5.3 Colonial Grants, Private Land Claims & Ellicott's Line

Four sovereigns before statehood

Spanish forces under Bernardo de Gálvez took the British posts on the lower Mississippi in 1779, and Spain governed Natchez until it withdrew in 1798. Spanish grants usually began with a petition and an order of survey and ended with a formal title. Many settlers held only the first steps when the Spanish left, which is why the 1803 Act distinguished complete from incomplete claims.

Old units. Retracing colonial grants means reading French and Spanish measures. The arpent as a linear unit is about 191.8 English feet. A square arpent is about 0.85 acre. River grants were commonly described as so many arpents of frontage by a stated depth. The Spanish vara is about 33 inches, and its exact value varied by jurisdiction and period. Always convert using the value appropriate to the grant's origin, and state the conversion on the plat.

Pinckney's Treaty and Ellicott's line

Pinckney's Treaty (the Treaty of San Lorenzo, October 27, 1795) fixed the 31st parallel as the boundary between the United States and Spanish West Florida. Andrew Ellicott, the U.S. commissioner, ran the line eastward from the Mississippi River in 1798–1799 with Spanish participation; William Dunbar of Natchez made astronomical observations for the Spanish side early in the work. Ellicott's Stone, set April 10, 1799 near Bucks in northern Mobile County, Alabama, bears "U.S. Lat. 31 1799" on the north face and "Dominio de S.M. Carlos IV" on the south. With his instruments Ellicott placed it slightly south of the true parallel, and the GLO later used the stone itself as the initial point of the St. Stephens Meridian. The line became:

• the south boundary of the Mississippi Territory (1798);
• the base line for the St. Stephens survey district, whose initial point is Ellicott's Stone;
• the parallel on which the Washington Meridian's initial point sits; and
• today, the Mississippi–Louisiana boundary between the Mississippi and Pearl rivers.

Sorting claims: the Act of March 3, 1803

The Act of March 3, 1803 (2 Stat. 229), "regulating the grants of land, and providing for the disposal of the lands of the United States, south of the state of Tennessee," did three things surveyors must know:

1. It created two boards of commissioners: one west of the Pearl River, sitting at Washington in the Natchez District, and one east of the Pearl, for the Mobile–Tombigbee settlements. They received and decided claims.
2. It recognized several kinds of claims. Complete British and Spanish grants made before the October 27, 1795 treaty date were confirmed. Incomplete Spanish warrants and orders of survey were recognized for actual inhabitants, within acreage limits. Donation claims went to settlers occupying land at the relevant date, and pre-emption rights went to settlers occupying public land when the act passed. Congress adjusted details in later acts.
3. It set up the Surveyor of the lands south of Tennessee, whose deputies surveyed the confirmed claims and the public land around them.

Private claims and the rectangular grid

Confirmed claims were senior to the public-land surveys. The United States could sell only what it owned. Deputies therefore surveyed the claims by metes and bounds and fitted the rectangular grid around them:

• Section lines were run until they met a claim boundary. There the deputy set a closing corner and noted the connection.
• Each claim became its own numbered tract, commonly a section number above 36 (Section 37, 38, …) in that township. Other claims were designated by claim number.
• Public land remaining around a claim became fractional sections, platted as numbered government lots with computed areas.

+---------+---------+---------+----------------+
|  Sec 1  |  Sec 2  | Frac. 3 |    Sec 37      |
|         |         | Lots 1-2|  (private      |
+---------+---------+---------+   claim,       |
|  Sec 12 |  Sec 11 | Frac.10 |   metes and    |
|         |         | Lots 3-4|   bounds)      |
+---------+---------+---------+----------------+

River-front colonial grants were typically long strips with narrow water frontage running back from the Mississippi, Homochitto, Buffalo, Pearl, or Pascagoula. Inland claims followed ridges, branches, and older lines with non-cardinal bearings.

Retracing a private claim

1. Seniority first. Where a private claim and a later section patent conflict, the confirmed claim controls. The government could not patent what it had already confirmed to someone else.
2. Proportionate measurement is a PLSS tool. Single and double proportionate measurement restore lost corners of the rectangular system (Chapter 7). A lost angle point of an irregular colonial claim is restored from metes-and-bounds evidence: original monuments and accessories, the claim's survey plat and notes, adjoining claims' calls, and ancient occupation of competent origin. Only as a last resort does the surveyor fall back on the record courses and distances from the nearest reliable corners.
3. Closing corners on the claim line mark where section lines met the claim. They sit on the claim boundary and help retrace it. Section-line corners do not move the claim line.
4. Records: the claim's confirmation (American State Papers, Public Lands), the claim survey and plat, the township plat showing how sections closed on it, and later county surveyor records (§ 19-27-5).

Why this still matters

Title research in Adams, Wilkinson, Jefferson, Claiborne, and the coastal counties still starts with these claims. Fractional sections and government lots along them explain acreage oddities, and descriptions often mix claim numbers with section numbers. A deed describing "Section 37, Township 7 North, Range 3 West" is not describing an error: it is a private claim numbered in the Washington Meridian township.