Take The
Case Of Agricultural Preemptions For Example.
A settler enters in good
faith upon a quarter-section for preemption; his entry, at first,
attaches physically to no more than the rood of land on which he is
commencing to construct a habitation.
Is that entry confined in effect
to a single quarter quarter? Can other settlers, the next day, enter
upon all the adjoining quarter quarters, and thus limit the first
settler to the single quarter quarter on which his dwelling is
commenced? Is all proof of occupation in his case, when he comes to
prove up his title, to be confined to acts anterior to the date of
conflict? Clearly not. The inchoate title of the first occupant ripens
into a complete one by the series of acts on his part subsequent to
the original occupation.
In the statement of the case prepared in your office, it is averred
that numerous precedents exist in the Land Office, not only of the
allowance of town preemptions as the voluntary selection of
individuals, but also of the application to such preemption claims of
the ordinary construction of the word "occupation" habitually applied
to agricultural preemption claims. That is to say, it has been the
practice of the Government, not to consider municipal occupation
"circumscribed by the forty-acre subdivisions actually built upon; * *
but that such occupation was (sufficiently) evidenced, either by an
actual survey, upon the ground, of said town into streets, alleys, and
blocks, or the publication of a plat of the same evidencing the
connection therewith of the public surveys, so as to give notice to
others of the extent of the town site:" all this, within the extreme
limits, of course, of the three hundred and twenty acres prescribed by
the statute.
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