782-784. Adams, Village Com munities of Cape Ann and Salem. to a 10 share of stock, and every shareholder received full Works of possession of twenty acres of land when the first division was Capt. John Smith, made. At Salem each of the original settlers was entitled to a house lot in the village, ten acres of arable land, and rights of pasturage and mowing in the meadows, in proportion to the number of cattle owned. The projectors of the Massachusetts Bay colony agreed that every adventurer who went to the settlement or sent others at his own charge, was to have fifty acres for each passage paid. This provision. did not lead to the building up of great estates, as in Virginia, because the arable lands were limited in area and there were always newcomers to provide for. Soil and climate, moreover, were not such as to encourage farming on a large scale. The settlers preferred to live near together. The house lots were usually assigned along a single street with garden. ground at the back. The arable, meadow, and wood land was not divided until the community grew strong enough to build fences and to protect distant fields against Indian raids. In all the settlements made under the auspices of the Massa- Osgood, chusetts Bay Company this plan was followed, though the size of the allotments varied with the amount of land at the disposal of the town and the number of proprietors among whom it was to be divided. Settlers in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire adopted the Massachusetts model. The planters of New England were everywhere small farmers, dwelling near together in villages or towns, each possessing his land in fee simple, and cultivating it with his own hands. Taxes sufficient to meet local expenses were assessed by the town authorities, but nothing in the nature of quitrent was required by the General Court. In the royal province of New York, the feudal form of land tenure introduced by the Dutch West India Company influenced later developments. Great estates such as Rennslaervyck persisted under the English rule. Some of the royal governors granted tracts of hundreds of thousands of acres to favored individuals, and feudal properties like Livingston Manor were created. The practice was protested, since it seriously retarded the settlement of the province. I, Pt. II, Ch. XI. Doc. Hist. N.Y., III, 622-627. "The grantees themselves are not, nor never were in a capacity to improve such large tracts, and other people will not become their vassals or tenants, for one great reason as people (the better sort especially) leaving their native country, was to avoid the dependence of landlords, and to enjoy lands in fee to descend to their posterity that their children may reap the benefit of their labor and industry." The development of the province was retarded, since immiHusbandry, grants preferred going to New England, where lands might be had in fee simple and without charge. When, by the treaty of Fort Stanwix (1766), the Mohawk Valley was 122-123, 190. purchased of the Iroquois Confederacy, land offices were opened and farms were made over in fee simple to actual settlers on the easy condition that five acres out of fifty should be cleared within three years. American 'I, 192, 196, 198, 235; II, 15-17, Osgood, The several proprietors held their respective territories as so many feudal estates from which they were at liberty to grant, sell, or lease lands as might best suit their purposes. William Penn had in mind an aristocratic form of land tenure. He offered to sell five-thousand-acre tracts for £100, reserving a quitrent of one shilling per hundred acres. Fifty acres were allowed for each servant imported. A tract of five hundred acres was awarded to every man who should transport and "seat" his family at his own charge. Here was abundant opportunity for the acquisition of large estates, but here, as in Massachusetts and New York, physical conditions were not favorable to great plantations. Soil and climate necessitated a varied and intensive agriculture. Large tracts of land were bought by groups of settlers, English, Welsh, or German, and then subdivided among the partners to the purchase. The result was a series of agricultural communities of an especially democratic type. With a view to attracting settlers, the proprietors of the Jerseys offered to every man who, already equipped with musket and ammunition and six months' provisions, should meet the governor on his arrival (1664), one hundred and fifty acres of land, and a like amount for each servant or slave imported and similarly provided at his own expense. This offer Hist. N.Y., The allowance for women was seventy-five acres. drew settlers from the adjacent colony of New York. "What Docs. Col. man," wrote the Earl of Bellomont, "will be such a fool as to become a base tenant to . . . Mr. Livingston, when for crossing Hudson's river that man can for a song purchase a good freehold in the Jerseys?" The colonial population of New Jersey was almost wholly made up of small farmers and their families. Local Insti tutions of South of Mason and Dixon's line, both physical conditions and the terms on which land was granted tended to develop large estates. The soil lay in vast fertile tracts, and the climate was suited to the cultivation of staple crops, such as wheat, tobacco, rice, and cotton. There was considerable Wilhelm, economy in cultivation on a large scale, and the small farmer was at a disadvantage. In the Conditions of Plantations Maryland, (1636) Lord Baltimore offered each adventurer who should 7-38. transport five settlers a grant of one thousand acres in perpetuity, subject only to a quitrent of 20s. per year. Adventurers bringing over a greater number of laborers, especially when the men were "artificers, workmen and other useful persons," received larger grants, so that some of these estates amounted to ten or fifteen thousand acres. The intention of the proprietor was to create manors after the medieval type. Each adventurer sublet his lands to the men whom he brought over, and these, like feudal dependents, paid rent in money or produce and presented themselves at the call of the lord of the manor fully equipped with muskets, powder, and bullets for service against the Indians. Sixty such manors of three thousand acres each were established by 1676. The proprietor also made provision for peasant farmers in freehold grants. To any man who should meet the cost of transporting his family to Maryland, was assigned one hundred acres for himself, his wife, and each servant imported, and fifty acres for each child. Such freemen were to pay rent at the rate of ten pounds of wheat for every fifty acres taken up. In the fertile lowlands the great estate proved so profitable that farmers who took up land on these terms were crowded out. Works of In the Great Deed of Grant issued by the proprietors of Carolina (1668) every freeman settling in the country was offered one hundred acres for himself, his wife, each child, and for every man servant imported, and fifty acres for each woman servant, subject to a quitrent charge of half-penny per acre. The philanthropic directors of the Georgia colony assigned to each settler brought over fifty acres of land and tools with which to cultivate it. In both of these colonies the intention of the projectors had been to induce farmers to take up the land in tracts commensurate with their working force. The influence of climate and agricultural conditions were more potent than their carefully devised plans. The government was obliged to concede the Virginia method of acquiring land. Great estates acquired by "head right" became the rule throughout the Southern colonies. The Colonists The subduing of the wilderness was no pastime. Strenuous labor was required to fell the trees, plow lands beset with stumps and stones, protect growing crops against weeds and cattle, build houses and barns, cut roads through the forests, and defend the little settlements against hostile Indians. Only men of strength, courage, and industry could succeed. The fifty spendthrift gentlemen who came to Jamestown with Captain Newport knew nothing of agriculture or of any other useful art. They had no inclination to the prosaic task of providing food and shelter, and were infatuated with the hope of finding some easier road to fortune. There was among them, says Captain John Smith, "no talk, no hope, no work but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold." Even when the shipload of shining earth sent over to England was declared to be worthless, and the "goldshowing mountains" proved to be hills of common red clay, it was not easy to induce the visionary adventurers to undertake useful employments. This futile experiment proved the necessity of sending out men who were able and the United willing to labor with hand or brain. In 1610 the Council Brown, in Virginia reported to the London Company that they Genesis of must have at least a year's provisions supplied them and States, laborers adequate to this difficult business. None but 1, 410, 439. "honest, sufficient artificers, as carpenters, smiths, coopers, fishermen, brickmen and such like" were desired. ter. III, 121, 137, 151, 152. The men who settled Plymouth suffered terribly in their Bradford, first winter. Half of their number died of cold and scurvy the major part adult men. When the spring came they set about planting corn, catching fish, and building houses that they might be well provided against the second winThe Pilgrims were men of the middle and artisan classes, accustomed to work, and, though they knew little of agriculture, they readily adapted themselves to the new conditions. Moreover, they had come to America in no venturesome spirit. Driven from England by religious intolerance, they brought their wives and children and household goods with full determination to build homes in the New World. 137-151, In striking contrast to the sober industry of the Pilgrims Osgood, and their eventual success, showed the braggart thriftlessness I, 114-122. of three neighboring settlements. Thomas Weston, one of Bradford, the merchant adventurers of the Council for New England, 154-161. equipped a colony on his own account, having secured a patent to lands in Massachusetts Bay. A settlement was attempted at Weymouth (1622), but the men sent over were an "unruly company" who "spent excessively " while the ship's stores lasted and then begged and stole from the Indians until the exasperated savages determined to destroy the camp. The settlement was only saved from annihilation by Miles Standish, who went to Weymouth with his little force, overawed the Indians, and enabled the disheartened rowdies to get away. Weston's colonists had laughed at the straits to which they saw the Pilgrims reduced, handicapped as they were by women and children, and had boasted of their own advantage in being all lusty men. They did not understand how essential to a settlement was the steadying stimulus of the family claim. |