V. APPENDICES. 

 A. LAND LAWS AND TECHNICAL EXPRESSIONS. 



In order to avoid the necessity of frequent digressions 

 throughout the text to explain the ownership of the land at 

 the time settlement began, and the ways in which the settler 

 could acquire title to farming lands, it has been thought best 

 to gather all those matters, together with some related ones, 

 into an appendix, to which reference could be made from the 

 body of the paper. 



When the lands now included within the borders of the 

 state of Nebraska passed out of the hands of the Indians and 

 into the possession of the Federal government, the latter 

 .proceeded to have land surveyed as fast as the rate of settle- 

 ment seemed to warrant. Without going into the details of 

 this survey, it may be said that the main subdivisions created 

 were townships, each six miles square; that the townships 

 were divided into sections of approximately one square mile 

 each ; and these in their turn into quarter and quarter-quarter 

 sections. The disposition of the land by the government 

 was on the basis of these last subdivisions. The survey was 

 completed in Hall county in July and August, 1866, and in 

 1869 a U. S. land office was established at Grand Island, the 

 county seat. 1 



The federal government gave to the state of Nebraska 

 sections sixteen and thirty-six in every township for a school 

 endowment; it also gave to the Union Pacific Railroad, as to 

 the other roads built in the earlier days, a land grant consist- 

 ing of all the alternate sections for ten miles on each side of 

 the railroad track. As Harrison township lies within this 

 " ten mile limit," all of the odd-numbered sections within the 



1 For a concise account of this and the following matters, see 

 Sato's History of the Land Question in the U. S., Johns Hopkins 

 University Studies, Vol. IV., Nos. 7-9. 



