22: sale at Logansport under Polke, floor price of 1.25 dollars per acre, lands placed on sale at La Porte during 1832, and the road financed largely with scrip based on the ceded lands.
5. Indiana Archives and Records Administration, “Land Records” page (in.gov/iara): La Porte land office opened 1833, moved to Winamac 1839, district including St. Joseph County, prior Fort Wayne and Crawfordsville offerings; the list of state lands including Michigan Road Lands; the statement that purchasers of state lands are not indexed in the Indiana Public Lands database; and the statement that post-first-sale transactions are held by county recorders.
6. Indiana Archives and Records Administration, “La Porte–Winamac Land Office Entries 1833–1855” introduction: district composition, the roughly 500,000 acres previously purchased through the Crawfordsville and Fort Wayne offices and not included in La Porte–Winamac records, first sale August 12, 1833, and closure January 31, 1855.
7. Banked fragment The Land, as supplied in this section's register: the cession of the Michigan Road strip with one section per mile, at about 168,000 acres in the grant.